Kraken

Kraken, the demons of the deep, roam the depths of the seven seas. They look like giant squid but have a sinister intelligence and are deadly to people. They can grow past eighty feet and weigh up to twelve tons. Soft-bodied like squid, they have powerful beak-like mouths, and three rows of suckers under each tentacle let them grip any solid surface. They have few natural enemies apart from the leviathan and often hunt whales, dolphins and other large sea animals.

Without a single bone, they are still immensely strong. They crush the stoutest hull in moments, and one tentacle can maim a man or hoist a warhorse. Being clever, they hunt shipwreck survivors, even trailing lifeboats to feed on the crews. They often lurk almost fully submerged with a single eye-stalk poking above the water. A kraken has twelve tentacles, each constricting for 3-24 damage a minute, but any blow from an edged weapon that deals 12 or more damage severs a tentacle or leaves it useless.

They move by squirting jets of water from chambers inside their bodies, which makes them surprisingly fast and agile, and the same system lets them take on water as ballast. Outnumbered or hard-pressed, a kraken may escape behind a cloud of dark ink or simply dive. The ink spreads through a block of water 1,000 feet on every side, and spell casters seek it out for making magical inks and dyes.

Tritons say kraken mate often, yet they are almost never seen in pairs. A female lays hundreds of eggs about six inches across in a protective sac anchored to the sea floor or a reef, then abandons them. Most eggs and hatchlings are eaten, so kraken stay few, though enough survive to terrify sailors everywhere. Some people eat the eggs as a delicacy, paying up to twenty gold pieces apiece.