Pasari-Niml

Pasari-nimal, often just called mants, are tool-using insect predators: huge black ants bearing human heads with brown, creased skin, pointed ears, goggling eyes and long faces warped by spite. Two of their six legs can grip weapons or implements.

Merely seeing a mant is a test of nerve. Anyone whose Hit Dice do not exceed the mant's rolls a save vs. spell: a failure locks the viewer in place until something attacks, while a success sends the viewer running flat out for 1d3 rounds. Tougher creatures save only to avoid fleeing, in their case for 1d2 rounds.

Squads mix warriors with nobles, who are linked mind to mind with their queen (the calipha) and run the battle, first sending a few warriors to probe the enemy, then committing everyone. Up to eight mants can swarm one man-sized target.

Against armored foes they tunnel beneath the target in one round until the ground caves in; failing a save vs. paralyzation leaves the victim sunk in 1 to 3 feet of earth. Burrowers then pry at the plate, opening a gap after 1d2 rounds, and one mant attacks through each breach.

Outmatched squads call 1d4 more squads, arriving in 1d4+1 rounds, or simply fall back and wait. Each warrior and noble carries a knife and two darts, most also haul awls and pry bars, and all are immune to charm and enchantment spells.

A nest holds 6d4×10 warriors and 1d20+20 nobles serving one queen, with 1d4 squads always patrolling its edges. Many lie under human cities, tunneling through walls and raiding by night; in the wild, workers dig the queen a chamber and keep raising a grander palace over it.

Keeping a harem of nobles, the queen lays eggs equal to her Hit Dice every day; they hatch after three weeks, about one in eight as a noble. A 6-HD queen can lay one royal egg a year, and once it hatches a squad carries the young queen several miles off to found a new nest.

Mants worship her, carving her face throughout their halls, and share an antenna-borne telepathy that works within a mile of her.

Mants eat any beast or monster and strip the land around a nest. Workers feed the queen, who regurgitates part of each meal for them. If she dies, they perish within 1d2 days; if they all die, she survives three days per Hit Die, perhaps until new hatchlings emerge. Only very tough predators hunt grown mants.

The queen lives to feed, be adored and lay. A small, lovely woman's head with flowing hair and feathery antennae crowns her blotchy, grub-like body. With only a feeble bite and stunted legs, she cannot use tools and moves by squirming. She gains 1 HD and a foot of length yearly.