Dune Reaper

''Hurtling towards you is a horrendous leathery quadruped with no discernable features on its long head except for a fanged orifice flanked by a pair of snapping mandibles. It front two limbs end in scythe-like blades and it has a scattering of short spines across its back and down its twitching tail.''

Tactics
Dune reapers will often lie in wait for days near caravan routes or game trails, secure in the instinctive knowledge that a meal will present itself sooner or later. Upon sensing prey, the dune reaper leaps out of the sand and attempts to impale their victims on their scythe-like limbs. They have also been known to resist magical attacks.

Description
Drones are the smallest and weakest of the dune reapers, often comprising two thirds of a pride. Possessed of only the most rudimentary intelligence, each drone is bonded by pheromones to a single warrior from birth and receives all orders and instructions from this warrior as part of that warrior's ―clan‖. Should a controlling warrior die, the pride will turn on her clan of drones and destroy them. Orders given to a drone are followed slavishly by that drone. Any other warrior or drone interfering with such orders is attacked by a controlled drone until the interloper is dead. Only the matron can override orders given by a drone's controlling warrior without running the risk of attack.

Tactics
After initial contact with an enemy, warrior reapers usually stand back and support the drones by using their innate psionic abilities. If overwhelmed, the warrior will flee and seek to summon reinforcements from the pride.

Description
Warrior reapers are the sergeants of the pride and ensure that the orders of the matron are carried out. Warriors are assigned 2-5 drones that are bonded to them for life. A warrior and its drones are known as a clan. If a drone dies, one is assigned to the warrior when a new one is born. If all of a warrior's clan dies, the matron will turn on the warrior and attempt to kill her.

Tactics
The matron of a pride has the same abilities and statistics as the warrior reapers, as she is simply the largest female in the pride, and her hit points are at their maximum as a consequence. A matron will only engage in combat if she believes that her pride is in danger.

Otherwise, she directs her warriors and their clans into battle and supports from a distance with her psionics. Matrons most often find themselves in conflict with warriors who seek to usurp her position in the pride.

Description
The matron of a pride is always the largest female warrior and has the duty of directing the pride in all of its actions. She decides when and where a specific clan will hunt and when the pride migrates from one hive to the other. Matrons are occasionally challenged for supremacy by other powerful warriors – this is the only way that one matron will yield power to another, short of death in combat with foes other than dune reapers. A dune reaper warrior who becomes a matron undergoes hormonally induced spurts of growth until she reaches her maximum hit point total.

About Dune Reapers
Dune reapers are large, aggressive predators that inhabit the deserts and sandy wastes. While hunting, they leap from the sand in packs to ambush and hack apart their prey on their scythe-like front-limbs. The deserts outside the city-state of Draj are said to hold many packs of wandering dune reapers. Dune reapers are known to lie in wait for many days along a caravan route just to find suitable prey. Because of their fearlessness and their tendency for fighting to the death when in search of food, they are especially prized in the gladiatorial arena.

Perhaps the most disquieting features of the dune reaper are the eerie red luminescence of its eyes and the sickly sweet smell of decay that surrounds it. The reaper emits a howling wail that can frequently be heard across the barren deserts of Athas. The size, ferocity, and eerie appearance of the dune reaper make it a highly valued combatant in many Athasian arenas. Dune reapers will eat anything, even stone and sand (believed to aid in digestion) and will also turn on one another if living food supplies run out.

Dune reapers communicate through a combination of sound, motion and scent. To outsiders, this communication can often appear to be some sort of strange dance, accompanied by soft whirring chortles. Close encounters with communicating dune reapers soon disabuse observers of such opinions, however.

Society
Dune reapers live in prides of up to 30 individuals. The prides follow a strict matriarchal hierarchy, with three distinct roles: the matron, the warriors and the drones. The matron and all warriors are female and the drones are male, with female dune reapers growing larger than their male counterparts and the oldest and most powerful female acting as the matron of the pride.

Dune reapers build subterranean nests out of a combination of sand and salival secretions. Each pride will have two such nests in its territory and spends half the year in one nest and the other half in the other. The nests are always located near a source of water for the pride. This water source also serves as the mating ground and pride hatchery. The matron will mate with a prospective male drone twice a year. Following mating, the matron kills the male and lays her eggs in his corpse. These hatch in two months, following which they join the pride. If an excess of warriors or drones has been hatched, the surplus hatchlings are killed to keep the pride in balance.