No. Appearing: 3-18
Armor Class: 0
Movement: 20
Hit Dice: 7
THAC0: 13
No. of Attacks: 3
Damage/Attack: 1-4 / 1-4 / 1-8
Special Attacks: See Below
Special Defenses: Invisibility to infravision
Magic Resistance: Nil
Size: L (5' @ the shoulder)
Morale: Elite (13-14)
XP Value: 800
These reptilian crosses between grayhounds and snakes are voracious predators with a preferance for humanoid flesh. Unlike their cross suggests, they are the size of small horses, capable of eating their body weight every four hours. Their ground-eating pace and quasi-cartilaginous structures allow them to cover distances at an incredible rate, and allow them to squeeze through crevices too narrow for even a small human.
Combat: Black wyrsa prefer ambush and harassing tactics, inspiring fear in their prey before rushing in, en masse, for the kill. Their claw attacks deal 1d4 points of damage each, and their bite deals 1d8 points of damage. Their first attack always engenders a -1 penalty to their opponents surprise.
Habitat/Society: Female black wyrsa can lay up to a dozen eggs, each of which hatches into a voracious, gray-hound sized, young wyrsa with half the stats and abilities of its parent. The female does not tend to the eggs, and in periods of little nourishment, may eat her young. She will lay a batch of eggs in a small, enclosed environment into which she can barely squeeze, once every three months. Usually, a dominant female leads the pack, one that has an Intelligence of two (2), and a Neutral Evil alignment.
Ecology: Black wyrsa can be devestating to a country-side, eating beasts of burden and sentients alike. Starvation is the most common form of control on the black wyrsa; they eat themselves out of a habitat. Their eggs, however, can remain in stasis for up to ten years, allowing the environs to recover from the initial attack, before the eggs hatch new black wyrsa. Considered a scourge and a disease, they are wiped out whenever possible; proof of killing a black wyrsa often brings substantial rewards.
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