Sludge Camouflage. (Replaces Shadowed Scales) The cloacae has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made in sewers, drainage tunnels, cisterns, culverts, flooded cellars, refuse channels, or similarly filthy urban environments.
Compacting Hide. (Replaces Swamp Glide) The cloacae can traverse tight spaces (such as pipes or masonry gaps) that would normally be too narrow for a Medium creature. It can compress its body to fit into and move through spaces as if it were a Small creature without penalty.
Ambush Clamp. (Replaces Surprise Attack) If the cloacae surprises a creature and hits it with a bite attack during the first round of combat, the target is Grappled by the drake. Until this grapple ends, the cloacae cannot bite a different creature.
Restraining Conduit. If a medium-sized creature is successfully pulled into the cloacae’s chosen lair, the narrow, crushing architecture forces the creature into the squeezing rules. The creature is immediately Restrained by the structural environment itself. Small or smaller creatures remain only Grappled within the space, as they have enough room to maneuver. Large or larger creatures cannot physically fit into these narrow conduits.
Opportunistic Cannibal. Black Ambush Drakes may turn on wounded, trapped, starving, or visibly weakened members of their own kind, especially when food is scarce or pack order has begun to break down. This behavior does not alter the drake’s statistics unless the DM determines otherwise.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d4 + 1) piercing damage.
Description
In place of the heavy, bone-crushing jaws of their swampy Black Ambush Drake (Draco insidiae palustris) kin, the sewer-adapted branch of Draco insidiae cloacae has developed an incredibly elongated, narrow muzzle. Their teeth are needle-like and exposed, interlocking outside the lips. While the wild palustris possesses a slick, oily hide designed to glide through open water, the cloacae features rough, pitted, matte-black scales. This coarse texture causes city sludge, mineral encrustations, and mold to cling to their backs like a second skin, heavily aiding their camouflage.
Most interesting is its adaptation to the architecture of its urban sewer biome. Cloacae have developed the ability to fit themselves into city drainpipes, overflow grates, and narrow masonry conduits that are a scant meter wide. Once positioned they sit completely hidden inside the dark pipe, exposing nothing but the very tip of their narrow, moss-covered snouts to the walkway, or as these cloacae drakes likely perceive them, the game trail.
When prey passes the hiding hole, these "Sewer Drakes" strike with the same explosive violence as their wild kin. The drake propels its elongated jaw and body out of the pipe like a dart, clamping onto a leg, arm, or passing appendage with absolute precision. Once locked onto their next meal, they do not roll or buck; instead, they yank and tug backward into their hiding holes. By pulling prey back into the hiding place the drake locks its victim in a confined space, severely limiting their quarry's ability to fight off their ill-intentioned advances. I surmise that this is when the hapless creature realizes the true terror of the encounter, as the cloacae safely releases its clamp within the pipe to begin consuming them at leisure.
Physically, their mass does not differ significantly from that of palustris, but they possess a noticeably more flexible bone structure. However, it remains a matter of further field study whether they can maintain this extreme structural compressibility immediately after eating their fill.
Excerpt from the recovered and reconstructed Observations Journal of Master Naturalist Corwin Vale, 1498 DR, Year of the Black Regalia.
See Also: Ambush Drake, Black (insidiae palustris)
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