Nightmare Beast

A nightmare beast stands nearly 20 feet tall on four clawed legs and weighs about 4,000 pounds, yet it climbs well. Its hide is like a crocodile's but far thicker, usually dark blue-gray, sometimes purplish. Big red eyes glow in darkness. Eight-inch fangs fill its jaws, and one upper and one lower pair grow nearly twice as long, jutting out even when its mouth is shut, the lower set nesting inside the upper. Great tusk-like horns crown its head.

It can rout a small army, and its speed and mass carry it through trees, outcrops and city walls. Against a wall or fortification, roll 1d20 on the structural saving throw table (screw or drill column); a result under the listed number costs the structure part of its integrity, and repeated hits keep weakening it until it collapses.

Rearing up to 35 or 40 feet, it makes up to five attacks a round: two claws at 2d6, two horns at 2d10, and a bite at 4d10. Its hide gives AC -5, only +1 or better weapons affect it, and it has 20% magic resistance. Spells and spell-like abilities from creatures of 4 Hit Dice or less inflict half damage even if they penetrate, and spells that already allow a save for half are reduced further.

Three times daily, in place of its physical attacks, it can drain one experience level from a victim and gain the hit points that victim loses. This drain, and all its spells, count as life-draining wizard magic, which may be how the species was made.

Every round it may fight physically and also use one spell or one psionic power. It casts each of these twice per day, one per round, at 10th level: cloudkill, death fog, dispel magic, fireball, incendiary cloud, chain lightning, lightning bolt and wall of fire. Its own spells never harm it.

Its psionics match the greatest psionicists. Sciences: teleport, disintegrate, tower of iron will, psionic blast, summon planar creature. Devotions: contact, mind thrust, ego whip, id insinuation, psionic crush, mind blank, thought shield, mental barrier, intellect fortress, molecular agitation and manipulation, ballistic attack, biofeedback, double pain, teleport trigger. Its defense modes are always on, automatically using the best one against any psionic attack if PSPs allow. It favors brute tactics: psychokinesis to wreck weapons and buildings, teleport to strike or escape, and planar summoning (outer planes first).

Its unique nightmare attack needs a psionic check and 50 PSPs. Aimed at marked victims while they sleep, or at everyone within 50 feet during combat (in the same round as its melee attacks), it calls for a save vs. spell at -2. Those who fail dream of being hunted and slain by the beast, at once or at their next sleep. They gain no rest, heal no lost hit points naturally, and are fatigued: -1 on all rolls and movement as if moderately encumbered, for three days or until healed by a heal spell.

These beasts can appear in any terrain. Perhaps a hundred once lived; maybe six remain.

A lair serves for up to a year, usually near ancient ruins and always hard to assault by ground or air. It alternates roughly 6-hour periods of resting and roaming for days or weeks, changing pattern only to prepare for battle. While resting it runs a variant danger sense covering the whole lair for 5 PSPs per hour instead of the usual 3 per turn.

It eats nearly anything and has slaughtered entire herds of scale-runners and pack insects. It leaves drakes and megapedes alone and would never fight the dragon-tyrant.

Its corpse rots almost at once as the sustaining magic fails, so it is inedible. Its horns, teeth and claws make prized daggers, arrowheads and darts. Ground horn stirred into water yields a paste, a weaker cousin of mindroot, granting 30 PSPs and two wild talents for 5 rounds.