White Fang

White fangs are snow serpents, far-off kin of white dragons, with neither wings nor legs. Soft white fur covers the body, while the head is armored in overlapping plates of white ivory.

A white fang can cool its skin until infravision barely registers it; even a searcher staring right at it has only a 20% chance of spotting it that way. Against snow its pale fur hides it superbly, and anyone ambushed by one takes -4 on surprise rolls. Though it moves well across open ground, it would much rather travel unseen. It burrows easily through snow and tunnels through ice at a rate of 6. It has 120-foot infravision and detects the heat and vibrations of prey up to 120 feet away, even through 30 feet of solid ice.

It attacks with a bite and a slap of its flat tail. The fangs inject venom: a creature that fails a save vs. poison is instantly chilled through and frozen rigid with paralysis. On the following round its blood starts to freeze, its skin turns blue, and it takes 1d8 points of damage every round until it dies or the poison is neutralized. Neutralize poison or similar magic ends the paralysis and the damage and restores normal color, but heals nothing already lost. Remove paralysis frees the victim to move but neither stops the damage nor restores color.

Even a successful save leaves the victim numb and cold, suffering -2 to both Strength and Dexterity for 2d6 rounds. Exceptional Strength instead drops by 20% of its percentile; falling below 01 means Strength 17. More bites lengthen this penalty without deepening it.

These serpents are equally comfortable in frozen caves, icy polar seas and windswept snowfields, and freely cross between sea, pack ice and land wherever prey is found. They have no social bonds at all, not even family, though a few may share an area when hunting is rich. When food runs short they instinctively spread out rather than waste strength fighting over territory.

White fangs prey on warm-blooded creatures. Sea dwellers hunt mostly marine mammals but happily take a careless fisherman or hunter; those on land go after nearly any large animal within reach.

Roughly every five years many gather in huge ice caverns for a month of mating. Each pregnant female then seeks a remote spot, usually a burrow in a drift or glacier but sometimes the sea floor, and six months after mating bears 2d12 live young about 4 feet long. Newborns have 2 Hit Dice and their bites and tail slaps are harmless, yet their poison is just as deadly as an adult's. They take about 25 years to mature.

An undamaged adult pelt sells for up to 500 gp and the ivory head plates for another 100 gp. A youngster's pelt fetches about 4 gp and its ivory nothing. Extracted venom soon loses strength, but poison sacs carefully removed and frozen are useful in brewing a potion of fire resistance.