Addazahr

Addazahr, or backbiters, are slim winged insects about two inches long, found in deserts, plains and hills. Pale amber and extremely elongated, they look like a stray bit of straw or hay. Their wings are so delicate they are nearly invisible in flight.

Addazahr do not really fight; they simply want blood from warm-blooded hosts. A bite does 1 point of damage and injects saliva that acts as a disease. In humans and most animals it makes the joints sore and swollen unless the victim saves vs. paralyzation. Pack and riding beasts such as camels and horses suffer worse, though seldom fatally: the saliva attacks their back muscles, leaving them weak and in such pain that they cannot carry loads or be made to travel far.

Cure disease ends the illness; otherwise it passes in about two weeks. Some desert tribes claim a mundane remedy that works in three days, but nobody has confirmed it. Caravans draw swarms, and the resulting delays can mean lost profits at market or even deaths if a caravan is stranded far from water. Merchants grimly joke that the backbiter is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Killing them is easy. Normal or magical fire and cold both work, and any hit destroys one. Liquids do not harm them unless they are fully submerged and kept from escaping, in which case they drown.

Addazahr wander constantly in search of food, most often in dry seasonal desert grasslands. They are omnivores but need warm blood to breed. A female that has fed on blood lays eggs within 72 hours, wherever she happens to be; the eggs are too small for the naked human or demihuman eye and hatch in a month. Hatchlings with no plants or animals to feed on die, and even well-fed young cannot breed until three months old, which keeps these prolific insects in check. They live up to a year, keep no lair and gather no treasure.

These parasites also scavenge, eating carrion (whose blood does not let them breed) and cracking small seeds. Pollen sticks to their wings, so they sometimes pollinate plants by accident. Eggs, if found, can be carried safely, and hatchlings can be kept in glass or clay jars with air and food.