Sha'az

The sha'az are insect-humanoids built for arctic cold and sworn enemies of the haun. A sha'az has a nearly human head and torso above six insectile legs. Its broad chest narrows to a thin, muscular waist, and it usually stands on its back four legs with the upper body upright. Fluffy white down covers it, thickest and felted on the four hind feet. Retractable hooks on every foot cling to sheer ice, and the front pair carry smaller, nimble hooks that serve as hands.

Under the down the body is skinny, wiry and gray-skinned, armored with chitin over shoulders, back and thorax. Beneath a thick white mane the face is nearly human, with deep-set eyes and a hooked nose, but two big serrated mandibles jut from the cheeks. Male warriors hide four delicate, translucent wings in the down of their backs and can fly in anything short of extreme weather.

Alone, a sha'az shuns combat and tries to alert the hive; in hunting packs they are dangerous. They use spears, swords, nets, bows and shields but no armor, and warriors can fire bows while flying at -2 on top of other modifiers.

A warrior may instead bite. The mandibles deal 1d4, and once per day the bite can carry a freezing venom that deals 1d6 each round until the victim saves vs. poison. A save is allowed each round at a cumulative -1 per round, and a victim reduced to 0 hit points freezes solid and dies.

One warrior in ten is a knight with maximum hit points and an empathic link to the queen when away from the hive. It works at will within 900 feet. Out to a mile it fails 10% of the time per round of use, plus 1% per additional mile, to a maximum of 90%. A failed roll costs the knight the ability for the rest of the day.

Each queen fights as a 10 Hit Dice sha'az and casts spells as a 10th-level cleric. Her drones, the females, cannot fly, carry no weapons, lack venom in their mandibles and fight at -2, only when cornered or when their queen is threatened.

Hives are dug into glaciers and hold 30-60 sha'az (1d4+2 x 10), half warrior-hunters and half drones who tend the hive and serve the queen. The queen lays eight-pound eggs and is the only one able to cast spells or create magic items. They are literate and talk through words, gestures and scents.

A queen lives for centuries and occasionally produces a daughter queen, who leaves at maturity to found a hive that remains loyal to its mother. Rank depends on how near one's hive stands to the mother-queen, and chains of allegiance can run many generations deep. When a queen dies, her drones wall up the hive entrance and the grieving hive soon suffocates. Any vassal hives then swear to the oldest related mother-queen.

They hunt polar bears, whales, seals, deer and haundar, and trade pieces of shell with other races. Haun raid their nests because the eggs hold a substance that changes resistance to psionics, which the haun use to keep control of their huge haundar mounts.