Rast

The body is a small knot of flesh barely large enough for heart and stomach. From it sprout ten to twelve thin, spidery limbs (the count varies), each tipped with a hooked claw for ripping meat or scooping cinders. None of them work like wings, yet the creature flies anyway, perhaps the way gazer tyrants do. A long, supple neck holds up a head that is mostly mouth, crammed with teeth, and slitted red eyes glow through the smoke.

Meeting a rast's stare stirs a terror older than reason. Anyone who looks into its eyes must save vs. paralyzation or stand frozen for 1d6 rounds. Nothing is immune, and magic resistance does not help, but a creature that passes can ignore that gaze until the fight ends. The next rast it meets gets a fresh try.

Rasts hunt with stealth and feints, and they deliberately kill the foes still able to fight before turning on the ones locked in fear. With its clutch of limbs a rast can rake with up to four claws a round at one or two targets, each for 1d4.

It may instead bite, limiting it to one attack that round. The bite deals 1d8+3, and once it lands the jaws clamp shut and drain 1d4+4 hit points of blood every round after. Nothing breaks that grip short of killing or subduing the rast or the victim dying, and wrenching it loose by force always kills the victim.

At heart rasts are beings of cinder: they inhale ash, eat it when meat runs out (though it cannot sustain them long), and are immune to fire and heat.

A pack shares a small cave hollowed into the ash drifts, sleeping there between hunts. Game is scarce, so the pack spends nearly every waking hour hunting as a unit, guided by instinct, and a failed hunt can mean starvation. Packmates never eat each other, but rival packs are food. Their wars are brief and savage, since every rast killed is both a meal and one less competitor.

Litters run to ten or more young, and each newborn must start hunting with the pack immediately. Any rast too old, sick or feeble to do its share is driven off, likely to end up as some other pack's dinner.