Silt Spawn

Combat
Silt spawn prefer to attack from ambush, and once they have detected prey, they will emerge from their lairs and silently swim towards the surface, striking when their target is within reach. Although they are of very low intelligence, their clutch instinct drives them to cooperate in combat, and they will attempt to grapple a single target en masse and drag their prey into the silt. Once submerged, the prey either swiftly drowns or succumbs to the bites of the mass of feeding spawn.

Description
The immature form of the larger silt horrors, silt spawn are aggressive predators driven by the same voracious hunger that typifies the fully grown members of the species. Silt spawn are all born identical, no matter their parents' subspecies, and do not differentiate into the various strains of silt horror until they reach maturity. To many observers, they barely resemble the adult horrors that they will later become.

Silt spawn live in rocky crevices and similar locations in the shallow silt, where they are protected from the hungry jaws of larger predators. They ambush their prey, swarming through the silt in a mass of tentacles and snapping jaws.

Over time, spells have been developed that focus upon the silt spawn. Two of these are: Spawn Heritage and Spawn Song.

Silt spawn are born four feet long, weighing 130 pounds. They continue to mature until they reach 10 feet in length, at which time they weigh as much as 500 pounds. At this point the maturation into a silt horror of a specific color begins, and the spawn is treated as an adult of the appropriate species.

Silt Spawn Society
While adult horrors are solitary beasts, the silt spawn are driven by a clutch instinct. They are clutched by their parent in the shallows of the silt and as soon as they are born, the spawn instinctively flee into whatever crannies or bolt-holes they can find. The parent horror cares nothing for its children and often lingers in the vicinity of the birthing site in the hope of an easy meal. Spawn that do not hide are devoured, a hazard that persists until the adult horror‘s own instincts drive it back into the deeper silt that is its natural home. The spawn will remain in the shallows until they mature, at which time they are driven into the deep silt by both their size and a growing competitive streak that forces the clutch to separate – or become enemies.

Occasionally a particular area of shallow silt becomes a popular clutching ground for more than one adult silt horror. In such situations it is possible that more than one clutch of silt spawn will occupy the same area. Observers have noted that, far from competing, the clutches will combine into a single, tangled mass of spawn. Clerics of Silt have been known to claim that spawn from differing species that matured together in the same clutch will not compete or attack one another as adults. There is no proven example of this yet known but it seems likely that the hybrid brown silt horror is a result of such early pairings.

Unlike mature horrors, silt spawn are both edible and tasty and are hunted for their flesh by the giants of the silt archipelagoes and other dwellers along the shores. In addition to their flesh, they are also hunted for their hide, which can be used to make waterproof containers or clothing.

A weed known as draxia, native to the silt islands, can reputedly be used as an ingredient in an ointment that will repel silt spawn and act as an irritant to silt horrors. It is unknown if this is merely rumor, however, as no-one on the mainland has been able to successfully produce an effective formula, and experimenters are as often as not attacked by the irritated adult silt horrors, a tendency that has discouraged further experimentation.