Lesser Rain Drake [Dark Sun]

Rain drakes are big lizards covered in gleaming silver scales, with eel-like tails, long tapering snouts and a pair of black eyes placed well back on the head. Loose skin joins their front and rear legs and helps them glide through water, and all four feet are webbed and clawed.

In water a rain drake rakes with all four claws; on land it rears and slams down on its prey with its forelimbs. Either way each claw deals 2d6. The slam gains +1 to hit and damage, and spears or similar weapons can be braced against it exactly as against a charge. The bite does 3d8, and if the roll beats its THAC0 by 4 or more, the victim is swallowed whole. A swallowed victim is limited to psionics, and digestive damage begins on the third round.

It always prefers to fight in water, and even a little goes a long way: the drake cannot fly, yet it can swim through the air in light rain. If it rises clear of the cloud tops into sunlight, it takes 2d10 points of damage immediately. Heat and dehydration attacks hurt it badly and may make it flee.

Psionic science: mind link. Devotions: combat mind, contact, domination, phobia amplification and psionic crush, plus the innate lesser drake devotions.

Rain drakes despise water drakes, and that hatred is strong enough to override all self-preservation. They have real advantages in the feud, needing less water to live and move, and being quicker and cleverer.

A pool under a waterfall is the ideal lair, though any water will do. The den is usually a flooded grotto, sometimes with a dry ledge and a pocket of air. Out of water a rain drake survives a few hours at night or while clouds are dropping rain, but it dries out if its hide is not kept wet. It can smell water up to 10 miles away.

They gather anything that looks like a raindrop, from glass beads to diamonds, and see no difference in worth between one piece and another.

Depending on how much water they have, rain drakes live for centuries. They mate only after rain has fallen, at intervals of 5 to 10 years, and unlike other drakes give birth to 1-2 live young, which are sent off to find territory of their own after a few days. In the water they rule the food chain, preyed on only by water drakes. Because they are tied to water, they are the rarest lesser drakes. Their hide, teeth and claws are valuable but must be kept wet or specially treated after death.