Skrit

Picture a flea grown five or six feet tall. The skrit's rough, domed shell is mottled black and brown like the stony ground around it, rows of short spiny legs jut from under the rim, the little head can withdraw beneath the dome, and the body ends in a stiff, tapering tail.

Too big to stalk, a skrit waits motionless among rock outcroppings. A searcher can spot it, but casual eyes take it for a stone at any distance over 15 feet; closer than that, intelligent creatures who look its way see the truth. Victims who failed to notice it take -1 on surprise.

The beetle is quick for its bulk. It fixes on one target, usually whoever seems smallest or weakest, and all but ignores everyone else, scraping with two feeble forelegs and stabbing with its needle mouth. Barbs hold the probe fast once it hits, and every turn afterward the skrit injects enzyme while dragging its prize toward cover.

That enzyme paralyzes: the victim saves vs. poison each round of attachment, with the penalty growing by 1 every round past the first, and failure means 3d6 hours of paralysis unless the enzyme is neutralized. Over the next several hours it also dissolves flesh into the jelly the skrit eats, draining 10 hit points per hour. Neutralize poison halts it. Bite and claw wounds heal normally or by magic, but enzyme damage mends only naturally or through regeneration.

Each skrit hunts a small patch of broken ground alone, keeps no lair, and moves its ambush site daily depending on its luck. The sexes differ only in tail length. In early spring a female clatters her tail on the rocks to summon males, who battle for her; in that season they strike at anything moving, with +1 to attack and damage.

Skrits are important predators in the cool deserts, and their empty shells shelter many small, mostly harmless animals, though occasionally a vast and vicious ant colony claims one. Skilled armorers can work the carapace into breastplates and similar rigid pieces; a full suit grants AC 4.