ACHAIERAI

The legs are a metallic blue-grey, the body-head a dull scarlet with deep red blotches. The eyes are steel-blue and the wings blue-green. A wide range of crest colors have been observed, the most common being a bright flame-red. An adult achaierai weighs roughly 750 pounds.

Though the foul motives which caused these loathsome birds to be first summoned from the infernal regions are now lost from memory, remnants of the original achaierai flock still stalk the earth, haunting shadowy places and underground passages. In form they consist of a huge spherical head-body, with a powerful beak and feathery crest, atop four long legs ending in strong claws. 

Man-sized opponents cannot usually attack the soft body but can only reach the hard, metallic legs. Likewise it will not usually be able to reach a victim with its beak and will therefore fight with two claws, doing 1-8 hit points of damage each.

A beak attack, when this is possible, will have the hit probability of a 9-dice monster, while the claws attack with the hit probability of a 4-dice monster in all cases. If a beak attack is delivered, it will inflict 1-10 hit points of damage on the victim.

The achaierai often travel in groups and, though a group need never check morale, each individual bird will try to flee if it loses a leg (a total of 15 hit points of damage or more on a particular leg will break it from the body). Though flightless (the rudimentary wings are scarcely visible and will not support flight), a bird often eludes pursuers with its long strides. Its movement rate is unaffected by the loss of a single leg, but the loss of two legs halves movement rate. An injured leg will regenerate fully in about two days but the birds do not possess other regenerative powers and a leg which has been completely lost will not be re-grown.

If a bird loses three legs, or is otherwise seriously wounded, it will release a cloud of black toxic smoke which in shape and size approximates to a sphere of 10-ft radius. All within the cloud (except achaierai) take 2-12 hit points of damage automatically and must save against Poison or suffer insanity for 3 hours (treat as the Druidic feeblemind spell of limited duration). 

In the confusion the wounded bird will seek to escape, crawling if three legs have been lost at a 2" movement rate.