I'm planning an adventure where the party are shrunk down by fey and have to survive a horrible bug infested environment to retrieve a magic item from an ant hill.
Post horrifying bugs.
Boo
>>47627482
Don't just think about the bugs, think of the enviornmental things. There's a ton of more ways you could twist your parties arms with all sorts of teeny tiny fun.
Acid covered plants for instance, one touch and your hand is caught by a substance as sticky and tough as superglue that starts melting right away and the rest of the plant moves to encase you
>>47627482
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxpV9V7lup0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNC8riU4dzQ
>>47627482
The "dragon" at the end of the "dungeon".
>>47627482
Can I also post arachnids?
>>47628346
I feel like maybe bot flies lose their horror somewhat when they can't fuck with you as badly on account of you being their size and as such being unable to get their larvae under your fucking skin.
https://youtu.be/X5YaihAtnC4
Once had an entire party tpk to a mated pair of these fuckers. We weren't shrunken or anything, and they weren't enlarged or Enchanted or magic in any way. We just didn't bother to check for vermin in the room in the dungeon where we decided to camp. 5 failed perception checks and 5 failed saving throws later, the whole party of second level adventurers was dead. Extreme aggression and one of the most dangerous tissue damaging venoms of any creature on the planet are a dangerous combo.
>>47627482
It's the Fae. They are practically obligated to screw around with the party. I would word the fae's offer as " once you retrieve the item I desire, I will provide you with a Magic Stone which can return any person to their normal size."
Note: *A* stone. Singular. Which can affect *any person*. He just didn't happen to mention that the stone can only be used once. Oh, you want it enough stones to fix the entire party? Well I guess he does have a few other jobs that you could do. For a price.
>>47627482
>Party gets grabbed
>By a fucking Mantis
>>47628696
>Mantis gets grabbed
>By a fucking party
Consider cordyceps.
Consider cordyceps that can infect the players.
Consider it persisting if untreated when they're returned to size.
>>47628696
Reminds me that I need to pray to the mantis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FTMlkBifTo
>>47629134
It's less scary when you realize it's not drawing blood.
>>47628525
>Brown Recluse
>Aggressive
Senpai it's even in their name.
>>47627482
Oh my god that's terrifying
Underwater spider that hatches eggs underwater. Yes, it breathes with its ass.
>>47629178
Still painful as fuck
>>47628476
Jesus fuck Mother Nature.
Hope this isn't too much for the blue board
>>47628525
>tissue damaging venom
Might as well have given them wings and shoot fireballs out of their arse if you were going to go by urban myths rather than what they actually do.
>>47629415
>spiders with wings
>>47629171
I have done this except I froze rather than pulled back and it (a huntsman spider) stopped just above my elbow.
>>47628525
Your bait has gone sour
>>47627482
How about those spiders who lay out their webs outside their nests and wait inside and snap out and grab anything that gets close?
>>47627482
ichneumon wasp, or some other parasitoid
>>47629415
As somebody who once walked around with a dime-sized rotting hole in the back of their neck because of a brown recluse bite, please go fuck yourself.
>>47628346
So is the fly's name Brandon?
>>47629134
It's trying so hard!
Mecoptera or Scorpionfly
Scorpionfly, the name alone is enough.
>>47630670
>In this thread: "Dam nature you scary!!"
>>47630800
oddly enough, since the players in the OP are going to be shrunk down to ant-sized, they're not likely to draw too much attention from these various, parasitizing insects and even mantises.
Parasite impregnators need something... bigger to lay their eggs in. And most predator insects, as I recall, tend to look for bigger meals and not just maybe eight, ant-sized things.
Unless the OP's talking about some big ants.
>>47628696
>akimbo
>>47631050
Bullet ants?
>>47629098
That's a really dumb looking solifuge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iVXvAWyNBM
>Be walking though forest of grass
>This fuck's leg hooks traps whole party under him
>Be forced to watch your party get devoured as it slowly becomes your turn
Make bobbit worms into a freshwater species. Put them in any kind of water shallow enough to wade through.
>>47628476
Depends, if the botfly larvae grows inside you, hollowing you out until you're just this massive larvae shaped load of human skin with flappy empty arms and legs.
>the party sees in the distance what looks like a human figure, spreadeagled on the floor
>it seems to be slowly wriggling along the ground
And then the party gets near and a giant maggot tears out of the "crawling man" and leaps straight at the nearest party member's head, it's vile maggoty beak/mouth spread wide.
>>47630135
Winrar...I hate those things
>>47628696
>"Gee, Billy, your mom lets you have TWO bees?!"
>>47632502
That's actually more terrifying than a normal bot fly holy fuck.
>>47631050
Just do a plain old cellar spider. Not very scary to us, but to something the size of an ant? Have you ever seen how quickly they warp something up in webbing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszY3rQOrQI
![qa1y6zvrsxs3veen1hku[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QIGyQvd.jpg "qa1y6zvrsxs3veen1hku[1].jpg")
>>47627482
>>47637025
those sound-effects are comical
>>47637348
Yeah. I honestly think they were at exactly the wrong level. They should either have toned it down (or removed it entirely), or they should've said "fuck it" and gone all out with cartoon bonks, jackhammers and shit.
>>47632129
including toilet water? Seriously, these'd be the deadliest assassination devices if they were freshwater.
>>47630223
You had a staph infection and a retarded doctor who defaults to "spider bite" when he doesn't know what's going on.
>>47641054
this is a nasty part of an otherwise decent thread. I'd appreciate it if you two both just agreed to disagree? Not trying to roil up more conflict, but let's save posts for more bugs.
>>47628621
It's relatively simple if the entire party is ant sized, but I'm not sure how the quests would work if one of them is human sized.
>>47627482
Antlion - obligatory.
Trapdoor Spider - similar to Antlion.
Titan Beetles - bigger than your fist, can snap pencils in half.
Praying Mantids - grappling action.
it's too bad these things are slower than snails.
>>47627482Shrikes. Because really bugs are overrated when it comes to terrible things assaulting smaller things.
>>47629084
Wow that is striking
>>47646989
Oh god, this.
I love these guys, but they would be absolutely terrifying from the perspective of anything smaller than them.
>>47645240
Reach grab attack, though?
>>47646989
Nature is edgy as fuck.
>>47629332
>mfw I have no face
>>47629415
I'm not linking any of the videos because the images of them were graphic enough to prove the point.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brown+recluse+spider+venom
>>47629332
That little guy looks...awfully happy about his current predicament.
>>47642829
No, have them all human sized, but they wander into a mario style "Macro world" where everytrhing is fuck huge.
>>47628476
Am I the only one that could see those guys evolving into a drider?
>>47627482
Mantises
Because they melt your face and eat it first while you're still alive to witness it.
>>47646989
OP here. The town all this is happening in actually has a legend called The Black Shrike, a shape shifting devil bird whose is inhabited by the soul of the necromancer shaman who served as a witch doctor to the black magic cannibal clan who inhabited the area the town sat on before an army expedition blasted them to piece with artillery. Because their bodies were destroyed so completely by the sustained bombardment, they couldn't rise as corporal undead and just haunt the town as spirits and bad dreams, but the Black Shrike is their main living agent and will both spy on the party and try to pluck out of the eyes of anyone left alone and unconscious and then impale them on a fence or a wire for them to find.
Posting the most horrifyinglycutespider known to man.
>>47651409
Metal as fuck. There needs to be a book, movie, anything about this.
>>47627482
+++ SUMMONING Fetishes +++
===Right-click the purple portal ONCE and DON'T MOVE===
>>47628924
Human immune systems are far, FAR stronger than insect immune systems.
Human immune system is one of the strongest on the fucking planet, mostly because our hobbies include Plague.
>>47629634
I pet a huntsman once.
It sat on top of my CRT monitor for warmth.
It was placid.
I offered it a bug.
It ran away.
>>47651409
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYIUFEQeh3g&list=WL&index=10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICpw9FwYqAs&list=WL&index=25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlMK7vRVa-I
Two Champions both alike in bravery,
In fair Erebus were we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break new mutiny,
Were civil hemolymph makes civil pedipalp unclean.
>Party finds a Peacock Spider and makes it a party mascot
>it has a few levels in Bard
>>47627482
I didn't even read the rest of the thread... just stopped y to say i'm definitely stealing this for my next campaign
>>47655469
Imagination!
>>47629134
Too thick?
>>47652123
That and our digestive tract doesn't go right through our brains.
Include all Arthropods my man, like big crustaceans along with insects and arachnids
>>47646989
You want birds? How bout this cool as hell one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretarybird
>>47631651
Best animal. Seriously this is my favorite one of them all aside from squids. They just look so cool and adorable.
>>47628476
Those spiders are such cunts. They follow drag lines util they reach another spider's web, trip the web from the edge until the spider comes out then pounce forward trapping them in the fangs.
>>47650122
I've seen staph infections, thank you. Because that's what those videos are, staph infections.
>>47654175
Jesus fucking Christ that second clip. How is that poor creature not dead?
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1609rCmfVLc
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fGGz6d3vC4
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnAkFoIfuLU
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNAk6oIKAjI
There's also some worm like thing that bursts out of a praying mantis, but I don't have the video. I'd look for it, but I have trypophobia and there are too many botfly videos when I search for "worm like thing comes out of..."
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdkz7tZ5lr0
skip to 13:51 for a pulsating yellow jacket hive. And yes, I want to die whenever I watch this.
>>47657804
>itstimetostop.gif
>>47643079
>>47643079
This guy knows what's up Fucking antlions man.
>>47630670
>>47630688
Scorpionflies are innocent, innocent little darlings!Their tails are actually part of their reproductive organs.
>>47627482
Parasitoids, of all shapes and sizes. The fact that so many insects implant their larvae inside others is absurd. Shit gets so crazy that you have some parasitoids that lay their eggs within the larvae of other parasitoids, so you get a weird nesting doll of flesh-devouring creatures within each other.
![porafr53[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/E4PJL7O.jpg "porafr53[1].jpg")
Not so much horrifying as really interesting. There's a genus of jumping spider that's extremely intelligent by spider standards and uses this and its superior vision to hunt other spiders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider)#Hunting_techniques
>When stalking web-building spiders, Portia try to make different patterns of vibrations in the web that aggressively mimic the struggle of a trapped insect or the courtship signals of a male spider, repeating any pattern that induces the intended prey to move towards the Portia.
>Other jumping spiders take detours, but Portia is unusual in its readiness to use long detours that break visual contact.
>Laboratory studies show that Portia learns very quickly how to overcome web-building spiders that neither it nor its ancestors would have met in the wild. For example, in one part of the Philippines, local Portia spiders attack from the rear against the very dangerous spitting spiders, which themselves hunt jumping spiders [...] [E]xperiments that pitted Portia against "convincing" artificial spiders with arbitrary but consistent behavior patterns showed that Portia's instinctive tactics are only starting points for a trial-and-error approach from which these spiders learn very quickly.
>Against other jumping spiders, which also have excellent vision, Portia may mimic fragments of leaf litter detritus. When close to biting range, Portia use different combat tactics against different prey spiders. On the other hand, when attacking unarmed prey, such as flies, they simply stalk and rush
>>47662299
Reminds me of cobras. Good vision, mentally agile, eats "its own kind".
>>47661138
that's poop
https://thebuggeek.com/2012/12/13/poop-not-parasites/
>>47642829
Could be fun. You'd have your full sized party member doing the talking and walking, while the tiny party members hide in his-her sleeve, ready to be deployed for sneaky purposes.
Basically just do Ant-man shit.
>>47630688
That would make for a kick ass mount.
>>47630271
> Now kiss
>>47657965
Neither does theirs. I mean they have an extra mini brain under their esophagus but that's different
sorry in advance for the nightmares / cost of therapy
>>47663409
woops
>>47662663
Please read the filename
>>47627482
Velvet worms are pretty fun. They're stealthy little buggers that can spit a glue-like substance that hardens in seconds, rendering prey immobile so it can take its sweet time approaching the victim so it can suck its insides out.
>>47663364
There's the supraesophageal ganglion and the suboesophageal ganglion.
They are connected because rope ladder nervous system, which I'm haphazardly translating from the language I learned the concept in.
The digestive tract passes between the two.
Ergo it is technically going through their brain.
Although my word choice "Right through" may have been shitty and implied a lack of seperation between the digestive tract.
However because of the proximity between the nervous system and the DT the nervous system is vulnerable according to what I know.
Not sure if it's specifically cordyceps though, which was the point of contention anyway.
>>47665138
the rope ladder nervous system is just their spinal chord.
The two ganglia are separate entities with the supraesophagal being the analog of the brain.
It's tempting to think of them being like the cerebrum and cerebellum but they're simply not.
>>47660034
>tfw your video gets posted in bug threads now
I still have no idea how this thing exploded to almost 5 million fucking views.
And just to make centipedes more terrifying (because apparently people are really creeped out by them for some reason): They can actually hold several items of prey at once. If they've caught something and sense there is something else they could catch they simply move their current prey back a few pairs of legs and go for their next target. This doesn't inhibit their mobility at all. I've seen mine carry up to 3 (kind of alive)crickets at once. Some species also carry their eggs this way.
Also they're as fast backwards as they are forwards.
>There's also some worm like thing that bursts out of a praying mantis, but I don't have the video. I'd look for it, but I have trypophobia and there are too many botfly videos when I search for "worm like thing comes out of..."
You mean this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhzFh_hs5Oc
It's one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematomorpha
They are surprisingly common.
>>47629178
What, then, is that brownish shit?
>>47665843
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autohaemorrhaging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemolymph
>>47665257
Thanks for correcting me then.
While I hate to pester you further, would I be correct in saying that it is their nervous system, as opposed to their brain?
>>47665884
Not the guy you're responding to but in the end it's semantics if you should call the cephalic ganglia a brain or not.
I'd argue for "no" because they really don't play as central a role as the vertebrate brain does. The reason they're so prominent is because they have to process the information of the sensory organs of the head and coordinate the movements of the mouthparts and there just is a lot of stuff to do there (especially because the insect head is made up of three very tightly fused segments that all had their separate pairs of ganglia).
That is about it though, they're really just big sensory input processors, they don't exert a controlling role on the rest of the body the way that our brain does for example.
>>47665884
Pretty much, Whether the nervous tissue actually touches the esophagus depends on the family/genus, I think.
>>47666032
If I'm not mistaken there are some insects, like hydrometra, where the ganglia fuse and move up towards the head region.
Which basically gives you 3 parts with separate functions that would be in the vertebrate brain.
>>47627482
Surprised nobody has used this. Idk what you could do with it, maybe be a parasite or a mind controlling bug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuHGdv4ZLjA
>>47663429I am reminded of a hentai with a beastgal based, IIRC, off of that.
Hell if I remember the name, sadly.
>>47667854
Well, obviously mind control worms are why there are so many different bugs in the same dungeon worshipping the same artifact.
>>47663429
>open it
>starts to extend hand
>close it
Did it get him?
>>47632593
>dragon headed
More like harlequin baby headed.
>>47668836
>Onward Huckleberry! To war! To glory!
Huzzah and hoorah! The wonderful world of insects, a magical realm of awe!
>>47673574
>>47673584
>>47673596
>>47673630
>>47673646
>>47673712
>>47673727
