Hanweir, the Writhing Township
NE Colossal ooze (earth)
Init -2; Senses blindsight 60 ft., tremorsense 300 ft.; Perception +20
AC 30, touch 0, flat-footed 30 (-8 size, +30 natural, -2 Dex)
HP 390 (20d20+180); fast healing 10
Fort +15, Ref +4, Will +7
Defensive Abilities Will +10 vs. effects that impede or force movement; DR 10/-; Immune cold, mind-affecting effects, petrification, ooze traits; SR 28; Resist acid 20, electricity 20, fire 20; Weaknesses one with the land, sound sensitivity
Speed 30 ft., burrow 30 ft., climb 30 ft.
Melee 2 slam +26 (8d6+18/19–20 plus grab or trip)
Ranged rock ranged touch +5/+0/-5 (4d6 plus entrap)
Space 30 ft., Reach 30 ft.
Special Attacks breath weapon (60-ft. line, see tundral swarm ability, Reflex DC 29 for half, usable every 1 hour), destructive, engulf (DC 38, 2d6 crushing and 2d6 cold), entrap (DC 29, 1d10 rounds, hardness 8, hp 20), fast swallow, inescapable, rock throwing (100 ft.), swallow whole (2d6 crushing and 2d6 cold damage, AC 25, 27 hp), trample (4d6+27 plus 1d6 cold damage, DC 38), trip
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 20th; concentration +22) Constant freedom of movement, pass without trace At will chill metal (DC 14), quench (DC 15), sleet storm, soften earth and stone (DC 14), spike growth (DC 15), stone call, sympathetic vibration 3/day commune with nature, quickened sleet storm 1/day animate objects, antipathy (DC 21), creeping doom
Str 46, Dex 6, Con 28, Int 7, Wis 12, Cha 15
Base Atk +15; CMB +41; CMD 49
Feats Greater Sunder, Improved Critical (slam), Improved Natural Attack (slam), Improved Sunder, Improved Vital Strike, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (sleet storm), Skill Focus, Vital Strike (perception), Weapon Focus (slam)
Skills Climb +30, Perception +20, Survival +1
Racial Modifiers +20 Survival to follow tracks
Languages Sylvan (can’t speak)
SQ immovable mire, tundral swarm
Environment any cold
Organization solitary
Treasure incidental (standard gems, no coins or items)
Destructive (Ex) The Hanweir perceives crafted items and permanent structures as a disease upon the land, filling them with a destructive rage. Whenever the Hanweir makes a full attack against an object or structure, its attacks deal double damage. In addition, when the Hanweir uses animate objects to take control of manufactured structures or objects, these objects bash themselves relentlessly to pieces when making their attacks, gaining a +4 bonus to attack and damage rolls but also dealing half as much damage to themselves as they deal to their targets. The animated object’s hardness applies against this self-destructive damage.
Immovable Mire (Ex) Hanweirs are perpetually surrounded with sodden muck of boggy peat and half-thawed permafrost. All squares adjacent to the Hanweir are treated as wet mud, and those up to 10 feet beyond these adjacent squares are treated as loose dirt, as the soften earth and stone spell. In addition, the Hanweir gains a +10 bonus to their CMD against bull rush, drag, overrun, and reposition combat maneuvers. They gain an identical bonus against any effect that would force them to move, fall, or be knocked prone, including physical effects such as wind or water and magical effects up to and including teleportation effects.
Inescapable (Ex) Hanweirs engulf and cling to grappled, swallowed, or engulfed creatures with unearthly tenacity. Hanweirs can grapple creatures using freedom of movement, albeit with a -20 penalty to their CMB and CMD for the purpose of grapple checks made against such creatures. A creature using freedom of movement can attempt an Escape Artist as a swift action once per round to escape from the Hanweir’s grapple. Creatures that do not have freedom of movement take a -5 penalty to grapple combat maneuver checks or Escape Artist checks made to escape a grapple or pin.
One with the Land (Su) Hanweirs are intimately connected with the land. If they are separated from the ground, their fast healing is suppressed. In addition, damaging effects (including physical attacks) directed at the ground within 100 feet of the Hanweir deal 1 point of damage to the creature for every 10 points of damage dealt to the ground (after deducting the ground’s hardness). This damage bypasses the Hanweir’s damage reduction and resistances. Effects that affect an area that already include the Hanweir deal damage to it directly but do not also deal this damage in addition. Effects that disrupt the earth but do not do hit point damage, such as expeditious excavation, stone shape, transmute rock to mud, stone to flesh, and earthquake, deal 1d6 points of damage to the Hanweir per level of the spell. It can halve this damage with a Will save with a DC equal to 10 plus the level of the spell. Spells that create extradimensional spaces or passages or temporary changes in the earth, such as create pit, passwall, and phase door, do not harm the Hanweir. If the Hanweir is killed while touching the ground (including a vertical surface), it triggers an earthquake centered on the Hanweir’s location, as the spell (caster level 20th).
Sound Sensitivity (Ex) Hanweirs are very sensitive to loud noises and take a -2 penalty on saving throws against sonic effects or effects that would cause them to become deafened. If targeted with a sonic or deafening effect (whether successful or not), the Hanweir becomes shaken for 1 round (DC 20 Will negates).
Tundral Swarm (Su) As a move action, a Hanweir can surround itself with a crawling, whirling tempest of tundral debris, which it can dismiss as a free action. Creatures beginning their turn within the tundral swarm are nauseated for one round (DC 29 Fortitude negates), as the distraction universal monster rule, and spellcasters within the tundral swarm must make concentration checks (DC 20 + spell level) or have their spells ruined. Creatures must succeed on a DC 20 Will save in order to use skills that require patience or concentration. Within the tundral swarm, creatures take a -4 penalty to concentration checks and Perception checks. Each round the tundral swarm is active, the Hanweir takes 1d6 points of damage as parts of its substance are literally blown away; however, the tundral swarm intercepts many attacks intended for the Hanweir, granting it a 20% miss chance against ranged attacks. In addition, the tundral swarm deals damage to creatures within it based on the ambient temperature; this damage varies depending on whether the temperature is above or below freezing.
Frozen (below freezing) (Ex) In colder environments, the Hanweir’s tundral swarm is mostly shards of ice, hard-frozen ground, bits of bone and stone, and driving snow. Creatures within 10 feet of the Hanweir at the end of its turn are dazzled until the end of their next turn and take 3d6 points of bludgeoning and slashing damage and 1d6 points of nonlethal cold damage, becoming fatigued with frostbite as long as they have any nonlethal cold damage.
Thaw (above freezing) (Ex) In warmer weather, this tempest is largely comprised of mosquitoes, beetles, and centipedes, interspersed with rocks, uprooted plants, and chunks of permafrost. In addition, creatures within 10 feet of the Hanweir at the end of its turn take 3d6 points of bludgeoning and piercing damage. If the tundral swarm is infested with vermin, creatures taking damage from it take 1d4 points of bleed damage and are exposed to red ache.
Breath Weapon (Ex) Once per hour the Hanweir can disgorge a torrential gout of its tundral swarm as a 60-foot line. This functions as its tundral swarm ability within the area of effect but deals double the damage listed above (DC 29 Reflex half). In addition, creatures failing their reflex saves are affected by the Hanweir’s entrap ability, encased in clinging mud, crawling vermin, or glazed with ice.
This immense abomination looms like a frozen hillside come to life. Rivulets of slushy muck cascade across the frost-rimed boulders of its massive shape, infested with tiny parasites in every crevice. A face in the frost forms and deforms from nearly human to gaping, vacant pits and back again, shifting as it heaves its mountainous bulk across the tundra.
Hanweirs are strange and solitary creatures of the northern wastes, known by many names wherever they exist. Some call them palartokmaguyuk, the “silent howlers,” while others name them nunataq, “the mountain rising from the snow,” but their common name simply means “the rugged and desolate ones.”
Hanweirs are amorphous creatures, amalgamated from the land itself and imbued with a crude intellect and spirit that craves silent solitude. A Hanweir may lie dormant for years, half-buried in a chilly bog or forgotten valley, dimly contemplating the proper balance of nature and brooding on their forgotten purpose until their reverie is interrupted. They use their magic to make their homes as inhospitable and unapproachable as possible.
Hanweirs carry a deep loathing for the din and clamor of humanoid civilization, which grates unmercifully upon their hypersensitivity to sound and vibration in a way that the ambient noises of the empty tundra do not. Their empathic linkage to the land carries even far-distant echoes of every blow and cut of hammer, axe, and saw, piercing them with a needling pain, inflaming in them a destructive rage, and calling them to avenge this insult to the land itself. They destroy every physical trace of civilization they discover, demolishing buildings, tearing up roads, smashing bridges, and slaughtering any that get in their way. They can follow even subtle traces of patrols and explorers, trailing them back to their outposts and laying waste to all they find in the hope of driving them so far away they will never return. Even the sounds of combat can sometimes attract the wrath of the Hanweir, awakening it from its torpor and bringing its wrath down upon combatants on 11 both sides. They are generally tolerant of fey creatures, plants, animals, vermin, and other oozes, but other creatures venturing into the Hanweir’s range may soon find themselves face to face with the creature.
The true origins of the Hanweirs are a mystery even to them, some believing they well up naturally at places of great primal power in the North as either a manifestation of nature magic or perhaps an accretion of disruptive forces worms away at the natural world like a canker and the Hanweir forms as an anodyne to heal it. They may also be the literal or figurative children of Tekkeitsertok, great god of the earth and the hunt, made to keep the wild places wild or formed from the divine residue created where his feet touched the ground. Others call them “tundra spirits,” believing them to be animated by the souls of ancient shamans seeking the quiet solitude of the endless arctic wastes, and that their rage is kindled by those who disrupt their silent meditations. Survivors of encounters with Hanweirs often describe shifting faces in the frost that shrouds them, some seeing just yawning dark pits like eyes and a gaping maw, others reporting the chiseled features that look entirely human.
In combat, Hanweirs are usually surrounded by a whirling tempest of tundral debris, and when they cannot crush or engulf their foes or drown them in the muck that perpetually surrounds them, they may hurl torrents of this debris or even rocky chunks of their own body mass at them. If confronted with foes it cannot perceive or cannot reach, or if severely wounded, the Hanweir burrows underground to heal, often covering its retreat with a blinding sleet storm.
Knowledge Checks: Hanweirs
Although it is an ooze, use Knowledge (nature) to identify a Hanweir rather than Knowledge (dungeoneering)
17 Hanweirs are “tundra spirits” that destroy any kind of buildings or other traces of civilization they encounter. They hate fire but do not fear it, and fighting one is like fighting a living avalanche.
22 Hanweirs wield powerful magic of nature but can also engulf and swallow creatures, suffocating them within their frozen yet fluid oozy substance. They hate loud noises and seek quiet isolation, though they sometimes associate with fey creatures.
27 Hanweirs are not spirits but oozes that can burrow through the ground and draw strength from contact with the earth. They are as one with the land, and devastating the earth itself causes them pain and injury, though destroying the Hanweir causes its own cataclysmic disruption of the land.
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