Hala
These creatures are a strange and monstrous breed of dragons that originated from Limbe-Limbeu’s experiments on the catastrophic dragons of the Inner Planes. Halas have three heads, each with three tongues, six wings, a weird flattened body and nine tails that look more like a the plumage of a peacock. Despite this unusual appearance, it turns out that hala dragons are agile fliers. While they are clumsy of land they are threatening combatants, and mighty elemental mages.
Halas are numerous on the Inner Planes—they mostly inhabit the Plane of Air, but they can survive almost every other plane’s elemental environment too. They prefer to stay away from all solid planes—Ice, Earth, Mineral, Ash—and especially Vacuum, as they hate not being able to fly. Uniquely for dragon-kin, hala aren’t partial to creating lairs, and instead they embed the few items they may need in their hides. Each head of the hala has one random breath weapon out of following: lightning; buffeting hurricane wind; thick freezing fog; cloud of desiccating salt particles. They can also spit hailstone projectiles as a means of ranged attack, which halas greatly prefer over melee. And lastly, like any dragon, these creatures are natural mages, able to cast weather-related spells and change shape into humanoid or beast forms.
Halas are generally chaotic and evil. They are gluttonous and greedy, aggressive and treacherous. They are, however, willing to cooperate with other Zmeys, especially if the plan includes attacking Slavic powers and their worshippers. There’s a tale of a seemingly good hala, who was grateful when kind villagers saved her after getting herself injured. However, most bloods are suspicious of this story—even if that hala was actually hala and not some other kind of dragon, misinterpreted by clueless folk, she could very well be using her pawns in some plot.
Some halas apparently serve Stribog, which seems to be quite weird on face value. Turns out that these sods have been infected by a magical plague from Oinos that blinds them, but at the same time makes their breath weapons poisonous. These dragons, that are called sárkány, are guided by the petitioners of Stribog, who use them to defend the Tsardom of Copper from fiendish incursions and lend their might to other escapades. Many bashers believe that sárkány merely wait for the opportunity to strike back at their tormentor. Stribog, however, seems to think he’s got them under his control.
Sources: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. A homebrew addition to the lore. Margarita notes: While this adaptation is heavily based on Slavic folklore and beliefs, I must warn you. The amount of actual information we have on pre-Christian Slavic deities is so minuscule that building any kind of lore out of it is impossible. However, there’s a lot of folk beliefs about things these deities are thought to represent.
