Tembo

''This creature resembles a large, hairless canine. Its four foot- long body is covered in loose folds of light brown, scaly hide. All four legs end in razor-sharp claws, and large canines protrude from its upper jaw.''

Tactics
Though all tembo love to fight, their battle tactics are as unpredictable as these vicious beasts themselves. Some attack by stealth from a short distance away, sneaking as close as possible to their victims and trying to destroy them with a death field. Others prefer to play with their victims, batting them from one paw to another, using claws of the vampire each time the paw lands. Still other tembo like to leap into the fray immediately, meleeing their victims from the first round.

Each tembo pack has its own tactics. Some prefer to wait until a group camps for the night and then sneak in to drag one victim away at a time. Other packs prefer hit and run tactics, slowly wearing their prey down until they can no longer resist. Still others enjoy direct attacks, attempting to overrun their enemies.

Description
The tembo is a savage predator that will eat anything, but it prefers the children of sentient races. Tembo base themselves in a lair or den and hunt in packs throughout the surrounding wilderness. They have also been known to inhabit the ruins that lie beneath many of the large cities of the Tablelands.

In addition to their physical speed and strength, tembo also boast psionic powers and the ability to drain the life energy of their victims. Few are those souls that can brave and endure a den of Tembo.

Tembo are universally hated and despised because of their preference for young humanoids. Tembo are famous for sneaking into nomadic camps to drag off Elven children, for skulking about Dwarven villages prowling for untended toddlers, even for sneaking into populated cities to snatch noble babes from their cradles. They have extremely strong jaws in relation to their body size and have a very powerful digestive system with highly acidic fluids, making them capable of eating and digesting their entire prey, including skin, teeth, horns, and bones.

A typical tembo stands between 3 and 6 foot long, including tail, and can stand 3 feet tall at the shoulder. An adult tembo weighs 600 pounds. Instead of fur, these creatures have a scaly hide, which help to conserve moisture. Tembo show little sexual dimorphism, usually with males being only slightly larger than the females.

Society
Tembo hunt for pleasure as much as much as they do for sustenance. They are intelligent enough to engage in cruelty for its own sake, sometimes putting their victims through torturous cat-and-mouse games before consuming them.

Tembo prowl the desert in small packs that seem to have no real social organization or cohesiveness. Each tembo does more or less as it pleases, not sharing any prey it downs with the others. The tembo's one concession to social life is that if one of them is attacked, the entire pack will join to fight the enemy.