I think I’ve said here before that I’m not a big fan of seafaring adventures. The ocean is this huge, impersonal thing that can just swallow you whole and leave no trace you ever existed. The ocean is utterly primordial, and never lets you forget it. The creatures that live there – even if we forget about Merrow and Water Elementals and Marid – can be utterly alien and terrifying.

So if you’re going to have an adventure in the great sea, you should turn the terror up to eleven and hit your players with one of the great beasts of the deep: the Giant Squid.

This is a creature that is so large and so terrifying, you almost forget that it’s a Beast. Your Druid could probably talk to it, but what would they even talk about? The way the sunless depths smell faintly of ammonia? How miniscule pressure differences in the water guide it like the stars do for us? The Giant Squid is alien to all things we understand on the land, and that is something you can play up when you put one in your game.

Your Players are on the ocean. Maybe they’re heading to an uncharted island to do some dinosaur hunting, or perhaps there’s an entrance to a mythical dungeon deep below the waves. They’ve hired a ship and a crew and have been out at sea for days, following the stars or fairy lights or the map that just happened to appear on the broad back of the Paladin after they saved that temple from destruction.

Then, late at night, the ship rocks. Something slams into it, cracks against the wood like the hand of an angry god. When they get on deck, they see a cacophony of screams and waves and tentacles as some members of the crew fight, and others are pulled away by tentacles as thick as tree trunks.

As a random combat encounter, this can be a lot of fun on its own. You have this huge creature with a 15-foot reach lashing at the ship, yanking people towards its hideous beaked mouth. If you start to get the better of it, a cloud of ink can give it the cover it needs to move away and come at you from a new angle. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, your ship will probably be badly damaged, missing a few crew members, and not entirely ready to finish the journey it set out on. More complications for you to play with, especially if you haven’t finished fleshing out that uncharted island or mythical dungeon yet and need the extra week.

As with all the other Beasts we have discussed here, though, the Giant Squid should be more than just a random encounter in an appropriate environment. It should mean something to your world or to your adventure, and leave your Players with a better understanding of where they are and what this world can offer them. So, with that, here’s a few ideas for you.

The Misunderstood Leviathan

A standard Giant Squid has an intelligence of 5 – which isn’t great as far as pinning motivation and backstory onto one. But you’re the DM here, so what if it wasn’t? This could be a creature that can think, and what it thinks about is protecting the seas. This isn’t a rampaging monster, looking for food: this is an agent of justice, making right what the Surface Dwellers have made wrong for so very long. It attacks your ship because that ship doesn’t just transport adventurers from plot point to plot point: it’s a whaling vessel that has butchered the seas for years. The Giant Squid has been tracking it, and has finally found it. Like Ahab of old, this Squid is going to have its vengeance if it has to go down with it.

If you’re going to go with this, make sure you prepare your Players. Tell them this used to be a whaling vessel – make the Captain proud of how many sea-beasts he and his crew have butchered over the years. He can show off his collection of ambergris and scrimshaws. And maybe his ship – let’s call it the Tequod – has those telltale scars from tentacle battles before. The captain knows what is looking for them, but is brashly confident that he can defeat it.

Whether they do or not is up to you. And how you feel about the whaling industry, perhaps. But either way, the ship’s survival is essential for your players’ survival. Will they side with the Squid, or with the Captain who holds the only key to their destination?

The Mythic Remnant

The sea is vast, and it remembers its gods. Gods of current and swell, of storms and shallows. Perhaps one of those gods has spawn, and over the years those spawn have dwindled.

Until there is only one left.

The worshippers of an ancient Kraken cult, looking to restore their lost deity, are trying to uplift the beast into a true apotheosis, granting it access to the divine abilities that are its right. And, as is so often the case with cults, this will require sacrifice. And your Party is first in line for the demigod’s ascension.

With this in mind, you can really beef up this encounter a lot. Bring those Merrow and Mermen, devout worshippers of a long-vanished Kraken god. Have another ship filled with humans, willing to throw their lives away if they need to. Turn this into a three-dimensional battle of wood and wave as cultists chant and storm clouds amass overhead. Your Players will not only try to keep themselves alive, but try to prevent a new and terrible deity from being birthed upon the waves.

The Squid IS The Dungeon

Your Players are looking for a lost dungeon, which is where they will find the MacGuffin they’re looking for. All their research tells them it’s under the waves, but not in the way they think. A Giant Squid – perhaps even a Truly Enormous Squid – is the guardian of what they seek, and if they’re going to find it then their best move is to go in after it.

This is an encounter that needs more than brute force. This is a dungeon you dive into. It is alive, angry, and very much aware of you.

They can’t just kill the Squid and carve the thing out of it. Stormy seas and angry waves that will swallow the carcass whole in a moment. Maybe their target is intrinsically tied to the Squid’s life force – when it dies, there are only moments available before it vanishes or self-destructs without the proper rituals being performed.

And so your Players enter the living dungeon, full of acid pits, inky blackness, and ever-constructing tunnels. Perhaps there’s an ecosystem of strange creatures living inside, protecting the Squid and its precious cargo. Blind crabs that click in disorienting rhythms. Tiny shrimp that swirl and feast on memories. They defend their home as your Party tries to fight through the anatomy, weakening it without killing it until their mission is complete.

When it is, they will hopefully start asking, “How the hell did this get here in the first place?” At which point you level them up and unveil Phase Two of the campaign.

However you use your Giant Squid, it should be a wild, chaotic, and memorable moment at the table. There’s just so much going on, and so many ways for your Players to lose, that they should come out of it with a healthy respect for not only the vast and deep ocean, but for their humble Dungeon Master whose twisted mind has presented them with such a terrible task.

After all, nothing says “I love my players” more than wrapping them in tentacles and pulling them into the infinite deep.

Or so I’m told.