Carrion Crawler

Carrion crawlers consume rotting material from the dead, including flesh, blood, and bone. They are also highly aggressive, and will attempt to make any creature that approaches them one of their meals.

A carrion crawler follows the scent of death to its food, but it prefers not to compete with other scavengers. These foul creatures thus hunker down in territories where death is plentiful and other carrion eaters have limited mobility. Caves, sewers, dungeons, and forested marshes are their favored lairs, but carrion crawlers are also drawn to battlefields and cemeteries. -- Monster Manual

Carrion crawlers prefer the dark, for they are able to see quite as well in it as in daylight, and often their enemies cannot. Their many legs allow them to walk along walls and even ceilings, thus enabling them to avoid many of the other predators who lurk underground, and even ambush targets, taking them by surprise.

Whether in subterranean darkness or while hunting at night, light signals a potential meal. A carrion crawler might follow a light source from a distance for hours, hoping to pick up the scent of blood. Despite their great size, carrion crawlers can also easily set up ambushes by waiting around blind corners for prey to come to them. When facing potential prey or intruders, a carrion crawler lets its poison do the work. Once a victim goes rigid with paralysis, the carrion crawler wraps it with its tentacles and drags it away to a high ledge or isolated passageway, where it can be killed safely. The monster then resumes patrolling its territory while waiting for its meal to ripen. -- Monster Manual

The party first encountered carrion crawlers in the decaying portions of the Westwood -- an area most certainly not normally known to house such mosntrosities.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Carrion crawlers are segmented annelid-like creatures with multi-faceted eyes and a whorl of tentacles around their mouths. Their tentacles are capable of injecting prey with a paralytic poison.

Ecology and Habitats

Carrion Crawlers normally live in the dark, dank places of the world -- caves deep underground, bogs and swamps covered with heavy canopies that block out the sunlight, and the graves of the dead. It is rare to find them above ground in the open.

Additional Information

Average Intelligence

Animal Intelligence

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Carrion Crawlers can see in the dark as well as if it were daylight.

Average Length

9' Long

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Neutral colors such as browns and tans.

First encountered

Westwood