What starts as a simple return to Tanner's Folly snowballs into a mission for Cthulhu that ends with the guild cooking and eating the fish-people's old god.
The Return of Alfred Strangetide
Who actually gets to do some explaining of things to the guild this time.
Egbert chasing a ninja-turtle through the alleys of Tanner's Folly
At precisely 30 mph.
*For context, he rolled a 1 with a -1 modifier on his perception check.
POV: You are being rescued from a sack by a half-orc and an elf
Congratulations. Please do not resist.
"Get a load of this guy! Doesn't even know about the fish people and the giant pearl!"
Cue raucous laughter.
The Birth of Katie Pearlhead
"Are you pleased!?"
Alternatively, "Get some!"
The Chuul gives Prudence claws for concern
And a mild case of disembowelment.
And so with Cthulhu firmly re-established as the god of the sea temple worshippers, the guild head forth, shortly to have a bad chair day.
The Chuul! 8 foot (2.4 m) tall sadists with tentacles full of paralyzing venom! That actually about sums it up, as even imprisoned or tortured chuul just refuse to speak to people in any meaningful way. They only really willingly talk once they've paralyzed someone, in which case they'll taunt the victim about how much they'll enjoy eating them. Food, breeding, and psychologically tormenting people seems to be about all they care about. From what we can tell they seem to think degradation makes people taste better, but that's about it.
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[The last monster I’m currently interested in retroconverting from Bestiary 2, and the last PF2e monster for a while. I have another concept in mind to fill the Wednesday slot for “new school monsters”. One thing I think is striking is that the umonlee is said to be related to the chuul, when the former has the [Beast] descriptor and the latter the [Aberration] descriptor. It was clear from how monster types were treated in 3.x and PF1e that they didn’t really correspond to cladistic categories (although I’ve ranted before about how invertebrates were much more likely to be lumped into “aberrations”). But this particular confirmation stuck out to me.]
Umonlee
CR 15 N Magical Beast
This immense crustacean is larger than an elephant, with a pale blue carapace lined with ridges and spikes. Its front two pairs of limbs feature large claws, one set of pincers and one set flat for digging.
Umonlees are immense burrowing predators native to glacial regions and polar seas. They can swim through solid ice as quickly as a man can walk, and on open ground are even faster. Umonlees are roaming ambush predators, devouring most prey that they come across with insatiable hunger. If they can be negotiated with or fed (the two are typically synonymous), they are not inherently evil, and may know bits of information about their homes, or follow their new friend for a while at a distance in hopes of finding bigger game.
In combat, an umonlee opens with its breath weapon, even against other polar creatures—the ice that entraps its targets is as useful as any damage dealt. Once prey is pinned down, the umonlee uses its pincers and mandibles to tear prey apart. They are bold and unafraid of magic, but grow leery around fire, and will flee if badly injured when fire is on the battlefield.
Due to their vaguely crustacean shapes and inherent resistance to psychic magic, some sages hypothesize that umonlees and chuuls are related in some way. Perhaps umonlee stock was altered through fleshwarping into chuuls, or umonlees are the descendents of escaped chuuls who became magically acclimated to cold climes. The two species rarely cross paths, and when they do, the famished umonlees typically try to eat their smaller cousins.
Umonlee CR 15
XP 51,200
N Huge magical beast (aquatic, cold)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +9, tremorsense 90 ft.
Defense
AC 31, touch 11, flat-footed 28 (-2 size, +3 Dex, +20 natural)
hp 225 (18d10+126)
Fort +18, Ref +14, Will +10; +4 vs. psychic magic
Immune cold; SR 26
Defensive Abilities psychic resilience; Weakness vulnerable to fire
Offense
Speed 50 ft., swim 50 ft., burrow 30 ft.
Melee 2 claws +24 (2d8+8/19-20 plus grab), bite +24 (2d6+8 plus 1d8 cold)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft. (10 ft. with bite)
Special Attacks breath weapon (1d4 rounds, 50 ft. cone, 12d8 cold damage plus entrap, Ref DC 26 half), constrict (2d8+12), crush claw, entrap (Fort DC 26, 1d10 minutes, hardness 0, 30 hp, vulnerability to fire)
Statistics
Str 26, Dex 17, Con 24, Int 5, Wis 14, Cha 17
Base Atk +18; CMB +28 (+32 grapple); CMD 41 (49 vs. trip)
Feats Blind-fight, Combat Reflexes, Critical Focus, Exhausting Critical, Fatiguing Critical, Improved Critical (claw), Iron Will, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Stealth)
Skills Perception +9, Stealth +14 (+22 in icy conditions), Swim +23
Languages Aklo
SQ amphibious
Ecology
Environment cold aquatic and plains
Organization solitary or pair
Treasure incidental
Special Abilities
Crush Claw (Ex) A creature grappled by an umonlee must succeed a DC 27 Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round. The save DC is Strength based.
Some idiot teenagers decided to play necromancer and dug up a couple of old graves at one of the local cemeteries, reanimated a bunch of skeletons, and then had them do a bunch of stupid shit. They had them spray painting curse words on buildings and robbing stores. Now all of this would have been bad enough, but then they lost control of some of the undead they brought back so there were a bunch of skeletons running around attacking people. It was a whole kerfuffle, and the teenagers were eventually taken into custody.
So after those idiots got arrested, we got called in to empty all the skeletons out of this historic monument where they decided to set up shop, and Chandra decided to start making spider web jokes again while we had to scour this labyrinthine tomb for the dozens of armed skeletons hiding in it.
Then, when we finally got that cleared out, one of the Chuul slipped its enclosure and started wreaking havoc, and we had to figure out how to get it contained again while it was trying to eat our office staff. Rob ended up playing bait to lure it back in, and then we get a call to get a grick out of a golf course, which involved spending hours just trying to find the thing.
I was exhausted and completely out of spells by the time I finally got home, and I’m turning in early because I am tired.
Monster Analysis: Undead Avantika and Strike Team Uk'otoa
Thanks to @oddthesungod for this art piece!
With a false sense of security in arcane vaults, attentions fully focused on other mysteries, and a massive distance between here and their last encounter with his forces, the Mighty Nein discovered that Uk’otoa’s agents prove to be as troublesome and persistent as ever every time the Nein return to the sea. This time, their leader was someone significantly more competent, confident, and appropriately reckless, someone who somehow found a way to be even more intimidating in death than she was alive.
