The Giant Scorpions of the Plain of Fire
As described in The Night of the Gangs, the Caryat gang of the Easthill area of Akorros now proudly sport scorpion-carapace breastplates when they go on a raid. But what are these scorpions, and what are the properties of their body armour?
Fifth edition describes the Giant Scorpion as a large beast, with AC15 natural armour. That suggests a creature up to 10 feet long. The Giant Scorpions of the Plain of Fire in The Sind Waste can grow larger than that – typically 15-20 feet long, with reports of some up to forty feet long (though how trustworthy those reports are is up for debate; the longest recorded body returned to civilisation was 27 feet long).
Their armour is formidable, and serves a dual purpose. They need to defend against the sphinxes, rocs, dragons, coatls and wyverns of the wastes, and they also need to cope with the intense heat of the Plain of Fire and the Burning Waste, as well as frequent rock falls from the many earthquakes.
So their carapace over the front part of their body is a solid shell, hardened to withstand puncturing and piercing, giving them resistance to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing damage from non-magical sources, and the latter segments are also armoured, although the joins between the segments introduce an area of vulnerability for those with precise strikes.
Inside the outer armour is a network of veins and vessels which swell when in damp conditions, absorbing liquid like a camel. This provides them with the ability to go without water for extensive periods. An ingenious system of circulation of these fluids also takes the heat from overheating areas of the body to cooler areas, where the heat can be radiated away whenever the scorpion finds a place in the shade.
The carapace and back armour is an iridescent steely blue which blends into the rocks and the sky when the scorpion remains still, giving them proficiency in Stealth. Their claws and sting scale up with their size, the sting delivering a larger dose of poison sufficient to endanger an unwary wyvern. All in all they are a far bigger challenge than the measly giant scorpions of the fifth edition ruleset.
Geographic Distribution
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