Sand Lion
GM's Eyes Only
Spoilers. This page is written for the GM, and players who read on will learn things their characters don't know.
A pit-trapping hive beetle of Dar Ilm al-Zakir's deserts. Source: Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon, p. 10 (Cataphract Beetle).
Names. Sand lion on the street. Dar Ilm's scholars call it asad al-naml, "lion of the ants," the Arabic for antlion.
What it is. A squat, six-legged carnivorous beetle about three feet long, armored in a spiky carapace thick enough to turn small-arms fire. Its mandibles can rend steel, and it spits a stream of caustic digestive fluid.
The hive. A burrow can hold up to two hundred. Most are drones that forage and tend an immobile, defenseless queen. The rest are soldiers, a little larger and with heavier mandibles, that guard the burrow and dig the traps. Foraging drones attack anything they meet, dismember it, and drag it home in pieces.
The pits. Near the burrow, soldiers dig widening circles of loose sand that collapse inward under anything but a sand lion, sliding the victim toward the center. Two or three soldiers wait there, buried to the head, while drones mill about nearby. A field of pits can stretch for miles at the edge of a hive's ground.
In Tir Hathar. A denizen of Dar Ilm's deserts. It makes a southern counterpart to the north's Pinebores: a beetle of each climate.
Stats¶
First draft, built from WWN's baseline stat lines.
| HD | AC | Atk | Dmg | Shock | Move | ML | Inst | Skill | Save | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drone | 1 | 15 | +1 | 1d6 | 1/13 | 30' | 9 | 5 | +1 | 15+ |
| Soldier | 2 | 15 | +3 | 1d8 | 1/13 | 30' | 10 | 5 | +1 | 14+ |
| Queen | 4 | 11 | — | — | — | 0' | 12 | 1 | +0 | 13+ |
- Acid spit. Drones and soldiers, once per scene: a ranged attack out to 20 feet for 1d6 damage that ignores armor-based AC.
- The pit. A pit of loose sand 20 to 30 feet across. Anyone entering it, or starting a turn in it, makes an Evasion save or falls prone and slides to the center. Climbing out takes a Move action and a successful Dex/Exert check against difficulty 8; a failure means another slide. Sand lions are never caught by their own pits.
- Pit fighters. Soldiers wait buried to the head at the center of a pit, and gain +2 to hit and damage against anyone inside it.
- The hive. A burrow holds up to two hundred, mostly drones. Killing the queen breaks the hive's Morale: every sand lion makes an immediate Morale check.
Still open: playtesting the numbers.