Chon Chon

This flying head has incredibly large ears that constantly flap to keep the creature aloft. It babbles to itself as it flies, as if to remind itself of secrets only it knows.

ECOLOGY

Environment temperate or tropical forests or ruins
Organization solitary, pair, flight (3–12)
Treasure none

Chon chons appear to be human heads with ears so grotesquely enlarged that they can serve as fleshy wings. Their jealous hatred of all beings with full bodies easily counters their comical appearance, however. Accursed creatures drawn to places of dark magic and arcane disasters, chon chons possess the desires of the most obsessed magic users, but their dementia and twisted
forms prevent them from ever obtaining the power they seek. Although these crazed beings loathe all things, they do find a vicious kind of solace among their own kind, not out of any sort of commiseration, but rather by wallowing in the pain of their own kind. Such hateful swarms gather to bear witness to each others’ misery, inadvertently increasing the deadly efficacy of the entire group.

A single chon chon is no larger than a human head and weighs 10 pounds at most. The creature’s ears give it a total wingspan of 3 feet, making it appear much larger and more menacing.

A chon chon’s winglike ears endlessly flap, serving as monstrous wings that give it surprising grace in flight. These creatures always seem distracted, carrying on perpetual one-sided conversations and listening to voices only they can hear, then replying aloud with magical recitations or snippets of botched arcane formulae in a gibberish amalgam of Common, Draconic, and meaningless noises. This blathering has no meaning, mundane or arcane, but sounds so similar to the common phrases and syllables of magic that it insidiously intrudes upon the minds of spellcasters working their craft, invading their thoughts like an arcane earworm. An individual chon chon can suppress this babbling to speak semiintelligibly— as much as such an insanely erratic creature can be called intelligible—but rarely does so for more than a minute before lapsing back into nonsense. Groups of chon chons seem to have no ability to quiet themselves, being little more than a collection of raving lunatics inspiring one another to ever-greater heights of insanity.

Although chon chons appear to be disembodied human heads, they are a unique race of creatures and not merely the victims of a magical curse—though some particularly demented spellcasters have discovered methods by which they might take the forms of these creatures to horrific effect. How chon chons increase their numbers few scholars know—and far fewer care to find out. Hateful of all things, including others of their kinds, to say nothing of their lack of generative organs, they seem doomed to extinction. Many assume these terrors spread their terrible condition in a way similar to that of vargouilles, which many mistake them for at first glance. Chon chons, however, lack those outsiders‘ terrifying kiss. Beyond general appearance, few similarities exist between these two races.