Monster Profile #20: Drow Scorpion
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From the personal journal of Azalai Korias, Elven Wizard
2 Lharvion, 998:
When camping in the wilds of Xen’drik, always make sure to shake out your boots when it is time to take your watch. Tiny scorpions often find their way into them, and they don’t take kindly to sharing their new home with your feet.
As I wrote a few weeks back, the drow have a fascination with scorpions, believing them to be lesser servants of Vulkoor. In their tales, Vulkoor is said to be a giant scorpion with the head, arms, and upper torso of a male drow. Until today, I thought their beliefs quaint and primitive superstition, childish at best and embarrassing at worst. It saddened me to see distant relatives so...deluded.
T’kkaz, a drow guide from a local tribe, led us to a site considered holy by the tribe in exchange for a handful of baubles and a magical dagger. He warned us not to take anything from the site lest we anger the guardian of the ruins, but we could examine the carvings and tablets scattered about the demolished temple so long as he was with us. This was an opportunity I could not pass up, even though the drow insisted that we traveled only at night.
When I asked T’kkaz about the guardian, he evaded the question, saying only that the guardian was a cleric of his tribe “blessed by Vulkoor”. When we arrived, I began my research, wondering to myself what such a blessing could mean.
We were on edge – Kleija kept noticing movement outside of our range of vision, and hearing scuttling creatures all around the ruins. When the clouds parted for a moment, hundreds of scorpions darted for cover from the moonlight and a monstrous form was silhouetted atop one of the fallen pillars – an enormous scorpion clung to the stones, but like a centaur, it had the torso and head of a drow. Instead of arms, it had a pair of massive pincers, and a poisoned tail loomed ominously over its head. Darkness quickly claimed the creature, and when we looked back again it was gone.
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Drow Scorpion
Creature Type: Aberration
Environment: Any
Attack: Claws, sting
Special Qualities: Poison, spell-like abilities
Organization: Solitary, pair, or nest (4+)
The drow of Xen’drik worship an aspect of the Mockery that they call Vulkoor, and combine the mortification of the flesh popular amongst cults of the Mockery with primitive beast worship of arachnids – specifically scorpions. The scarification the devout undergo seems to be pleasing to the Mockery, and it is said that especially pious worshippers may be rewarded with transformation into a servitor of Vulkoor.
These servitors are a centaur-like hybrid of a giant scorpion and a drow. The torso of a drow emerges from the body of a scorpion, but pincers replace the arms. Reported abilities include a powerful constitution damaging poison and numerous spell-like abilities. If the reports from the drow are to be believed, most of these aberrations were presumably powerful clerics or wizards prior to their elevation in status, so it is wise to expect conventional spellcasting ability as well.
If you should ever encounter one of these creatures, take standard precautions against poisons and do what you can to capture it alive. The academy will pay a great deal for the chance to study one of these “scorpion drow” so their actual origins, strengths, and weaknesses can be properly determined.
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