Stalking Catfish

This remarkable fish can spend nearly all its life out of water, striding on broad, powerful fins. That lets it leave a cave pool once it has eaten everything there and go looking for fresh hunting grounds. Its scales shine a brilliant metallic green, though there is rarely anyone in the dark to admire them.

The catfish creeps slowly through the tunnels, feeling everything around it with barbels 12 feet long, so magical concealment does nothing to hide prey from it. The instant any barbel brushes a living creature, a reflex fires and the fish lurches forward to gulp it down, if the target is Size M or smaller. A victim who fails to evade takes 1d8 from the teeth and another 1d8 each round afterward from digestive acids. A swallowed victim can fight back only with a short weapon already in hand, such as a dagger or short sword. Rescuers hacking from outside have a 50% chance with each cut of dealing half the damage, rounded down, to the person inside.

Without its barbels the fish is nearly blind in the dark and attacks at -4. Severing one takes a called shot using an edged slashing weapon, but anyone cutting them at the root is standing a few feet from the mouth and has made his presence very clear.

For most of the year they live alone, but for one week each year they gather in the largest bodies of water around to breed, as many as a dozen to a pool or lake depending on how many such waters the region has. Their appetites thin out every other creature there, which suits them, since the eggs are defenseless. Of up to a hundred eggs per female, just four or five live to adulthood.

Down below they are one more big predator; a tunnelmouth that catches one must chew until it bites the fish in half, since it is too large to gulp whole. A catfish that reaches the surface usually becomes the dominant hunter unless something like a dragon already rules the area.

The flesh is delicious and sells for 10 gp a pound, fresh or smoked. Mashed eggs make an exquisite 'egg cake' worth 20 gp; the eggs alone go for 6 gp a dozen but must be kept underwater until used. Fighters with an eye for fashion pay a wizard well to turn the tough, handsome hide into scale mail +1. A foot of barbel sealed in amber and enchanted can become a wand of enemy detection, but only one barbel from each fish works.