Uthraki [Forest Spirit]

Local tales describe a hairy, twisted horror with eyes all around its head, impossible to surprise. Few survive to confirm it, but the tales are true. In its real shape an uthraki is a stooped, hunchbacked ape with long, matted gray fur, a small, eerily human face and eyes of solid black.

Uthraki speak Common and can magically become any humanoid, human or demihuman. Only true seeing or similar magic sees through the guise; detect magic reveals just an aura. An uthraki fights in disguise and resumes its true form right before the kill, to heighten the terror. If both of its claws hit in one round, it has its victim by the throat and deals an automatic 2d8 each round until a Strength check at -4 breaks the grip.

After sunset it regenerates 2 hit points per turn, so it prefers night attacks. Heat spells deal it double damage, and earthy weapons, such as flint arrowheads or clubs of wood or stone, always do maximum damage, perhaps because its spirit nature is inimical to the earth.

Uthraki hate all life, even each other. They haunt remote roads in the wilds of a cold eastern land, lairing in burrows under roots or between rocks, and avoid towns, where true seeing and the land's witches would doom them.

To win trust until dark, an uthraki wears a comforting face: a lost child, a jolly peddler or minstrel, merry elves, gruff but kindly dwarves, cute halflings or gnome tumblers. Otherwise it eats rats, rabbits, squirrels and carrion, and cunning ones pose as easy prey to ambush predators.