The sinister little insects known as earwights are thought to have once been earwigs who fed on the decaying flesh of revenants or other matter suffused with necromantic energy. Now much prized by assassins and occasionally by adventurers, earwights have developed the unique ability to burrow into the brain matter of a corpse and secrete a series of alchemical substances that reanimate the cadaver, transforming it into their putrescent puppet. They can perform similar operations on the brains of reanimants, including the zombies increasingly essential to Hex’s burgeoning industrial economy, seizing control of the undead being’s brain from whatever necromancer reanimated them. Earwights slowly consume the brains of their hosts, laying their eggs in their skulls. Although wild earwights generally direct their hosts to mindlessly kill and consume flesh, to find hosts for their future young, earwights in captivity can also be trained. By feeding the earwight strips of vellum inscribed with instructions written in Deadspeech, the earwight absorbs the instructions and then somehow transmits them into the brains of its host, infusing its alchemical secretions with the directives of its owner.
Earwight: 1d8 HD (6 Hit Points), Bite (Dex, +1a/1d3 piercing) or Pincers (+1a/Dex, 1d3 piercing), Speed 20 feet or climb 20 feet or fly 20 feet, Morale 0, Small, Str 4, Dex 16, Con 6, Int 5, Wis 8, Cha 4
- Brainburrow: An earwight that critically hits an enemy with a head with its Bite attack can burrow into its brain through an ear or nostril, dealing Bite damage automatically as an automatic critical hit with each subsequent action. While inside a brain, the earwight can no longer be targeted directly. To target the earwig, the host must first be killed or the parasite removed with a Dexterity test opposed by the earwight’s Dexterity save, or by magic. An earwight can abandon a host as an action.
- Puppeteer: An earwight inside the brain of an inert corpse can use an action to reanimate the corpse, as per Reanimate Cadaver, directing the corpse as it wishes. If instead inside a corporeal undead creature, it can make a Dexterity test opposed by the target’s Charisma save to seize control of them, repeating this test each round to maintain control. A host later reduced to 0 Hit Points ceases to function for the earwight and cannot be reanimated a second time.
I’m going to be posting monsters like this once a week, both here and as free posts via my new Patreon. Over time these will be compiled into a Hex Bestiary. The rules used are for The Hex Hack, accessible for paid Patrons, though easily adaptable for lots of other systems.
