Velya Vampire

An ancient curse turned these former land dwellers into vampires of the deep. Seen as it truly is, a velya has blue skin, gill slits, and claws on both hands and feet. When it wears a human guise it is handsome but savage, wild-eyed and tangle-haired, draped in rags that resemble a burial shroud.

Spending a round per change, it can become a great white shark (swim 24), a manta ray (swim 18) or a current (swim 18), keeping its AC, hit points, THAC0, saves and morale. As shark or ray it fights as the animal; as water it neither attacks nor takes damage. In human shape it swims at 12 and its touch deals 1d8 and drains a level.

Its song is audible a mile off and charms living creatures within 200 feet who fail a save vs. spell. Those who save cannot be charmed by that singer for a day. Dispelling the charm (treat it as 12th-level magic) leaves the victim open to recapture until they finally save. It usually swims with 1d6 marine wights (move 12, swim 9) and can call 3d6 common sharks of 3 to 6 HD, arriving in 1d4 rounds.

Immune to sleep, charm, hold and normal weapons, it takes half damage from cold and electricity and regenerates 2 hp per round. At 0 hp or below it flows home as water and must rest there a whole day.

By day it hides in a flooded, lightless crypt, often a sunken-city tomb, with spares in caves or wrecks. Each day without such rest costs 2d8 hp that stay lost until it rests a full day. Bless cast on a crypt with a holy symbol left inside ruins that crypt forever. A boldly held holy symbol keeps it 10 feet off, though it can circle around. Wholly out of water it disintegrates in 1d4 rounds unless some part stays submerged, and returning in time still costs half its original hit points. Open air over its entire body, a wooden stake while it lies in its crypt, or disintegrate destroys it.

Solitary and merciless, velya usually haunt drowned ancient cities.

It feeds on the blood of the living. Its victims rise three days after death as wights it commands. Only a transfusion of velya blood, or the long-forgotten original curse, makes a new velya.

This kind lurks in marshes and bogs, changing into an albino crocodile (move 6, swim 12), a giant white eel (swim 9) or a water current (swim 18), and calling 3d6 ordinary crocodiles that arrive in 1d4 rounds. It otherwise matches the ocean velya.