Sharn

A sharn's real body is a glossy black teardrop of loose flesh, dotted with tiny eyes and haloed in purple light. Few foes ever see it. What they meet instead are its limbs: three fanged serpent heads and three trihand arms, snakelike trunks that split at an elbow into three humanlike forearms. Every limb is covered in little eyes with 60-foot infravision.

The sharn opens up to 6 small ethereal windows at once, anywhere within 400 feet, one for each limb, and attacks from many angles together. A window looks like a whirl of winking purple motes, moves at MV 6, and is AC 2; damage to it passes through to the body. Each appendage is AC 4, the same as the body. Each hand deals 1-2 points with a punch or rake, and can also grab items or wield a weapon. Singling out one hand means hitting AC 3, because its two neighbors are in the way, but success can disarm it, break what it holds, or sever a finger bearing a magic ring.

Enchantment/charm spells never work on a sharn, and illusions never fool it. Nothing, psionic or otherwise, can contact its mind unless it permits. A creature that does make contact faces an extra attack through the link: an Intelligence check at a +3 penalty, or the effects of feeblemind. With water (even ice, snow, or blood) plus heat or sunlight, a sharn regains 1 hit point every two turns.

Sharn lurk in several vast underground complexes and seem to feed on adventurers, repeatedly troubling those who explore the lowest levels. They link with each other through a close-range shared telepathy. All sharn of an area form one clan that sets its secret aims in council; they are known to be curious about magic, planar travel, and mastering varied environments on and off the Prime Material Plane. They keep apart from the brief affairs around them, and one human sage aptly called them 'The Great Aloof Ones.'

Sharn bud once they reach 55 hit points or more. One clan worships the Sunken Matriarch, a being in the depths of a great subterranean river that some think is an aboleth with sharnlike magic. Other clans honor human, elven, or even goblin gods.

Their diet mixes lichens, roots, and green plants with mammalian prey.