Domestic Animals II [Dark Sun]

Beyond the great caravan beasts, the desert world's farmers keep humbler stock for meat, milk, hides and thread. Some are barely tame, and one is lethal to touch.

Shell-pig: A small, piglike animal in a hard shell, gray to reddish brown, with a flat rooting snout, keen nose and ears, and poor eyes. It would rather run; cornered, it charges squealing, bites for 1d4 with its blunt teeth, and flees. An uncleaned bite has a 5% chance per day of turning septic, laying the victim up for 1d4 days. Shell-pigs eat nearly any plant, scraps included. A herd is one boar, several sows and their young, and once a young boar comes of age one must be sold or the two will fight to the death. Sows litter twice a year, up to 10 piglets each time. Their grunts and squeals convey only danger, food and contentment. The meat is rich with a faint nutty taste; the milk is poor. Shells serve as bowls or crude greaves but cannot be worked. Prices: about 50 cp alive, 20 cp as a carcass, up to 10 cp for an intact shell.

Hump-ox: Drab gray cattle with soft hides, a tougher hide over the skull, and a fixed water-storing hump behind the head. Their side vision and smell are weak. Bulls' horns curve forward past the eyes; cows' are short and straight. A bull guards the herd, slashing with each horn for 1d6; if both hit, it skewers and flings the foe any direction for another 1d8. Landing among the cows invites a trampling of 1d4 per cow that connects (1d2 for young). Suckling calves cannot attack. Herds have one or more bulls, three or more cows apiece, and calves, led by the biggest bull. Fully domestic, they stay near the farm, pull ploughs and turn water wheels, and graze rather than eat costly grain. Cows calve yearly. A bull yields 250 pounds of meat, a cow 200, though cows are kept for their thick, life-sustaining milk, up to three gallons a day, which spoils within days. Hides take dye well; head hide stiffens shields or makes flexible armor joints. The hump holds 1d6+2 pints of flat, tepid but drinkable water and becomes a decent waterskin, though alcohol rots it. Bulls sell for up to 1 gp, cows for up to 3 gp, carcasses for half a bull's price.

Poison silkworm: An eyeless, off-white caterpillar 8 inches long, with two feelers and a bullet-shaped head that is mostly mouth. It cannot attack, but it oozes venom, and any break in its skin sprays it. Whoever crushes, stabs or cuts one needs a Dexterity check at -4 to dodge the spray. A splashed victim saves vs. poison or takes 15 damage and a rash for 1d4 days (treat as Class A). Dodging the spray still leaves the character at -4 to save against this venom for 1d4 hours. If swallowed or splashed into a wound, the venom counts as class J: a failed save means agonizing death in 1d4 rounds unless neutralize poison is cast at once, and even a successful save costs 20 damage and the same -4 penalty for 1d4 hours. Leather or better armor shields what it covers, and the venom loses its potency on weapons and armor within minutes. Only fire destroys the worm and its poison. The caterpillars swarm berry trees for 10 days, only eating; their venom, harmless to them, feeds the tree into rapid regrowth. They pupate for 12 days, and the poison-free cocoons unwind into fine, strong silk; farmers leave a few on the trees for the next crop. The harmless butterfly mates and dies within a day. Nothing hunts the worm, since eating one, even for a drake, likely means an agonizing death.

Horn-nag: A cloven-hoofed beast with a short black, brown and white coat, a horned, horselike head, a keen nose and wide-set beady eyes. It fights viciously with independent hoof strikes and a bite, and males also gore with their horns for 1-4; a horn attack that beats the needed roll by 4 or more adds another 2d4. They are only half tame: a well-fed, well-treated flock lingers around a farm. Flocks are a quarter males, half females, a quarter young. Wild ones flee anything on two legs, and food may soothe or spook them. Males stand night watch, and light sleep and sharp ears make the flock hard to surprise. Horn-nags eat almost anything, offal included, which makes them handy for waste disposal, though they prefer plants and offal to fresh meat and only eat a fallen foe when starving. The meat is decent, the milk tasty, and the tough hide makes clothing or cheap leather. Sold dead, one fetches a copper for every three pounds of meat, and the hide adds up to 5 cp.