Thoqqua

Thoqquas are cantankerous creatures of fire and slag. Their bodies generate incredible heat that allows them to burrow or melt through most surfaces, even solid rock. Thoqquas are native to the vast ash deserts and lava fields of the Plane of Fire. There, they consume ore and minerals, which their furnace-like bodies then smelt into armor plates that grant the creatures their armored forms.

These creatures' foremost body segment tapers into a straight, hornlike beak that glows with a blistering heat. Steam and smoke constantly hiss from their joints, and from a distance, thoqquas can be mistaken for strange metallic constructs. Adult thoqquas are 5 feet long and weigh 200 pounds.

Thoqquas are dangerous to approach-they attack without thinking when startled or frustrated. If they don't immediately chase away intruders within their territory, then they might gradually come to view that area as property and even guard it. Mephits seem to understand this curious thoqqua thought process, occasionally brokering deals with the magma worms. The mephits claim that the mountain- sized ancestors of modern thoqquas were servants of the elemental lords and dug the first volcanoes in the young worlds of the Material Plane. These "progenitor worms" then retired to the worlds' cores, where their heat warms the planets even today. Thoqquas on the Material Plane do congregate around volcanoes-though whether this tendency is to protect a mineral-rich food site or sacred place, or simply out of comfort, depends on the thoqqua in question.