Skin Beetle
Level 3Attacks
Abilities
A skin beetle can use its mandibles as a Healer's Toolkit.
A creature exposed to a skin beetle's saliva must succeed on a DC 19 fortitude save or become Clumsy 1 for 1 round.
The skin beetle makes a mandibles Strike against an animal or humanoid. If the Strike deals damage, the beetle tears of a large portion of flesh, dealing an additional 1d6 bleed.
A typical skin beetle is 1-1/2 feet long and weighs 10 pounds—about the size of a house cat. Its oval-shaped body is covered in dull-colored scales, and short, club-like antennae stem from shallow grooves in its head.
Skin beetles are found in most environments that can sustain life, from cold, dry steppes to dense, humid jungles. They use their complex multi-jointed mandibles to strip the skin and flesh from recently deceased creatures with almost surgical precision. While skin beetles eat most of what they remove, they also preserve chunks for later by coating it in special salivary secretions similar to formaldehyde. The skin beetle rolls this coated flesh into a ball, then stores it under an exposed tree root or rock for leaner times. Signs of skin beetle activity include excoriated skeletons and the smell of the beetles' preservative saliva.
Umasi Beetle Masters Though best known for flaying carrion, skin beetles can also heal gravely wounded individuals. Skin beetles can graft preserved flesh onto a dying animal or humanoid. The end result isn't pretty, but it sometimes works. From the perspective of the healed, the blessing can be mixed, as the beetle's surgery often transforms the subject into a patchwork aberration called an Umasi.
Umasi created by skin beetles sometimes develop supernatural connections to their insectoid saviors. Such umasi can command skin beetles to harvest more flesh to keep their decaying bodies intact.