Scythe Mantises

Overview

Scythe Mantises are the ambush hunters of the Scourge, among its Apex Predators. They stand taller than a rider and wait without moving in the razor-edged red bloodgrass of the plains, and they cut down whatever passes within reach. The Scourge-Born count a kill of one as a mark of honour.

Appearance

A grown mantis stands half again the height of a mounted rider, a long, narrow body on four thin legs, with a triangular head that turns on its neck to follow movement. Its forelegs fold against its chest like a pair of scythes, the inner edge of each a serrated blade longer than a sword. Its colours are those of the plains: rust and dull crimson, streaked with bruised purple, so that standing in the red grass it reads as more grass and a thorn stem. Its great compound eyes are a dark, wet green. It moves in slow, swaying steps and strikes faster than an eye can follow. A strike makes a dry snap; a hunting mantis is otherwise silent.

Habitat and Range

They live alone on the red grass plains and in the thorn thickets at their edges, one to a wide stretch of ground, each holding its own and killing any other that comes into it.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Scythe Mantis hunts by waiting. It stands in the grass for days, swaying a little with the wind as the grass sways, and lets prey come to it: grazers such as the Scourge Tuskers, lone hunters, travellers. When something passes within reach, the forelegs open and close in one movement and the prey is held, cut, and eaten where it stands. A mantis that misses does not chase. It turns its head, watches, and waits again. It fears nothing on the plane but an Iron-Claw, whose armour its blades will not cut.

Abilities

Its strike is the fastest movement on a plane where every blow lands harder than it should, and its blades cut through hide, leather, and mail. Standing still, it cannot be told from the grass even at a few paces, and it can stand still longer than any hunter can bear to watch.

Life Cycle

Females lay their eggs in a frothy case on a thorn stem, and the young hatch in hundreds and begin killing each other at once; the plane's pressure leaves only a few to grow. Mantises moult their blades as they grow, and the shed blades lie in the grass, as sharp as the living ones.

Uses and Dangers

The Scourge-Born hunt them alone, by walking into the grass and waiting for the strike, and the one who kills a mantis wears its forelegs as blades or as a badge of rank. Shed blades are traded as weapons. To travellers a mantis is death in the grass, and the Scourge's warning is to walk the plains only where the grass has been burnt.

Lore and Belief

Travellers say a mantis can be seen only by looking for the grass that does not move with the wind; the Scourge-Born say this is how a fool dies, since a mantis sways with the wind exactly. A common tale on the Material Plane, told of War-Gates and old battlefields, is of a grass that cuts men down where they stand, and may be a memory of the mantises.

Sellswords who came back from the Scourge with a mantis blade had it set on a hilt and carried it to every war after; a mantis-blade sword is one of the great prizes a company can boast of, and has been stolen and killed for.

Where It Appears

• The Scourge