La Facultad de Medicina

FREQUENCY: ORGANIZATION: ACTIVITY CYCLE: DIET: INTELLIGENCE: Large Any warm/desert Rare Nocturnal Huge Giant

Any temperate/any dry, non- Any temperate/any (subter- mountainous ranean)

Very rare Very rare

Hunting bands Any Any Carnivore Non- (2) TREASURE: ALIGNMENT: Q Q,SNeutral N x 4 , Q x 2 NO. APPEARING: 1-6 1-6 1-4 ARMOR CLASS: 6 5 4 MOVEMENT: 9 11 12 HIT DICE: THAC0: NO. OF ATTACKS: 3 + 3 17 5 + 515 2 or 1 6 + 6 15 DAMAGE/ATTACK: 2-8 (bite) 3-12 (bite) 4-16 (bite)

SPECIAL ATTACKS: Grip

SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil Nil Poison immunity

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

SIZE: M (up to 5’ long) M (up to 6’) L (up to 9’)

MORALE: Average (10) Average (10) Steady (12)

X.P. VALUE: 175 420

Solifugids exist on several worlds; those of the Realms (which differ slightly from those known elsewhere) are described here. Also called “false spiders,” “camel spiders,” or “sun spiders,” solifugids are arachnids that roam as hunters rather than spinning webs. They have segmented, hairy bodies, powerful hooked beaks, and ten legs—the foremost pair ending in hooked, powerfully-muscled fore- joints equipped with clamps. Their bodies tend to be brown, dun, russet, or yellowish in hue, their eyes blood red or glossy green-black.

Combat: In combat, solifugids try to strike prey with their clamp-equipped forelegs. These do no damage, but should either arm score a hit, any victim of “Large” or smaller size is caught in the solifugid’s mighty grip. Only one creature at a time may be caught in a solifugid’s grip.

The entire frame of the creature is constructed to maintain this grip against all forces; the only way to win free is to slay the solifugid (its grip relaxes 1-2 rounds after death occurs) or to sever one of the forelegs. A limb can be severed by a disintegrate spell, any attack that deals a limb 50 or more hit points of damage. In all cases, damage to a limb should be considered separately from the hp total of the creature.

A solifugid may voluntarily relax its grip at any time. This usually occurs only when a gripped victim is visibly dead (head gone, etc.) and another target presents itself that might otherwise escape. Large solifugids are too stupid, and too driven by a killing instinct, to be charmed or influenced by any known spell or power into relaxing a grip, or shifting attacks from one being to another. The other two varieties may be controlled by use of spells or

650

Creatures in a solifugid’s grip are attacked at +3 to hit. Habitat/Society: Giant solifugids roam the Underdark and the warmer mountain fastnesses of Faerun, hunting by day or night. Huge solifugids roam surface wastelands all over the realms, being particularly numerous in Raurin and in the Shaar, where they lie in wait in gullies for herds of wild animals (or nomadic tribes) to pass. A few of them can be found in the Underdark, particularly beneath large, rolling plains or deserts such as Raurin and the Shaar. Large solifugids, the weakest of the breed, are sometimes found in the Underdark, but prefer hot desert climates (such as Calimshan and Durpar). They come out at night, when the sands are cooler and the darkness cloaks them, to hunt. Their prey often includes other predators, such as snakes and scorpions. They band together to bring down large or dangerous prey—especially prey that may endan- ger them later, if left alone.

Ecology: Solifugids are immune to all known poisons, and can eat poisonous creatures with impunity. Their diet consists of everything, from large insects knocked down with their forelegs to wandering giants—every sort of creature, that is, except other solifugids, whose taste is abhorrent. A really hungry solifugid will attack anything that moves.

Solifugids are fearless, but by instinct avoid fights that will not profit them. Therefore, solifugids never fight others of their kind—nor, in the Underdark, amid drow who have spells to control arachnids, and other powerful weapons, do solifugids attack drow. It is easier and more profitable to obey or avoid the dark elves, gleaning richer

Sword Spider Watchspider This large, non-webspinning hunter is native to the

Mhair jungles. It can tolerate a wide variety of tempera- tures, and was long ago introduced into the Underdark by drow traders. It has a sleek, hairy black body, striped with dark brown fur, and its legs have bony, segmented plates, with raised, sharp ridges that cut like sword-blades.

Against formidable prey, a sword spider uses a “leap impalement” attack, bounding up to 30’ horizontally to land atop an opponent, with its legs together in a forest of impaling blades. It gets only one attack roll—but if successful, the victim suffers full damage from 3 leg-blades if S or smaller, 4 blades if M-sized, 5 blades if L, 6 if H, and all 8 if G. If the sword spider descends more than 20’ in its leap, +1 point of damage is added to each leg. Any upward attack made by the target of such a leap strikes at the descending sword spider at -4 to hit, due to the difficulty in getting past the forest of blades.

Watchspiders are fairly common in guild and rich merchants’ cellars and warehouses in Sword Coast cities, from Neverwinter (north of that is too cold) to Lantan. They are a specially-bred subspecies of Huge Spiders (detailed in Volume 1 of the Monstrous Compendium, under “Spider”), raised and trained as guardians by the Mhairuun merchant family of Waterdeep, and other folk native to Tharsult. Drow have secretly purchased these arachnids in great numbers from these breeders, and have begun their own training programs and power-augmenta- tion experiments.

Trained to obey a single master, and not to attack certain other beings designated by the master, watch- spiders are schooled in disabling spellcasters and avoiding piercing weapons in battle. (They have acquired Low intelligence through breeding, over centuries.)

Their venom has also been magically altered, to cause 2d4-turn paralysis, not death, with an onset time of 1-2 rounds, if a victim’s save vs. poison at +1 fails. They are otherwise identical to huge spiders, including their inabil- ity to spin webs. If starved for long periods, they tend to

Hairy Hunting

devour paralyzed prey.

Spider, Subterranean