Dune Reaper

A dune reaper is a towering, menacing beast up to 10 feet tall, with a fanged mouth flanked by mandibles, a line of razor-edged plates down its spine and thick scaly hide from red to dark brown. Its forelimbs end in sword-like blades, and its folded hind legs give it a mighty leap. Its eyes glow an eerie red, a cloying smell of rot hangs around it, and its howl carries across the wastes. Such fearsome looks make reapers prized in arena combat.

Fiercely territorial, reapers patrol in clans of 3-6 (at least one warrior, the rest drones), killing intruders and hauling the bodies home to feed the pride.

Low intellect hides savage cunning; reapers will wait days beside caravan routes. A favorite ambush is to crouch atop dunes overlooking a trail and drop onto passersby with blades extended; a successful leap deals 6d6 and gains +5 to hit from the weight and speed of the fall.

In melee the blade arms strike fast for 3d6, plus 7 damage from sheer strength, and the jaws and mandibles bite for 2d6. A second successful bite locks the mandibles into the flesh, and from then on the reaper hits automatically for 2d6 every round until the victim pries them loose by succeeding at a Bend Bars/Lift Gates roll, giving up his own attacks that round. Tough hide gives AC 2, and they are agile if not fast.

Prides of up to 30 follow a strict matriarchal order: the matron, female warriors and male drones. Females grow larger, and the oldest and strongest rules, leading in battle and in the search for food; any female may challenge her in a fight to the death.

Each pride keeps two multi-level, adobe-like hives of sand and gravel bound with drone spittle, built at cliff bases near water and extending above and below ground, and lives half the year in each.

Only the matron breeds, mating once a season at the ancestral water beside each hive. She then kills her mate, lays 5-6 eggs in his body and buries it near the shore. The pride returns two months later as the young hatch, culls some to balance warriors and drones, and absorbs the rest, which mature in about two months.

A scout that finds prey performs a dance of soft chirrs and scents that tells the pride its direction, distance, kind and number.

Reapers are omnivores that will devour any plant or beast, even swallowing pebbles that seem to aid digestion. In hard times prides fight each other over food, often to the death. Sorcerer tyrants enjoy releasing a reaper above two gladiators just as one is about to deliver a killing blow. Their blades become swords and their plates shields and armor.

Drones are the smallest reapers and make up about two-thirds of a pride. Dim but tireless, they build and forage, acting only on orders. Each is bonded for life by pheromones to one warrior; if she dies, the pride destroys her remaining drones. Drones never attack their own warrior or any matron, but they will attack another warrior who meddles with their chain of command or tasks, until slain or called off. Only the matron can override their warrior's orders.

Warriors, about a third of the pride, act as sergeants enforcing the matron's will, each bonded to 2-5 drones, with a newborn drone replacing any that die. Their psionic powers include mind link and superior invisibility as sciences, plus the devotions psionic crush, mind thrust, mind bar, contact, send thoughts, molecular agitation, inertial barrier and ballistic attack. After the opening charge a warrior usually hangs back and supports her drones with project force and ballistic attack, or uses inflict pain to cripple a strong foe. If the drones are losing, she flees under superior invisibility to warn the pride and bring help. This is instinct, not cowardice: a matron attacks any warrior whose clan is wiped out, and the warrior almost never survives.

The matron has a warrior's statistics and abilities but always maximum hit points. She decides when and where each clan hunts and when the pride moves between hives.