Silt Paraelemental Beast [Dark Sun]

Picture the kraken of old tales built entirely from fine dust. Eight suckerless arms, each about 7 feet long, spread from a snakelike upper body, and a neck of similar length carries a head much like a silt drake's. The arms can hoist a man or club a foe, and dust puffs from the nostrils like steam. Since it glides through the very silt it is made of, the beast stays all but invisible until it rises to strike.

Each round it bites for 3d6 and lashes with six tentacles for 1d6 apiece, though no more than one arm can target a single foe of man size or smaller. A tentacle that hits has a 50% chance to coil around its target, squeezing for 2d4 every round thereafter until severed or escaped.

Seized victims are hauled down to be smothered. Roll percentile dice for their arms: 1-25 leaves both free (attacks at -1), 26-50 traps the left and 51-75 the right (either means -3), and 76-100 binds both, so the victim cannot fight back. A tentacle's Strength is 18/01, and anyone stronger can pull free of the squeeze; the beast then bites that victim automatically, without rolling, until the struggling stops.

Every tentacle has 8 hit points apart from the beast's 8 HD. When one takes that much damage the creature loses its grip on the shape and the arm spills to the ground as dust.

The dreaded whirlpool comes from the beast spinning in the silt, opening a funnel that drags down everything within 1 foot per hit point it has. When the spinning stops, the dust closes over those below. A buried victim must make eight Constitution rolls in a row to surface before inhaling silt. Breathing it means a save vs. death magic at -3: failure is death, success costs 2d10 hit points and the climb continues with the rolls still remaining.

Wind attacks deal double damage to it, and attacks tied to its own para-element do none. While in contact with a large body of silt it regenerates 2 hp per round.

It can only be summoned where silt is plentiful. Once free-willed, most head for the silt sea or similar dust basins to roam their element forever. They live alone and attack only those who threaten them or who resemble their summoners, which in practice means most humans, demihumans and humanoids.

Unnatural as it is, the silt beast has found a lasting role in the desert world, thinning out the predators that hunt its dusty home.