Utukku

An utukku is a 12-foot scaled humanoid with a lion's head ringed by long quills instead of a mane. Most of its body is deep red, the face golden red, and its hands and feet end in great white claws. Its yellow eyes have blue, catlike pupils. It speaks a growling language of few words that depends on tone, and writes in a jagged script resembling that of the winged bull-folk.

It slashes with its claws. At will it can detect magic, detect invisibility, know alignment and read languages. Three times daily it can hurl a 12d6 lightning bolt, create darkness in a 30-foot radius, cause fear like a wand of fear, or teleport without error with up to 1,500 pounds. Once a day, as an 18th-level mage, it can control weather or use a symbol of discord. Once a week it can spread disease with a touch, and it can polymorph self into human or humanoid shape for a whole day. It has 120-foot infravision and enough telepathy to converse with intelligent beings. Lightning, fire and poison gas do half damage on a failed save and a quarter on a success, it gains +4 on saves vs. poison, and ESP, telepathy and other mind probes cannot touch it.

Utukku dwell on the prison plane. Once every hundred years each may plane shift to the Prime Material, where it remains one year before being drawn home automatically with as much as 4,000 pounds of goods. In that time it lairs in caves or pits in barren country, such as the deserts of a frontier coast, and its hurried lair has only simple defenses. Working alone, it uses its powers to torment nearby humanoid settlements rather than recruit followers. It attacks any outer-planar being it meets, of whatever alignment, unless outnumbered.

Though extraplanar, utukku are mortal and live for several thousand years. Legend says they once served a forgotten divine patron who was destroyed or imprisoned by the vengeful god of the winged bull-folk, which would explain their burning hatred for that race.