Axe Beak

OG AXE BEAK
Fast and with a decently hard-hitting claw-claw-bite routine, the axe beak could be any number of statlines for smaller predatory animals, honestly. There's not a lot going for them as is- it's a killer dodo, nuff said. I wonder if they were just called 'Axe Beaks' because the players couldn't take 'Giant Chicken' seriously. Although, they are specifically described as 'prehistoric' so maybe they were for all those presumably more Conan/Pleistocene-era D&D games that one naturally infers existed from similar monster manual entries

In anycase, they have become popular as unusual mounts, perhaps due to similarities with chocobos from the final fantasy games, or maybe there was some adventure that had demihumans riding them and it stuck.

SUNSET REALM AXEBEAK

yes, i admit it, i had no desire to draw a bird, i just wanted to play around with different brush settings

These large birds are one of several species endemic only to the tropical areas of the Fault, though fossils of them can be found all over the beast islands, typically on deforested islands. They are swift jungle-runners, able to hop over obstacles and navigate with the reaction times typical to birds avoiding collisions at high speeds, and make excellent, if vicious, mounts for forest terrain. They hunt in small packs, and will happily use the titular 'axe beak' to chop down trees to reach tasty bird nests and treed mammals. These avians communicate by rapping their beaks on wood, as opposed to any vocalizations, though they occasionally make dreadful hissing noises and barking 'caws.'

Though 200 years ago they were only ridden by free-living goblins who served as the first line of defense for the Orb of Omnipotence, in modern times they are popular pets, steeds, and food sources (meat and eggs both) for the two major civilizations of the fault- the northwestern Gondazong and the eastern M'sheshans. The creatures are also used in the lumber industry, chopcock fighting (chopcock being a far more common name than axebeak), and fancy breeding, the latter of which having produced coloration on par with fancy chickens and parrots.

the gauche of both these gondazong chopcock breeders bringing juvenile Classic Mangobeaks
will doubtless haunt them for months to come