Fiedoth “Shovel Mouth”

Large beast, neutral

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 82 (11d10+22)
Speed 10 ft., fly 90 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
16 (+3)	13 (+1)	15 (+2)	3 (-4)	10 (+0)	3 (-4)

Skills Perception +2
Senses passive Perception 12
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Ram. If the fiedoth moves at least 30 feet towards a target and makes a bite attack, it has a chance of forcing the target prone. Whether the attack succeeds or fails, the target must make a Strength save (DC 15) or be forced prone. If the bite attack hits, the save is made with disadvantage.

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The fiedoth makes 1 bite attack. If it chooses to stop moving while in contact with a target, it may also make 4 tentacle attacks.
• Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d10+3) piercing damage.
• Tentacle. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d6) necrotic damage and the target is grappled. If a target is grappled by the fiedoth at the beginning of its turn, the tentacle automatically hits. The target can attempt to escape the grapple, using an action and needing to make a Strength or Dexterity save (their choice) of DC 13.

ABOUT

The fiedoth dominate the skies they occupy. Huge, featherless creatures, they use their broad wings to glide through the air, seeking prey from on high. Broad wings span some 40 feet from tip to tip, balanced by a huge mid-section. Their heads are broad, with mouths shaped something like a shovel. They have four eyes, two on the top of the snout and two more underneath. This second set of eyes they use to spy the ground far below. The upper eyes are weaker, and are able to detect motion and shapes but little more. Thick, boney apertures cover the head; their spine curves in a great hump, decked with thick, blunted spikes that run the full length of the creature’s back. They have no tail, only a nub of bone where the spine ends. Many mistake their tentacle-like legs for a tail, but in truth where most creatures sport two legs the fiedoth, sport four 12-foot long tentacles. These tentacles serve to grab a hold on limbs, mountain crevices, and the like. When the beast is in flight, the tentacles trail behind it, not unlike a tail. These tentacles serve the creature in a far more insidious manner as well. Thousands of tiny barbs line the tentacles; these allow the creature to absorb its prey.

Death from Above. Fiedoth are visual hunters, spending the majority of their lives gliding on the upper air currents in broad circles seeking desirable prey. They are very aggressive — if dim-witted — hunters, attacking almost anything that that is smaller than they are. In hunting, they range over hundreds of square miles; some become very territorial and feed off of the same animal or human communities for years. They hunt in most seasons, but are more lethargic in the winter months, hunting far less.

Mountain Dwellers. They generally nest in the mountains, or if necessary in very tall trees, several hundred feet high. They lay their eggs in clutches of one or two. The creature matures in the egg, hatching as a full-grown fiedoth. Attempts to tame them have almost always failed as the creature’s intelligence does not lend itself to learning and is compounded by their ferocious appetite and their propensity to devour their riders.

Fight and feed. A fiedoth swoops down upon its prey from above, gaining tremendous speed. As it descends, its broad head and mouth serve as a battering ram, knocking over its target and anyone standing near it. Once it knocks down the victim, the fiedoth uses its huge wings to cover its victim, where it hovers, attacking with its tentacles, strangling and devouring its prey. Creatures captured in the beast’s tentacles keep the fiedoth from moving very fast or far. They generally hover, beating their massive wings in a slow rhythmic fashion, defending their kill with its bite or ram attack and their tentacles if necessary. They are generally satisfied with one victim, having feasted they leave the battlefield.

The fiedoth, or “shovel mouth,” is a rare predatory creature that occupies the steepest and most remote mountain ranges. They hunt far beyond the mountains though, often venturing into the plains and steppes. But it is in the mountains that they have their greatest impact. For here, the stone giants dwell and they worship the beast as a god and the source of much of their worldly goods. These simple peoples hunt the fiedoth, for they cull their carcass for all manner of tools. The meat is high in nutrients; their skins they use as clothing; their bones they fashion into ornaments; their skulls serve as powerful shields, rams, or other weapons; the tentacle barbs, however, are of the greatest significance, for the stones giants believe that these small hollow barbs are gateways to the Shadow Realms. To pass through them leads one to an afterlife of misery. So they take the barbs of dead fiedoth and use them as totems; these they believe give them power, long life and protects them from other fiedoth and the Shadow Realms. Any stone giant who has charms made from these barbs gains a +1 on all his morale and to-hit rolls. Any weapon or piece of armor fashioned from the skulls of the shovel mouth gains a +2 bonus. They are of course very heavy and impossible for normal men to lift and wield. Slaying a fiedoth, if discovered by the stone giants, brings down their wrath and they pursue any who are so bold as to defend themselves against the daunting shovel mouth.