Firenewt

Sometimes called salamen, firenewts are distant kin to lizard men. Their dry, smooth skin is mottled sepia, darkest down the spine and nearly white on the belly, and their faces look rather like an eel's, with deep red eyes. Females stand a little shorter, around 5 1/2 feet, and are a duller brown. Young start pale and darken with age. They speak their own tongue and a dialect of the lizard man language; priests, elites and overlords may also know common.

The ordinary warrior wears chain mail and carries pike and sword (45%), a sword alone (25%), pike and hand axe (20%) or a battle axe (10%). Each group of ten warriors includes an elite fighter (3+3 HD, AC 3) (chain plus Dexterity) who wields a battle axe. For every 30 warriors there is a mace-wielding priest of 3+3 HD and AC 5, whose daily spells, one use apiece, are faerie fire, produce flame, heat metal, pyrotechnics, animal friendship and predict weather.

Every firenewt can spit fire once per turn at a foe directly ahead. The flame reaches 5 feet and deals 1d6, halved by a save vs. breath weapon. They save at +3 against fire, and any fire that does affect them loses 1 point per die (to a minimum of 1 per die). Cold is another matter: they save at -3 against it and take 1 extra point per die.

On the surface 33% of ordinary firenewts ride giant striders, as do 90% of elites and every priest. These mounts are trained for battle and keep fighting even after the rider gets off.

Firenewt life is harsh, warlike and run by priests. Any group met away from the lair is out hunting or raiding. They enjoy torturing prisoners and roasting them alive, and tribes wage wars of extermination on one another; wiping out a rival tribe's hatching ground earns a warrior high honor.

An overlord of 4+4 HD and AC 3 commands the lair with four elite bodyguards and holds the tribe's communal treasure, built from loot taken off beaten enemies. A warrior's own share is a handful of gold or silver, which hardly matters to him. Besides the males, a lair holds females equal to 70% of their number, young equal to 150% and eggs equal to 200%.

Each female lays two to six eggs twice a year, and priests carry every one to a hidden, closely guarded hatching ground watched by 1d3 young fire lizards. This nursery is the center of tribal life and the root of priestly power. Officially, eggs and hatchlings are raised together with no record of parentage. In truth the priests track every egg, quietly destroy those of rivals or of parents with 'undesirable' traits, and favor their allies by quietly handing them their own true children to raise. Eggs hatch after six months; the young are sorted by sex into groups of ten, each raised by two females, and every youngster also gets an adult mentor.

Firenewts are carnivores that eat whatever they can run down, and they consider humanoids a delicacy. They also eat captives and stolen eggs from rival tribes. As masters of volcanic country and other blistering lands, they treat every outsider as an enemy, including firenewts of other tribes, and seldom ally with anyone but the mightiest evil powers.