Myrmex

Family: Myrmex

Medium elemental, neutral good

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 90 (12d8 + 36)
Speed 40 ft., burrow 40 ft., climb 40 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
16 (+3) 13 (+1) 16 (+3) 10 (+0) 14 (+2) 8 (–1)

Skills Perception +5
Damage Resistances poison; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Condition Immunities exhaustion, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, unconscious
Senses blindsight 60 ft., passive Perception 15
Languages understands Terran but can’t speak
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +3

SPECIAL TRAITS

  • Elemental Nature. The myrmex doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.
  • Keen Smell. The myrmex has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
  • Limited Telepathy. The myrmex can magically transmit simple messages and images to any creature within 120 feet of it that can understand a language. This form of telepathy doesn’t allow the receiving creature to telepathically respond.
  • Stone Walk. Difficult terrain composed of earth or stone doesn’t cost the myrmex extra movement.

ACTIONS

  • Multiattack. The myrmex makes three Bite attacks.
  • Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) poison damage.
  • Earth Shift. Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, range 60 ft., one target in contact with the ground. Hit: The target is pushed up to 15 feet in a direction of the myrmex’s choice, and its speed is reduced by 10 feet until the end of its next turn.
  • Wall of Earth. The myrmex can make a wall of earth spring out of earth or rock on a point the myrmex can sense within 30 feet of it. This action works like the wall of stone spell, except the myrmex can create only one 10-foot-by-10-foot panel and the panel has AC 13 and 15 hp.

BONUS ACTIONS

  • Earth Manipulation. The myrmex can manipulate and move earth within 30 feet of it that fits within a 5-foot cube. This manipulation is limited only by the myrmex’s imagination, but it often includes creating caricatures of creatures to tell stories of travels or etching symbols to denote dangerous caverns or similar markers for those in the colony. The myrmex can also choose to make the ground within 10 feet of it difficult terrain or to make difficult terrain normal, provided the ground is made of earth or stone. Changes caused by Earth Manipulation are permanent.

ABOUT

Giant ants made of dirt and stone climb out of a hole in the ground, while the clusters of ferns, grasses, and flowering vines on their backs sway with their movements.

Myrmex are giant ants from the Elemental Plane of Earth that have burrowed their way to the Material Plane.

An Incessant Need to Explore. Intelligent, curious, and social, mrymex love to explore, meet new creatures, and learn new things. Their colonies are welcome to all—so long as no one is intentionally harmed—leaving them with no notion of private or political boundaries. Myrmex young are encouraged to become companions to other explorers to better enrich the colony on their return.

Uncommon Ants. Myrmex superficially resemble ants but have notable differences. They don’t have a hierarchy, and they have neither a queen nor castes. Instead, all are equal, and if a colony maintains at least twelve myrmex, it can elevate a speaker. The speaker is a myrmex that is imbued with power by the colony—a power that can be revoked in the rare instances the speaker works against the desires of the colony a whole. The speaker becomes the myrmex’s voice to other cultures and enacts the will of the colony after each member has voted on a decision.

Earthen Young. Rather than lay eggs, adult myrmex sculpt their young from dirt, stone, earth from their own bodies, and rare minerals. These minerals prove a limiting factor to a colony’s growth because the required minerals and their proportions are precise. This need for rare minerals frequently puts them at odds with roaming xorn, who enjoy consuming many of those same minerals.

Seeking Friendship. Myrmex make allies easily, but they don’t tend to swear fealty to anyone, especially elemental lords, which often makes their colonies a target for other elementals. They are loyal friends, and such friendship can last for generations. For instance, many myrmex have been friends of the pech for millennia, and some myrmex even share colonies with them. However, no myrmex colony has ever sworn fealty to a pech lithlord, and some colonies have even broken away from their pech allies when a lithlord has tried to rule or command the myrmex.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Tome of Beasts 3 © 2022 Open Design LLC; Authors: Eytan Bernstein, Celeste Conowitch, Benjamin L. Eastman, Robert Fairbanks, Scott Gable, Basheer Ghouse, Richard Green, Jeremy Hochhalter, Jeff Lee, Christopher Lockey, Sarah Madsen, Ben Mcfarland, Jonathan Miley, Kelly Pawlik, Sebastian Rombach, Chelsea Steverson, Brian Suskind, Mike Welham

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