Image by Anthony Carpenter, © Kenzer and Co.

[Exhibit B as to why I think Hacklopedia of Beasts 2 remembers its comedy roots. This monster mashes up “krill” and “calamari” in its name, and can give your PCs something called “seal meat madness”. But it’s a dang good monster, one of the best fantasy parasitoids I’ve ever seen. As an aside, does anyone working for Paizo know what size a seal is supposed to be? The default seal is Small, which is really only appropriate for the two Asian lake seals (which are shorter but heavier on average than a wolf, which is Medium). Most seals are between 1.5 and 2 meters long and weigh as much or more than a human. So they should be Medium.]

Okrillamari CR 5 N Magical Beast This creature resembles a crustacean the size of a rhinoceros, each of its forelimbs shaped like the end of a polearm.

An okrillamari, also called a seal herder, is a giant parasitoid amphipod that lays eggs in seals and guards them from other predators, up to and including humanoids. Its foreclaws are the size and shape of the business end of a bill-guisarme, but it uses them primarily for defense rather than hunting. Okrillimari are omnivorous scavengers, and much of their diet comes from seaweed, driftwood, tide pool animals and even the feces of their seal charges. Their jaws are relatively weak, but contain potent paralytic enzymes. Most creatures they paralyze they leave behind, but a seal is injected with a slurry of eggs and microbes carried in an ovipositor. Seals and other pinnipeds that consume such a mixture become hosts for the next generation of okrillimari, which grow inside the animal for three months before bloodily emerging. The eggs cannot develop inside of any other creature, but they do cause increasing irrational behavior and eventually dangerous delirium. This “seal meat madness” is most commonly experienced by creatures that eat a seal hosting okrillimari eggs.

A seal herder is treated as an alpha by infected pinnipeds, and the animals behave favorably towards it even as their young kills the animal slowly. By concentrating, an okrillimari can see through the eyes of seals hosting its young, and thus are able to monitor a wide span of beach and ocean nearby. Okrillimari are simultaneous hermaphrodites that fertilize each other when they cross paths, but otherwise usually ignore others of their own kind. They can apparently smell the eggs inside a seal, and so do not attempt to parasitize a pinniped already hosting okrillimari eggs.

An okrillimari is most comfortable on the shoreline, but can remain on land or underwater indefinitely. Rumors exist of variant okrillimari capable of infecting any carnivoran animal, such as big cats, wolves and bears, with their young.