Komu Ka Bawe (5e Creature)

Huge beast, unaligned

Armor Class 12 (natural armor)
Hit Points 115 (11d12 + 44)
Speed 30 ft.

Skills Perception +6, Stealth +5
Senses passive Perception 16
Languages —
Challenge 10 (5,900 XP)

Ambusher. The komu ka bawe has advantage on attack rolls against any creature it has surprised.

Blood Frenzy. The komu ka bawe has advantage on melee attack rolls on any creature that doesn't have all its hit points.

Forest Camouflage. The komu ka bawe has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to hide in forests, woodlands, or other terrain of abundant foliage.

During Kaimere's Tyrant Dynasty, tyrannosaurs were the dominant predators, with their offspring filling up the space of predators between typical mesopredators and their adults at the top. This place on the food web is known to Kaimeren naturalists as a "vassal predator," and while juvenile tyrannosaurs filled most of the niches, several other genera took the mantel as well at this time. Entelodonts were omnivores but still held the niche along with several ceratosaurs, including noasaurs^[1] and abelisaurs^[2], and eudromaeosaurs that were simialr in size and build to utahraptor. When the dynasty came crashing down during the Dynastic Extinction, each of these clades stepped up to the plate and each claimed a mantel. The entelodonts took to the prairies, as did abelisaurs along with the wetlands, and the dromaeosaurs the forests and each got massive. Their dominion over these lands was absolute until the robust monarch megaraptorans came to Kairul from Ni'khar, and while it was not the wiping of the slate it may seem, they did manage to force the resident predators into extinction or specialization. The latter is the path of the giant dromaeosaurs, as seen in their modern survivor which the native Kairulens call Komu Ka Bawe and the Assembly calls Titanophonaeus, both of which mean the same thing: "Titan slayer."
Slayer of Titans. The ancestors of titanophons like komu ka bawe (Titanophonaeus coroniris “crowned titan slayer”) were already at the upper limits of the anatomical features that set cockatrices apart from other dinosaurs, in particular the compromising of tail strength of agility, their bodies rapidly underwent changes of a much more conventional theropod. One such adaptation was the lengthening of their tail and building up of fat reserves at the base of the tail, shifting the center of balance back to the hip as they were now too large to balance at the knee as they had before. Their bodies were still slightly tilted up but as often happens nature makes due with a suboptimal form. As the signature dromaeosaur weapon, a sickle shaped claw on the second toe, was now useless as this toe had to bare the weight of the animal, they invested heavily in what to many of their relatives was simply a tool to restrain prey and process food: their jaws. Unlike other dromaeosaurs, cockatrices had serrated teeth for cutting flesh and bone, and titanophons doubled down on this, developing teeth that were trapezoidal thus giving the tooth three distinct cutting edges. Like the now extinct carcharodontosaurs^[3], they developed tall neural spines to anchor massive back and neck muscles to maneuver huge heads and deliver shearing bites with surprising flexibility. Despite the ferocity that comes with the description, the bite itself is actually quite weak in terms of raw power, making it actually a poor weapon against prey smaller or even of same size as itself, as prey is often simply pulled along rather than torn.
It is however a fantastic weapon to use against the most abundant large herbivore in the ecosystem and something so massive that shearing bites are extremely effective: the titanosaurs. When put into the context of their prey, their anatomy makes more sense than that of the generalist macropredatory role taken up by the megaraptorans. Rather than trying to restrain the great beasts or break their bones, they simply cut through their many tons of flesh, jogging in and landing a few quick bites and falling back to let them succumb to blood loss. They're not as fast as a megaraptoran but they don't have to be: they simply need to catch up to their humongous prey.
Petty Kings and Queens. Like Kairulen megaraptorans, titanophons are good parents with a fairly high degree of parental investment compared to other dinosaurs. Mothers and aunts take great care of these offspring diligently, until about nine months at which point they stop feeding them altogether and focus their time on the next generation. By this point however, the previous generation is several hundred pounds and able to subsists on small game, which includes potential nest raiders. As such, they still earn their keep by protecting their younger siblings and are protected from larger predators by the two to five adult titanophons.
Unlike robust monarchs which take as much as fifteen years to mature, titanophons grow rapidly and are mature at the age of five, being chased from their natal den at three. By this point however, they are half a ton in weight and are soon to experience a tremendous growth spurt. Before this growth spurt however, they develop macropredatory tendencies and their bauplan is much more similar to that of a conventual dromaeosaur, to keep them out of competition with their large cousins and relatives. They grow fast and have to for survival, as megaraptorans will kill adolescent titan slayers if they find them and they are vulnerable to their prey at this time. It isn’t uncommon for packs of females at this stage of life to start with between 10 to 15 individuals only to be reduced to three or five by the time they reach maturity and establish a territory.
While this is a rough lifestyle, males are thrown into a much tougher ring: their drive to dominate each other often results in fighting and once they’re on their own, these fights can quickly turn lethal and subordinate males flee for their lives. It’s often that these fights result in a single dominant individual or pair and this experience not only prepares the titan slayers to establish their own territory, but also for combat with megaraptorans: although the Kairulen forest monarchs prefer to settle their scores with intimidation and posturing, while komu ka bawe care not for such displays and simply charge them while the megaraptoran inflates its chests and bares its claws. While there are documented cases of megaraptorans hunting and killing titan slayers and they outnumber the titanophons by a significant margin, this aggression and the fact that komu ka bawe could easily rip open a windpipe has done wonders to keep the species alive in the face of competition. It helps as well that titanophons prefer different prey than megaraptorans and the titanosaur’s abundance favors their survival. Komu ka bawe, despite the massive lost in genera and distribution of titanophons, is proof that legacies can persists in specialists and through such specializations, ecological stability can be found.