Dragon Beetle

A dragon beetle is a foot-long, wingless insect, dark red with black edging along its spiked shell. Three horns jut from its head and a wicked stinger curls behind. Threatened, it gives off a dry, rasping hiss.

Nearly mindless, blind and deaf, it relies on taste and touch, and nestmates share only touches and a few sounds.

The beetle bites with strong mandibles for 1d4 damage and stings with venom. The sting itself does almost no harm, and to humans, demihumans and most other creatures it is no worse than an insect bite that smarts and then itches. Drakes, dragons and wyrmkin are another matter: one struck must save vs. poison, taking 1d10 damage on a success, or 2d10 on a failure along with a burning red scar around the wound.

Alone, a dragon beetle is timid. It runs if it can, and if cornered it freezes and hisses, refusing to strike back even while being hit. Two or more together turn vicious, biting and stinging anything that comes within 10 feet. Disturb the nest itself and every beetle present swarms out with +1 to attack rolls and +1 damage on their bites.

They infest the depths beneath the ancient fallen city, including the moaning ruins, the fire-caverns and even the buried city, in nests of up to 16 that fill ruins, narrow caves and dense clumps of underground plant growth. Each day at least half the nest goes out looking for fresh carcasses or prey the group can easily overwhelm.

Wyrmkin of the buried city must guard their fanner fields constantly against packs that pick off small fanners, and given the venom, nobody wants that duty.

Each nest follows a bigger leader of 3 HD with a tougher AC 5 shell, a 1d6 bite and venom that deals 1d12 to wyrmkin and other draconic creatures on a failed save, or 2d12 on a successful one.

Mostly carrion eaters, dragon beetles can kill small creatures in numbers, and wyrmkin sometimes end up on the menu. The group drags any big find back to the nest, where a medium-sized body feeds them for up to two months and also serves as an egg chamber. The young hatch in about a month, eat the leftover flesh, then crawl out to join the nest. Such carcasses, especially dead wyrmkin, sometimes still carry treasure.

Venom can be milked and smeared on weapons to devastate wyrmkin foes. A beetle yields 1-4 single-use doses; on a bare blade the poison lasts a day, and sealed in glass or ceramic it lasts a week. Both generations of wyrmkin have used it on each other, but gathering it is too risky to be common.

Elder wyrmkin of the fire-caverns sometimes test youths by sending them to bring back a few live beetles from a nest. Enough shells can be worked into armor and shields, though only a few old wyrmkin know the slow craft.