Urophion

From afar it looks like a 9-foot rock column, 3 feet wide at the bottom and 1 foot at the top. The water-carved ridges around its purplish-gray body are really thick tendrils coiled tight. When it wakes, one milky eye opens near the top above a round, lamprey-like mouth, and six tendrils spaced around that mouth uncoil and thrash. Because it matches its body heat to its surroundings, infravision barely shows it, and those relying on infravision still fight it at -4 in darkness.

Its pliable body can pose as a stalagmite, a boulder or a stalactite, imposing -2 on foes' surprise. It opens with a psionic mind blast in a cone 60 feet long, 5 feet wide at the creature and 20 feet wide at the end. If that succeeds, all six tendrils (reach 50 feet) seize the stunned victim and extract his brain within the round, killing him. The tendrils can also fight at range while the body stays hidden in the dark. Each hit grips for 1d4+2, and a bend bars/lift gates roll tears one free. Once one tendril holds a victim, each further tendril gains a cumulative +1 to hit, up to +5; with four attached the victim is pinned and loses his brain the next round, which the urophion eats while its other tendrils keep fighting. Tendrils are AC 0, and each soaks up to 6 points from any single edged-weapon blow; all damage dealt to tendrils comes off the creature's total. It is immune to electricity, takes half damage from cold and saves vs. fire at -4. Its infravision matches that of mind reavers.

Telepathy: domination (science); awe, ESP, post-hypnotic suggestion, suggestion and taste link (devotions). Psychokinesis: control body and levitation. Psychometabolism: body equilibrium. It always has other powers too, though weaker than its makers'.

Despite mental gifts close to those of mind reavers, its crude shape and immobility make it a second-class servant, and most spend their lives guarding the fringes of mind reaver territory.

Mind reavers sometimes plant tadpoles in non-humanoid hosts to breed new kinds of reaver kin. The urophion came from one such pairing with a subterranean roper.