Domestic Animals I [Dark Sun]

Across the city-state heartlands and the humid jungle borderlands, a handful of tamed creatures do most of the hauling, riding and feeding. Every one of them is useful twice over: once alive, and again when its hide, shell, beak or claws go to the craftsman.

Scale-runner: A featherless, flightless bird up to 7 feet tall and 200 pounds, its flaky scales pale gray to deep red, with useless folded wings, a snaky neck, a wedge-shaped beak, and long legs ending in four razor-clawed toes. Easygoing and able to eat tough plants, snakes, lizards and bugs, it is a perfect herd animal. Its eggs are so nourishing that a person can live on them for months, and one raw egg can stand in for a gallon of water, though that trick only works for up to a week. The meat is excellent too. A threatened flock huddles, then bolts at movement 18 for up to half a mile (its usual walk is 12). Trapped, the flock fights together, pecking for 1d6 and then raking with a claw for 1d4. Wing scales make shields or AC 6 armor, beaks become fine spearheads, and claws become daggers and tools.

Shellback lizard: Midway in size between a pack insect and a dune hulk, a shellback stretches 16 feet and weighs about two tons, with a heavy shell on top and supple scales underneath. It makes a lively mount, plodding along at movement 15 for a full day and night without rest, or sprinting at 18 for a mile. It carries up to 750 pounds, often in a howdah strapped to its back. Its weakness is appetite: it must graze every few hours, and an underfed shellback becomes almost unmanageable, so nobody takes one across barren country. In a fight it slaps with its tail for 1d6 and bites for 1d8 in the same round; a natural 20 on the bite clamps a man-sized or smaller victim for an extra 1d20 crushing damage. The shell makes AC 5 armor, and the belly scales weave into AC 7 leather mesh.

Pack insect: Docile, black-shelled giant insects 4 feet high, 8 feet long and up to 400 pounds, with six spindly clawed legs and jointed mouth pincers for carrying, eating and fighting. One can run at full speed all day bearing a 200-pound rider plus 200 pounds of gear, and since it digests nearly any organic matter it thrives almost anywhere. Elves are the main herders. A hive naturally divides into three castes: honey-makers, soldiers and brood queens. Honey-makers store melon-sized globes of sweet green honey in their abdomens to feed the young, and the whole hive in lean times; people can live on it alone for three weeks before craving other food, and tame hives make more of it than wild ones. When queens are ready to lay, 20-50 eggs apiece, the hive digs into thick vegetation and refuses to budge until they hatch while soldiers savagely guard the site. Herders either wait or walk away. Pincers deal 1d6; only soldiers carry venom, and their victims must save vs. poison or be paralyzed within 2d12 rounds, with effects lasting 2d6 hours. Honey-makers fight if they must; queens never fight, even for themselves or their young. A dead pack insect floods its flesh with a stench that sickens even a starving giant, so only desperate scavengers eat one. Its chitin makes AC 5 armor that has a 20% chance to shatter uselessly every time it is struck.

Dune hulk: A mound-shaped lizard up to 30 feet long and six tons, with a thick sun-shielding shell over back and head (AC 7) and a softer belly (AC 9). Savage and never truly tamed, a yoked pair still slowly hauls a 20-ton wagon, though they wander off the road on a whim, cargo and all, and sometimes eat their handlers. Psionicists handle them best. Its long tongue whips out for 1d8; on a natural 20 it snags the target and drags it to the mouth, where a failed save vs. paralyzation means being swallowed whole. A swallowed victim can do nothing but use psionics and is digested in 2d6 hours. If anything creeps underneath, the beast reflexively flops onto its belly for 2d12 crushing damage, and may hurt itself depending on what it lands on.