Azhdarch
SpeciesFirst appears in Empire of Silence, Chapter 6
The azhdarch is a non-sentient alien predator used as a baiting attraction in the opening bout of the Colosso. A team of four douleters is required to manage a single specimen, using stun rods and great chains to restrain it.
Biology
The azhdarch resembles a pterosaur in having leathery wings and a large frame, and a dragon in having a long spine-covered tail and hooked claws. Its most distinctive feature is its neck: nearly twice the length of a man, open from its vestigial head to the start of its thorax, and lined with hooked teeth that hinge open and closed like the mandible-leaves of a fly trap. When struck with a stun rod it produces a gurgling howl, and when distressed it blows sputum from its open throat. The creature is described as fundamentally wrong to human perception, provoking an instinctive revulsion rooted in an evolutionary expectation of what life ought to look like.
Information current through Empire of Silence, Chapter 10