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Wyvern

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Wyvern
Wyvern
(Creature)

Wyverns are venomous drakes known for their aggressive personalities.1

Appearance

Wyverns average around 15 feet in length and normally weigh about 2,000 pounds. A wyvern resembles a blue-coloured dragon without front arms, as it has only rear legs and wings, and its tail ends in a venomous stinger.1

Habitat and ecology

Wyverns favour warm and temperate areas, particularly hills, although they can dwell in many environments. A group is known as a flight of wyverns, typically in numbers no higher than six.2 Like other drakes,3 wyverns may share a nest with members of the same species;45 however, wyverns usually claim an area from 100 to 200 square miles as their exclusive hunting territory and fight other wyverns to the death over their domain.2 This behaviour differentiates wyverns from the rest of the drake family, as drakes rarely come into conflict with other drakes.6

Wyverns are highly aggressive creatures, and though capable of speech have little interest in conversation beyond taunting prey, issuing territorial challenges or demanding tribute.1 These violent tendencies and lack of sophistication results in most dragons seeing wyverns as hopelessly primitive savages.2

When hunting, wyverns prefer to crash into their targets talon-first, as their resilient bodies take little damage from such collisions, in order to stun their prey before injecting it with venom or carrying it over a cliff. As wyverns lack the strength to carry intact prey items in flight for extended periods of time, they prefer to drop subdued prey from great heights and afterwards pick through their remains.1 Two species of animal that wyverns commonly prey upon are horses and their part-equine cousins, hippogriffs.78

While wyverns are commonly classified as drakes, scholars debate the precise relationship between them. Drakes and wyverns show general deference and collegial behaviour to one another, although wyverns exhibit significant differences from most other types of drake. For example, unlike most species of drake and dragonkind, wyverns possess no magical abilities.19

Wyverns are distant relatives of amphipteres, which unlike them lack even their hind legs and possess only a pair of wings. Both species possess long tails tipped with inborn weapons; unlike a wyvern's poisonous stinger, however, an amphiptere's tail ends in a sharp spur used primarily to spear targets.10

Society

Due to their aggressive tendencies, wyverns are normally solitary creatures, though they sometimes band together to hunt larger prey that a single wyvern cannot kill alone. Wyverns can sometimes control their violent urges long enough to ally with others, such as giants and tribes of violent monstrous humanoids. There have even been reports of tribes of lizardfolk and boggards that have bribed wyverns to serve them as mounts.2 Despite their otherwise antisocial tendencies, wyverns enjoy grim humor and violent tales, and can be appeased with meat, treasure and flattery to serve as guardians or steeds for brief periods.1

Variants

Night wyvern

Covered in dark blue scales to provide camouflage, night wyverns are a more powerful nocturnal variant of the common wyvern. However, such wyverns are inhibited in strong sunlight. A flight of night wyverns nested in the Iron Peaks of central Varisia.411

On Golarion

Wyverns inhabit places across the Inner Sea region, ranging from the half-frozen Antler Rock in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings of northern Avistan12 all the way down to Dahak's Teeth in The Shackles where Aashaq's wyverns terrorise the people of Garund,13 east to the Tors of Levenies in the Stolen Lands14 and as far south as the fertile region of Maharev in the desert kingdom of Qadira.15

Several prominent locales across the Inner Sea region are named after the ferocious beasts, most notably the Wyvern Mountains atop the Storval Plateau in Varisia16 and the orc city of Wyvernsting where beastmasters of Wingripper tribe soar on their semi-tamed wyverns above the city.17

References

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Logan Bonner, et al. “Monsters A-Z” in Bestiary, 133. Paizo Inc., 2019
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Jason Bulmahn, et al. “Monsters A to Z” in Bestiary, 282. Paizo Inc., 2009
  3. Logan Bonner, et al. Bestiary. Paizo Inc., 2019
  4. 4.0 4.1 Wolfgang Baur & Greg A. Vaughan. “Fortress of the Stone Giants” in Fortress of the Stone Giants, 21. Paizo Inc., 2007
  5. Wolfgang Baur. “Chapter Four: Fortress of the Stone Giants” in Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition, 201. Paizo Inc., 2012
  6. Logan Bonner, et al. Drake” in Monster Core, 128. Paizo Inc., 2024
  7. Logan Bonner, et al. “Monsters A-Z” in Bestiary 2, 143. Paizo Inc., 2020
  8. Logan Bonner, et al. Hippogriff” in Monster Core, 197. Paizo Inc., 2024
  9. Logan Bonner, et al. Drake” in Monster Core, 131. Paizo Inc., 2024
  10. Jason Bulmahn, et al. “Monsters A to Z” in Bestiary 5, 18. Paizo Inc., 2015
  11. In the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Adventure Path Fortress of the Stone Giants, night wyverns were elite wyverns with the nocturnal template from Green Ronin Publishing's Advanced Bestiary. In the Pathfinder First Edition Anniversary Edition of the same Adventure Path, the same flight of wyverns are advanced wyverns with no mention of any of the characteristics of, nor the name of, night wyverns.
  12. Matthew Goodall, et al. “The Linnorm Kingdoms” in Lands of the Linnorm Kings, 23. Paizo Inc., 2011
  13. Mike Shel. “Threats of the Shackles” in Isles of the Shackles, 42. Paizo Inc., 2012
  14. F. Wesley Schneider. The Stolen Lands” in Guide to the River Kingdoms, 53. Paizo Inc., 2010
  15. Jessica Price. “Adventuring in Qadira” in Qadira, Jewel of the East, 37. Paizo Inc., 2017
  16. James L. Sutter. Varisia” in The Hook Mountain Massacre, 62. Paizo Inc., 2007
  17. Tyler Beck, et al. Belkzen Gazetteer” in Belkzen, Hold of the Orc Hordes, 17. Paizo Inc., 2015