Basilisk

Basilisks, also known as a cockatrice or king of the serpents, are a fabulous beast as well as the most dangerous serpents that have ever existed on Earth. Basilisks are very rare, some even believe them to be extinct.

Origin
Old tales describe basilisks as being born from a spherical, yolkless egg, laid during the days of Sirius (the Dog Star) by a seven-year-old chicken and hatched by a toad.

Traits and Physical Description
The Basilisk can grow up to fifty feet in length, and is a dark green colour with large yellow eyes. It has a large patch of white skin on the top of its head, the only area where it does not have any scales. A basilisk's eyes have the power to instantly kill anyone who looks into them. Basilisk skin is armoured like that of a dragon's, which deflects spells cast upon it. The Basilisk sheds its skin at intervals, like all other snakes, when it grows.

Basilisks can live up to nine hundred years at the most, but majority of basilisk only live to be five hundred.

Basilisk Venom
Basilisk venom is an extremely poisonous substance that only has no known cure. Basilisk venom is so powerful that it can kill a person within minutes, making the person drowsy and blurry-visioned before they die. Basilisk venom can even affect supernatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves.

Powers/Weaknesses
Those who went to hunt the basilisk took with them a mirror, which reflected back the deadly glare upon its author, and by a kind of poetical justice slew the basilisk with his own weapon. According to some tales, the crowing of a cock can also kill a basilisk.

Weasels can bite basilisks to death, their smell weakening them. Men put them into the caves where the basilisks lie hidden. The basilisk might look daggers; the weasel cared not, but advanced boldly to the conflict. When bitten, the weasel retired for a moment to eat some rue, which was the only plant the basilisks could not wither, returned with renewed strength and soundness to the charge, and never left the enemy till he was stretched dead on the plain.

Places and Locations
Africa is the basilisk's homeland. Basilisks are always found in a desert. This is not because they enjoy living there, but because its breath and sight are so destructive that they turn any landscape into a sandy desert.