Mud Fiend

''From out of the pool of watery mud rises a pillar of muck the size of a man. Crude arms and legs emerge from the seething mass and black, hollow eyes open to gaze hungrily upon you.''

Combat
A mud fiend lies immersed in mud until a target passes nearby. It then forms a body from the surrounding mud and strikes with a pair of slamming pseudopodia. These armlike protrusions are used to grapple, envelop and smother a target. A particularly tricky foe will be dragged into the fiends' muddy pit itself where he or she can be attacked from all angles by any mud fiends dwelling there.

Description
The mud fiend is a lurking predator formed entirely from mud, slime and muck. Most scholars assume that the mud fiend is some kind of sentient force that inhabits and animates mud, as the creatures seem indistinguishable from the wallows that are their home. Others believe it to be a colony of microscopic animals cooperating to create a common defense out of the mud.

Mud fiends require decaying flesh to sustain their foul existence and treat the bodies of their victims as fertilizer for their homes. A mud fiend forms a body that is roughly man-sized, but this form is temporary and can reform if destroyed. There appears to be no known way to permanently destroy a mud fiend, other than by drying out or removing the mud that is its domain.