The render is a hideous subterranean creature with a leathery black hide, powerful hind legs, sharp fangs, horns, and a pair of hinged hooks for hands. Its leering grin and glowing red eyes regard potential prey for only the shortest moment before the predatory render covers the intervening distance in a few bounds and attacks.

The render snarls and growls as it hacks at its prey. It is extremely unlikely that renders communicate with these growls, as they are totally bestial and display little intelligence other than for cruelty.

Combat: Renders are completely silent before they attack, and often stand motionless in the darkness for hours waiting for prey. This imposes a -3 penalty to the opponent’s surprise roll. When they do sight prey they attack immediately, leaping up to 30 feet in a single jump. A leaping render attacks as if in a charge (-2 initiative, +2 attack, double damage). Renders slash with their hooked claws for 2d6 damage each. They may bite with their sharp fangs for 1d6 points of damage, but only do so when feeding upon fallen prey.

Because of their incredible savagery and speed, renders make natural attacks with an intiative modifier of +1, ignoring the +3 modifier for Man-sized creatures.

Renders forced to fight under sunlight conditions are at -2 to attack.

Habitat/Society: Renders are intelligent predators in a patriarchal society with a strict dominance order, defined by age, gender and sirehood. This dominance order is evident when renders are feeding, but when they hunt and fight all renders attack simultaneously and equally. Encounters with two renders are with a mated pair, and encounters with three or more are with a mated pair and their young.

Renders mate once every ten years, travelling to racial breeding grounds deep within the bowels of Athas, laying about 20 eggs. 1-4 of these will hatch into baby renders. These young stay with their parents until they are ready to choose a mate, whereupon they form their own pack. A render’s lifespan is 250 years, but the rough lifestyle under the crust of the Athas shortens this greatly.

Ecology: Renders fill out an important niche as a common predator in the subterranean regions of Athas. Many great tunnels and spacious catacombs wind beneath the earth, starting at the Jagged Cliffs and continuing all the way to the Silt Sea. Some of these contain strange organic ruins, which historians understand are remnants of the halfling Blue Age culture. The renders have moved into these tunnels and catacombs, and are now one of the more frequently encountered creatures in the Athasian ‘Underdark’. They rarely prey on vermin, but they do hunt some larger species and they serve as food to some particularly huge creatures as well.

Occasionally a pack will find its way out of the subterranean regions, roaming around the mountains during moonlight hours.