Darter

With its plump, pear-shaped body, tube snout and bulging dark eyes, the darter looks more silly than dangerous. A short crest on its head rises when it is startled. Its scales run from vivid emerald to deep jade, each of its four feet has three stubby claws, and its tail is as long as the rest of it. It is astonishingly idle and moves only to eat.

Up close the darter is harmless, but its snout is lined with thin, lengthwise fangs that it can loosen and shoot like darts. Poison coats each fang as it leaves the snout, and a target it strikes is frozen for 1d4 rounds unless a save vs. poison succeeds. Beyond 10' the darts still fly but can no longer break skin. The fangs regrow quickly, allowing 1-6 shots per day.

Once a target is frozen, every darter nearby creeps up to feed. Each scratches a hole in bare skin with its feeble front claws for 1 hit point of damage, then sucks blood for another 1d6. One such meal lasts a darter a full day.

Darters are jumpy and shoot at nearly anything that moves within range. Luckily for them, their own venom does not affect them. Their high morale is not bravery; they are simply too lazy and dim to run.

Darters bother only creatures that wander into their patch, and they stay close to where they hatched. They mate each spring with so little enthusiasm that sages rank their courtship among the dullest in the world. Three weeks later the female scrapes together a crude nest on whatever spot she occupies and lays 1-6 eggs, and the young hatch two weeks after that.

Darters wait for food to come to them and leave home only when starving. Many swamp predators eat them, but only desperate ones accept the risk of being darted and drained.

Lizard men and other primitive swamp tribes put them to use. A dead darter yields 1-6 easily removed darts about two inches long, straight enough for blowguns or as tips for bigger darts. Its poison sacs, handled carefully, give enough venom for 6-36 darts. Air weakens the poison: victims gain +1 to their saves for each day it has been exposed, and after a week it is useless.

Some tribes post darters as guards, though the lizards cannot be trained and shoot their keepers as readily as intruders; wiser tribes simply scatter a few around sacred sites as a living trap. A few bold or foolish swamp-dwellers even carry one and aim its snout at enemies, but a careless bearer who moves suddenly gets darted himself.