Sunfly

Picture an oversized golden dragonfly touched by something otherworldly: long thin legs, rainbow-bright eyes, gauzy wings and feathery antennae that glint like dewy spider silk. Even people uneasy around big insects find it lovely and harmless. By day its gold shell and silver wings throw dazzling color; at dusk it releases the light it stored as a gentle glow. Its wings hum in flight, the pitch changing with every turn or gust.

Sunflies flee rather than fight, and their speed usually lets them. An enraged one bites for 1 point of damage.

Once per hour a sunfly can flare brilliantly. Anyone within 10 feet looking at it must save vs. spell or be blinded for 2d4 rounds, after which the sunfly happily bites the blinded. Clouds often surround intruders and flash together so no one is missed.

A group of 12 or more can perform a sundance instead of biting or flashing. Circling, weaving and singing, they shield themselves and everything inside the ring with a protection from evil of double strength. The circle spans one foot per sunfly, so 25 cover 25 feet. Danced around an evil creature unable to cross a protection from evil, it holds the creature in place.

Though not truly intelligent, sunflies are strongly empathic and sense alignment. They harass evil beings ceaselessly and know enough to fetch a stronger servant of good. Archons, celestials and petitioners sometimes use them as couriers, scouts or sentries, but mostly they live to dance, sing and spread joy.

A cloud wanders 15 or 20 miles a day and sleeps at night curled in a tree or bush, lights dimmed. Larger clouds act smarter, posting lookouts, sending for help, and using massed flashes and sundances to hold foes until aid comes. Their displays grow more intricate with numbers, and watchers grasp a welcome, a warning or a call to play without knowing how. Clouds have no leaders and decide by consensus, and their curiosity can keep them following interesting people for hours.

In the upper planes they are cherished; a whole town of the blessed fields may stop work to watch them at dusk. But a sunfly stays beautiful only while free, and one kept in a cage dies within hours.

They eat small insects, fruit, nuts and berries, and may also draw nourishment from sunlight like plants. Nothing wakes them at night except on midsummer eve, or its equivalent on their current plane, when they dance from dusk until dawn and mate. Each member lays one egg on the sunny top of a leaf high in a tree. The eggs hatch after 2 to 20 days into tiny golden moths with no larval stage, reach adult size in roughly 2 months, and can live up to 10 years.