Environment

Special abilities

Normal sight 20 | Dark vision 10

The hydra is a creature with the body of a huge snake and several dragon heads. The body ends in a mace-shaped tail and is entirely covered in yellow-brown scales.

Hydras are magical creatures in origin, yet they are able to reproduce. They live in swamps and devour everything that moves, from fish and birds to snakes and crocodiles. They swim well and see in the dark. They do not like light, although it does not harm them: by day they rest in a lair in the heart of the swamps or in a cave and set out for food at night; a hungry hydra, however, will set out even at noon.

Hydras have no sex. They swallow the fertilized eggs of a large snake, transform them into hydra eggs and lay them in the body of captured prey. The young that hatch in the carcass kill one another once the flesh is used up, and only the strongest survives. It then grows to full size within two years.

Combat

The hydra bites the enemies in front of it and covers its back and flanks with its tail. A young hydra has three heads. A head can be cut off with a sufficiently strong blow (the massive body does not protect it), but for each one cut off two new ones soon grow; in the end there can be as many as thirteen heads. A head burned by fire does not grow back.

The hydra dies only if it loses all its heads before new ones grow back. If it is seriously wounded, its heads stop growing back, but at rest it soon regenerates and three heads grow again.

Blood and Poison: both the hydra's bite and its blood are poisonous. Whoever cuts a hydra must defend themselves so that its blood does not splash them.