Tentamort

Tentamorts are abberations.

An aberration has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three.

Aberrations have darkvision.

Aberrations breathe, eat, and sleep.

Tentamorts are eerie ambush predators, preferring to let their prey come to them rather than seeking food out, and rely on their excellent senses to warn them of approaching meals. A tentamort possesses several tentacles, most of which are used for locomotion but two of which have evolved for singular purposes in securing food. One of these longer tentacles is covered with tiny, sticky nodules and is capable of constricting prey, while the other ends in a long, thin stinger. The tentamort’s method of attack is to grab its prey with its constricting tentacle and sting the grappled target with the other. Tentamort poison is particularly horrific, as it swiftly liquefies the creature’s internal organs into a rancid slurry the monster can then drink with the same stinger, siphoning out the fluid with foul sucking sounds. Larger creatures often require multiple stings before they can be fully absorbed by a tentamort. Tentamorts are almost mindless, possessing just enough intellect to make crude animal judgements about peril and food. Once a tentamort has grabbed prey, it tends to focus entirely on that creature, ignoring attacks upon it from other sources as long as its current victim remains a source of nutrition. After a tentamort finishes consuming a creature, all that typically remains are the bones and skin.

A well-fed tentamort uses the hollow corpse of its meal as a sort-of incubator for its eggs, injecting the body with a caviar-like mass of black eggs that mature in the rotting carcass for several weeks until a dozen or so hand-sized tentamorts hatch and crawl out of their host’s orifices. Depending upon the availability of other prey, anywhere from one to six of these may survive, feeding on rats and Tiny vermin, until they eventually grow to adulthood. Tentamort young look like dark blue starfish with a single red eye in the center – they do not possess their longer, specialized tentacles until they mature. A young tentamort often attaches itself to a larger predator, clinging to it much the same way a remora clings to a shark, dropping off to feed innocuously on its host’s kills while the creature sleeps.

Tentamorts see in all directions at once. They cannot be flanked.

Some tentamorts grow much larger than their human-sized kin. Known as greater tentamorts, these ogre-sized creatures are Large-sized. Their two specialized tentacles grow long, providing the creature with greater reach than a Large monster normally possess. Greater tentamorts are never found in groups, for these creatures can only achieve such monstrous size through cannibalism, as if there were some key nutrient in another tentamort’s body that allows them to exceed their typical physical limitations. Some of these creatures have mutations giving them two tentacles and two stingers. Yet the most disturbing quality possessed by these monsters is their unexpected intellect – greater tentamorts are often as intelligent as humans, or more so. They cannot speak, but possess an eerie form of telepathy that works only on creatures they are in contact with – a feature they often use to “chat” with their food as they eat.

Using nonvisual senses, such as acute smell or hearing, tentamorts notice things they cannot see. Any opponent the tentamort cannot see still have total concealment against it, and it still has the normal miss chance when attacking foes that have concealment. Visibility still affects the movement of a tentamort. A tentamort can still not defend effectively against attacks from creatures it cannot see.