Tether Beast

Visitors call it the dragon of the time demiplane, but its shape owes more to a behir: a long, serpentine body carried on eight unevenly spaced legs. The legs are far longer than any behir's, yet it keeps them folded tight to its flanks, so its reach looks short. Many victims learn the truth too late. Oily, rainbow-sheened scales armor its back and limbs, its belly is soft black hide, and its blunt reptilian snout is crowded with knifelike fangs. It lives nowhere else.

It prefers ambush but needs no excuse. Surprised, wounded, bribed, starving or freshly fed, it attacks anyway, and it will happily attack for no reason at all.

At least four claws always stay locked on nearby lifelines; it fights with the other four and its savage bite. The free claws strike in any direction, and its arms outreach even a polearm. A foe who hangs just beyond that range sees it clamp down with its rear four claws and hurl its whole front half outward to deliver all five attacks. Prying an anchoring claw loose, successful or not, achieves only one thing: the beast turns every attack on the culprit, plus an extra claw from the freed limb.

From the second round on, if it is losing, it exhales a 30-foot jet of what looks like the demiplane's drifting smoke-mist at a single target. The victim must save vs. death magic or age so fast that he crumbles to dust; even a successful save adds 20 years (compare with his race's maximum lifespan). It can breathe once every 10 rounds. It knows humans are prime targets and gladly dusts them, apparently getting nearly as much nourishment from the powder as from a body.

Tether beasts have no lair and are always moving, often in pairs. A third in the group is usually their young, with 6+1 Hit Dice and correspondingly weaker abilities. The biggest one hides treasure in concealed pouches in its soft belly. A large valuable or any magical item is dragged in one claw, which is then useless for moving or fighting; there is a 10% chance it can actually use a magical item.

Though it could likely walk or float as other travelers do, it always crawls along the silver cords, four claws wrapped around one. Sometimes it chews on a lifeline. No harm to the owner has been found; adventurers questioned by chronomancers recall only a sudden chill at that moment, like someone stepping over their grave.

It is the demiplane's fiercest hunter, eating everything from the temporal mold to temporal gliders, with chronomancers a particular favorite. Only adventurers hunt it. If it finds the silver mist trail a visitor leaves, it follows until the trail fades or the traveler is caught.