Water Elemental Beast [Dark Sun]

These beasts look like piranhas that fly, each 9 to 12 inches long, with fan-like membrane wings folding out from their backs and long, razor teeth that seem far too big for their bodies. They are never alone; a school moves and fights as though one mind directed it. The only sound they make is the splash of their passage through water.

A school darts in and pulls back as one, attacking as a single creature with Hit Dice equal to the number of fish (eight fish fight as 8 HD) and saving as a creature of that many Hit Dice. Each fish slain lowers the school's effective Hit Dice by one.

Each fish bites for 1d8 and can leap up to 18 feet through the air before coming down. Airborne attacks count as charges, at +2 to hit and -1 to AC. Underwater the fish are invisible and automatically surprise anyone not native to the water, and attacks against them while submerged take -4 on top of normal underwater penalties.

Aloft, the school instinctively goes for the faces of air-breathing creatures. On a natural 20, one fish breaks away and wedges itself in the victim's throat. The victim must save vs. paralyzation or take 1d6 suffocation damage per round, and each round after the first must save again or pass out from lack of air. A successful save means the fish is coughed up; otherwise it swims free only when the victim dies.

Nonmagical weapons cannot harm them. They may not go more than 20 feet beyond the shoreline of the water they were called to, and must return to it every 2 rounds or take 1d8. Fire attacks such as fireball and flame strike deal double damage, and area attacks split their damage evenly among the fish.

Schools of these beasts swim the pure waters of their elemental plane and belong to no other. A summoner needs a large volume of fairly pure water nearby, at least 700 cubic feet (10 by 10 by 7 feet, for example); tainted liquids such as ale or wine will not do. They always arrive as a school, one fish for each Hit Die of elemental summoned.

Marids use them as guardians, hunters and trackers. On the desert world they are summoned least of all elemental beasts, since few bodies of water are large enough, and the dry air pains them; each month a school must save vs. death or lose one of its members.