The Sawanak Pyrenaga is an offshoot of the Dread Maw, a huge snake-like subterranean creature that hunts across the eastern lands by bursting out of the ground, devouring massive prey or entire regiments of soldiers. Inhabiting the vast network of ancient karsts and chasms beneath the Hinterlands of Khuresh where it feeds on giant squigs, trolls and even larger monstrosities, the Sawanak is the work of Blood Naga thaumaturgy and magic imprinting from the primordial days following the arrival of Chaos.
Why the Naga sought to ‘improve’ such mutated creatures is a mystery, perhaps the Naga and Snake Men sensed an uncanny kinship with such terrors and saw them as the strongest manifestations of serpentine might. Lured south with immense numbers of slaves, dozens of Dread Maws were subdued by Snake Men warriors after lengthy battles. While some were used as early war-beasts and mounts, a select few were kept for special experimentation. These Dread Maws underwent trials of sorcerous infusion, becoming the prototype for many other living creatures to follow. The Naga aimed to make them more suggestible to commands and to increase their lethality against the elder Dragons, the war beasts of the bygone Saurus armies, the Dragon Ogres and any Daemon fiend that sought to challenge the Naga within their domain.
The tests eventually led to impressive results, the new Dread Maw offshoots were larger and grew massive horned crests wreathed in a lambent red or gold glow with which they could pierce bedrock, stone fortifications and the hides of enemy monsters with terrifying ease. Their bodies turned into living furnaces, allowing them to expel hypnotic spheres of concentrated flame out of their gaping maws that could melt stone and steel in seconds. These newly dubbed Sawanak Feynaga were tested on the remnant forces of the Lizardmen left behind in Khuresh, specifically their monstrous reptilian beasts. The creatures’ performance exceeded all expectations of the Naga. Stegadons, Carnosaurs and even a Dread Saurian were overpowered by the Sawanak that came at them from unfamiliar angles. The unexpectedly agile giant serpents rammed the reptilian creatures with their great flame-enveloped horns and carved through the armoured hide of their quarry, before immolating them from the inside out and feasting on the charred carcasses.
During the Daemonic Incursions, the Sawanak performed well against the initial assaults of the Ruinous Powers that fell on the Naga sanctums before the fell pacts were made, their magical flame capable of cutting through or burning away the incorporeal forms of daemons. Vakognaw, a gargantuan blue-gold hued specimen that expelled globes of eldritch energy, matured around this time. It would go on to become the bane of many a rift-born Greater Daemon seeking to make sport of the Snake Men in centuries to come. In the Mahayuth - the era of the Serpents' grip on the world - the Pyrenaga again performed admirably against the empires of the Elves and the Cathayans, mangling and consuming many Dragons, dragon-kin and Ogre regiments.
In the present era, these giant serpents are employed as status symbols by the Blood Naga Queens who occasionally ride them into battle and as living siege engines in difficult engagements. When the season to invade the Celestial Empire arrives, the Naga brood-sects gather their Pyrenaga in strength and unleash them upon the border defenses of the Southern Provinces. The assembled Sawanak carve deep routes and channels beneath the Mountains of Heaven in the Naga's campaigns towards the fertile river valleys beyond, smashing aside all obstacles and barriers arrayed against the Serpent Hosts that follow in their wake and providing them with easily traversable avenues. The telltale rumble created by these activities are a dreaded portent for the forces of Fu-Hung and the Monkey King, who have fought untold desperate battles in the great ravines and waterfall caverns under the Mountains to close off breaches and thwart the worst of such attacks.
Unlike the drab poisonous slime-coated body of a typical Dread Maw, the Pyrenaga's many yards-long body is covered in a natural layer of scintillating imbricated armour, embers crackling between its smouldering scales. In battle as in its natural hunting state the Sawanak Feynaga approaches its prey by tunneling underground, emerging on the flanks to ram and ignite. What it cannot swallow whole, or tear into pieces with its horn and jaws it burns, and even aerial foes have learnt to fear its projectile fireball.
The Blood Naga take pride in their mighty creation for not only do the Sawanak act as a deterrent against other large monsters, they also lure in many unwitting potential specimens with an unusual behaviour related to their hypnotic fireballs. In 2413 IC, a Bright Wizard known as Belmo Rasmus travelled east after hearing legends of fireballs hovering above water at lakes and on the sea coasts. Belmo thought that if fire could be tempered to be resistant to the dampening effects of water, he could achieve great power! Hiring mercenaries along the Silk Road and a small detachment from Shang-Yang, Belmo travelled towards the source of the rumour in the Hinterlands. At a vast lake deep within the peninsula, the Wizard discovered the truth behind the legend: Pyrenaga periodically submerge themselves in large bodies of water such as lakes, rivers or seashores to cool the inner fire within their bodies, holding the fireball above water as a method of dissipating the excess heat. Unfortunately for Belmo and his hired mercenaries who stood mesmerized by the display, the monsters were not happy with being disturbed and proceeded to devour the hapless explorers, the Bright Wizard’s powers proving completely ineffectual against them.
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