Sharg

The sharg looks like a giant shark crossed with a squid, 20 feet long, with dull black skin that never shines even in strong light. Its dark eyes all but vanish against it. Four long tentacles, each edged with sharp, toothlike ridges, trail from its body. It makes no sounds and has no capacity for intelligent speech.

The sharg is always hungry and strikes swiftly from under the steaming black river under the buried city, drawn especially to moving barges. In open water it either rises under a victim for a powerful 5d4 bite or grabs with its tentacles. A tentacle hit deals 1d8 and seizes the target, who then takes 2d8 crushing damage each round until released. Escaping takes a bend bars roll; alternatively, the tentacle can be cut off by dealing it 15 points of damage, though aiming at one means hitting AC 2. A held victim is hauled toward the jaws, and only a Strength check at -4 delays the bite; failure means being stuffed into the mouth.

In the narrow tunnels east and west of the city it has a nastier trick. It lets a barge pass, then braces two tentacles against the cavern walls, one on each side, and hoists its body out of the water for 1d4 rounds, striking with the other two tentacles and its bite all at once. When its grip fails, it drops onto the barge if the craft is still close, crushing the barge for 3d10 damage; anyone aboard takes the same unless a Dexterity check at -3 lets them dive clear.

If it suffers more than 40 damage, it flees to its island lair to heal. Bright light pains its eyes, which cannot adjust to sudden changes. A light spell has a 75% chance to drive it off, but 25% of the time it flies into a rage and fights at +2 to hit for 1d6 rounds.

The sharg did not originate on the desert world. It came from tropical freshwater rivers elsewhere, found by the undead dragon king during one of his many planar journeys. Impressed when it dared to attack him, he subdued it, brought it home, and, needing water to keep it alive, dumped it into the black river to study and someday train it for his war on the surface. Like so many of his schemes, it has slipped from his attention for now. The beast lairs in an underwater cave beneath one of the river's small islands, and though fishermen keep pleading for help, the templars are ordered to leave it alone. Templars ferrying the dead to a cave east of the city have learned to scare it off with light spells.

There is a 50% chance it is home at any time. It notices intruders on the island unless they are extremely quiet, then slides out and circles, waiting to snatch one or two, even reaching up out of the water. Driven by desperation or hunger, it can haul itself ashore on its tentacles for up to five rounds, long enough to run down a fleeing victim or grab someone at the water's edge.

The sharg eats almost any meat and is steadily emptying the river of fish, but it has come to relish the wyrmkin who run the fishing barges, and has learned that a capsized or broken barge means a meal of them. When one passes overhead, it swims out to meet it. Unknown to the city's wyrmkin, their river is only a short stretch of a huge underground waterway running for scores of miles in both directions, full of creatures for the sharg to hunt.