Month of the Dragon: Wyvern

Expanding on Monster Mondays, I’m spending March digging deep into dragons. Inspired by James Jacobs’ 10 goblin facts written for Pathfinder, I’m working my way through the Monster Manual creating ten facts about each creature based on their art and lore. The goal is to provide habits, scene-setting tools, and plot hooks for encounters.

10 Facts About Wyverns

1. Draconic Relations: These foul-tempered creatures garner little love from their draconic kin. Both chromatic and metallic dragons will kill wyverns and destroy their nests.
2. Fiendish Fellows: Yugoloths have been known to steal wyvern eggs on trips to the Material Plane, hatching and raising them for use as mounts.
3. Aerial Assault: Griffins and wyverns make for poor neighbors. Wyverns find griffins to be suitable prey, and should griffins detect a wyvern near their nests, the entire pride will track the wyvern to its lair and tear it apart.
4. Searing Seasoning: The venom in a wyvern’s sting is deadly, but in some cultures, it is also a delicacy. Specially trained cooks will dilute the venom and brew it into an exceptionally spicy sauce.
5. Fabled Fall: Old tales say that wyverns were once true dragons that defied their god and were cursed into their current form. Some versions of this tale say that any dragon could become a wyvern by breaking a certain taboo.
6. Rubbish Reapers: Wyverns still possess the draconic hoarding instinct but lack any concept of value. Instead, their nests are filled with shiny or brightly colored bits of rubbish and bones.
7. Sky Scavengers: Wyverns prefer fresh meat, but they are legendarily ravenous creatures. They’ve been known to carry off sick livestock and even to dig up shallow graves.
8. Shifting Scales: A wyvern’s scales shift color throughout its lifetime. Different species of dragons have different colorations, but the common wyvern begins as a red hatchling fading into a violet for most of its adulthood. The oldest common wyverns are blue.
9. Territory Tantrums: A female wyvern commands a large territory and will not tolerate trespass. The larger female wyvern will kill males outside of their mating season and territory fights between female wyverns are bloody affairs.
10. Cliff Climbers: Wyverns prefer cliffside dwellings, especially small caves or alcoves in a cliffside. Their nests are difficult to reach on their own, but they typically seek out smaller crevasses for their egg sacs so that even other wyverns will have trouble accessing them.