Hendar

Picture an enormous, thick-bodied worm with a horselike head and leathery wings like a bat's. Its black hide shimmers blue and purple when wet, its eyes glow red, and an angry hendar snorts steam and rumbles. Manes go gray, then white, over a life span thought to run to centuries. Vain creatures, they are often found gazing at their own reflections.

Clumsy on land and heavy in the air, a hendar swims almost as fast as it flies, propelled by tail and wings, and it can survive great depths though it hunts in shallows. It likes to ram flying targets, buffeting with wings and/or tail for 2-8 while its bite adds 1-3. A foe that irritates it is gripped in tail and jaws and dragged deep underwater to drown; a water-dwelling foe is instead carried up and inland to suffocate or be hurt by the drop. It hunts at night with 120-foot infravision.

Its size makes it nearly fearless. It retreats only when obviously outnumbered and will never quit against a lone foe no larger than man-sized (M), since despite average intelligence it cannot admit a smaller lone creature could threaten it.

Solitary and intolerant of its own kind, it seeks company only to mate, and even then is skittish, snappy and prone to attacking anything nearby. Desolate places suit it, such as swamps, ruins, sea caves and crags on the moors, venturing near settlements when hunting is poor, and prefers humanoid prey to livestock.

It needs damp air to keep its skin supple. In dry lands the hide weakens to AC 6 and the beast takes 1-4 damage daily; bitter cold cracks it with the same effect. Hendar therefore live only along a mild, wet stretch of coast and the northern shores of a great inland sea. They tolerate perytons but try to kill or expel any other big flying or swimming predator within a mile.

Hendar mate roughly every thirty years, and the parents stay together about a year until the young fly well. Of 5-8 eggs, usually 2-4 hatch. Young strike out alone on reaching 3+3 Hit Dice, when their buffet does only 2-6. Nothing hunts them, but starvation kills many young, keeping the species rare.

Cold halves their speed, so they sleep through winter to avoid becoming easy targets. Waking ravenous in spring, a hendar may eat twice a night for about a month before returning to one hunt per week.