Wild Grell

A grell is a five-foot sphere split down the middle into two lobes, its dull olive skin streaked with white and lumpy with ridges and veins so that it looks like a naked brain. A ten-inch beak juts from the lower front, right on the seam between the lobes. Hundreds of short tentacles, one to three inches long, fringe its underside, and from the bottom hang ten six-foot tentacles, pale green, each about as thick as a human arm and lined with small spines on the inner face.

It cannot speak but chirps and squawks like a bird. In motion and in attack it makes no sound. It smells faintly musky, and its lair stinks of old carrion.

With human-level intelligence, it plans its attacks and will not fight a group that would clearly kill it. Its favorite trick is to hover out of sight near the ceiling. Rising and sinking happen at its listed speed; sideways drift by fanning air with its tentacles is only movement 4, though it moves at full rate if it can push off a surface.

When someone passes below, it drops in silence, usually with surprise (-3 to the victim's roll), and lashes with all ten tentacles. Each hit grips and holds, and the victim must save vs. paralysis at +4 for each one. With two or more tentacles attached it can lift the prey at half speed. A paralyzed victim is carried up into the dark, hit automatically every round, and dies within a few rounds. The beak can be used only against paralyzed prey in its grip.

While the victim still resists, at least two tentacles keep scourging it and the rest strike at other attackers; the grell divides them shrewdly. A tentacle is AC 4, like the body, and any hit on one severs it or disables it, though this damage does not reduce the grell's hit points. Left alone, it grows back missing tentacles within a day or two. Lightning and other electrical attacks cannot harm it.

Grell inhabit caverns and ruins. They see only by infravision, so they seek perpetual darkness, and since strong drafts push them around, they like sheltered spaces. Each lives alone, meeting others of its kind only to mate. It will not bargain by choice, though it will strike a deal rather than die. Gold and the comforts of civilized folk mean nothing to it. It dens on a high ledge or in a cave well off the ground, and it often waits just outside for prey to pass.