Draknor

Draknor pass through three life stages, egg, larva and adult, and only the larva is normally met on the Prime Material Plane. The listed statistics describe that stage alone; a mature draknor, should one ever appear, needs statistics of the DM's own making.

The larva is enormous: roughly 55 feet wide, 40 feet long and 25 feet tall, not counting the dozens of feeding tendrils hanging beneath it. Twelve stony struts brace it against the surrounding cave walls. Two reptilian arms with claws jut from the front, and four heavy tentacles rise from its back. Its body is built of two shells, upper and lower, separated by a 6-inch gap crowded with stalked eyes and other sense organs.

The draknor is highly intelligent, but its mind works in ways utterly foreign to every other living thing, and it cannot or will not communicate.

The larva cannot leave its lair and has no movement rate, but its tendrils can slither like snakes at 15 and bore through solid rock at 9, melting the stone with their heat. Up to a mile long, they reach far beyond the cave. Its shell is effectively stone, so the body, support struts and clawed arms are AC -7. The back tentacles are softer at AC -1, and the tendrils and the gap between the shells are its weakest points at AC 2.

In melee it attacks six times a round, twice with its claws and four times with its tentacles. A tentacle that hits wraps the target for 2-12 points of damage each round with no further attack roll; escape takes Strength 22 or more or cutting the tentacle, which has 30 hit points beyond the body's total. Instead of constricting, or when a claw hits a creature of size L or smaller by 4 or more over the needed roll, the draknor stuffs the victim into its mouth. Inside, acid and heat inflict 10-100 points per round. A swallowed victim who deals 50 points to the interior (AC 2) is spat out at once.

At range it has two weapons. It can drive a burrowing tendril under up to three targets per round, setting off a tiny local quake that knocks each one down on a hit; each victim is also stunned 2-5 rounds unless it saves vs. paralyzation. And in any round it is not swallowing something, it can give up its regeneration to breathe a ruby-red beam of heat, 1 foot wide and up to 200 feet long, at one target: on a hit the victim takes 5d12, halved with a save vs. breath weapon. Its own ray neither harms nor heals it.

Only +2 or better weapons affect it. Poison and lightning have no effect on it; it takes half damage from acid and double from cold, and fire or heat heals it by the amount of damage the attack would normally deal, up to its maximum. It cannot be magically controlled, and its alien mind is immune to all mental attacks; treat it as having Wisdom 25 for magical defense. It is immune to mind blast and reflects it.

Its 30 feeding tendrils tap a heat source, usually magma, though any steady intense heat will do. Each takes 10 points to sever. While even one survives, even partly, the draknor regenerates 3 hit points per round, losing 1 point of regeneration for every 10 tendrils cut. With all of them gone it cannot feed and starves in about two weeks.

No one knows how the eggs come to this plane, though it is supposed that adults cross over to leave them in hidden places. Draknor are always found alone and always underground. Once grown, a draknor departs for its true home, the para-elemental plane of Magma, where it spends the rest of its life, and since no adult has ever been seen here, almost nothing is known of them beyond the certainty that they far outstrip the larvae. Because their life cycle is so destructive, draknor are hunted down the moment anyone learns of one.

The egg starts at 2 feet long, AC 8, with no attacks or defenses, and can be destroyed quickly and safely. Over a year it swells to 20 feet and hatches. The new larva must find a lasting heat source within two weeks or die, so it sends its 30 tendrils snaking through the rock in search of molten stone. Once it is feeding, it grows from 100 hit points, gaining 1 every other day. At 160 hit points it is mature and leaves for its home plane, and the vortex of energy it unleashes usually turns the region into a blazing volcanic landscape.

Heat is its main food, but it can digest organic and inorganic matter as well. How it uses these is unclear; many sages think they feed its intellect and senses.