Felldrake

Common drakes enhanced by tiefling sorcery, felldrakes are unparalleled guardians and ferocious hunters. The largest of the felldrakes is an aggressive, territorial, three-horned monster that would charge a red dragon before yielding an inch of ground—and it’s the most docile of the species. Smaller varieties bring down their quarry with a sinister fervor that borders on malice.
Bred for Savagery: When devils transformed the decadent human nobles of Bael Turath into tieflings, the nobles were thrilled with the infernal power inherent in their new forms. Casting their balefulgaze upon the common drakes wandering their land, the Turathi devised ways for these creatures to better serve the empire. Emulating their infernal masters, the tieflings altered the drakes in various ways and bound them to service.
Cunning Ambushers: The leaping felldrake is a green-scaled creature capable of quickly jumping out of danger. Adept at camouflage, leaping felldrakes bide their time amid bookshelves, rafters, tree branches, and cave walls, waiting for an opportunity to lunge at a victim. Their tiny jaws work quickly, crushing a windpipe or severing an artery within seconds. A weak venom in the felldrake’s saliva turns the flesh around a bite wound blue for several hours, making a felldrake a valuable asset when identifying thieves and burglars who were caught in the act and bitten before they managed to flee.
Pack Hunters: The second of the tieflings’ successes, crested felldrakes were bred from guard drake stock and enhanced for agility, speed, and stealth. Like its progenitor, the crested felldrake is a pack hunter. Its bright orange crest runs from skull to tail, and it shifts in color from light orange to deep red as the felldrake closes in on its prey and smells its fear. Many a foe has underestimated the vicious cunning of crested felldrakes on the hunt; clutches of these creatures have been known to climb upon one another’s backs to reach high places, and stories tell of an individual creature using its foreclaws to open and close doors.
Deadly Stalkers: The hissing felldrake is a lithe copper-scaled beast that has a frilled neck and a largerbody than the leaping and crested varieties. Turathi beastmasters drew their inspiration from nagas and cobras, creating a quick, poisonous beast with a hypnotic dance that entrances its envenomed prey. By refining the leaping felldrake’s weak poison, the tieflings imbued the hissing felldrake with a corrosive spittle laced with soporific pheromones.
Determined Guards: The tri-horn is the most aggressive felldrake produced by the tieflings’ breeding program. Tough, territorial, and stubborn, the tri-horned felldrake claims a piece of ground and considers that place its lair until instructed otherwise. A tri-horned felldrake can corral lesser felldrakes, who obey the larger creature through some pecking order among these unnatural reptiles.
Unwilling Allies: Although felldrakes are wild predators, a remnant of the domestication that the tieflings of Bael Turath embedded in them remains. With the knowledge and help of their devil masters, the tieflings of the Fell Court have recently begun to reassert control over many of the felldrakes in the Nentir Vale, using them as pets and protectors.