Giant Scarab Beetle

These are black or brown-shelled scarabs of the kind carved on old amulets. Deep underground they eat guano and crickets, but treat anything smaller as prey.

Reclusive by nature, it always flees first, using stubby wings for loud, buzzing hops of up to 120 yards, often onto ledges.

Cornered, it lights a magical flare under its wings, brighter than sunlight, that illuminates everything within 150 feet, dispels magical darkness or shadow within 10 feet, and deals 1d6 damage per round to undead and shadow beings (shadow fiends, darkness elementals, slow shadows and the like). It burns for one round per Hit Die and leaves the bite unaffected, but since the wings generate the glow, the beetle is grounded while it shines.

Sun cults prize them as holy symbols of rebirth. They have no real society, just a taste for dung-rich places, rolling the dung into egg balls and nest walls.

Nests are round, reeking tunnels about 4 feet wide, too tight for big predators but bone dry. Treasure ends up pressed into the walls.

They also thin out the underworld's undead: an instinct some credit to a sun god drives them to swarm any undead on sight, and light plus jaws can destroy anything from skeletons to vampires.