Giant Scorpion

A sixteen-foot-long desert beast that scrabbles forward with ferocious claws raised and its stingered tail arched over its back. It burrows beneath the sand to strike with hit-and-run tactics, grappling prey in its claws and dragging victims—civilians and adventurers alike—down into its tunnels. Groups of them, drawn by the heat of unstable arcane crystals, menace the oases of the Western Wastes.

Featured In Modules

This lore entry is featured in the following adventure modules:

  • A Horse With No NameGuildmaster Thalin hand-picks a party and sends them west from Kingdom Grand to New Arcanum to investigate the caravan of strangely well-guarded stolen keepsakes tied to Cassius and, he suspects, to Biscuit's fate. Given a wagon, supplies, and an unnamed horse they are urged to name, the heroes must survive a week-long trek across the Western Wastes—rationing food and water, weathering a blinding sandstorm that forces desperate choices about what to save, and threading between unstable arcane crystals whose shattering warps magic and flesh. At a rare oasis they drive off a nest of burrowing Giant Scorpions besieging a merchant caravan, earning the gratitude of its leader Elanor Westwind, who escorts them the rest of the way in comfort. They arrive to be welcomed by Guildmaster Alyndor "Aly" Marvale, their business in the desert city still to come.
  • The Locket and the LedgerLieutenant Darnik De Roche of the City Watch of Grand hires the Adventurer's Guild to recover a brass-and-glass locket—a keepsake from his late wife—stolen by a westbound caravan fleeing into the desert toward New Arcanum. Tracking the caravan, the party ambushes a patrol of soulbound Thrall Grunt outriders, scouts a broken-down wagon, and confronts the soul broker Cassius. The locket proves to be collateral for a soul contract that would turn its owner into a thrall if not reclaimed in time, opening a new arc into how New Arcanum's soul contracts operate. Cassius, who prizes sentiment over gold, would rather bargain a Writ of Exchange than fight, and Darnik quietly pays extra to recover other trinkets he knows to be soul-contract collateral.