Winged Fiend [Greater Mercenary]

A winged fiend is a massive, broad-shouldered humanoid built like a classic gargoyle, with mighty limbs, great wings, thick claws, and tough, leathery skin of pale green. It speaks only by telepathy.

Most carry a huge double-bladed axe (2d8+8), often with a shield (75%), and their strength grants +3 to hit. Nine in ten axes are enchanted with a plain bonus, and 20% of those have a special property such as vorpal, rolled randomly. Unarmed, a winged fiend slashes with two claws for 1d8+8 each, and each wound bleeds for 1d6 per round until healed by magic like cure light wounds.

Comprehend languages, read magic, detect magic, and detect invisibility are always active. At will it can use invisibility, dispel magic, polymorph self, project image, wind walk, enlarge or reduce, and fear by touch. Three times a day it can use dimension door, command, and mirror image, and once a day reverse gravity, wraithform, and word of recall, on top of the powers all mercenary fiends share. Once daily it may try to gate in 1d10 soldier fiends, 1d3 clatter fiends, or one more winged fiend, with 35% success. Enchantment and charm spells never affect it, and weapons below +2 cannot harm it.

Free to roam the lower planes, winged fiends serve as scouts, watching battles between baatezu and tanar'ri and reporting to the scholar fiends, who use the intelligence in negotiations. Careful and calculating, they look after their own power and safety, yet their reports enrich others, which keeps them low in status. Bitter and envious of the other greater ranks, they scheme for advancement and bully lesser kin for attention, and in a rage may wipe out whole companies of soldier and clatter fiends.

Males and females look almost identical to outsiders. A mated pair produces three young at once, lets them grow for 100 days, then sets them to fight to the death; only the survivor is raised. Carnivores, they prefer rotting meat to fresh, perhaps a holdover from scavenging ancestors.