Ptallant Lizard

The ptallant lizard is a small, hefty blue lizard with a round body and long tail, with a back covered in short spines. While it appears harmless, it possesses a powerful magic that can cause earthquakes.
==The Quake==
While mild-mannered and generally docile, the ptallant lizard can activate a powerful—albeit unusual—defense mechanism when threatened. It can smack its tail on the ground and cause a mighty quake that sways buildings, rumbles the ground, and sloshes rivers over their embankments. Anyone and everyone within 1,000 yards must make a DX+4 roll every second to avoid falling down, and any physical action requiring a roll is at -2. In a modern world, this quake can crack water pipes and snap electrical lines, even collapsing some buildings. 
For any given building, roll 3d6—on a 6 or less, something dangerous happens. A fire breaks out, a wall collapses, or a power main breaks. This can also be quite the wakeup call to the poor shoulder giant hiding under such a structure!
===Focused Smash===
If the lizard is very afraid (for instance, pursued by a predator), it will caused even mightier quakes! These are a 25-yard shudder giving a whopping -8 to staying upright, and any building suffers serious damage at 10 or less.
In either case, the earthquake subsides in about a minute. The lizard itself it immune to the shifting of the ground... but not the aftermath. Thus, it often skitters into a safe, sturdy place underground right after starting the quake. As expected, this can be frustrating to adventurers who aren't patient enough to approach the lizard with caution.
==Biological Quirks==
Being a fully magiophoric creature, PLs are sustained entirely by mana.Dependency (Mana; Constantly) They are lively in high mana and lethargic and sickly in low. If in a No Mana zone, the creature quickly starves. Otherwise however, it doesn't need to eat or sleep; although it may prefer the occasional bug.Fanon
As a side effect of their magically-dense physiology, PLs are incredibly "bright" to mages, showing up easily (+5) to Detect Magic and Magery senses.
PLs are "materially fragile", and will simply turn to dust if they've taken serious damage. They are a great example of a puzzle monster that's easy to kill, but hard to catch, and typically, not supposed to be killed. 
Finally, they can tunnel quite rapidly.
==Origins==
It is said that ptallant lizards are created by dreadful mishaps with earth spells. It certainly doesn't help mage-statisticians that the appearance of a ptallant lizard tends to be quite delayed in its spawning time and location, only being "somewhere in the vicinity of the mage, a few hours after a botched spell".4d hours and 2d+4 yards away, use a 1d die for a direction! 
==Fault Familiars==
While most mages are familiar with ptallant lizards, there are other such "accidental monsters" caused by other spell colleges...
College 	Animal. Traits
Fire 	A salamander with amber fur and white hooves. Loves starting fires.
Mind Control	A black and yellow fox, causes mass hallucinations, very dangerous due to miscommunication.
Necromancy 	An albino bat, causes pestilence and rot.
Weather 	A hawk with greenish plumageChanged from a green beak, which would be hard to spot on a hawk, causes gale-force winds and storms.
==References==
*Creatures of the Night, Vol.1, p.15-16
Category:Monsters