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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 2172570" data-attributes="member: 508">The chuul crawled out of the castoff husk of its latest molting and stood for the first time in its full adult form.  Eight feet long from rounded head to fan-shaped tail, its two long pincer-arms extended out even farther beyond its head.  And its tentacles had at long last reached their full size and function.The chuul reached for its old shell out of long habit, ready to reabsorb it, bite by bite, when it heard a noise from further down the corridor.[12]  Dropping its just-shed husk, it spun around to face this new possible threat.Sure enough, the sound was repeated: Voices!  The chuul knew what that meant: Voices meant language, and language meant intelligence, and intelligent beings always seemed to have the best-tasting flesh!  Eager for its favorite food, the chuul scampered toward the cavern entrance.[13]The first one to enter the chuul's chamber was a human clad in leather armor, carrying both sword and torch; directly behind came a dwarf, all metal armor, scruffy beard, and heavy hammer.  The chuul struck before they could even register its presence.  As quick as that, the chuul had a struggling humanoid in each of its pincers.[14]The human was not much of a threat; the chuul's sharp pincer-blades cut through the simple leather armor and deep into the juicy flesh beneath, drawing both blood and delicious shrieks of pain.  The dwarf posed a bit more of a problem; the chuul's pincers kept the dwarf from escaping but were having difficulty piercing the thick metal plates of overlapping armor.  The blasted dwarf's armor seemed as tough as the chuul's own!  Worse yet, while the human's weapon had dropped to the ground, the dwarf maintained his grip on his warhammer and used it to good advantage against the chuul, slamming the weapon over and over against the chuul's forelimb.  Each blow sent pain coursing up the chuul's limb, and cracks began forming on its still-soft outer layer where the hammer struck.The chuul pulled the dwarf in close and captured him in a tentacled embrace.  The dwarf got in a final blow with his weapon, shattering at the wrist the pincer that gripped him, even as he lost all chance at further motion.[15]  Paralyzed, he didn't see the severed pincer-claw fall to the stone ground, nor the stream of bluish blood that oozed from the creature's wound.  He felt it when the monster dropped him to the hard stone to dispatch his human companion, though; he felt it when the creature's tentacles deftly pulled the helmet from his head; he definitely felt it when the piercing mandibles punctured his throat and he drowned, screams unvoiced, in his own blood.The wounded chuul dragged its victims through the shallow water and into the back of its lair, away from the corridor and any other passersby.  It retrieved its old husk, as well, then hunkered down for a well-earned feast.  Later, it would worry about rearranging its new trophies along the walls of its cave.[16]</blockquote>

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