Skuz

A skuz looks like a scum of algae coating a still pond or lake. It can mold that slime into humanoid or other shapes to tempt prey closer. Its deep tie to the Negative Plane makes it loathe all life and wants to pull every living thing into its watery grave. Sunlight does not trouble it, and it hunts day and night alike.

Its favorite trick is shaping itself into a person, most often a child, thrashing as if drowning. It avoids striking until the would-be rescuer is in the water, where it has every advantage. The skuz grows pseudo-arms from its slime; each touch deals damage and drains one life level. Once a humanoid is weakened, the skuz drags it under to drown, and a victim who drowns this way rises as a new skuz. Humanoids it kills by other means stay dead.

Twice a day each, it can call on animate dead, watery double, suggestion, transmute dust to water and gaze reflection. Only +2 or better weapons can hit it. Fire of any kind, mundane or magical, does nothing to it, and its pliant body halves damage from enchanted blades. Lower water inflicts 2d10 damage, and raise dead destroys it outright. Priests turn it on the 'special' row, though a turned skuz still will not leave its pond.

Groups sometimes hunt together, pooling their powers or posing as several drowning people. In such a hunt each attacks more savagely, competing to claim the most victims.

Skuz infest stagnant ponds and small lakes in warm and temperate country near people, avoiding the icebound north and empty wilderness. They are loners at heart, but one that drowns many victims soon shares its water with several of its spawn. An overcrowded pond loses some members, which crawl overland to less contested water.

A skuz never sleeps and needs no food, though drained life energy refreshes it. It kills every fish and plant in its water and every animal that comes to drink, leaving the carcasses on the shore as bait for larger scavengers. It hauls armor, coins, jewelry and other trophies from humanoid victims to the bottom, and the one with the richest hoard is most respected and usually directs the others.

Skuz have no place in nature; they kill pointlessly and empty waters of fish, and their link to the Negative Plane makes them foreign to the world. Creatures close to nature avoid their waters, though swanmays and centaurs sometimes join forces to hunt them or ask adventurers to do it. A slain skuz's slime is a prized component for water-based spells, typically doubling their duration.