Megapede

A megapede is built like an ordinary centipede scaled up to monstrous size. Its segmented body runs 100 to 150 feet, with a pair of five-foot legs roughly every two feet, each ending in flexible claws. Instead of hard plates, a bulbous, fur-covered hide serves as a sort of false exoskeleton.

Alternatively it bites with its huge jaws for 3d10, giving up its leg attacks that round; a bitten creature must save vs. poison or lose another 20 hit points, or just 1d3 on a success.

It can also use two different psionic powers per round if it skips melee that round. Like many desert-world creatures, it keeps its psionic defenses always active, still paying their PSP cost but free to use them alongside anything else. Sciences: death field, detonate, disintegrate, energy containment, mind link, project force, psionic blast, tower of iron will. Devotions: contact, ego whip, mind thrust, mental barrier, thought shield, intellect fortress, psionic crush, aversion, reduction, double pain, chameleon power, biofeedback, soften.

Apart from the world's dragon-tyrant and a few legendary horrors, megapedes are the greatest peril of desert travel. Too large to hide, most stay buried and surface only to eat passersby. They love herds of scale-runners and even pack insects, yet can live on plants alone for weeks.

To breed, it seeks an isolated spot, ideally among the stony wastes of the city-state heartlands, and spins a cocoon near 60 feet long holding up to three eggs. Young emerge after four or five weeks at 20 to 30 feet long and reach full size within three months. The parent instinctively fights anything that threatens the cocoon but is not otherwise protective.

Megapede claws make excellent arrowheads and quarrel tips that add +1 to damage without being magical. The poison sacs can be harvested; their Class B venom stays potent for about a month before drying out.