Braxat

Part mammal and part reptile in look, the braxat walks upright on two legs and looms over even a big half-giant. Heavy jointed plates of shell armor its back and shoulders, and its blunt, square, lizardlike head is ringed by three to five horny spikes. Despite the scales, it is warm-blooded. It is both brilliant and wholly evil. Among themselves braxats use a secret tongue no outsider knows, but they can also speak most human languages.

A braxat hunts for pleasure. It stalks quarry and works to frighten it as much as possible before closing in, and it never kills quickly when it can toy with a victim first. It opens with psionics, wearing enemies down telepathically while using psychoportive powers to dodge harm and confuse prey, then moves into melee with a huge spiked club (2d4 damage, plus +6 for Strength). Its powers: Psychoportation science teleport, with devotions blink, dimensional door, phase, and summon object; Telepathy sciences psionic blast and tower of iron will, with devotions contact, mind thrust, psionic crush, awe, mind blank, and intellect fortress.

Acid breath is a last resort, because it spoils the meal. The cone stretches 10 feet, 1 foot wide at the mouth and 5 feet wide at the far end; anything it touches takes 2d10 damage, halved by a successful save vs. breath weapon. Its shells and hide shrug off any weapon that is neither steel nor enchanted, although a hard enough blow from such a weapon may still knock it off its feet.

Braxats roam every corner of the desert world in small numbers, drifting across the barrens hunting both prey and fresh cruelties. They are loners, and rumor says not even another braxat is safe around one, yet mated pairs do turn up on rare occasions, doubling the misery they spread. Any young are stashed in a remote cave somewhere inside the pair's range.

They usually hunt at night by the pale glow of the world's twin moons. A hungry braxat eats nearly anything, caravan beasts included, though even starving it refuses pack insects. Its true preference is intelligent prey, chosen for the thrill of the chase rather than the flavor of humans, dwarves, or elves.

Properly worked, braxat shell makes shields that improve AC by 2 or armor plates of AC 2. That value tempts elf tribes and raiders into hunting them, a venture that often ends badly, since braxats are clever and cruel enough to lay traps and ambushes for even the toughest hunters.