Household Animals [Dark Sun]

Homes and trading houses in the desert world often host small creatures that pay their way in comfort or service. Nobody keeps them because they are cute; nothing on that world is.

Hum beetle: A flightless beetle with a domed, opalescent shell from cobalt blue to copper green over four pairs of stubby wings; its tiny head and short legs make it look faintly silly. Fanning those wings against the inside of its shell produces a soft, rising and falling hum that it uses to talk to other beetles and to lure the small flying insects it eats, which grow drowsy and easy to catch. Listeners who fail a Wisdom check find it soothing, but it has no hold over anyone's will. The hum is really the beetle cooling itself, and its pitch and the shell's shimmer shift through the day. Better trading houses keep at least one, and letting one crawl over bare skin, buzzing and fanning a tiny breeze, is a known luxury. Halflings love them, and when hungry find them tasty. Hum beetles live alone and meet only to mate. Put two together and their hum changes: a male and female fall into harmony within minutes, likely courtship, while two of the same sex make an ugly, tuneless drone. More than an hour of direct sun kills one, its hum climbing higher until it stops.

Warden lizard: Spiny-backed, mottled lizards 12 to 17 inches long and 2½ to 5 pounds, often called the prettiest on the desert world, changing colors with each yearly molt. They signal with simple body language, and magical conversation gets jittery, suspicious replies. The bite does only 1 point; their worth lies in innate clairsentient psionics: the precognition science plus the devotions spirit sense, danger sense and poison sense. When a warden lizard suddenly dives for cover, sensible owners follow. Even captive-born ones stay wild. A warden attunes to one place and puts up with a few people if fed regularly, keeping watch and raising an alarm at any perceived threat, unless it has been mistreated, in which case it spitefully stays silent. Households count them lucky. They are lazy and would rather be fed than hunt, though they stalk insects and small rodents with great stealth. Owners usually catch a young one and let it settle in on its own terms; within a week it either adopts the place or vanishes. Caged or chained, it never stops being alarmed.

Water slug: A harmless, tasteless slug 2 to 3 inches long, in many colors, with a short pair of vibration-sensing antennae above a sucking mouth. It rides on obliging people or creatures, feeding on their salt, sweat and dead skin, and travels on small suction pads on its belly. In melee, a slug riding a combatant has a cumulative 10% chance per round of being struck and killed. It shuns sunlight, shriveling to death after 1d4 turns of direct exposure. Slugs breed in stagnant water or rotting grain, producing about a dozen young that mature in 3-4 weeks, and otherwise live alone. Desert travelers carry them because an extra stomach holds an improbable amount of water that bursts free when the slug is eaten raw and alive. Each holds about ½ cup, so an active man needs 32 a day to stay hydrated in the desert. Buyers should beware, as crooked sellers sometimes slip a leech or worse into the batch.

Resin snail: A tiny spiral-shelled snail rarely over an inch long, pale and variably banded, whose two eye stalks wave constantly to signal simple ideas to other snails. It breathes through its skin and cannot attack at all. Colonies always hold an odd number; if an even number are penned closely, one dies or is killed, for reasons only the snails know. Inedible, the snail is prized for two things. Its shell makes curious jewelry, and as it hunts food and moisture it leaves a glossy ochre trail of amberlike resin that dries as hard as stone, saving as stone, at a quarter of stone's weight. People use it to coat weapons, waterproof goods, and seal food or the dead, among other things. Each snail makes just one fluid dram (1/8 fluid ounce) a day.