Huge monstrosity, unaligned
Armor Class: 11 (natural armour)
Hit Points: 59 7d10+21
Speed:
30 ft
, swim: 30 ft
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft, passive Perception 12
Challenge Rating: 9
Amphibious. The worm can breathe in air and water.
Ambush Predator. The worm usually lies in wait, and has advantage on surprise rolls.
Damaging Wounds. If the worm scores a hit and spends at least one turn attached to an opponent, it injects anticoagulants & neurotoxins into them, causing 7 2d6 poison damage at the start of it's next turn, whether it is still attached or not.
Actions
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack +3 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit 8 1d12+2 piercing damage. On a successful hit, it clamps its mouth onto a single target and doesn't let go, causing an automatic hit with this attack every round. Damage rolls are made instead against this specific victim. A DC 13 Strength roll is made by the victim or another in their turn to remove the worm.
Swamp Worms are disgusting creatures, many metres long. Each swamp worm looks like a thick pale white to pale cream coloured tape worm. Besides the size, the mouth of the worm is at the underside of the head, and made up of two rows of teeth inside two sucker-like layers of the mouth. Above this is two eyelike blubs sunk into the head. These pick up light and movement of prey, and can work in the dark swampy conditions it lives in. The colouring seems to cause no bother to it hiding in the murk, and when it reproduces it either mates with one of it's own kind if possible. If it doesn't it can fertilise itself being a fully functional hermaphrodite. The body of it has a couple of feet of egg sacs that break off when fertilised eggs are detected that sink to the bottom of a swamp and grow. Most will be ate by other swamp based predators like frog & toads, snakes, and such like, though quite a few will be fed upon by other young. This keels numbers down, and allows the strongest to survive. When grown the swamp worm will take up a mobile lifestyle covering no more than a few square miles at most as its home territory. Here it will surprise prey by lying in wait and fixing its sucker like mouth onto them before swallowing as much fluids as possible out of its victim. It releases an anticoagulant & nerve agent to prevent it initially being felt, and stop the victim healing quickly. When the majority of fluid is removed, the rest of the tissue will be ripped of if possible leaving behind inedible material such as armour, clothes, weapons and the skeleton of the victim.
Suggested Environments
Swamps
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