Enduk

Enduks stand six to seven feet tall, lighter and smaller than ordinary minotaurs but still heavily muscled. Short fur from black to light brown covers the body. The bull's head has horns, a blunt square muzzle, big heavy-lidded eyes and a powerful jaw full of large teeth, and is usually mottled in black and white with brown around the eyes and muzzle. Coarse hair grows in tufts at the throat and shoulders and runs down the back as a mane.

Their great wings span eight to ten feet and, folded, rise from the ground to a foot above the head. Feathers range from white through gray to black. The undersides bear inherited patterns that reveal family ties, and enduks spread their wings on the ground to show them off.

Their own tongue is a deep, guttural speech that few other throats can manage. Most also speak common and the language of the ee'aar winged elves. Few learn more, though some keep up the manscorpions' language in case it helps win back their land.

Treat a typical enduk as a 4th-level warrior; leaders are warriors or clerics of at least 7th level (7+7 HD, THAC0 13). Their natural AC is 6. Armor built for their winged frames helps only if it is AC 5 or better, in which case the armor's AC replaces theirs rather than adding to it. They never carry shields.

On the ground an enduk can use any weapon its class permits, though it prefers weapons of 12 pounds or less that also work in flight. The bastard sword is a favorite, swung one-handed with full effect thanks to their size and strength, and a few fight with one in each hand. Their heavy shoulders add +2 to damage with normal melee weapons. They do not use ordinary bows but sometimes carry heavy crossbows, firing twice per round. Along with a melee attack an enduk may gore with its horns for 1d4+1, but not in a round when it makes several melee attacks.

Airborne they attack at -2, so they prefer to land and fight. Only weapons of 12 pounds or less are usable in the air, and crossbows can be shot aloft but must be reloaded on the ground. Unable to hover, they make passing attacks, often gliding silently onto unwary foes; dropping down to strike quickly gives +1 to their surprise rolls.

Level flight covers 180 feet per round, at least half of it forward. Climbing is hard work for such bulk: only 30 feet up for each 90 feet forward. Gliding, they move their full 180 feet both forward and down, and in a steep dive they double that to 360 feet each way, never steeper than 45 degrees. Armor does not hurt speed or maneuverability but counts toward the load they can carry.

They can carry 200 pounds plus 10 per point of Strength at no penalty. Beyond that, speed halves while maneuverability stays at C, up to a flying limit of 200 pounds plus 20 per Strength point. They can still glide (maneuverability D) with up to 30 pounds per Strength point.

After each turn of continuous flight an enduk makes a Constitution check, at -1 per 100 pounds carried beyond the first 100 and a further -1 above 5,000 feet, but +2 with favorable winds. A failure forces it to glide down and rest one turn for every two it spent aloft. No enduk can climb past 10,000 feet.

Wing injuries work as they do for the ee'aar. For example, a 40 hp warrior who takes 23 points to the wings and 8 to the body is grounded twice over: its wings alone account for over half its hit points, and its total losses exceed three quarters. Healing magic can restore its hit points for battle, but the wing damage still grounds it. After a week it recovers 4 points (10% of 40) of wing damage, leaving 19; that permits gliding, but since 19 is still above a quarter of its total, true flight must wait two more weeks while the feathers grow back. An enduk with Constitution 17 or more heals an extra 3 points of wing damage per week and in this case would fly again exactly two weeks after the injury. A heal spell regrows feathers and cures the damage at once, allowing immediate flight.

From the beginning the enduks have been a plain-living, trusting folk of deep faith. When the manscorpions lost their own lands, the enduks agreed to share their homeland with them, and were betrayed. Driven off their peninsula on the frontier coast, they resettled with the help of their ee'aar friends on a remote mountainous peninsula, where they kept their simple ways while preparing to fight for their home.

Family comes first. Enduks mate for life and seldom remarry even when widowed, and a couple raises four to six young over the years, about one every few years. One member speaks for the whole extended family in local government or in the occasional clan-council that decides matters for all enduks, the most recent of which dealt with the return home. This spokesman is usually widowed or unmated and has turned to a martial or religious calling; now and then a mated pair takes up that role together.

Stoic unless roused to anger, enduks get on well with every race except the manscorpions, who may have earned their undying hatred. Their faith calls for a humble, ascetic farming life, devotion to their patron god and veneration of their greatest leader, Ashurdan, who is said to return every 300 years to renew his people's faith. In his latest return he led them back to the frontier coast. Lacking the manscorpions' fanatical ferocity, the enduks and ee'aar won only a foothold and now hold the bull-folk's capital and its surrounding lands. Enduks there are warier and more warlike. Some have gone back to farming, but the capital depends mostly on support from those still living on the mountainous peninsula.

Enduks want nothing more than to farm, hunt as needed and live peacefully beside their neighbors, yet that option was stolen from them, so for now they press their war with vigor. Short of the manscorpions atoning for their betrayal, the fighting will likely go on until one race is gone.

The war has also pushed them into finer craft and wider trade. They are gifted smiths whose tools and weapons rank among the best available, mostly of ordinary steel, though since their return they have begun forging crimson steel. They do not yet make goods for other races, so most items are sized for enduks, but their work is already winning buyers in neighboring lands.