Deep Glaurant

Deep glaurants are heavily muscled, scaly humanoids 8 feet tall, ranging in color from ocher to stone gray. All four limbs end in sharp claws as hard as iron, equally good for tearing flesh and scaling rock, and they dig well. Small wings jut from their shoulders; they can be folded flat or worked with great skill to help the creature swim, climb and glide instead of falling. Short, bendable horns fold down over the ears to keep out dust and to probe cracks in the rock.

The name comes from the odd gulping sound they make deep in the throat when excited. Alone or on the hunt, they make no sound at all.

Once every third round a glaurant can silently will magical darkness around itself, lasting that whole round. It has 90-foot infravision, and normal or bright light does not trouble it. Clever enough to rig rockfalls and plan deadly ambushes, it loves to glide silently onto prey from above under cover of darkness. It turns magic taken from caches, tombs and victims against its foes, or bargains with such items when it is at a disadvantage.

Most prefer to fight with weapons, striking twice with weapons or claws followed by a savage bite. If both front claws rake an opponent and the bite also lands, the glaurant can scrabble with its rear claws as well, each needing its own attack roll and dealing 2d4 points of damage. It attacks anything it sees and fights until badly hurt, facing death or its foe is dead, at which point it starts eating immediately.

Encounters are rare and spread across huge stretches of the deep underground. The creatures eat any meat at all and in great quantities. Rumors speak of glaurant cities and a hidden civilization, yet no reliable account mentions more than two together. Many scholars doubt the cities exist given the creatures' modest intelligence, while others suggest explorers have met only dim-witted outcasts. No young glaurant has ever been found, which deepens the mystery. Their only evident goal is finding and eating food, though they pursue it with elaborate cunning.

Thinking races of the caverns dread glaurants, and some underground cultures tell tales of them to scare children into behaving. Their darkness ability comes from a gland in the hindbrain that a skilled alchemist or wizard may be able to extract intact. Its oily gray secretion is a special material component for darkness, continual darkness and darkness 15' radius, doubling either the spell's duration or its radius. Useful as it is, the fluid has never been worth hunting glaurants for, since easier foes yield richer prizes.

Glaurants scorn almost all treasure except magic items, especially practical ones such as weapons, and never keep magic they cannot use.