dailybestiary:

Over time, one-off dragon species have become one of my
favorite monster categories.  I love
their wildness and their weirdness, how they harken back to early folktales and
myths, and how each one’s set of abilities and characteristics is a surprise
instead of checkboxes on a five-dragon matrix.

So naturally I’m delighted by the khala, a female water
dragon from Bulgarian mythology.
Introduced to Pathfinder via the Golarion’s dark, vaguely Slavic
fairytale land of Irrisen, the khala has added supernatural cold to her portfolio
as well.  A three-headed, snake-like, ice-spewing
beast, she brings winter with her wherever she goes.  Even her bite is laced with a poisonous
chilling disease.

The presence of a khala implies both history and corruption,
because there is a warping in the race’s past.  Somewhere back in the distant strands of time,
they were prouder wyrms and their lands more beautiful or fertile places…but no
more.  Khalas tend to linger in the same
regions as witches, hags, cruel magical or military tyrants, and frost
giants…anywhere where decades or centuries of cold, corruption, coercion, and
control have worn down the land and its people.

There’s also the mystery of how khalas reproduce, and the
fate of their male zmey counterparts.  Ecologically
minded adventurers might wish to see the zmeys restored; defenders of
civilization might wish the khalas wiped out completely.  Other dragons might fill in for the zmeys as
well—the flame-spewing, multinecked gorynyches seem a particularly good fit.  But the demise of the zmeys might also serve
as an origin for the cursed taninivers or the mysterious damned azi as well…

A mysterious wood has
grown up around Dun Harrow, hiding the ancient fort and its renowned,
possibly magical stone carvings.  Even
the weather seems to linger chill and stormy over the surrounding shire.  A khala has used repeated suggestions to take a dryad queen as her
lover and force the fey’s kinswomen to reshape their forest as she desires.

When the shattering
of the Sphere of Black Omens corrupted the Elflands, Par Tarthelion
suffered the worst.  Its crystal towers
grew dark and cracked; its trees turned thorny and brittle; its rivers ran with
blood and the weeping of sores.  And when
the cold winds blew from the north, no longer held at bay by elf weather magic,
Par Tarthelion’s guardian green dragons shriveled and split, each one
transforming into—or was it birthing?—a khala.
If there is one small consolation, it’s that the nightmarish beasts
cannot breed, the guardian greens all having been female.  At least, that is what the elven exiles hope…

When the Bohemians
left the poor, overworked foothills of their homeland in search of the rich
plains of the American Midwest, they brought their work ethic and their mournful
songs…but also their nightmares.  Through
possession, subterfuge, and the mysterious Grey Roads of the Otherlands, hags,
soulbound dolls, dybbuks, ice devils, and the terrible khalas all found their
way to the Great Lakes region.  Canadian
gnomish settlers and furriers report that monsters hold the northern shore of Lake
Huron, and Lake Superior is nearly entirely overrun.  Adventurers who were running guns to the
Lakota Indians and the Lake Crowfolk tengu tribes now find themselves being
offered pardons if they will go with a U.S. Army detachment to drive the khalas
out of the Great Lakes.

—Irrisen: Land of
Eternal Winter 59 & Pathfinder
Bestiary 5 151

Irrisen pluralizes
khala as “khala”; B5 uses
“khalas.”  I like the former but went with
the latter for consistency.

Khalas roam the wilds of Senksen, violently enforcing their will on any other creatures they can. They once ruled the polar continent alongside the zmey, but when the umbral dragons invaded, they killed all of the zmey in order to limit the numbers of these powerful competitors. Even now, khalas hold out hope of finding a lost zmey specimen and rekindling their race.