Sea Dragon

Kin to the dragon turtle, this creature has a dragon's head on a huge turtle's body, a black or dark green shell, toothless jaws, and webbed flippers that make it clumsy ashore. It speaks its own language plus those of fish and evil dragons, and can talk with any human or demihuman.

Every uninvited visitor is a foe. The dragon breathes, batters with its front flippers, and closes to crush the wounded in its jaws. To capsize a vessel it has a chance equal to its length divided by the ship's, times 100 (a 50-foot dragon against a 200-foot ship: 25%), never above 95%, so ships its size or smaller go over 95% of the time; it then tries to kill everyone aboard. Wise sailors toss treasure over the side, though anything less than the full cargo offends it.

Its steam cone reaches 50 feet, widening from 5 feet to 30, works as well underwater as in air, and can be used every third round; a save vs. breath weapon halves the age-based damage. It breathes air or water from birth and senses man-size or bigger objects up to 360 feet away by sonar.

Once a day it commands 4d10 times its age category in animal-intelligence fish, reptiles and other scaly creatures within half a mile for 2d6 turns, with no save and no dispelling; no rival can take them over, and scaly beasts never attack it willingly. Adults gain light, old dragons entangle and wyrms suggestion, each 3/day.

A territory spans hundreds of square miles of sea, and its owner rarely strays except to chase enemies or nest. The lair is typically a great undersea stone castle. Two meet only in a three-week annual mating season, after which the female buries up to 300 eggs in beach sand and leaves; the sun hatches them in about eight weeks, and few young survive.

Largely herbivorous, it eats seaweed and algae, plus the odd fish, mineral lump or swimming sailor. Many races, notably the minotaurs of a certain island realm, prize its eggs as food.