Leomarh

Picture a lion built a little wrong. Heavy shoulders slope down to lighter haunches like a hyena's, fine scales replace fur, and a long serpentine tail ends in a spade-shaped blade. Only the golden-brown mane is true fur, matched by a short beard and tufts on the legs. Sages think the breed descends from big cats some power brought to the planes long ago, which have since escaped the divine realms to thrive wherever no god rules.

Keen senses mean a leomarh is surprised only on a 1. Its scales shift to match the background, so while motionless it is 90% invisible until it springs, usually giving victims -4 on surprise rolls; moving, it gains nothing. Prides hunt as a team, with a few members showing themselves to drive quarry toward packmates lying hidden.

It attacks with a bite and two foreclaws. If both foreclaws hit, it adds two hind-claw rakes at 1d4 each, and a small or man-sized target struck by both must save vs. death magic or be knocked prone, suffering -4 to attack rolls and Armor Class. Magic missiles do not affect leomarhs, and some planar scholars believe the line is plane-touched.

Leomarhs are animals, wordless and without true sentience, but they plan with a fiend's cunning, favoring hit-and-run raids and steering clear of armed humans and anything that wields magic. They signal each other in a complex code yet never deal with thinking races; to a leomarh, a visitor is a meal or a threat to its cubs.

A pride dens in a thicket or small cave and sends out hunting groups of 1 to 4. Anyone nearing the den is attacked ferociously. Cubs number 10% to 60% of the adults; each has 1 Hit Die, THAC0 20, claws for 1 point and a bite for 1-2, and is born with full camouflage, freezing in place when danger comes.

Most common in the neutral planes, prides also roam the dusty plains of the first layer of the Nine Hells and the meadows of the first layer of the blessed fields, and like any planar they can see portals. They prefer goats, deer, bison and wild cattle but will take lesser fiends or local farmers if those are easier to find. Since they will attack nearly anything smaller than an elephant, they menace travelers in the wild planes.