Baldandar

Unmasked, a baldandar is a lanky humanoid with an oversized skull and round yellow eyes that shine like lamps. Few ever see it so, since it lives behind illusions and seldom drops them. It speaks Common, its own impenetrable racial tongue, and often many other languages besides.

Its phantasms reach 240 yards, fool every sense and behave like the real thing while it concentrates and for one turn afterward. They can duplicate veil or advanced illusion at 15th-level power in all respects but duration. Favorite masks are a mighty human spellcaster or a great dragon; anyone struck by the illusory spells or breath takes the full effect unless a save vs. spell at -4 exposes the trick.

It can turn invisible and fly at will, and once a day each it may use confusion, magic jar, polymorph self and polymorph other. Cornered, it claws twice for 1d8 each and bites for 1d4. The bite's venom puts a victim to sleep for 1d4 turns unless he saves vs. poison at -4.

Baldandars are spiteful loners. Their deceptions are clever and lovingly detailed, and the charm they can fake covers a cruel, antisocial core, one reason the race is dwindling toward extinction. Some live among orcs or hill giants in their hosts' shape, using wit and magic to take command and win the fearful admiration they crave, yet they never truly bond with their followers. All of them covet treasure, magic most of all, and use it for their own ends.

They live 100 to 150 years and breed perhaps once a decade. After roughly 12 months the female bears one whelp; hormones make her neutral while she spends up to a year teaching it to hunt, then she abandons it at about half grown size.

A meat-eater, the baldandar herds frightened game with false sights, sounds and smells toward the spot where it waits, invisible and with its scent masked, then bites the prey to sleep and feeds at leisure. In civilized lands it schemes for influence instead, and if a tasty human wanders into those plots, so much the better; it builds especially elaborate illusions to catch human prey.