Firenewt

Firenewts, also sometimes known as salamen, were reptilian humanoids native to volcanic regions, who evolved from lizardfolk and gained the ability to breathe fire.

Description
Firenewts were about the size of a slim human. They appeared like lizardfolk with simpler faces and larger, dark-colored eyes. Their speckled, smooth-scaled skin appeared eel-like and was colored dark reddish brown at their spines and faded to nearly white on their front sides. They had long feet, giving them the appearance of "reversed knees", which gave them an advantage while running or leaping.

Personality
Firenewts were known for being cruel marauders. They delighted in torturing and roasting their victims alive before eating them.

Abilities
These creatures were highly resistant to harm from fire and could even breath small bouts of it out to a range of. However, they were vulnerable to extremely low temperatures and cold-based spells.

Priests within firenewt society were typically capable of casting the spells animal friendship, faerie fire, predict weather, produce flame, heat metal, and pyrotechnics.

Combat
Firenewt warriors typically wore chain mail and carried longswords, battleaxes, scimitars, longspears, pikes alongside swords, and handaxes. Battleaxes were most commonly used by their elite warriors, while their priests favored the use of maces.

Society
Firenewts required a heated source of water in order to survive and breed. Separation from warm water for more than a tenday would cause a firenewt to slow mentally and physically, eventually entering hibernation.

They kept their hatching grounds secret and closely guarded, with its activities monitored by priests.

Homelands
Apart from areas with volcanic activity, firenewts were also living on the sun of Realmspace.



Religions
They worshiped Imix, the Prince of Evil Fire, leading them to be aggressive, wrathful, and cruel.

Relationships
Firenewts domesticated giant striders, which were trained by the priests in their society and made into very capable combatants in their own right. The firenewts provided shelter and food for giant striders, as well as breeding grounds in their lairs. After fifteen years of service, firenewts typically killed and ate their giant striders.

Besides giant striders, firenewts domesticated fire lizards and used them to guard the hatching grounds of their lairs.

They sometimes acted as servants of, or were enslaved by, efreeti.

Rumors & Legends
How firenewts came to acquire their race's primary form of mounts, the giant striders, was a matter of some speculation. Some among them believed they were a gift bestowed upon them by their deity Imix because they were able to breath fire.

According to another legend the red dragon Imvaernarhro was in search of fire-based creatures to serve him when he came upon the firenewt colony of the Peaks of Flame. In return for a large band of them, he offered the firenewts an immense pile of gold with which could recast their statue of the deity Kossuth. But having looked upon knights and recognized how valuable mounts were to them in combat, the firenewts countered &mdash; in return for some beast they could ride and breed, they would give him fifty of their warriors. Imvaernarhro agreed to their terms and returned six months later with an immense bag, filled with giant strider eggs, and after quickly discovering their usefulness the firenewts honored their agreement.