Scorpions

Overview

Scorpions live under stones and in wall cracks wherever the far side is dry: across the Windscar, out over the Glassbelt, and on the bare saddles between the terraced folds. Most kinds give a sting that hurts for a day. The pale scorpion of the glassed ground of the Glassbelt kills. Every child on the far side learns to shake out its boots before putting them on.

Appearance

A scorpion is a flat, armoured, eight-legged hunter with a pair of grasping claws held out in front and a long segmented tail curved up over its back, ending in a bulb and a curved sting. The common kinds of the Windscar and the Folds are dark: brown, black, or dull olive, as long as a finger, with thick heavy claws. The pale scorpion of the glassed ground is slender, straw-yellow to nearly translucent, with thin small claws and a thick tail, as long as a hand. Scorpions move in short darts, stand with claws raised and tail cocked when disturbed, and make no sound.

Habitat and Range

The dark kinds live under stones, in the cracks of dry-stone walls and stronghold walls, and in burrows across the Rimward Basins and the High Scars, and on the bare, unterraced saddles and spurs of the Leeward Folds, seldom in the terraces themselves. The pale kind is found only in the Glassbelt, thickest on and around glassed ground and furnace scars, in the cracks of the fused surface.

Behaviour and Temperament

Scorpions hunt at night, waiting at a burrow mouth or under a stone for insects, spiders, and small lizards, which they seize with their claws and sting if they struggle. By day they hide in cool dark places, which includes boots, bedding, folded hides, and the gaps of walls a hand reaches into. They sting people only when touched or pressed, but they do not give way.

Life Cycle

A female gives birth to live young, which ride on her back for their first weeks. They grow through several moults and may live several years.

Uses and Dangers

The sting of a dark scorpion brings burning pain, numbness, and swelling for a day or two, worse in a child. The sting of the pale scorpion brings pain, then sweating, twitching, a racing heart, and failing breath, and it kills children often and grown adults sometimes. Crossers shake out boots and bedding, sleep off the ground, and turn stones with a stick; Halfling wall-menders work the saddle walls in gloves.

Lore and Belief

Glassbelt crossers carry a remedy against the pale scorpion of chewed root and prayer: a bitter root chewed and packed on the sting, and the name of the dead spoken to call them to help. The root eases the pain; whether the prayer does anything, the crossers do not argue. Salvagers say the pale scorpion was white-hot once and has not yet cooled, and that it takes its poison from the fire in the glassed ground, which is why it lives nowhere else. Halflings say a scorpion in a terrace wall means the wall has dried out and must be watched.

Glassbelt tales tell of the poisoner who milked the pale scorpions for a lord's enemies and was killed by his own jar; the salvagers say the scorpions still nest in the ruin where he worked.

Where It Appears

• The Leeward Folds
• Stings and Bites
• Writers' Guide: The Leeward Folds