Giant Bloodwing

This huge winged insect is 13 feet from head to tail, its wings spanning almost 20 feet. A narrow head reaches into tight spots, hollow mandibles sip blood or nectar, and moist scent-feelers fold flat in combat. Six limbs tipped with long, daggerlike talons and a pair of thin wings all attach to the thorax; at rest the wings lie along the body and trail a few feet behind, and spread they are clear and delicate-looking. Its brittle shell is black and vivid blue. The abdomen holds stored blood and nectar, swelling deep red or yellow after a meal and hanging slack and gray after weeks without one.

Bloodwings talk among themselves by scent. Mantis warriors and other insects can trade crude pheromone messages with them, though nothing complex, and other intelligent beings need psionics or magic to communicate.

It can always bring both mandibles and all six legs to bear, either while hovering or after landing and rearing up on its abdomen. Each leg does 1d4 damage and the mandibles 1d8. Starting the round after a mandible hit, it drinks 2d6 points of blood per round while the victim lies pinned and unable to attack; the bloodwing keeps striking with all its legs, and the victim may save vs. paralyzation each round to break loose. After killing by blood drain it stays fastened to the body for 1d3 rounds. Once it has drunk 50 points of blood in a fight it is full and stops draining.

At 10 hit points or fewer it belches a stinking cloud filling a 15-foot-radius sphere straight ahead; anyone inside who fails a save vs. poison is helpless for 1d6 rounds. It can do this up to three times a day.

Wild bloodwings plague herders across the city-state heartlands. They live in big swarms but do not cooperate the way hive insects do; eggs simply fall from the constantly flying swarm into the hot sand, and though just one in 1,000 hatches, that keeps the swarm's numbers up.

Mantis folk of the far north first tamed them, and some mantis warrior bands still use them as draft animals on migrations. In an emergency the handlers slice off its abdomen for food and water, or to lighten it for an extra-heavy haul; it then carries on normally for 36+1d6 hours before dying. Efforts to ride them have failed: they cannot carry much, harness injures their wings and legs, and the usual taming methods leave them unable to fly anyway.

An abdomen holds 16 gallons of water plus enough blood and nectar plasma for 32 meals, if one has the stomach. City artists use the wings as canvases, paying 50 cp for an undamaged pair.

Rumors tell of a rare giant strain growing over 20 feet long, more capable in every way, whose mandibles punch easily through mantis warrior chitin. These monsters do not truly fly but make wing-assisted leaps with little control over where they land.