Bull Ant (giant)

Bull Ant (giant)

Species	insect (myrmecia gargantua)
No. Appearing	3–18
Behaviour	nest
Range	desert, savanna, veldt
Size	4 ft. long
Weight	125 lbs.
Intelligence	0
Armour Class	3
Hit Dice	4
Action Points	4
Max. Stride	19
THAC0	18
Hp/Die	d6
Attack Forms	2: pincers; stinger
Damage	pincers (2–8); stinger (1-6)
Special Attacks	leap, venom

Giant bull ants are imposing solitary hermaphroditic insects, distinguished by their aggressive hunting behavior. They hunt over a wide area, particularly at night. They have powerful manibles and can deliver painful bites; but when faced with larger foes, the bull ant relies upon its stinger to inject one of the world's most devastating poisons.

They are renowned and feared by many. Their spiky or bristly hairs, particularly around the thorax and abdomen, as well as horn-like structures on their heads and thoraxes, make these easily identifiable to those familiar with such bugs.

Behaviour

Hunting is done by workers, who emerge from their nests in the late evening. Once a target is identified, the bull ant employs its impressive speed and agility to swiftly close the distance, attacking alone.

The stride of the creature is rapid, but the heavy scurrying sound is loud and gives warning to potential victims. After a successful kill, giant bull ants partially consume their prey and then transport the remains back to their nests.

In the month of January, virgin queens take flight, covering an area of 2-3 acres as swarms numbering between 2 and 20 individuals. Physically indistinguishable from ordinary giant bull ants, these queens consistently possess 6 hit points per die. Following aerial mating, they disperse over a region with a diameter of six miles, burrow, and initiate the production of 3-30 eggs. Among these, 1 to 12 will develop into workers; the remainder are groomed to become an equal number of male drones or queens.

Advantages

Leap. As these creatures are remarkably agile, when attacking they're able to jump up to 15 feet (3 hexes) without an action point cost. This ability allows them to traverse obstacles like walls and pits, while easily attacking a single intended prey with both pincers and stinger.

Venom. Upon hitting with it's stinger, the giant bull ant injects a venom containing a mix of toxins that cause intense pain, paralysis and potentially death among those with too few hit points. If saved against, the dose causes half damage per round; but as the unmitigated dose does 10 hit points (h.p.) of damage over each of four rounds, half of this (5 h.p. per round) is still quite deadly for many. Without prompt administration of a neutralise poison spell or other healing, persons can quickly succumb.

Those who fail save are fully paralysed and remain so for 6-24 rounds following the poison's delivery. During this period, an excruciating pain is still felt by the victim, so intense that in future encounters with bull ants the character must make a saving throw or flee in terror. The pain slowly subsides over a period of an hour; in the first 10 minutes of that time, the character suffers a -6 penalty to hit; this improves to -5 over the second ten-minute period, -4 in the third period and so on.

Characters who succeed in their saving throw can sense that they narrowly avoided being paralysed, and feel only a hint of the intense pain they might have received with a full dose.

See Bestiary