Tentaspouter
“Dungeons and Dragons Monsters - 62″ © Tim Morris, accessed at his deviantArt gallery here
[The last of the Tim Morris D&D monsters commissioned by @glarnboudin. I wanted to do this one because it reminds me of some toys I had as a kid. They were little rubber aliens or monsters with long snouts. All three of the ones I had had legs (some with toes, some insect-like), but I’ve seen tentacled ones more like this in passing. But I never knew who made them or where to get them (I got mine as prizes at Chuck E Cheeze, but never saw them after like one summer). I just looked up “rubber monster with snout” and apparently they were called Slurfies? I might need to buy some to reward my inner child for solving this more than 20 year old mystery.]
Tentaspouter CR 3 N Aberration This creature is vaguely like an octopus, with eight tentacles, but two of them are larger than the others and tipped with claws. It has eight eyes overlooking a long siphon, which is mobile and flexible.
Tentaspouters are cephalopod-like ambush predators that live by the water’s edge. They are most common in fresh water systems, although some do move into estuaries or salt marshes. Their hunting strategy consists of using powerful blasts of water to bludgeon and push prey around, preferably into the waiting arms of one of their kin. Only two of their tentacles are large and strong enough to strike from a distance, but once prey is grappled, all of the limbs come into play, as does the tentaspouter’s beak. The beak is much more like a stylet than the parrot-like beak of an octopus, and can drain blood at an impressive rate.
Tentaspouters are social creatures, and typically live and hunt in groups. These “gauntlets” are so called because they usually set up outposts running along a natural or constructed bridge, hoping to catch passing organisms on land. Tentaspouters can speak, albeit only to a limited degree, and supplement their speech with tentacle gestures and shifts in color. They are not inherently evil, but only a few of them realize that humanoids are different from animal prey. They do not value treasure, but valuable items may be found near their lairs, still held or carried by desiccated victims.