Frelôn

Imagine a 7-foot wasp with a dragon's head, standing upright on two pairs of long legs. A restless stinger-tipped tail lashes from its two-segmented body, small claws on its upper limbs can rake or grip, and its smallish head holds a double row of fine teeth. Black scales armor it, banded or striped with red or blue, and its clear dragonfly wings flash faint colors. It buzzes and clicks to its own kind, speaks a clipped tongue understood by all evil dragons, and can still talk with descendants of the dragons who made it.

Frelôns hunt mainly for food and have come to crave human and demihuman meat. Aloft it can swing its tail forward and use all four attacks; it must land to fight anything on the ground, where it relies on claws and bite. It carries off the first foe to fall and flees after losing over half its hit points.

It stings when hunting its intended prey, when fleeing, or when a tenacious foe keeps it from escaping, angling sideways to strike with one claw and the tail; facing two melee attackers, it fights one normally and stings the other. After a successful sting it always breaks off and flies away. The sting deals 1d6 damage, and a failed save vs. poison means 2d4 rounds of unconsciousness and 1d4 turns of lost memory. The stinger also implants eggs, a feat it can repeat only every second day. Without prompt heal, limited wish or similar powerful magic, a larva will hatch, and most victims never recall the attack.

Two weeks later the eggs hatch. For the first week after hatching, the tiny young devour each other and the host for 1 hp a day; then a single survivor takes 2 hp a day, with cramps and nausea like a fever or bad food, and can dominate its host once every 24 hours. In the third and fourth weeks it slows to 1 hp every few days, mimicking recovery while the symptoms quietly worsen. It can stay up to a month before erupting, and then the host saves vs. death magic or dies, taking 4d8 damage even on a success. Unless that wound gets disease treatment and magical healing inside 48 hours, a fatal illness sets in within a week that only wish or regenerate can stop.

It flies 180 feet a round, climbing no steeper than 45 degrees (90 feet up and 90 forward) but diving 180 feet both down and forward. Because the flight is magical it bears 200 pounds freely and up to 400 at half speed and maneuverability D, flies whatever its wounds, and regrows ruined wings in three turns, though that heals no hit points.

Dragons at war with the araneas made the frelôn from a piece of their own essence and traits borrowed from other beasts, granting it a hunter's gifts, the wits to track the hidden spider-folk and a lonely nature so it could never be destroyed in numbers. It matures in six months and reproduces without a mate, ideally inside an aranea, using domination to make hosts guide it to more.

For centuries the araneas did not know what was killing them. Once the dragons' divine patron left the struggle, the spider-folk regained their magical advantage and exploited a flaw: by revealing their humanoid shapes they misled the hunters, who have since targeted all humanoids. Frelôns spread across the frontier coast and beyond; winged elves on a remote mountainous peninsula fought a long campaign to clear them, and the araneas have partly tamed the menace in a wizard-governed nation. Indifferent to wealth and rank, frelôns take what they need and now and then ally with intelligent nonhumanoids.

Unopposed, one frelôn can seed a few remote farmsteads and have dozens of young plaguing the district within months. The dragons likely could not stop them now, and crimson dragons even employ them as guards. Only their solitary design keeps them from far greater power.

Cities post bounties, and casters pay well for parts: small scales for crimson essence, wings for potions of flying, and a young one's brain for potions of domination. One creature's venom coats three blades or six arrows, each dose paralyzing for 1d4 rounds unless the target saves vs. poison. A quarter (25%) bear 5d4 scales, usually colored ones near the head, that each serve as one ounce of a curse-warding red metal, depleting normally and then useless; they form if a young frelôn is near that metal reacting with someone who carries curse-born gifts.