Scorpion's Sting

For 2022, I've been wanting to write more 'creature features' and generally improve my short story writing. My partner got me a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual for my birthday so I came up with the idea of writing a story every week based on a different creature from that - All There in the (Monster) Manual. Hope you enjoy!

This Week's Inspiration: Giant Scorpion

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The nomads' enormous scorpions fled across the Great Sandy Wastes with the bandit city in pursuit. Light bleached the sky as dawn quickened in the east. Already the backs of the scorpion mounts were a hive of activity.

Black or brown and bristly, each scorpion hosted open roofed structures that grew from their shells. Each scorpion home to a different family, the structures were shaded with sails of cloth and buttressed with planks of moultshell. Scuttling across the Great Sandy Wastes' endless dunes, they left scars of footprints in their wakes which the bandit's predator city would have no trouble following. Throughout the night, in the vast blackness of the desert, the nomads had been unable to steer and were forced to rely on their mounts' other senses to keep them ahead of the bandits and slavers. Dawn revealed how close the tribe was to destruction.

Of the half a dozen arachnopolis scorpions, the largest and most developed hosted the largest family. The wives, children and household of the head of their tribe, Waheed Al Aleagrab. Even in his late fifties, Waheed remained a powerfully built man. His steps adjusted automatically to the violent rolling and pitching gait of his scorpion as it fled across the sands. Thick at the shoulders and the hips, tall and upright, his face was half-hidden behind a luxurious beard. Strapped to his hip was a heavy sword with a curved blade. Voluminous robes swept around Waheed as he hurried from the head of their mount to its tail. At the head, multiple eyes glistened like large, dark pools in the carapace above complex mandibles which were longer than Waheed was tall. Massive pincers remained tucked beneath its chin. Its tail, curved and segmented and ending in a bulbous head and barb, arched above Waheed and the man already on lookout.

"What is the latest?" Waheed asked.

Ajmal, the lookout, was young and slim in loose, pale robes. He passed Waheed a battered looking glass in a brass casing.

"See it for yourself, sir."

Distorted by imperfections in the magnifying glass, Waheed swept his gaze over the desert. Golden dunes rolled behind them, marked by their scorpions' knifelike footprints. Nothing but waves and waves of dry sand soaking up the dawn sunshine. And then, Waheed's gaze settled on what looked like a moving mountain range. A greater rockback, tamed and inhabited by an army of bandits and slavers in much the same way the nomads travelled atop the arachnopolis scorpions. Turned into a predator city. Greater rockbacks were the largest predators to inhabit the Great Sandy Wastes and even wild ones were a threat to the scorpion nomads. The gigantic lizards moved on four clawed feet, with huge, blunt heads hidden partially beneath rocky brows that were balanced by heavy tails. Their backs, as their name suggested, were covered in carapaces of rocky growths that formed jagged hills and peaks down the length of their spine. Through his eyeglass, Waheed could see balconies and walkways strung between the rock growths. Tunnels and caves had been bored into the creature's carapace. Like ants, bandits swarmed among the walkways. Head lowered, the rockback fixed on their trail.

Waheed dropped the looking glass and scanned the wastes around them. He already knew what he would find. Low islands covered in stone and scrub grew above the oceans of sand but none large or complex enough to lose the greater rockback.

"We cannot stay ahead of them forever. As the day heats up, the rockback will gain speed while our homes cannot keep up this pace. Make sure everyone is ready to fight."