Talking Bird

This big-billed bird looks like a parrot crossed with a toucan. Its voice is calm and musical, and its singing draws songbirds to join in. It speaks Common and has a 75% chance to know any other given language.

It prefers to fly away but can defend itself, and it hunts small animals, with a sharp bill dealing 1d8.

Rare and very long-lived, talking birds devote their years to learning. They instantly know whether someone is honorable, and will answer such a person's polite questions at length. Each knows as much as the local history proficiency grants, and many also have ancient history and similar Intelligence-based skills.

Legend holds the first was set in the world to help the worthy. Forests are their favorite haunts, and many appear posted by unknown forces at certain places, some to advise all comers, some to await one particular person who will take them away, and a few to teach deserving pupils. Ask what the gods have planned for you, in any wording, and the answer is always 'Only the gods know for sure.'

Males and females meet perhaps once every 50 years and court with a dance of up to a week. The single egg is laid a year later and takes about five more years to hatch. The mother teaches the chick languages; the rest it learns through travel, keeping away from other species until age 50. They survive for centuries, a few claiming over a thousand years.

Some make their homes in or beside a singing tree. Their songs attract birds for the tree to feed on, lightly, so that few die; the tree never harms them, and in return they eat its pests and shelter among its leaves.