Vermin Juggernaut

Another relic of a wizard-governed nation's ancient experiments, and one of the frontier coast's most destructive monsters, it is a hairless bilge vermin grown giant, lumbering on two huge feet. Its arms are thin but muscular and clawed, it has no tail, its eyes are big and black, and its blunt snout bristles with teeth and fangs. Loose, thick hide sags as though about to slough off.

It charges into battle screeching shrilly; everyone within 30 yards must save vs. paralyzation; those who fail are stunned and cannot attack for 1d4 rounds. The screech can be used once per turn. Dropping to all fours, it can sprint at movement 18 for three rounds. It relies on its tough hide while it claws and bites, and it regenerates 1 hit point per turn. Once a fight starts it does not run until its foes are dead.

In the opening rounds it goes for the largest opponent, the most dangerous foe and the biggest meal. It then switches to anyone who keeps dealing heavy damage or who inflicts more than 15 points in one round, working its way from attacker to attacker until no one remains standing.

It carries several curse-born gifts from the same region of the crimson curse, most often war cry, weapon hand and amber paralysis, and needs no curse-warding metal. It tends to spend all its gifts quickly, hoping to overwhelm its foes.

Bred with a craving for bilge vermin to exterminate them, juggernauts soon learned other food was easier and just as tasty. They now migrate: a spring month mating and roosting in the forests of the wizard-governed nation, then out across the northern steppes toward a neighboring nation's west. Few cross into the coastal kingdoms.

They eat anything, including neshezu and other creatures where those live, and plague goblinoid settlements on the steppes and the western communities of the neighboring nation. Prides of cat-horses sometimes bring one down, always at a cost. Nothing good has ever come of them; alchemists have not even found a use for their weak regeneration, though potions of healing normally rely on the blood of regenerating beasts.