Gorgon

Gorgons are immense black bulls covered in thick metallic scales, their wide nostrils puffing out clouds of foul vapor. They usually stand on all fours but can rear onto two hooves when needed. Big as they are, they barrel through dense forest at astonishing speed, flattening brush and snapping saplings. They have no language, only a furious bellow for any creature they meet.

The breath weapon is its favorite tactic, usable four times a day: a truncated cone 60 feet long, 5 feet wide at the mouth and 20 feet wide at the far end. Anything caught in it must save vs. petrification or turn to stone on the spot. Both its awareness and its breath reach the Ethereal and Astral planes as well.

Only when its breath fails does it close to melee, butting or goring with its horns. It fights with total fury, trampling and slashing until it dies.

Gorgons lair in gloomy caves or remote wilds and attack nearly anything they find. They mainly hunt deer and elk but a hungry one eats other meat too. Keen noses give them them a 75% chance to follow a trail, and when the quarry comes into view they scream in rage and charge. Unless somehow shaken off, a gorgon chases for days until the prey collapses or falls to its breath.

Sages argue over whether gorgons eat their statues, crushing them with flat iron teeth, or whether their saliva restores flesh as they chew. They care nothing for treasure, so coins and jewels often stay petrified on their victims. Valuables swallowed by accident end up in the dung near the lair entrance.

A typical group is one bull with two or three cows. Cows raise calves until age two, when young bulls are driven off; females stay with the dominant bull. One encounter in four is a single animal, always a rogue male seeking mates. Trails crisscross the forest around a lair, broken by trampled clearings where fights happened, sometimes littered with the fragments of a shattered statue.

Only rival gorgons and humans hunt them. Bulls must often defend their herds from rogues; such fights are rarely fatal, though a well-placed horn can kill even a gorgon.

Properly prepared gorgon blood can seal an area against astral or ethereal intrusion, and powdered scales go into the ink for a protection from petrification scroll. With much effort and some magic, the hide becomes fine scale mail granting +2 to saves vs. petrification and flesh to stone spells.