Stone Termite

Apart from size and color, stone termites look like ordinary termites, but they eat only rock and minerals. Soldiers are pale gray with oversized heads and sharp mandibles. Workers are lighter, often nearly white, with smaller heads and jaws. The king and queen range from charcoal to near black; the king shares a worker's build, but the queen has a swollen abdomen for laying eggs.

All types bite, with damage varying by caste. Soldiers bite hardest (1-3) and can also spit acid 10 feet for 1-2. Workers make acid in their mouths but cannot spit it; their 1-point bite is half mandible and half acidic saliva, so half of it counts as acid damage.

Fights with a colony are uncommon because the termites eat nothing but stone. Even stone creatures such as golems rarely tempt them, since the slow insects prefer rock that stays put. They defend the colony fiercely, though, and workers and soldiers often die doing it.

Colonies usually tunnel into solid bedrock underground but become a scourge in towns and fortresses, devouring foundations and walls. An active colony can bring down a stone building within several months: in each month past the first, the building makes a structural saving throw as though struck by a giant's fist, with a cumulative -1 penalty each month (no save in the first month, a normal roll in the second, -2 in the third, and so on). The DM decides the details of any collapse.

As in most insect colonies, a queen rules and lays the eggs for each new generation. The king, the main breeding male, also matters, so the royal pair live in relative comfort; when the king dies, another is raised to replace him.

Sages think wizards magically altered ordinary termites to plant in enemy strongholds. It may have seemed clever then, but the insects have spread widely and are now hated pests among most intelligent races. Their stone diet makes their shells so hard they are basically inedible, though osquips and other stone-eaters sometimes devour a colony.

Ground into fine powder, the shells make magical inks for scrolls of protection from acid and for scribing acid arrow and stoneskin.