Vermin Queen

Armor Class
7 [12]
Hit Dice
6
Attacks
Claw or Weapon (1d6)
Special
paralysis
Move
12 Fly 6
HDE/XP
8/800

Description

A Vermin Queen is a colony of horrid, intelligent black beetles with the ability to assume the guise of a beautiful human or demihuman. It uses this disguise to waylay travelers in order to devour their flesh and steal their skin. When a vermin queen eats a living human, demihuman, or humanoid creature, another beetle is born to the colony. When the swarm gets too big to comfortably fit into a human skin, half of it splits off and becomes a new vermin queen. The mother swarm typically deposits the daughter swarm in the body of its next victim.

A vermin queen can freely change between humanoid and colony forms once per round. The touch of a vermin queen in either form paralyzes (much like a ghoul) and it never takes more than 1d4 points of damage from weapon attacks. While in colony form, a vermin queen fights just like an insect swarm.

Source note: This creature is converted from The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign – Omnibus Edition, 1st Edition Release 4, © 2010–2025 Chris Gonnerman, R. Kevin Smoot, James Lemon, Matt Sluis, and Contributors. The Basic Fantasy Field Guide textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.