Kraan
| Statistic | Value |
|---|---|
| Climate / Terrain | Acheron / Mountains |
| Frequency | Rare |
| Organisation | Solitary |
| Activity Cycle | Any |
| Diet | Carnivore |
| Intelligence | Low (5-7) |
| Treasure | E |
| Alignment | Lawful evil |
| No. Appearing | 1-6 |
| Armour Class | 3 |
| Movement | 3, fl 50 (b) |
| Hit Dice | 7+7 |
| THAC0 | 13 |
| No. Of Attacks | 1 |
| Damage / Attack | 2-16 |
| Special Attacks | Nil |
| Special Defences | Nil |
| Magic Resistance | Nil |
| Size | l (20’ long) |
| Morale | Very Steady (14) |
| XP Value | 1,000 |
Description
These foul creatures fly around the layers and realms of Acheron, watching over thier lairs on the great spinning cubes. They look like large vulture-like creatures with tight skin stretched over a thin, bony frame. Thier intestines can be seen to bulge in it’s emaciated abdomen, and they have giant, thin bat-like wings. Thier heads are like those of a pterodactyl, with a maw of razor sharp teeth. Incapable of communication, they can only make a savage cawing like a crow, or shriek when they’re in danger.
Combat
Being not of particularly high intelligence, Kraan will always attack moving things that move in it’s lair. It prefers to attack while diving and will snatch man-sized creature or smaller with it’s claws. They cannot fly with anything bigger.After a dive, it takes a Kraan a full round to circle. Once the Kraan has a creature in it’s talons, it will savage it with it’s bites receiving a +4 to hit until the thing stops moving. If the creature starts to fight back (receiving a -2 to hit) and causes more than 10 points of damage, it will drop the prey from a high height and deal with it later. Once all the things are motionless, it will return to it’s nest with the bodies and determine if they’re edible by eating them. It is quite stupid, and a boulder being pushed down a mountainside appears to be prey to them.
Habitat/Society
Kraan are frequently used by evil creatures and humanoids as steeds. It is very difficult to train one, but once trained, they make faithful, if rather thick, steeds. The Raveir often use them to counter and launch thier own attacks on dragon and terel forces because they are much faster and far more agile.
Ecology
Kraan have a vorocias appetite, often eating more than ten to thirteen times thier own bodyweight in food over the course of a day. Kraan contribute nothing, even thier flesh and bones cannot be used, turning into a soft, foul-smelling paste shortly after death. Thier eggs, however, are quite valuable to trainers and fetch between 5000-7000 gp for each one of their iron-plated eggs.