Ouranabad

The ouranabad, or winged hydra, is a distant relative of the true hydra that lives in swamps and grows to fifteen feet or longer, snout to tail tip (the appendix gives up to 30 feet). Fine scales cover it, huge bat-like wings rise from its back, and, like all hydras, several long, snaking heads. Each head has a bony crest of spiked horns and a mouth of needle-thin teeth, and its bite carries venom stronger than a king cobra's.

Most have seven heads. As with other hydras, a lost head usually grows back as two, but a head burned away, or bitten off and poisoned by another ouranabad, withers and never returns. Rivals fight often in the short mating season, so animals with fewer than seven heads are common. They fly badly and only when they must, their bodies being clumsy; both pairs of legs carry long hooked talons for seizing prey, and the thick tail steers in flight and strikes hard in a fight.

Fierce as they are, a skilled trainer can sometimes tame the young, and spell casters often keep them as pets for their magical value. The venom strengthens many magic brews and the head-crests are also said to be magical, so eggs and young sell for high prices. Chiron's Natural History tells of ten seasoned mercenaries sent to kill a marauding ouranabad and bring its eggs to a wizard; only two came back, and one died of his wounds within a month. Ouranabads are much rarer than ordinary hydras and seem to be slowly vanishing. Its level, like a hydra's, equals its number of heads, and each head can attack separately. It heals 1 hit point a minute and regrows lost parts in 2-7 days.