Solifugid

Solifugids appear on many worlds, and the kind described here differs slightly from others. Nicknamed sun spiders, false spiders or camel spiders, they spin no webs and instead roam in search of prey. Their hairy, segmented bodies are brown, dun, russet or yellowish, with glossy green-black or blood-red eyes. They have ten legs and a powerful hooked beak, and the front pair of legs end in heavily muscled, hooked joints fitted with clamps. The three varieties are large, huge and giant.

A solifugid tries to seize prey with its clamping forelegs. These deal no damage, but if either one hits, a victim of size L or smaller is caught. It can clutch just one victim at once and attacks a held victim with its beak at +3 to hit; the beak is its only damaging attack, and damage differs by variety.

Its whole body is built to keep that hold. A victim escapes only by killing the solifugid, whose hold loosens 1-2 rounds after it dies, or by cutting off a foreleg with a disintegrate spell or any attack dealing 50 or more points of damage to the limb. Limb damage is tracked apart from the creature's hit points.

It lets go on its own only when its captive is obviously dead and new prey might get away. Large solifugids are too dim and bloodthirsty for any known spell or power to make them release a victim or switch targets. The other two kinds can be controlled by magic or devices that command arachnids, some of which the drow use.

Giant solifugids hunt day and night in the deep underworld and in the hotter mountain strongholds of their world. Huge ones roam surface wastes everywhere, especially in a great eastern desert and the eastern grasslands, lurking in gullies for passing herds or nomads; a few live in the underworld beneath such plains and deserts. Large solifugids, the weakest, occasionally appear underground but prefer hot southern deserts, emerging at night when the sand cools and darkness hides them. They often prey on other hunters such as snakes and scorpions, and they gang up on big or dangerous prey, particularly anything that might threaten them later.

Immune to every known poison, solifugids eat venomous creatures safely. They will eat anything from big insects swatted down with their forelegs to stray giants, except other solifugids, which taste vile to them. A starving one attacks anything that moves.

They know no fear but instinctively avoid unprofitable fights. They never battle their own kind, and in the underworld they leave drow alone, since the dark elves carry arachnid-controlling magic and other strong weapons, and serving or avoiding them yields better meals. A wounded drow left alone after a battle with two or more solifugids nearby is in deep trouble, however.