Mordant Snare

**AC:** 18 **HP:** 264 **Speed:** [object Object] **STR:** 23 **DEX:** 16 **CON:** 22 **INT:** 15 **WIS:** 14 **CHA:** 6 _Mordant snares were created by war mages of ancient times. Each resembles an immense, dark gray, 11-armed starfish weighing eight tons, and yet a mordant snare is never obvious. Instead, it controls a few humanoids shuffling about aimlessly, their skin glistening with moisture, occasionally forming loose groups near the snare. These puppets pay little attention to their surroundings._ **Starfish Puppet Masters.** Snares bury themselves under loose soil to attack creatures walking above them. They attack by extruding filaments that inject acid into victims; this liquefies organs and muscle while leaving the skeleton, tendons, and skin intact. With the body thus hollowed out and refilled with acid and filaments, the mordant snare can control it from below like a puppet, creating a group of awkward, disoriented people. New victims fall prey to mordant snares when they approach to investigate. **Brains Preferred.** The mordant snare prefers intelligent food. With its tremorsense, it can easily distinguish between prey; it prefers Small and Medium bipeds. A mordant snare hunts an area until it is empty, so a village can suffer tremendous losses or even be wiped out before discovering what’s happening. However, a mordant snare is intelligent enough to know that escaped victims may come back with friends, shovels, and weapons, ready for battle. When this occurs, the snare abandons its puppets, burrows deeper underground, and seeks a new home. **Cooperative Killers.** Mordant snares are few in number and cannot reproduce. Since the secret of their creation was lost long ago, eventually they will disappear forever—until then, they cooperate well with each other, using puppets to lure victims to one another. A team is much more dangerous than a lone snare, and when three or more link up, they are especially deadly.