Kamatlan

A kamatlan is a large jaguar with two snakes rising from each shoulder, and is very probably kin to the phase panther. Its coat is medium yellow with dark spots. The snakes are about 3 feet long, sand-colored with a diamond pattern, and the tail ends in a rattle that buzzes whenever the cat is scared or agitated.

Kamatlan hunt with patience, trailing quarry for hours before pouncing, though the rattle sometimes gives them away. In a fight they hiss, snarl and rattle while attacking with front claws, their own bite and the bites of their snakes. A snakebite victim must save vs. poison at +3 or fall to a disabling sickness that sets in after 1d4 turns and lasts 2d4 days.

These cats are newcomers to their land, appearing in scattered places during a night of great lamentation, presumably spawned somehow by a bloodthirsty war god. They prowl wild jungle, desert and mountain, climbing and swimming expertly and lounging in treetops where there are forests.

Kamatlan are solitary and territorial, meeting only briefly to mate at any season. Two months later the female buries 1d4 big leathery eggs in a shallow hole, and they hatch two months after that. The half-sized young have only 2+2 Hit Dice but every attack of an adult, and they mature in about six months.

Few predators threaten a kamatlan except much larger ones such as giants and dragons, but people hunt it eagerly: as a blend of serpent and jaguar, nearly every part of its body is valuable to thorn magic practitioners.

The kamadan, a cousin found in other lands, is a large, long-bodied leopard with a tawny, rosette-spotted coat, three 3-foot green snakes on each shoulder and an ordinary cat's tail. It fights the same way, but its snakes are not venomous. Instead, three times a day it breathes a sleep cloud 20 feet long and 10 feet wide that works like the sleep spell, putting 2d4 Hit Dice of creatures inside it to sleep with no saving throw; creatures of 4+3 Hit Dice or more are immune.

Kamadans hunt and breed like kamatlan, with similar mating and incubation periods, but usually hide their eggs under foliage instead of burying them. They are rarely prey yet have more enemies than their cousins, and their tongues are prized for brewing sleep potions.