Arkths aka Ravagers
Arkths are dangerous creatures: as large as a grizzly bear, armored like an organic tank, strong like a wyvrn, and an attitude that makes them take out anything that gets between them and their 'food'. These creatures are destructive to everything around them. That is why they are known more commonly as Ravagers.
Full Description
These are large land bound crablike creatures about the size of Grizzly Bears. Physically, they are quite tough... and strong. The fact that they travel in pods of 4 to 12 allows them to be even more formidable. They live partially in the astreal plane, which allows them to support the weight of their shell (and makes them hard to target).
Their food is concentrated magical energy. They can sense it at huge distances. Since spells and such are hard to eat (being in motion) and magical places are the equivalent of a sea of krill to them, they are looking for magic stashed in concrete places. Their primary food source is magic items, alchemical potions, and enchantments.
These creatures see obstacles between them and a good food sources as trivial. They have the strength and the pseudo claws to stop just about any creatures that might get in its way and demolish trees, walls, and other standing objects that are 'in the way'. They can even tunnel through soft earth at a suprising fast (slow walking rate) clip. Sure they will sometimes 'go around' things. However, if they are 'hot on the scent' of food, a straight line is the best path.
While eating the magic, they do a pretty good job of mangling/ eating the physical aspect of said items in the process of chowing down.
Given the dangerous nature of these creatures, it is good they only lay an egg once every few years.
Additional Information
These things will be the bane of dungeons everywhere, as they will slowly eat away much of the treasure (and the magical traps... so it can be advantageous to follow these things).
They will attack people with highly magical natures (i.e. high magic powers). They will probably kill the person in the process of sucking out the power.
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? Responses (6)
A quite useful item for limiting magic within your world. Great for those of us who don't rely on components getting rarer as time flies, as it explains the general lack of magic items. A good encounter for your players if they happen to hit on the untouched magical trove of coolness.
I like it. I imagine these buggers might beeline for large cities where there's tons of good eating! Better have good guards at night or your magic shop might depreciate while you sleep. Oh you set an alarm spell and magical traps? Yeah, I'm sure it will be fine ;-p
Updated: corrected a spelling error and added some digging ability that I had forgotten to add.
I forgot about these dungeon and magic banes. I really like these things.
These feel a bit too heavy as a magic garbage collector when your campaign has accumulated too many items. I might only only have one of these things at a time roaming around, and also have it visit other worlds.
Perhaps you only get these things once magic use exceeds a certain threshold, and the PCs actions - Hey we finally can cast 9th level spells! - might trigger it. Now they need to clean up the mess.
If there is only one in an area strong adventurer team could take it. That is why they have pods.
They could travel between worlds, but few would notice that generally speaking.
They are designed to be a heavy handed tool for dealing with a world where the magical cottage industry has generate too much stuff. When the GM changes their mind about the texture of the rewards this gives you an in game reason for the changes. Or if you want a post apocalyptic generic fantasy world, let a few pods of these things decimate it.