Giant Beetle

Giant beetles are common insects swollen to monstrous size, plated in glossy chitin that turns blades like worn armour. Several kinds share the wilds: the squat acid-spraying bombardier, the night-burrowing borer, the glow-glanded fire beetle, the horned rhinoceros and stag types, and the broad water beetle that paddles flooded sinkholes. All are witless and forever hungry, tasting the ground with their feelers and crushing anything organic in their mandibles. Their wings are useless for flight, so they lumber rather than fly. Most ignore travellers unless cornered or starving, but a disturbed bombardier is a genuine hazard.