Tembo

A tembo is a repulsive, hairless, tawny beast wrapped in sagging folds of scaly skin. It runs three to six feet long and stands about thigh-high on a man, on four supple legs tipped with long, sharp claws. Big fangs jut from under the floppy lips of its boxy snout, and its large square ears swivel independently in any direction.

Every tembo loves a fight, but no two fight alike. Some creep as close as they can and try to kill with a death field. Others toy with prey, swatting it between their paws and using life draining with each blow. Still others charge straight into melee.

Up close it pounces, attacking with all four claws and its bite at once. The forepaws deal 1d4 each; the hind claws hit harder, digging into soft flesh to tear tendons and organs. The bite is the real threat: each time it lands, the victim must save vs. death magic or permanently lose one life level. Agile tembo have a 40% chance to dodge any nonmagical missile, and they never flee, always fighting to the death.

Psionically, a tembo commands three psychometabolic sciences (life draining, shadow form, death field) with the devotions displacement, immovability, heightened senses, ectoplasmic form and chameleon power. Its telepathy adds the science tower of iron will and the devotions mind thrust, ego whip, mind blank, id insinuation, intellect fortress and contact.

Tembo roam the desert in loose packs with no real hierarchy or loyalty. Each hunts for itself and never shares a kill. Their only social instinct is that the whole pack joins in when any member is attacked.

Above all else, tembo crave the young of other races. They are infamous for dragging elf children from nomad camps, prowling dwarf villages for unwatched toddlers, and even slipping into crowded cities to carry off noble infants from their cradles. Everyone hates them for it. Elf tribes locked in bitter feuds have been known to lay down their quarrels to hunt down a tembo pack in their territory.