Yphoz

Yphoz range from hatchlings 2-3 inches across to old adults 2 feet long. Their jelly flesh matches the tint of their water, black, brown, green, yellow, or clear, so swimmers in infested water are surprised on 1-4 on 1d6. Most are squat, wide cones with a low back fin and two long, whiplike tentacles. Though not amorphous, a yphoz can flex its body to crawl over land and up walls and across ceilings, gripping with sticky slime that dries into an elastic gum, slowly coating caves where many dwell.

Ripples from any swimmer within 20 feet draw a yphoz, which probes with its tentacles, coils them around whatever solid thing it finds, and rides along if the victim swims off. Toothless, it drains hit points by sucking blood through the skin. Its gum clings even underwater and carries a numbing contact poison that never kills directly but can leave a swimmer to drown.

Each hit lands where 1d6 says: 1 is the head, 2 or 3 the right or left arm, 4 the torso, 5 or 6 the right or left leg. One yphoz renders a limb or the torso numb and useless in 3 rounds; three do it in one round. The victim saves vs. poison each round per attached yphoz. On the head, six failed saves, from six creatures at once or one over six rounds, cause unconsciousness. With every yphoz removed, sensation returns in 4-6 turns.

A yphoz never goes more than 100 yards from water unless fleeing or relocating. Out of water it lasts at most 24 hours in damp conditions, less in dry air, and perhaps an hour in a desert.

These slimy pests live in damp caverns and stagnant pools, fresh or foul. They absorb organic debris, insects, and small worms, and feed like leeches on anything too big to engulf, cold- or warm-blooded alike, including fish and snakes. They cannot attach through fur thicker than a rabbit's or through hard scales like a turtle's.