Giant Scorpion

The giant scorpion is an enormous version of the desert stinger, its green-black carapace armoured like plate and its segmented tail curled high over a glistening venom barb. It moves with an unnerving dry scrabbling and reeks faintly of its own poison. Almost anything that strays near is attacked on sight: the beast seizes prey in two great pincers, crushing and holding fast, while the tail darts forward to inject venom strong enough that a single sting can prove fatal. Smaller cousins haunt the same wilds and ruins, weaker but no less hostile. Burrows may hide clutches of eggs and the picked-clean leavings of past victims. In a survival game it guards desert ruins and rewards those who can sever or pin that deadly tail.