L’Attrape-Sang (Opabinia Rexalis)
Medium Aberration
Hit Dice: 4d8+8 (26 hp)
Initiative: +3
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), swim 40 ft.
AC: 16 (+3 Dex, +3 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 13
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+5
Attack: Proboscis claw +6 melee (1d6+2 plus blood drain)
Full Attack: Proboscis claw +6 melee (1d6+2 plus blood drain)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./10 ft. (proboscis)
Special Attacks: Blood drain, improved grab
Special Qualities: Amphibious, low-light vision, chameleon submersion, all-around vision
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +5
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 6
Skills: Hide +11 (+15 underwater), Listen +6, Spot +10, Swim +10
Feats: Weapon Finesse, Alertness
Environment: Warm marshes and bayous
Organization: Solitary, pair, or cluster (3–6)
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 5–8 HD (Medium); 9–12 HD (Large)
Level Adjustment: —
An Opabinia Rexalis is a sinuous, three-foot-long aberration whose segmented body undulates with a soft, almost petal-like rhythm beneath the water’s surface. Its most striking feature is the cluster of five glossy, bead-like eyes arranged across its head, each moving independently, granting it a constant awareness of its surroundings. Extending from beneath these eyes is a long, flexible proboscis ending in a small but vicious grasping claw, capable of snapping shut with unsettling precision. Along its sides, soft lateral lobes ripple gently, aiding in its eerie, silent locomotion through still water.
The creature’s dorsal surface is lined with delicate gill structures that fan outward like pale fronds, filtering oxygen even in stagnant, low-quality water. Its coloration is naturally mottled - pale pinks, muted reds, and swampy greens - but when submerged, its flesh subtly shifts hue and opacity, blending almost perfectly with the murky environment. When still, it becomes nearly impossible to detect, appearing as nothing more than a distortion in the water or a trick of the light.
Opabinia Rexalis are ambush predators. They prefer to remain motionless just beneath the surface, their bodies aligned with submerged roots or driftwood. When prey approaches - whether a fish, animal, or unwary humanoid - the creature lashes out with its proboscis, seizing flesh and anchoring itself with surprising strength. Once attached, it begins to feed, drawing blood through a specialized channel within its appendage while maintaining its grip with the clawed tip.
Despite their alien anatomy, these creatures are not overtly aggressive unless provoked or hungry. They rely on patience rather than pursuit, often allowing potential prey to pass if the risk is deemed too high. However, in areas where they gather in clusters, their behavior becomes more opportunistic, and multiple individuals may converge on a single target, creating a sudden and horrifying feeding frenzy beneath otherwise calm waters.
Lore
Little is recorded of Opabinia Rexalis in formal scholarship, largely because early accounts were dismissed outright. Initial sketches, often produced by isolated naturalists or delirious explorers, were ridiculed for their implausibility - five eyes, a grasping feeding limb, a body plan that defied accepted anatomical logic. These reports were quietly shelved or outright destroyed, labeled as exaggeration or madness.
It was only when physical specimens were recovered - some preserved, others violently alive - that the academic world was forced to reconsider. Even then, acceptance came grudgingly. Many scholars attempted to reinterpret the creature within known biological frameworks, often downplaying or ignoring its more unsettling features. A few, however, recognized it for what it represented: a living contradiction to the assumed boundaries of natural design.
In the bayous and lowlands, local populations have long known of the creature, though under different names. It is sometimes called the “Stillwater Clutch” or “Five-Eyed Leech,” and is associated with disappearances in shallow waters. Stories describe it as a patient watcher, something that sees from all directions at once, waiting for the moment when movement betrays the living.
More troubling are the rarer accounts suggesting that Opabinia Rexalis may not be entirely natural to the current age. Some believe it to be a remnant of an older world, a creature whose design predates the modern order of life. Others whisper that it emerges more frequently in places where reality is thin - where the boundaries between what is and what was begin to blur.
Kelwyn’s Notes
Ah… yes. This one. I recall, with uncomfortable clarity, the first time I encountered its likeness - not in the flesh, you understand, but inked hastily across a page that bore all the hallmarks of a mind under quiet siege. Five eyes, a reaching limb, a creature assembled as though nature had briefly forgotten her own rules. I confess, I dismissed it. Not out of arrogance, I think - but out of necessity. One cannot afford to believe everything one sees in ink.
And yet, here it is. Not merely real, but consistent. The same structure, the same absurdities, repeated across accounts separated by geography, culture, and time. This is not invention - it is persistence. I have since uncovered references to such organisms in documents that should not exist, attributed to expeditions into places that are now… conspicuously absent. Entire bodies of study, orphaned of origin. It leads one to an unsettling hypothesis: that this creature does not belong to our world in the way we assume most life does, but is instead a survivor - or perhaps an exile - from a place that no longer exists at all.
Among those few who have encountered it and lived, there is a peculiar commonality in their accounts. Not merely fear - though there is plenty of that - but a deeper disturbance, a quiet unraveling. They speak of it as something that remembers being elsewhere, as though its presence alone carries the weight of a place that should no longer be. Those who study it too closely tend toward obsession, and in time, a certain resignation - as though they have glimpsed a truth they cannot comfortably return from.
I do not believe this species is native to our reality. There are whispers - fragments, scattered and half-erased - suggesting that an entire dimension was deliberately unmade in an effort to eradicate organisms of this design. If that is so, then this creature represents not merely a curiosity, but a failure. A remnant that slipped through whatever curtain was drawn to end its kind. That it is now unbelievably rare offers little comfort. Rarity, after all, is not the same as safety.
It is tempting to call such a thing an error. I would advise against it. Errors do not survive the death of their own world. Errors do not endure, adapt, and wait in silence beneath still water. No… this is something that was meant to exist - somewhere. And now, quite inconveniently… it exists here.
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