Sphinx

the sphinx is a guardian of ancient knowledge, forbidden vaults, or enormous treasure. this creature is a female lion but with the head of an beautiful Egyptian woman.

Culture

the sphinx is a curious creature while seemingly living in every way the sphinx is actually a creature much like a golem, created with the purpose of guarding a location from passerby only allowing through those that are supposed to go past. created by extremely powerful mages normally near-to the end of her lives to keep their vast libraries, research, or treasuries from the hands of their enemies

while neutral by nature the sphinx hates evil creatures so it is never used by mages of a such a nature. the attitude of a sphinx can be described as 'melancholic' and generally dislikes being bothered for any purpose unrelated to its duty. a sphinx is both intelligent and sentient this is useful to its duty since it is able to carefully decide who fits the description of what its master wanted allowed to enter and can even understand orders that are vague or illogical

when combat is forced a sphinx is a powerful foe. likely having many years where it was by itself it spent many of those years carefully setting up traps around itself to assist it in combat should one force it into such a role. because of this a sphinx will commonly run from combat tricking the charging enemy into traps then once plenty of traps are between itself and its foe it will cast spells with the capability 10 levels less then its creator. in close combat the sphinx can claw at its aggressors and cast spells at the same time. many mages summoning sphinxes will be so desperate to protect their charge from enemies they will give the sphinx a final solution: a spell that when activated destroys everything the mage wanted to be protected

History

like previously mentioned the sphinx is melancholic by nature. however researches that have questioned sphinxes about themselves have described that once the sphinx was convinced that the researcher had no interest in what the sphinx was guarding and only interested in the sphinx itself that the creature became amusingly bashful

golems are made by trapping a elemental inside of it. but what is trapped inside of a sphinx is unknown. it is assumed that whatever is inside of them is related to the egyptian pantheon