Swamp Wyrm

Swamp wyrms are enormous limbless reptiles with snakelike bodies and distinctly draconic heads, related both to dragons and to constrictors. There are two closely linked species, named before anyone realized they were kin: the olive knucker of warm lands and the pale green guivre (GEEV-ray) of cold ones. Both breathe air or water equally well.

Its preferred hunt is to lie barely submerged in cloudy water, which it sees through with ease, and grab whatever comes to drink, with +2 to surprise. It bites first; if that hits, a second attack roll wraps the victim in its coils. From the next round it crushes the trapped foe and can also bite once per round at +4, with the victim denied Dexterity and shield bonuses.

Each wyrm has a breath weapon usable three times a day: a 30-foot cone, 5 feet wide at the mouth and 15 feet at the end, dealing 4-40 points of damage (half on a save vs. breath weapon). Oddly, the cold-loving guivre breathes fire and the warm-climate knucker breathes frost. It saves the breath for emergencies or obviously dangerous foes, and takes half damage from attacks resembling its own breath (fire and heat for a guivre, cold for a knucker).

Swamp wyrms lair in small, still lakes deep in the wilderness, called knucker holes or guivre pools after their owners. A magical secretion from glands under their scales alters the water: a guivre pool always steams, thawing ice and snow nearby as a hot spring would; a knucker hole is frigid, shrouded in fog, sometimes frozen over, and kills the plants along its banks. Thanks to the secretion, stagnant water from either is toxic to all but reptiles, the wyrms included; anyone else who drinks must save vs. poison or lose 1-4 hit points each round for 1-6 rounds.

As dragons do, they keep solitary lives, meeting only in spring to mate and rarely fighting each other. Both sexes amass hoards to show off to visitors, and those with the richest hoards get first choice of mates, a habit that has led sages to suspect dragons hoard for the same reason (they mostly do not). This is the hoard's only purpose; a wyrm never bargains with it, not even for its life. Young, 1-4 of them, are born three months after mating. Their crude tongue, dubbed Wyrmic, is simple because they spend their wits on cunning ways to catch prey, and they will battle any large creature, dragons included, for more treasure.

These voracious carnivores eat anything that strays near their pools and often hunt in nearby rivers, lakes or even the sea, since local animals quickly learn to shun the poisoned water. Some settle near poorly defended towns, or rivers leading to them, for a steady supply of people and livestock. Unlike dragons they eat often, stripping the area of wildlife and wrecking the local ecology, which can make them a bigger nuisance than some dragons. Only adventurers and large monsters threaten them, and few live nearby. Many uses are rumored for their body parts, above all the glands that produce the water-changing secretion.