Wyvern

Wyvern

(Creature)

Common

Large

Dragon

Level

6

Images of wyverns

Source: Monster Core, pg(s). 131

2E legacy: wyverns had the

NE

trait in Bestiary 133.

Type

Dragon

CR

6

Environment

Temperate and warm hills

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Images of wyverns

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 282

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

Wyverns are venomous drakes known for their aggressive personalities.

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.

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. Like other drakes, wyverns may share a nest with members of the same species; 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. This behaviour differentiates wyverns from the rest of the drake family, as drakes rarely come into conflict with other drakes.

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

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. Two species of animal that wyverns commonly prey upon are horses and their part-equine cousins, hippogriffs.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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 Avistan all the way down to Dahak's Teeth in The Shackles where Aashaq's wyverns terrorise the people of Garund, east to the Tors of Levenies in the Stolen Lands and as far south as the fertile region of Maharev in the desert kingdom of Qadira.

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

References

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