Akhlut
Akhlut — The Encounter
Orca-wolf of the ice floes, hunter of two worlds · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Akhlut
Among the Inuit it is whispered that the orca and the wolf are one beast wearing two skins. By dark water the akhlut swims as a killer whale; when the hunger drives it onto the floes it sheds the sea and runs as a great grey wolf, leaving tracks that march boldly to the tide-line and then stop, as though the walker simply stepped off the edge of the world. Hunters who find such tracks turn back, for the akhlut is no honest predator. It learns the paths of villages, waits beneath thin ice, and takes the careless and the lone. It does not gorge for need alone but for the pleasure of the drowning, dragging warm prey down into the cold dark where no rescue follows. Offerings of fat and song are made at the shore-edge not to feed it, but to ask that it hunt elsewhere this season.
Run Akhlut in Sixty Seconds
- Hold underwater. Keep the akhlut submerged until a PC strays near the shore or onto thin ice — Beneath the Floe gives it stealth and a free Tail Slam when it surfaces. Do not waste its first turn swimming in the open.
- Open with the grab. Lead with Bite to grapple, then next turn or via Drag Under haul the victim into the water. The whole monster is built around one drowning kill, not spread damage.
- Kill-priority is whoever is closest to open water. It always works the edge — the lone scout, the prone PC, the one Tail Slam just slid toward the surf.
- When bloodied, it dives. Below half HP it breaks grapples it can, submerges, and harasses from the deep, only resurfacing to snatch a wounded straggler.
- Three ways to run it: (1) lurking ambush under one ice crack, one big bite-and-drown; (2) a pod of two or three flanking a larger sea boss; (3) a slasher that picks off the rear of a marching party crossing a frozen strait.
Akhlut
Large monstrosity, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEAmphibious. The akhlut can breathe air and water.
Hold Breath. While out of water the akhlut can hold its breath for 30 minutes.
Beneath the Floe. Signature. When the akhlut starts its turn fully submerged or beneath broken ice, it is treated as having half cover and advantage on Stealth checks. If it ends a movement adjacent to a creature standing on ice or near open water, it may immediately shatter the surface with a Tail Slam (see Actions) without using an action, once per turn.
Actions
Multiattack. The akhlut makes two attacks: one with its Bite and one with its Tail Slam.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10+5) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 15). Until this grapple ends, the akhlut can't bite another target, and the target is dragged at the akhlut's swim speed if it moves into water.
Tail Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8+5) bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 15 Strength save or be knocked prone. On ice, a failed save also slides the target 10 ft. toward the nearest open water.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Drag Under. Reaction. When a creature the akhlut is grappling ends its turn within 5 ft. of water, the akhlut may pull it into the water and dive. The target must hold its breath or begin to suffocate (SRD rules).
A sleek killer-whale built on a wolf's frame lunges from a glowing crack in the sea ice, dorsal fin cutting forward, fluked tail still trailing meltwater. It is poised between two worlds, equally at home stalking the floe and hunting the black water beneath.
Akhlut, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEPack of the Floe (signature). While Akhlut is within 30 ft. of the akhlut, both gain advantage on attack rolls against any creature that is grappled, prone, or in difficult ice terrain.
Actions
Rending Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6+4) piercing damage.
Reactions
Cut Off the Retreat. Reaction when an adjacent creature tries to move away: Akhlut makes a Rending Bite against it. On a hit, the creature's speed is halved until the end of its next turn.
A spectral sea-wolf that runs the ice ahead of the akhlut, herding prey toward the open black water where the hunter waits.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open by surfacing adjacent to a lone PC near the water's edge, Bite to grapple, then use Drag Under to pull them in. Kill-priority is the isolated or low-HP target by the shore. Pair it with an ice-cracking hazard or a small wolf pack so the party can't simply retreat inland.
Stay submerged, then burst the ice with Tail Slam to knock clustered PCs prone and slide them toward open water; Bite the heaviest-armored melee to grapple and Drag Under. Kill-priority is whoever the party needs out of the water — the grappled victim. This is an add-on hunter: pair it with a bigger boss on the floe so the party is squeezed between land and sea.
Hit-and-dive: Multiattack a clustered group with Tail Slam (prone + slide) and Bite-grapple, then retreat into deep water on its turn so casters can't easily reach it. Kill-priority is whoever can fly or breathe water and chase it. Run two or three akhlut as a pod flanking a flagship leviathan.
Put Akhlut on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Akhlut?
Its home stat block is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a tier-2 party of levels 5-10. Scaled versions for tier 1 (levels 1-4, ~CR 2) and tier 3 (levels 11-15, ~CR 11) are provided in the tiers list — traits and actions stay identical, only the numbers move.
Can Akhlut be a companion or ally?
Not as a tamed pet — it is a cruel, low-Intelligence apex predator that hunts for the pleasure of drowning. It works best as an environmental threat or as a beast bound by a shaman or sea-spirit. For an allied option, use Tuurngaq, the bound sea-wolf companion provided here, which fights alongside a leader and herds prey toward the water.
How do I make the akhlut feel different from a plain dire wolf or shark?
Lean on Beneath the Floe and Drag Under: it is a two-worlds ambusher, not a brawler. Make the table feel the ice as a trap — tracks that stop at the tide-line, the surface shattering, a PC suddenly sliding toward black water. The horror is the drowning, so always give it a victim to pull under rather than a fair fight.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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