Web-Eel Slaver

Picture a wolf spider crossed with a moray eel: a squat, furry body on eight small-clawed legs, topped by a long bare neck and a serpent head full of needle teeth. The tan fur is dyed to show rank, deeds, and warnings, growing gaudier with age. They speak their own tongue and Common, often plus 1-4 more for giving slaves orders.

Its first line of defense is its tunnel brute, a personal slave that serves as bodyguard, valet, and spare pair of hands. Its bite is venomous: a victim who fails a save vs. poison is slowed (as the spell) for 1d8 rounds, and each further bite adds another 1d8 rounds. One in ten casts spells as a human of level 1-8.

Ruthless and hateful, they eat foes, servants, and fallen comrades alike. They dwell only in remote depths underground or among distant stars, living for community and slaves. All is owner or owned: slavers enslave each other, and an enslaved one may own slaves too. Other slaves bear ownership tattoos, usually front and back of the left shoulder.

Tunnel brutes are raised from birth to serve their small lords, and any slaver can command any tunnel brute as if by charm monster. Their creed breeds paranoia, their raids make them universally loathed, and only mind reavers trade with them, for a cut of the slave market.

When an aging slaver's mind slips and its slaves grow unruly, its fellows may poison it all at once. The mingled toxins overload its body and begin its transformation into a great old master.

It swells to 20 feet tall and as wide, limbs useless and mind gone, living only to eat, live flesh preferred but carrion accepted; anything fed to it takes 1d12 per round. After two months its skin bursts and 20-40 unmarked, barely sentient young emerge to spend a week killing and eating each other. The 3-6 survivors are community slaves until each claims a tunnel brute.

Piercing its hide makes it loose 2d4 young in defense, taken permanently from the coming brood. Edged or piercing weapons and piercing or burning spells trigger this; blunt weapons do not.

Reavers are rogue slavers fleeing their kin and the poisons that would turn them into great old masters. No kinder than the rest, they are even more desperate, hunted by former fellows eager to start a new brood.