Blackskate
Image © Wizards of the Coast, by Drew Baker. Accessed at the Stormwrack Art Gallery here
[Stormwrack was the third of the D&D 3.5 environment sourcebooks, and it’s the one that saw the most use at my table. Not for the majority of the rules, but for the player races, which we will be getting to before long. There are less monsters in this book than in Frostburn or Sandstorm, probably because ships and sailing get their own rules and statistics, and that eats up page count.]
Blackskate CR 4 NE Undead This thing has wide fins like those of a ray, and its body is comprised of tatters of pallid flesh, shattered bone and other organic debris. Its head is vaguely like that of a crustacean, and its tail arcs over its back and ends in a vicious stinger.
Blackskates are undead creatures born when a truly evil creature dies at sea and its body is allowed to decompose and drift to the bottom as “marine snow”. It forms a tiny clot of malign purpose, and as the marine snow is washed by the current and stirred by the movement of bottom-dwelling scavengers, it accrues into a shape reminiscent of a ray—the blackskate. Although they are born at the greatest depths, most blackskates move to shallower waters when they are able to in order to prey on the blood of the living. They do not drink this blood with their mouths, rather bathing in it and absorbing it through their skins.
A blackskate prefers to attack from ambush, burying itself in the bottom of a shallow shore and lashing out at waders. Unlike mundane stingrays, which are content to flee once they have stung, blackskates will sting again and again until their prey dies, its skin and muscle sloughing away in a truly grotesque display. Blackskates often make hit and run attacks, made all the more rapid by its whirling frenzy when exposed to fresh blood. A frenzied blackskate can even chase prey onto shore, but doing so is risky—if it is still beached when the whirl wears off, it is stranded and easily destroyed.
