Manticore

Manticores are not natural animals but the result of sorcerous crossbreeding. Hideous, with a lion's body, huge bat wings, a spiked tail and a half-human, half-lion face, they are often ten feet long and six at the shoulder, armed with hooked claws and fangs, extremely fierce and perhaps wholly fearless (the appendix makes them immune to fear).

They can fly, but slowly and clumsily. On the ground they are surprisingly quick and agile: rearing on their hind legs, they fight enemies in front with claws and teeth while lashing those behind or to the side with the tail, and some reports say they also beat foes with their leathery wings. Scholars long claimed they routinely shoot their tail spikes like a porcupine. They can, flinging up to a dozen at once out to about thirty feet, but only do so when hard-pressed, otherwise swinging the tail like a mace; Chiron the Wise suggests they save the spikes because regrowing them takes 4-12 weeks.

Despite some magicians' claims they are not especially clever; they are very hard to train, make poor, unpredictable mounts, and serve as guard beasts only if chained, or they will escape. In the wild they lair in caves or among rocks and live mostly on vermin, though they will eat nearly anything they can swallow or rip apart. Being hybrids, few can breed, so they are scarce and rarely met in numbers, and little is known of their mating or young.