Sea Hermit

On a lonely beach rises a spiral shell some 20 feet wide and 30 feet tall, white streaked with deep blue and red. Its occupant seems a kindly hermit, human, turtle-folk, dog-folk or the like, glad of visitors and eager to offer them a bed inside. The shell really is the creature's home, but the host is a shapechanger: a scholar from an undersea kingdom who studies the surface world. Its true form is a colossal hermit crab, 10 feet wide and almost 40 long, with two huge pincers, big black stalked eyes that retract into armored sockets, two pairs of feelers that sense heat, sound and movement, and a dark red carapace. Six spindly legs reach out from its inner shell to crawl along the seabed or swim, towing the great shell behind. It speaks several coastal tongues and can talk with most intelligent sea dwellers.

In disguise it rarely fights, though it may strike sleeping guests; it prefers live specimens. A disguised hermit has the AC of its assumed form and resumes crab shape in the first round of any attack. As a crab it uses two pincers, and on a natural 19 or 20 the victim must save vs. death magic or lose a random limb. Its front is AC 0 and its softer rear AC 3, but tucked into the shell with only its front exposed it is always AC 0, as the shell is too thick to breach mid-battle. Captives inside who try for its soft back soon face hundreds of gallons of seawater, as it dives and lets its seals open long enough to flood the lower spiral.

Its shapechanging works like the 9th-level wizard spell shapechange but is natural, and it can copy only intelligent beings it has studied. A change takes one round and grants full natural, nonmagical abilities. Sages have tried to connect it to the aranea, without success, since the hermit can become any intelligent creature rather than a single humanoid form.

There is a 20% chance a hermit can use spells and skills stolen from earlier prey. Such a hermit knows 4d10 spells, each of a level found on 1d8 and chosen randomly, casting as a 16th-level mage, so 9th-level magic is beyond it and its spells never increase as a normal caster's would. It also has 2d10 random skills.

Sea hermits are sages of the deep kingdoms who lure surface folk in order to study their memories, which arcane, lethal procedures extract to teach the hermits new spells, skills and knowledge of the land. They feel no qualms about the deceit or the deaths, regarding it as no different from dissecting insects. They prefer taking prey alive back to their kingdoms, where the work is easier, and may keep up the act for hours to lull victims.

A hermit never strays far from its shell in humanoid form, since finding another empty one means a long, dangerous undersea quest without its best protection. It will do anything to defend its home, one of its few weaknesses. Small, sharp-eyed coastal animals that can see through its disguise are its special enemies; they often watch hermits and warn would-be victims, so a hermit may chase off any nearby dens before setting its trap.

Hermits usually dwell in the deep waters beyond the coast, surfacing only to collect specimens, and apart from their abductions they barely affect the land. They see surface folk as neither better nor worse than themselves, merely different, and exploit them to gain power at home. Parts of a hermit's body are useful in magic of water breathing and shapeshifting, and a turtle-folk wizard reportedly had one of the shells enchanted to function as an instant fortress.

The shell is a squat cone about 60 feet around at the base, coiling upward 30 feet to a top room only 10 feet across. Curving spirals bend the ceilings, so the rooms lack the hard corners most races expect, and on steep stretches the hermit has carved polished stairs from the shining mother-of-pearl. The first 40 feet, around the first bend, holds the crab's body; while it plays host this space is cluttered with driftwood and tools like a workshop or junk room. Beyond, the shell has been shaped into arches, stairways and chambers, including a laboratory and prison cells. Secret doors may guard traps for nosy guests, often spring-loaded tridents coated in exotic fish venom (THAC0 13, 1d10+4d8 damage, or 1d10+2d8 with a save vs. poison).