Fire Bat

At first glance a fire bat looks like nothing more than a bat made of flame, but it is stranger than that. It has a real body, two feet from nose to tail with wings spreading four feet, wrapped in a steady, intensely hot fire. Its reddish hide is leathery and unusually tough, so even the thin wings resist cuts and stabs. Instead of gliding, it drives itself through the air with the hot gases its own flames give off, and it can fly straight through fire or magma.

Unlike ordinary bats, fire bats favor bright places, though they see fine in either light or dark thanks to 120-foot infravision. A refined sonar sense lets them pick out invisible creatures and objects. They are also smart, hunting in packs with a cunning no natural bat could manage.

A fire bat dives in and bites, burning and drinking at once for 1d4 bite plus 1d4 fire, or 2d4 total. A hit means it has latched on: each later round it deals that damage again with no further attack roll. Fire immunity only stops the burn; the bite and blood loss still cost 1d4. After three rounds of feeding the bat lets go, full. If the victim dies sooner, it moves on to another one to finish its meal.

The pack spreads its attacks evenly across a group of enemies. Once casualties and sated bats cut its attacking strength by 25% or more, it withdraws, but only to regroup. It comes back later to harry the same prey until every bat has fed or the prey is dead, and because full bats reproduce, the returning pack may be larger than the first.

Plunging a fire bat into at least 10 gallons of water, even for a moment, puts out its flames, and it needs 10 rounds to relight. While extinguished it cannot fly and its bite deals just 1d4.

Killing a fire bat normally accomplishes little, since a bat reduced to 0 hit points or less pops back into being as a little flame-ball somewhere else on its home Elemental Plane and slowly regrows. This holds even on its home plane, a fact few visitors from the Prime know. To end one for good, someone must first hit it with dispel magic, dispel evil, protection from fire or affect normal fires, then slay it. Killing a bat whose flames are out, however it is done, destroys it for good 75% of the time.

Fire bats now crowd the Elemental Plane of Fire, and with their near immortality and method of breeding they might one day overrun it. They get along well with fire elementals, haunt places where those elementals gather, and sometimes ride inside one, feeding on whatever it consumes. A caster summoning a fire elemental can end up with a flock of these passengers, and whatever spell or device controls the elemental has no hold over the bats.

They hunt and are hunted by salamanders, efreet and many other fiery beings. Even so, they sometimes turn up alongside such creatures, bound as guards by magic common on the plane.

A bat that has gorged itself on blood divides into two complete adults over roughly a day. Afterward it may go as long as a year before splitting again, and through that stretch it is only half as eager to attack and feed as a bat ready to breed.