Astro-Sphinx

Nobody knows where this vicious, twisted kind of sphinx came from. It stands twice a man's height, with a dragon-like body sheathed in brass scales and a huge pair of black bat wings. Its head looks like a goat's skull, violet sparks glimmering in the empty sockets, though there really is flesh there, so pale and taut that it seems absent. Instead of forepaws it has big, clawed human hands, and it reeks of ozone and rotten meat. It speaks common and all sphinx languages.

Up close, the creature butts with its two goat horns (1d6 each), bites for 4d6 and rakes with its clawed hands (1d6 each). About 5% carry a two-handed sword, which may be magical. Its tail and hind legs play no part in a fight.

Every five rounds it can exhale a cone of sleeping gas 80 feet long, 4 feet wide at its mouth and 20 feet wide at the far end. Those caught in it sleep for 1d6 turns unless they save vs. breath weapon. In the void between worlds, sleepers inside their own air envelope stay unconscious until the gas is purged from it.

Its eye sockets also launch a 9d6 chain lightning. The violet sparks turn gold during a round of build-up before the bolt, then red during a round of rest afterward; when they return to violet, the attack is ready again. During that rest round the sphinx is blind and fights at -4 to THAC0.

A wrong answer to its riddle sets off the same routine almost every time: sleep gas, then lightning, then a murderous charge that continues until nothing near it lives. It attacks not just the one who answered wrong but all their companions too.

Astro-sphinxes guard their territory savagely and challenge every intruder, even birds, insects, small animals and plants, to a riddle contest. Silence or a wrong answer means death. Their madness makes the riddles senseless ('What is the speed of blue?', 'How loud is down?'), so an astro-sphinx is often the only living thing left on its world.

Tales say a few travelers have won by giving an equally insane answer, though this works only 1% of the time. Legend also holds that a truly correct answer makes the beast burst apart in a ring of 20d6 chain lightning that kills it, leaving behind only a clue to the location of the Great Starship.

It needs no air and survives in space, usually lairing on small, lifeless rocks. It will eat anything, most often those who failed its riddles.

Every responsible race agrees this bizarre predator should be hunted down, and even evil intelligent races avoid it. Keeping any part of one as a trophy is thought to bring bad luck, and whoever does so soon finds friends and comrades shunning them.