Kamadan

Regular Paizo blog followers (I confess to being only semi-regular, so don’t look at me) already know that hyphenated Paizo designer Stephen Radney-MacFarland likes the kamadan.  It’s not a magical beast I knew, so I took one look at the snake-shoulders and assumed it was Paizo’s analog for the world’s oldest role-playing game’s displacer beasts.  But it turns out it dates all the way back to the Fiend Folio (here’s where not being a 1e player puts me at a disadvantage) and Maztica.

Given the kamadan’s form, one has to assume magical, divine/mythical, or extraterrestrial origins, but it long ago adapted to the wider world.  Its sleep gas is useful for knocking out all kinds of prey, it’s smart enough to work alone or as part of a pride, and it might be found anywhere, with subspecies having adapted to several environments.

The couatls of Yeztal send a party of braves to investigate the silence of their sister city to the south, after several message runners have failed to return and signal fires gone answered.  The braves find the pyramid-topped city of Tolp silent, with no living creature present except for the cages of sacred parrots and prides of feral, ferocious kamadans.

Svirfneblin warn spelunking adventurers not to continue, that there are beasts in the mazelike caverns that will hunt them down.  Having bested a minotaur in these very halls, the adventurers laugh off the warning.  But they are unprepared for the pride of subterranean dusk kamadans that are as home in the dizzying tunnels as the minotaur was.

Gold rush fever has struck the Dire North.  And with it come disputes, claim jumping, and murders.  An assembly in the town hall turns to chaos when grizzled and bruised prospector Ephraim Shrike accuses merchant Mars Ironshield of sending thugs to pressure him out of his claim, nearly crippling one of his legs.  Shrike’s theory seems to be confirmed when an onlooker catches sight of an expensive iron cobra absconding with the deed in question right in the middle of their dispute, the paper locked in its metal mouth.  But before it can be stopped, there is a more immediate concern: a winged polar kamadan bursts through the window.  Having tracked the bloodied Shrike for days after being wounded by one of his traps, the pain-maddened kamadan is determined to have both its revenge and a feast.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 158

Reader Nick came through with some dice rolls (and even the chart/page numbers they came from), turning to Pathfinder Adventure Path 61: Shards of Sin (Magnimar Encounters, p. 79),  and the GameMastery Guide (2.3 MacGuffins and Quest Items, p. 53; 7.40 100 City Locations, p. 211) to serve up two delightful and one how-the-hell-am-I-gonna-work-that-in sets of hooks.

So for you, Nick: Iron cobra/Land grab/In the town hall.  Thanks! 

Look for his other hooks over the next couple of days.  Everyone else, feel free to drop some d20s and tell me what you get.  Cheers!