Monster Mondays: The Hunting Drake

Welcome to Monster Mondays! I know I haven’t posted anything in a while on the old blog, and I haven’t actually posted ANYTHING on this blog, yet. Part of that is a lack of inspiration and creativity. Thus, Monster Mondays! I’m hoping that, by keeping up and posting something every week, even if it’s so simple as a monster idea, a stat block, or even something deeper, like a new ecology or history for existing monsters, then I’ll keep my creative juices flowing.

Therefore, I present to all of you: the Hunting Drake.

I’ve been working on a new campaign for a short while now, and one of the features for this campaign is a country that reveres dragons. They use dragon iconography, raise half-dragons to high levels in government, and some of their soldiers can even do things like use breath weapons!

They also breed drakes: pseudo-dragons that are more like animals than their noble, intelligent cousins. That said, they are still deadly, powerful monsters. Tyranny of Dragons already brought us two new drakes to use in our games: the Ambush and Guard drakes. These got me thinking that drakes are bred for specific purposes. In many other editions and systems, drakes are categorized by environment or element: fire drakes, frost drakes, desert drakes, river drakes. I really like the idea of them being categorized by purpose, however. These dragons are bred like hunting hounds for specific purposes. Ambush drakes are used en masse to, well, ambush foes and overwhelm them. They’re dragon-wolves. Guard drakes are stocky and muscular, built to stand in one place and keep anyone from getting past them.

“Flying Red Wyverns” by VegaBone

Thus, hunting drakes. The first breed of drake to be given wings, and bred using the essence of a red dragon. Hunting drakes are predators. They are fed the scent of a creature and take to the air, tracking without error. They are also lithe and deadly, pouncing on foes with tooth and claw and carrying them into the clouds before either tearing them apart or dropping them to their doom.

High-ranking dragon knights will occasionally saddle and ride hunting drakes. A fire-breathing dragon knight astride a blood-red killing machine is an image that would strike terror into the most hardened of soldiers.

Here are the statistics for the Hunting Drake:

And here are the abbreviated statistics, for simple reference:

And here is the PDF containing both blocks: Hunting Drake PDF

Next week: who knows!? It’ll be October, by then. So perhaps I’ll present something spooky!

Oh, and welcome to the new site, by the way.