Flying Snake

Flying snakes, nicknamed 'flying fangs,' sprout a pair of flared, leathery bat wings just behind the head. They may look like nearly anything, but most have flat, pointed viper heads, yellow or red eyes and bronze or emerald scales. In the air they are superb acrobats, hovering, flying upside down, and wrapping tails and coils around victims in mid-flight.

A flying snake bites and slashes with needle fangs or spits acid up to ten feet, dealing 1d4 to flesh, hide or cloth but leaving metal and stone untouched. It always goes for the face, aiming to blind a victim so it can be killed and eaten at leisure, and attacks anything alive it thinks it can kill.

It can also coil around a creature of size S or smaller, attempting this once every 2 rounds as an extra attack roll, at -1 if both are airborne. The coils do no damage but cut the victim's movement by 8 (minimum 1) and worsen its AC by 6 (to no worse than 10).

A few hunt alone, but most travel in bands that dive and dart around their prey in a fearless cloud. They haunt ruins, caverns and rocky crags, tolerate many climates, and are most common in the hot southern lands. Once widespread in warm regions, they are so dangerous that every intelligent race hunts them relentlessly, though southern tales tell of lizard men and vasshari who train them as hunters or partners.

A flying snake will eat five times its own weight in a day when it can. A hunting flight may kill a dozen or more man-sized creatures if it expects the bodies to lie undisturbed for later meals.

Deathfangs are undead flying snakes. A flying snake slain by a vampire or other greater undead has a 20% chance of rising as one, and certain evil priests and wizards know spells to create them, mostly in the hot southern lands. They fight like living flying snakes but fly more slowly on bare bony wings and lose the acid spit.

Instead, once every six rounds, a deathfang that bites for 1-3 can choose to keep its grip and drain life, granting its victim an automatic hit against it the next round while siphoning 1d4+2 hit points each round, no save allowed. Like many undead it is immune to death spells, hold, sleep, charm and cold, and only its creator, if it has one, can control or influence its mind.