Silt Horror

Silt horror names a family of predators that vary in color and size but all hide below the silt, bristle with tentacles, and never stop being hungry. Each escapes by blasting air from a sac that shoots it backward through the dust in a blinding plume, and each lets captives suffocate before feeding.

The commonest and usually largest kind has tentacles reaching 50 feet. So keen is its sense of vibration that it gets +2 on surprise rolls, and it lies so motionless that foes suffer -2 on theirs. It lashes out with every tentacle as soon as anything is within 50 feet, splitting them among several targets if all are in reach. A hit does 1d8; beating the needed roll by 4 or more also seizes the victim, who takes 1d8 more each round while being hauled under. Only someone braced or anchored may roll Open Doors to resist.

Freeing a captive means cutting the tentacle (10 points each; blunt weapons deal half but can crush it), though a creature of Strength 21+ may try a Bend Bars roll. A losing white horror jets off at 50 yards per round and is fully buried the next round.

It drifts slowly through silt basins and the silt sea, feels movement up to 3 miles off, and gradually settles near regular wading paths. It eats anything except other horrors and can survive years on one meal. Living some 40 years, it usually mates once, after rain and only if a pair is nearby; the female lays thousands of eggs in her next victim. Lost tentacles regrow at one a month, and the few giants who have killed one praise its taste.

This blind, deaf hybrid of the other two kinds is really dirty white; its tentacles just look brown waving above the pearly silt. One sensing tentacle always rests just beneath the surface. Its psionics are precognition, feel sound, feel light, domination, contact, and mind blank. It reads foes and timing with precognition and tries to dominate anything too strong to wrestle, including other horrors, which it also hunts.

Tentacles hit for 1d6 and grab when the roll beats the target by four or more, then deal 1d6 a round; a braced victim makes a Strength roll or is dragged under to suffocate. With Strength 19 a victim may spend the round on a Bend Bars roll. Tentacles fall after 8 points of damage, separate from the body's hit points, and losing 4 or more makes it flee by air jet.

Most active of all, it roams far, needs a meal at least monthly, and lives around 45 years. Only other horrors prey on it, tentacles regrow in two weeks apiece, and giants say it tastes awful.

Sickly gray, with a mass of barbed, razor-edged tentacles, the gray is the cleverest, nastiest horror, unafraid of anything that moves. Using its devotions control sound, create sound, and control winds, it fakes whimpering or the splash of water a few steps away; it cannot copy voices. Someone actually looking for that water takes -4 on surprise.

Twelve tentacles burst up together. Any hit deals 1d8, grabs, and drags the victim down, where squeezing adds 1d8 per round besides the suffocation. Breaking free by Bend Bars requires Strength 23 or more. Tentacles take 12 points to sever and regrow monthly. A direct hit on its body sends it jetting up to 50 yards away, but it returns a few rounds later if victims stay, striking and retreating until it has smothered all it can or its body has lost over 50% damage.

Solitary and aggressive, it swims through the silt, saving its air sac for emergencies, feels travelers 3 miles off, and breeds with any horror. It loves eating giants, who usually abandon a path once a gray horror finds it.