Garbug

Kin to the corpse creeper, a garbug looks like a lobster with insect wings: an exoskeleton, eyestalks, antennae, five pairs of pincered limbs, and six tentacles ringing its mouth. Males are glossy black with a long proboscis. The dominant females are a vivid violet, except for a heavy pair of dark yellow claws on the foremost limbs.

Garbugs eat carrion but would rather feed on prey that is alive and unable to move. Six 2-foot tentacles each hit for 1 point and inject venom: save vs. paralyzation per hit or be paralyzed 2d6 rounds, with simultaneous hits not stacking. The venom is mildly acidic to aid digestion, and if not rinsed off it burns for 1 point per turn over two hours.

A black male adds a proboscis jab for 1d4. If it paralyzes a victim in a round when the proboscis hits, it leaves the tube in and drains blood for 1d4 per round. Males are stubborn, frequently battling until slain over a mere snack. A violet female instead uses her yellow claws, 1d6 each, rending for an extra 1d4 if both hit, then rips off chunks of a downed foe and feeds them into her mouth with her tentacles. Their other pincers are too weak to fight and only hold food or victims.

Males wander without lairs; females claim a cave or build a nest. Once or twice a year the sexes meet, and males duel in spectacular aerial proboscis fights for the right to mate. A week later she leaves 20-40 eggs in still water, hatching into crayfish-like nymphs colored by sex, about five or six males per female, which mature in two months. Predators, adult garbugs most of all, leave only 2d6 survivors per nest to claim hunting grounds. Few live past five years.

Like corpse creepers they clear refuse and cull the weak, and they love hunting spiders, females being expert at luring them out. They eat where they kill, so bones and stray treasure litter their range. Their tentacles yield paralysis poisons and may help make scrolls, glyphs and other paralyzing items. A female caught as a nymph can be raised as a guard beast that knows a few people and simple commands, fetching up to 1,000 gp; males have never been trained.