Iguanids

Iguanids are lanky, 6 feet or taller, with large head and throat frills and long talons for climbing and fighting. The most adaptable of the lizard peoples, they vary by home. Jungle tribes are bright green with long tails; northern rock tribes are dull gray or brown with sturdier limbs and short tails; island iguanids are heavy and lumpy with hard brownish-green scales who can breathe underwater. They wear little but love tattoos, jewelry and paint, and the colors of a face's paint announce its owner's rank.

Iguanids avoid fights unless home or young are threatened, and they know almost nothing of tactics: they boil out of hiding to swamp a foe with numbers, and when that does not work they scatter and resettle. They favor spears, javelins and darts, fall back on claws in a pinch, and can tail-whip in the same round as a weapon or claw strike.

Like dwarves they resist magic, so any wizard spell, scroll or activated wizardly item they use fails 20% of the time. Permanent magic such as enchanted weapons, priest spells and divine effects are unaffected, including their own druidic powers. They also get +2 to save vs. poison. They climb walls at 75%, rising to 85% in home terrain (trees for greens, cliffs and mountains for rock tribes), where they also hide in shadows at 40%. Their geckonid cousins climb better still.

Nature worship shapes everything, through strict taboos, holy days and rites, and all their priests are druids. There is a 3rd-level druid shaman per ten iguanids and a 5th-level one per thirty, and each tribe answers to a druid of 7th level or higher. Tribes are loose theocracies of hunting, gathering and ritual.

Greens live in treetop villages with no need of bridges or ladders. Rock tribes in the northern cliffs, hills and deserts favor caves, or simple huts where none exist, while sea iguanids use shore huts or air-filled undersea caves.

Most are dim and gladly follow the clever few. They spend hours basking in silent packs and rarely talk. Animals take to them: 1-6 giant iguanas (treat as giant lizards) always guard a village, ordinary iguanas abound as pets, and there is a 50% chance of jaguars, giant snakes or other local beasts visiting too.

In mating season the males grow aggressive, though their contests of croaking, wrestling and head-bobbing rarely turn deadly, and outsiders are kept away. Uniquely among lizard folk they can still drop their tails when one is yanked hard, regrowing a shorter, darker one within weeks. An iguanid is not an adult until it has lost a tail, and males boast of their count as proof of past dangers.

No other lizard people like fruit and vegetables; adding eggs, birds, insects and small game. Tribes get along with each other and avoid other lizard folk except the tolerated geckonids. Varanids love to torment them, scorning them as a weak freak of lizard kind.