The "Rainbow Quail"

"I tells ya the bird is real!" The old timer spoke with great insistence and enthusiasm.
He spoke to a sailor with many scars, a veteran from out west towards coral.
"Yeah sure old man, next thing you'll tell me is the *legend of the fish of wisdom* is true hah!"
"Just you wait, i'll find it and ya all will never doubt again ya hear!"

The old timer was found months later by the very same sailor, dashed upon the rocky shore of the Mandrake isles as if waiting for the sailor to pass by.
His body fresh as if he were recently slain, but having wounds older by fair. Parts picked off and eyes gouged out as if by some horrific buzzard.


Once there was a Rainbow Quail, said to be blessed by the god of of rainbows who formerly was the overseer of quails in the western isles.
This Quail was famous for its immortality and the fortune it brings to those around it, it was the gods pride and joy!
However times change and the god was slain in the balorian crusade, now having no master to control it the quail fled in fear.

But when the Raksha Malcontent of the Malice-Made Muzzle invaded the west, he found the Quail and took a twisted fondness for the immortal thing.
Seeing it as "imperfect" he twisted and warped it, fed it fae, the spirits of the dead, the living eyes and flesh of the exalted.
Until it became a thing of twisted horror, its form just as brilliant in color and immortal as it ever was... but mutated and warped into a state of pure horror that should not be able to physically live with its deformities.

Now maddened and twisted with the raksha lords own malice, it wanders freely around the isles of the near west, having been let loose by the fae upon the realm defence grids activation.
For a long time the wounds it suffered from the grid rendered it comatose by pure chance and fortune, but it has woken up in the past century.
And the same magic and wonder that once spread its legend through the west now worms its way into the populace again... a false signal for the horror at its center.

---

The "Rainbow Quail" appears like a massive bird of some sort. Too far mutated and deformed to be recognisable, traits of buzzards, hawks and things only the wyld could have spawned are visible. Its body is almost deformed with its legs twisted, its beak warped and its wings lopsided.... despite this *somehow* it lives thanks to its immortality.
And some fell joke of the wyld ensures despite these detriments its performs as well as any creature.

On average it both stands taller and has a greater wingspan (particularly on the left side) than a hybroc, while its claws vary in length the longest outsize most longswords.
It has 6 additional eyes of varying types dotted on its skull and neck, in addition to the two it retained from its original form. The only thing that remains the same (albeit faaaar larger) as its once wondrous form.

Despite these deformities it evokes a sense of wonder with its rainbow colors and a faint magical aura it excudes, somehow remaining intact despite its warping.
This does little except make prey easier to slay as their instincts are confused between the creatures passive wondrous aura... and the obvious monstrosity coming to claim them.

- - -

Once the Quail was known and tolerated as the "Scourge of Gardens" feasting upon the gardens of supplicants like some mischievous rascal.
In its twisted rebirth its taken to treating isolated settlements as gardens in instead, the fruit of its labour not quite the same flesh it once preyed upon.