Peluda

The peluda, whose name means shaggy beast, is a wingless, dragonish animal with a long neck and tail and four feet like a giant snapping turtle's. Its body has a turtle's shape without the shell. Coarse fur and a dense crop of quills, bright orange with pine-green bases, cover its back and give it a ragged, bristling look.

It bites for 1d10 or swings its heavy tail for 2d8. Its breath is a cone of flame reaching 300 feet, starting 10 feet across and spreading to 60, dealing 8d6 points of damage, or half for those who save vs. breath weapon. Fire of any sort deals it only half damage, or nothing if it makes its save.

The quills serve both attack and defense. Anything that touches them takes 2d10 points of damage and is exposed to type F poison. The thicket on its torso stops 75% of arrows and other missiles aimed at the body, unless the attacker makes a called shot elsewhere. Like a giant porcupine, it can also fire quills, each more than 10 feet long, out to 300 feet. Their length means that even in melee it can stab anyone within 10 feet with them, except foes directly before or behind it.

By turning its quills from orange to match the green of its fur, it blends into swamp and woodland and springs ambushes, imposing a -3 penalty on victims' surprise rolls.

Solitary by nature, peludas come together only briefly to mate in spring, since a lasting pair would soon eat every animal and monster nearby. The female buries 1d4 eggs along a riverbank and leaves them, concealing the nest so cleverly that only a mining proficiency check will locate it. Hatchlings emerge after a month and fend for themselves at once.

No predator in its swamps and woods outranks the peluda unless adult or older true dragons live nearby. Each eats the other's young whenever the parents are away. Because the peluda hides so well under the forest canopy, only woodland dragons such as green dragons have much chance of finding one; a dragon of the neighboring hills or desert may never learn one is there, provided the peluda stays in the trees.

Alchemists brew poisons from its venom, and wizards use it to craft a dagger of venom and similar items. Woven and enchanted, its fur makes a robe of blending, and a peluda-fur cloak treated with the creature's own venom becomes a cloak of poisonousness. A mage may enchant one quill per peluda, never more, into a single magical javelin. The eggs sell to dealers in exotic goods for up to 20,000 gp each, and hatchlings fetch twice that.