Skum

Nothing human remains visible in a skum. It has an aboleth-style tail and four mighty limbs, every one tipped with a webbed hand of two fingers and a thumb, all bearing retractable claws. Clear, hairless, gray-green slime-skin covers it all. Its round eyes share its makers' eerie purple-red hue and have 60-foot infravision. It lacks outer ears but hears underwater at double a human's range in air.

Skum were made to fight. They can engage three foes at once but usually gang up on one. Males have effective Strength 18, females 18/50. In water a skum bites and strikes with all four limbs; on land it is clumsy, attacks at -2, and uses only bite and arms. Taught weapons, it handles them badly, also at -2. With an aboleth present, skum keep fighting until they win, die or are called off.

They make excellent beasts of burden underwater. Strapped with a load, a female matches a heavy war horse's capacity and a male a medium war horse's. Ashore, a skum carries no more than a human of equal Strength.

At least a millennium of selective breeding stripped away whatever the aboleths judged useless, including voices, lungs, outer ears and hair, and added tails for swimming plus fangs and claws for combat. Most skum have Intelligence 5-7, and some strains are duller still. They are as coldly logical as such minds permit and nearly emotionless.

Skum share a simple telepathy (30 yards) with one another and their masters, enough to grasp basic orders but useless with any other race. Their minds bend easily: they receive no save against an aboleth's enslavement and save at -4 against other enchantment/charm magic.

Skum breathe through moist skin. Ashore, a skum is fine for 30 minutes; after that its skin dries and it takes 3d4 damage per turn. Females lay one egg after roughly six months, and it needs four to six weeks buried in sand on dry land, ideally watched by both parents. Young are nursed much like human babies and mature in three years. Only 25% of eggs reach adulthood, and though skum can live 30 years, most die fighting long before.

Most land dwellers hate skum. Drow and duergar kill captives slowly; deep gnomes tend to pity them. Brinekin bear them no particular ill will, yet skum have never been seen serving in a brinekin city. Skum eat anything they catch, and their masters let them scavenge. Aboleths cannot turn captive humanoids into skum, but they can alter them so that their children are born skum.