Orpsu

Often called night stirges, orpsu are blood-drinking fliers with no real kinship to common stirges. Picture a hairless, leathery body with a rat's tail, its veined hide blotched in mauve, crimson, cinnamon-brown or purple. It has raking fangs but no lower jaw, no legs, and four curved blades of bone that jut from its body like two crescents set back to back: one pair sweeps forward past the fangs, the other trails backward beside the tail like wings.

Orpsu see 150 feet with infravision and hunt by night to avoid larger predators. Once a day each can use a weakened hold monster, as the 5th-level wizard spell but limited to one living creature within 60 feet. The target saves at +2, and even on a success is slowed as if by the slow spell. Clumsy fliers, orpsu usually dive only on prey already held or slowed.

Because it is helpless if knocked from the air, an orpsu always strikes in a slanting pass, keeping one flank toward the target. Each swoop brings the fangs plus one horn, the forward blade or, if that misses, the trailing one, which deals 1d4+3. A horn wound bleeds for 1 hp per round until it is bandaged and the victim rests from fighting or exertion for at least a turn, or until magical healing is applied.

It feeds only on prey that is asleep, collapsed or held. Hovering to a flapping stop, it drops heavily onto the body and extends up to a dozen soft white tentacles from belly slits to anchor itself in the skin, often looping its tail around a limb. Starting the following round it sucks 1-2 hp per round until the prey is dead or the orpsu is knocked loose, which is easy for a conscious, mobile victim. Struck by anyone else, it usually springs away with a whip of its tail. It never seems to get full, stays alert while feeding, and flees rather than face sure death.

Its prehensile tail is too weak to grip prey or weapons but can drag small objects or wrap a branch for rest. On the ground it can only wriggle awkwardly. It flies by natural levitation, thrashing its tail for thrust and tilting the membranes of its horns to steer.

Orpsu roost in caves, ruins and other rocky places and hunt over rolling scrub and plains, from the far eastern lands west across steppe and desert beyond the eastern kingdoms. Others live and hunt entirely in the deep underworld.

Silent creatures, they talk only among themselves through a 20-foot telepathy that baffles any outsider trying to listen in by magic or mental power. That strange mind leaves them immune to hold, domination, suggestion, charm and similar mental magic.

Every third summer a mated pair bears 1-4 live young, ravenous and active from birth, with 1-1 HD and attacks of 2-5 and 1-2. The offspring stay to form a family swarm until it numbers more than a dozen, when 1-3 of the eldest pair off and fly away to found a swarm in territory free of orpsu.

On the surface they feed on sheep, cattle, large birds, humans and many small animals, especially badgers, foxes and otters. Below ground, drow and duergar blood is their favorite.