Monster - Torach-Noth The Snake-Headed Beast

Torach-Noth The Snake-Headed Beast

Frequency: Rare
No. Appearing: 1-100
Armor Class: 3
Move 14"
Hit Dice: 6
% in Lair: Nil
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 13 (Gaze/Stomp/Grasp x9/Claw x2)
Damage/Attack: Special/ 1d12 / 1d6 / 2d6
Special Attack: Gaze can focus on a single character and if a save against Paralyzation is not made the character will not be able to move. The Snake-Head must maintain eye contact with the character or the effect is immediately broken.
Special Defense: The Snake-Head is immune to all mind control/charm/sleep/paralyzation and such-like spells and effects.
Magic Resistance: 50%
Intelligence: Nil/Supra-Genius
Alignment: Nil/Chaotic Evil
Size: L (9ft tall)
Language: Cannot speak and individually it possess no language but the entity that controls it understands all languages.

Physical Description: The Snake-Head stands 9ft tall from its massively hooved feet to its neck-like head from which nine projections emerge. These projections have a slight similarity to snakes with a greenish reptilian pattern along their length. The creature's pear-shaped body is covered in a brownish feathery pelt that turns to a lengthy patch of hair along its short arms. Its arm are clawed and powerful, but appearing short when compared with its massive body (it easily weighs 500 pounds or more).

Combat: In combat it will attempt to use its gaze power to disable a foe but against multiple opponents it will put its head down and try to grasp them with its snake-like protuberances with a crushing grip and draw them to its powerful claws or through them down and stomp them with its massive hooves.


Ecology: The Snake-Head is not a living creature. It neither eats nor breaths. In human terms it is a kind of detritus which forms from the flesh and dreams of an Elemental Evil. It is born of this oerth in a sense but it exudes wrongness and while some at first would call it laughable it is really a thing of nightmare. Anyone encountering this creature will dream of it on and off for the rest of their lives. They will hear its sickly voice when the world is still, in the moment before they awake, in the dark hours of the night and when they do they are calling to this monster, whose parent flesh desires to eat the characters dreams and feed them back nightmares. Up to 100 can be encountered at one time. They move quickly on their Hooves and flow across the land as a herd with the singular motivation to kill anything in their path. At times the Elemental Evil awakes or turns its stray thought from the Snake-Heads and they wander, harmless and mindless, at other times the violent dreams of their creator take them across the land to seek or perform some unimaginable action. Rarely, very rarely, the Elemental Evil may place a splinter of its waking-self inside these beasts and drive them to unspeakable lengths for reasons beyond the conception of a mortal mind. 

Luckily these creatures are rarely seen above ground in the Flanaess. They have been spotted in Verbobonc around the environs and within the ruins of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Also in the giant-infested hills west of Geoff. It is rumored that they can be found amid the frigid Land of Black Ice and within the fetid swamps of Hepmonland. 

Beneath the Oerth it is said among the wise and powerful who know of such places that the Drow and Illithids encounter them and even the Kuo-Toa who have been drawn toward the seductive embrace of Elemental Evil.