Sand-Stalkers

Overview

Sand-Stalkers is the name given to the beasts of the Parched as a kind: hunters and scavengers made for a world without water. The best known are the Dust-Wyrms that swim through sand, the swarming Bleed-Beetles, and the carcass-guarding Bone-Walkers.

Appearance

They wear the plane's colours, ochre, pale sand, cracked-clay brown, and bleached bone, and most have hard hides or shells that hold in what moisture they win. Few are large in the body; all are large in the mouth.

Habitat and Range

They range across the deserts, mud flats, and canyons of the Parched, gathering wherever moisture is: at the deep seeps, at a fresh kill, and around any traveller.

Behaviour and Temperament

What unites them is thirst. Every Sand-Stalker hunts for moisture before it hunts for meat, and a living body is to them first of all a store of water. They are drawn to the smell of water, sweat, and blood, and to the vibration of footsteps.

Uses and Dangers

Their hides and shells are worked by the Dust-Eaters, and the plane's hunters come for some of them. Their danger is that the plane gives them nothing else to drink but the traveller.

Lore and Belief

Travellers tend to call every beast of the Parched a sand-devil. Between the Parched and the Scourge, it is said, lies a badland where predators of both planes raid for what little there is, and Sand-Stalkers are among them.

Desert raiders on Caeldon who use the Dry Gates as a bolt-hole are said to lose a man to the Stalkers on every crossing, and to count it the price of never being followed.

Where It Appears

• The Parched