Ferocious hunters, reefclaws terrorize both coastal waters and major rivers, feeding voraciously on fish, crustaceans, dolphins, and even land mammals come to riverbanks to drink. Once a reefclaw latches onto a victim it stays attached until either it or its prey is dead.

Reefclaws were originally created to act as guardians in moats and rivers but they occasionally escaped their servitude to become legendary terrors of coastal villages.

Reefclaws understand the most prevalent language used near their lairs (usually Common), but they lack the ability to speak and they cannot normally read.

Ecology

Although they were created unnaturally, reefclaws fill the niche of ferocious high-end aquatic predator. Since their creation more than 10,000 years ago, reefclaws have spread widely. Less picky than jigsaw sharks and more powerful than violin crabs, reefclaws pose a danger to any who work along or in coastal and river waters. More pearl divers die each year to reefclaws than to every other predator combined.

Society

Reefclaws mostly live as solitary creatures, although females sometimes gather in groups called harems. These harems form among females ready to mate (which occurs once every 2 or 3 years). When a harem finds a male ready to reproduce, the group descends on the lone male and rips him open, forming a cloud in the water through which the females swim multiple times. When they finish their flurry, the females then feed on the rest of male’s body. A harem repeats this process four of five times over a month’s period, then disbands while the impregnated reefclaws gestate. After 3 months, a female lays tens of thousands of eggs, less than 1% of which make it to adulthood.

Reefclaw Fishing

Reefclaw meat is considered a delicacy in many cities, although many more discerning folk argue that the consumption of reefclaw is immoral, as these creatures are far from unintelligent. These arguments typically fall on deaf ears—enough so that reefclaw fishing remains a profitable, if dangerous, career.

The classic method of catching reefclaws requires at least two fishermen. A hook at the end of a heavy chain is baited with a haunch of meat and then thrown over the side of a boat and allowed to float a few feet off the sea floor. When a reefclaw clamps onto the meat and attempts to retreat to its lair, the chain jerks and one fisherman can then winch it  up, pulling the reefclaw alongside the boat’s edge. The second fisherman then hacks off the reefclaw’s claws, which remain affixed even in death to the bait, allowing the body (whose meat is generally considered to be unpalatable) to drop back into the sea. Skilled reefclaw fishermen can catch a dozen reefclaws on a single side of beef over the course of a single day of fishing, although just as many hopeful fishermen loose hands of their own to the dangerous creatures.

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2, © 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Wolfgang Baur, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, Graeme Davis, Crystal Frasier, Joshua J. Frost, Tim Hitchcock, Brandon Hodge, James Jacobs, Steve Kenson, Hal MacLean, Martin Mason, Rob McCreary, Erik Mona, Jason Nelson, Patrick Renie, Sean K Reynolds, F. Wesley Schneider, Owen K.C. Stephens, James L. Sutter, Russ Taylor, and Greg A. Vaughan, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.