Jaleeda Bird

This failed experiment is a grotesque blend of giant eagle and great ape, standing 8 to 9 feet tall with a 30-foot wingspan. Coarse black hair mixed with brown and white feathers provides its armor. Its wings end in taloned, apelike hands, its feet in huge claws, and its mouth combines a jagged yellow beak with rows of teeth. Red eyes glare from deep sockets. The process that made it destroyed its reason, leaving it barely sane.

It attacks with almost no provocation anything it thinks has entered its territory, usually heralding itself with a scream like a wounded great ape. Creatures under 5 Hit Dice who hear it must save vs. petrification or flee in terror for 1d6 rounds. It has the sense to fight no more than about three foes and takes on a large group only if its cry has scattered some of them, preferring to chase those who fled and strike them from behind.

Its attacks are wild dives without strategy, using either wing claws and bite or foot talons and bite. If both feet hit, it has seized the victim and can lift him away, sometimes dragging him through treetops or along cliff faces to kill him before dropping him to the ground and eating him. Too dull and unhinged to be charmed, it is immune to charm effects.

The archmage of a hidden wizard's valley bred these birds as a by-product of his work on the jakar, borrowing the methods that created the owlbear, and named them after an uncle he loathed. They are vicious, voracious and crueler than any other beast of the vale, probably because of their unnatural making. He made a dozen, could control none, and released them, where reports of them now help scare common folk away from his land.

They nest atop low crags or high in big trees and defend the surrounding territory. Lone birds are typically 1-3 years old; older ones pair for life, producing a clutch of 1d6 eggs twice a year. A single chick survives, since the first to hatch eats the other eggs, and it stays with its parents until the next clutch is due before being driven out.

Elves and tree people of the valley have cut a population once estimated at nine dozen by about two-thirds; numbers beyond the valley are unknown. Their method is simple: set a dummy in a clearing inside the bird's territory, hide with bows drawn, and shoot the bird when it inevitably dives at the decoy. It has sharp sight and hearing but a poor nose and no judgment.

Jaleedas eat plants, animals and people, but they dislike water and avoid fish and riverbank creatures. Their favorite prey is monkeys and big birds, creatures they appear to resent and envy. They hoard treasure from their kills in their nests, especially shiny things, and regularly check their stash for thefts. They live about 50 years, laying eggs for the first 40, and have no language beyond ugly caws and wing signals.