This strange nautilus drags itself forward on oversized tentacles, its crimson-streaked flesh textured like the surface a brain.

A strange sort of sea creature that appears to be an oversized cephalopod, an incutilis hides a significant intelligence behind its unassuming appearance. Though most incutilises live their entire lives within the deepest trenches of the darkest seas, some venture to the border between water and land, taking terrible control over land-dwelling flesh with an alien disregard for sentient life. Because of their aquatic physiologies, their ability to cross this border and travel on land is limited. These aberrations overcome this hurdle with a lethal solution, slaying land dwellers and commandeering their flesh to bear the incutilis on shore.

Although incutilises can live as bottom feeders, they prefer not to scavenge. Their favorite foods seem to be larger sea creatures—sharks, whales, and sentient ocean dwellers—and they make no distinction between the living and the dead. Incutilises exhibit strong self-preservation compulsions, going out of their way to avoid dangerous predators. When one is on land and its zombie puppet is destroyed, it attempts to flee to the nearest body of water.

An incutilis weighs about 25 pounds (30 with its shell) and measures 4 feet from the tips of its longest tentacles to the top of its shell.

Special Abilities

Puppetmaster (Su) As a full-round action, an incutilis can drive its lesser tendrils into any helpless Small or Medium creature occupying the same square and pump the victim full of poison and chemicals. The victim is killed instantly, and becomes a zombie-like creature under the incutilis's control. This zombie isn't treated as being undead, and is immune to spells and effects that affect only undead (including damage from positive energy). The incutilis is attached to this zombie—typically by the headoccupying the same square and moving along with it. The incutilis can make attacks with its tentacles independently of the zombie's slam. It can also retract its tendrils as a move action, but doing so causes the zombie to collapse and revert to a normal corpse. The incutilis must retract its tendrils before it can move away from a zombie it's attached to. Any attack that deals damage to the zombie also deals 1 point of damage to the incutilis, regardless of how much damage is dealt to the zombie. Area-affecting spells affect both the puppeteer and zombie. A character can attempt to attack just the incutilis, but takes a 4 penalty on the attack roll. Killing the incutilis destroys the zombie.