Webbird

The webbird only looks like a bird; beneath its feathers it is closer to a spider or insect. Besides its pair of wings it has two perching legs below, two small hooked limbs for grasping, a five-inch whiplike tail, and a featherless two-inch egg-laying spike jutting from its chest. Bony ridges in its slit of a mouth do the work of teeth. Its stiff, hairlike feathers are black except beneath the wings, where three bright green, sightless eyespots per wing make it look bigger to predators.

A single beak deals just 1 point, but webbirds attack in flocks of 12 to 48 and will assail even big, heavily armed foes. They fear fire, refusing to attack anyone bearing a torch or other open flame and keeping away from bonfires and bigger blazes.

Each attacking bird trails a sticky, immensely strong strand 1d6+6 feet long from its tail. Every victim must save vs. paralyzation or be tangled and held, at -1 on the save for each three birds attacking that person, so nine birds mean -3. Entanglement lasts 1d4+4 rounds, though Strength 18 or more breaks free in one round. Fire cannot harm the strands, but wine or other alcohol dissolves them in a round; one wineskin frees one man-sized creature or two smaller ones. A tangled victim can neither fight nor cast spells, and loses Dexterity bonuses to Armor Class.

Once prey is held, 1-3 birds land and nibble for 1 hp each per round while 1 or 2 more stab their chest spikes into bare skin and inject 2d4 eggs each, painlessly. After 1d4+2 turns grubs emerge from the eggs, that each devour 1 hp per round, causing agony so intense the host can do nothing at all, not even fight, defend or use spells or psionics, until death. Within seven turns of the host's death, fledglings with full adult statistics emerge. Cure disease kills the grubs, as does burning the body before the young come out.

Webbirds weave silk nests in trees or cave mouths and always live in large flocks for safety. They often share caves with stirges: the webbirds hunt by day and the stirges by night, so someone is always awake, and dawn and dusk, when both are stirring, are the deadliest times to pass by. Each webbird is a hermaphrodite and can lay eggs. They live a year at most, spending nearly all of it hunting for food and hosts.

Carnivores, they feed mostly on carrion, including their grubs' hosts, and their sharp mouth ridges are built for tearing flesh; a flock often leaves nothing but bones. Drow are rumored to keep them as guards and corpse disposers. Wizards value their tails as components for web spells.