Air Drake [Dark Sun]

Of the four drake types, the air drake is the longest and thinnest. Its bones are light and its frame stretched out for speed, and loose flaps of skin run between its fore and hind legs. When it spreads its limbs, those flaps pull taut into gliding wings. Air drakes are moody and impossible to predict, which makes them perilous to meet, and they pass most of their lives riding the high desert winds.

An air drake likes to come out of the sky silently and from an unexpected angle. It turns psionically invisible to close with its quarry, and if that fails it uses awe to seize the initiative. Diving in, it rakes with both forelimbs (1d8+10 each) and tries to haul the target into the air. A victim who struggles gets bitten (3d8), and the drake whips its head back and forth, doubling the damage of that first bite. Once it has gained real altitude, it lets go.

Huge and gargantuan prey are too big to carry, so the drake makes strafing passes, striking with both forelimbs and its tail (3d10). It loathes psionic attack, and a psionicist who slips past its defenses can expect synaptic static or ejection in return.

Once every 15 days the drake can open a gate to the elemental plane of air and drop a sphere of tornado winds 100 yards across. Everyone inside is battered for 2d6 points of damage (save vs. breath weapon for half), and fliers cannot cross the zone. Where the winds touch the ground they can whip up a small sandstorm, and a victim caught in it takes 3d6 instead of the buffeting damage (save vs. breath weapon for half). The storm lasts one turn.

Psionic sciences: ejection, telekinesis and tower of iron will. Devotions: mind thrust, psionic crush and synaptic static on the attack; mental barrier and mind blank for defense; and all-round vision, awe, body equilibrium, contact, control winds, ESP, false sensory input, invisibility and levitation.

Air drakes never settle in one lair. Instead each keeps a dozen or so hideaways it trusts, and because it is always moving it owns very little. When something catches its fancy, it stows the item in some high, unreachable spot and wanders back to admire it only when the mood takes it. Stealing one of these treasures is about the surest way to send an air drake into a rage.

An air drake likes its meals soft, and it softens them by dropping them from a great height, often onto crags and rock outcrops. Flying prey is carried up and then flung straight at the ground as the drake dives and pulls out at the last instant. Few creatures can recover in time. Spellcasters, some psionicists and creatures with magical flight get a single round to act before hitting the ground. Fliers of maneuverability class A or B can catch themselves completely, class C fliers may try to brake and take half damage on a success, and anything less agile simply falls.

A typical adult lifts 1,000 pounds with ease. Every 200 pounds beyond that drops its maneuverability by one class.