Snapping spiny jaws at the bottom of the sand pit...

GIANT ANTLION (#14/31, #14/365) [OOTP IV]

SKILL: 8

STAMINA: 8

ATTACKS: 1

WEAPON: Very Large Bite

ARMOUR: Light Armour

DAMAGE MODIFIER: +1 to the Damage Roll

HABITAT: Deserts, Wilderness, Plains, Hills

NUMBER ENCOUNTERED: 1-2

TYPE: Insect

REACTION: Hostile

INTELLIGENCE: Low

Picture this: a faint trail wandering through the dunes, all skittering tracks across the sands, like the marching of an entire army but only several files deep. At one point it walks through a patch of scrub between the sand-dunes, the trail partially covered beneath windswept palm leaves and fallen acacia branches. A hapless Giant Ant wanders along, carrying some food back to its colony, and falls through the vegetation, which was actually a concealed pit, plummeting five metres to the bottom where a repulsive GIANT ANTLION, all barbed jaws and bristle-covered body, will then attack!

The Giant Antlion, also known as the Giant Doodlebug for the tracks it traces in the sands when relocating from one lair to another, is a giant beetle-like insect with huge curved and spiny mandibles, but no armoured carapace. It excavates deep pits in the sand or dirt near the nests of Giant Ants, Xoroa, and similar creatures, and preys on any stray Worker or Warrior that falls in. It is equally happy lurking along merchant trails and feeding on careless pack-mules or goods-camels that stray into its pit-trap.

It requires a successful Awareness Special Skill roll to notice the camouflaged pit, those that don't fall five metres to the bottom, taking normal falling STAMINA damage unless they successfully Test for Luck. The Giant Antlion will then emerge from where it was buried under loose dirt at the bottom of the pit and attack. here are the chewed up remains of various creatures; not just Giant Ants and Xoroa workers, but also antelope, jackals and hyenas, as well as stray travellers and whatever they may have been carrying.

Interestingly, this creature is just the larval stage. After consuming prey in such a fashion for up to a year, the Giant Antlion will then make a cocoon for itself, and undergo a dramatic metamorphosis into its mature form (GIANT ADULT ANTLION, SKILL 8 STAMINA 4, Small Bite, can fly), which resembles a Giant Dragonfly in appearance, though without the iridescent sheen to its chitinous body. This adult has a brief period of life, for several months during the cooler winter season of the desert, when sparse rains may fall, before mating, laying eggs (that hatch into Giant Antlion larvae) and then dying.