Lirr

Picture a big hunting cat rebuilt in fine gray scales as smooth as a snake's. The warm-blooded lirr has a lean body and powerful legs that let it outrun most quarry. Webbed rings circle its throat and tail tip; when it spots food it inflates them into bright red, orange and yellow flags that silently alert its packmates.

Its first weapon is a roar that fills a lane 40 feet long and 10 feet wide ahead of it. Every hearing creature there must save vs. petrification or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. Wax in the ears gives +4 to the save, and silence negates the effect entirely. Each additional lirr roaring at once worsens the save by 1. Stunned victims can do nothing, not even use psionics, and are hit at +4, so a large pack is truly lethal.

In melee it claws twice for 2-5 each and bites for 1d10. If both forelegs connect in one round, it braces on its prey and adds two rear rakes of 2-7 apiece. A running lirr can jump 30 feet across or 15 feet up; standing still halves the horizontal distance.

Males hunt, females raise young, and all defend the pack. In lean times, adults without young drift off in search of food. Rival packs hate each other, and canny prey sometimes escapes by leading pursuers into a neighboring pack's den.

Females lay 2d4 eggs every second year; they hatch in about three months. Only the mother tends eggs, but every female guards hatchlings, which mature in nine months and may live 45 years.

Mountain lirr favor cool caves and rocky heights. They differ only in their dull, colorless rings, and with smaller packs of 2d4 they are so hard to spot that prey takes -2 on surprise rolls.