Hippogriff

A melding of horse and bird, a fierce and nonsentient creature created by the four legendary Creator mages from the ancient times. The hippogriffs left to the Sierac Range, living in the mountain peaks. There are a very few who breed and train hippogriffs now, but their numbers are growing. Hippogriffs will tolerate no more than one humanoid in their life, two in rarest cases, but will be extremely loyal and protective of that person (there's a saying in SS -- "friendly as a hippogriff," which means the person the idiom is applied to is very antisocial). They're very intelligent, though not quite sentient.