Dracodile
GM's Eyes Only
Spoilers. This page is written for the GM, and players who read on will learn things their characters don't know.
A vast amphibious reptile, top of the food chain wherever it lives. Source: Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon, p. 28.
What it is. Over thirty feet long, scaled like a wall of shields, with jaws that splinter a boat or wagon. Agile in water, ponderous but faster than it looks on land. Shot rarely matters: what gets through the scales sinks into fat and muscle. When cornered or hurt, it breathes out a corrosive miasma that eats armor and flesh and sears the lungs.
Behavior. Solitary, rare, and fiercely territorial across miles of water. It ignores anything smaller than a person and eats anything bigger. Quick to anger, slow to calm, it will chase an attacker well past its own borders. A mother hunts outside her territory to feed her hatchlings and defends them ferociously. Signs of one: long tail-drag marks on the shore, flattened shoreline trees, and the crushed bones of large animals.
Engines. IK's dracodiles attack steamboats because the rumble of an engine sounds like a rival's growl.
In Tir Hathar. The Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and Azlotl's dried Lizard Sea.
The Lizard Sea's dracodiles. A few still live in the Lizard Sea: a relict population, stranded when the Giants drained it, mostly in the Lizard Swamp at the old seabed's low point. They're a living scar of the Long War. Some have become something a bit different, after generations dried out.
Stats¶
First draft, built from WWN's baseline stat lines.
| HD | AC | Atk | Dmg | Shock | Move | ML | Inst | Skill | Save | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dracodile | 10 | 17 | +11 x2 | 2d6+3 | 6/15 | 30' (swim 60') | 11 | 5 | +1 | 10+ |
- Shield-scales. Shots from hurlants and bows do half damage. What gets through the scales sinks into fat and muscle.
- Bilious breath. Once per scene, usually once it's cornered or hurt: a 30-foot cone of corrosive fumes, 4d6 damage, Evasion save for half.
- Terror. Anyone with Morale who sees it attack makes a Morale check. It never checks Morale while defending its young.
- Grudge. Once hurt, it pursues its attacker well past its own territory, and goes after the largest target first.
Still open: playtesting the numbers. What the dried-out dracodiles have become is left to the adventure that finds them. Suggested, not settled: the Nile delta on the Confederacy's coast as another home; and Mechanika engines on ships drawing their attacks, as steam engines do in IK.