Thoughts on the Flame Lizard

 

Credit: Gustave Surand, 1888

I've been rolling up some random dungeons for my upcoming hex-crawl using the OSE Advanced encounter tables. I do love OSE and its ease of use, but the creature descriptions are often a bit too sparse for my liking. So in an effort to add more narrative to the locations, I've been expanding on the monsters I roll up. The first creature I rolled was a certain fiery lizard:

Flame Lizard: 30’ long, mottled grey and red lizards which are sometimes mistaken for dragons. Lair underground and emerge periodically to hunt. Covet shiny objects. 

The second largest of the giant lizards, it has a breath weapon, fire immunity, and is found sleeping half the time. A special mention is made of a chance to find eggs. It also attacks with claw and tooth.

The 1st edition monster manual gives us a little more info; mentioning their slow movement and tendency to hunt only every fortnight.

I often like to rename monsters using Latin or Old English, as words are often familiar to English speakers while still sounding fantastical. After playing around with a few different words, I landed on ignisaur, which combines the Latin words for fire and lizard.

At a whopping 30' long, I can imagine how a fresh-faced party would mistake our ignisaur for a dragon. The dimensions of the lizard would also need to be more slender and angular to navigate tunnels, maybe with horned scales for armour. Something like a giant Philippine sailfin lizard might fit this description.

The mottled red markings also fit with the sailfin lizard, but I'm envisioning a glowing red throat sack, ready to spew fiery bile onto unfortunate adventurers. So maybe the Grand Cayman iguana's bulging cheeks and droopy neck might better fit the description.

The breath attack can only be used once per day, so the bile would slowly accumulate over time. A full sack might even glow more fiercely. Imagine staring down a long, dark cavern passageway—a red pulsing glow in the distance as the only warning before liquid fire sprays your party.

They covet shiny objects—this sounds like nesting behaviour. Perhaps the male builds a bower to attract a mate, decorated with jewels and gold. Ignisaurs might have several bowers in a larger cave network. Parties might discover half-buried treasure hoards in caverns, covered with ash.

An unfortunate explorer also has a 10% chance to encounter a lizard who is incubating their clutch. Weakened from a long nesting period, the lizard would be extra aggressive and fight to the death to protect the eggs. No need for morale roll, and a lower HD roll would denote the weakened state.

The numbers appearing per encounter are between one and four, suggesting the ignisaur is a social creature. The parties might encounter a potential mate visiting the bower, or perhaps rival males attempting to steal the treasures.

With an AC of 2, its thick hide would be prized by local leather workers and armourers. Leather armour crafted from fire lizard scales would most certainly give a bonus against fire.

So now we have a pretty good picture of how the ignisaur's lair might look as well as some basic logic to how they behave. I particularly like the mental image of a lizard in its bower, surrounded by golden trinkets, throat sack glowing menacingly in the dark. But what about an adventure hook?

A group of scholars from the Grand Library stand at the mouth of a cave, debating how to ensnare a great wyrm within. Half the party believe it to be an ignisaur, and want to use gold to lure the lizard out into the open. The other half believe it to be a pterosaur and want to use fire to drive it from its nest. The explorers look to you to decide on a course to take...

  When I get a chance, I'll illustrate my own version and post an update.