Secret Jackalope: Rare Bugs and Spiders and their Uses

Ro-Man! over at Multiverse of Terror has requested: Rare bugs and spiders and their dangers/uses

Excerpts from "Creepy-Crawlies and You: A Perspicacious Wizard's Guide to Practical Entomo-Arachnology"

The Greater Doom Weevil

Much despised by farmers is the lesser weevil, scourge upon crop and soil. Yet more despised is its rare and powerful relative, the Greater Doom Weevil. The antennae of these colossal beetle-like creatures reach to the height of a man's shoulder, their shell is glossy and slippery and as fit a suit of armor as any forged. And their hunger far exceeds that of their swarming little cousins. 

The reader may protest that the Greater Doom Weevil is no more than another oversized (possibly magically enhanced) pest, a beast to be exterminated like so many giant ants, and giant wasps, and giant locusts. What warrants its inclusion in a collection of rare and wondrous creepy crawlies?

Beyond its gross physical abilities, the Doom Weevil is notable for its prophetic properties. To those suitably inclined, the preserved innards of such a beast are unexcelled for the purpose of haruspicy, superior even to the guts of an albino lamb. Its entwined antennae produce excellent dowsing rods, its glittering eyes produce extraordinary, multifaceted black crystal balls. 

This divinatory power is possessed of the being in life as well, to the detriment of those who would hunt it. The Weevil has been known to pronounce exact and correct prophecies about those in its presence, though it possesses no faculties of humanoid communication in other situations, or perhaps simply chooses never to use them. These prophecies are uniformly damning to their subjects, most commonly consisting of loss of wealth and property, ill luck in romance, and grievous injury. They will continue to speak these prophecies if the subject does not depart forthwith, and they do not cease to be accurate or horrible. Our thoughts remain with the late Professor Gilliwig, God rest his soul. 

The Anatolian Hair Spider

A relative of various species of burrowing arachnids, the dime-sized Anatolian Hair Spider seeks out coiffures as its preferred habitat. Note that it is not wild, but feral; the nobility of the Ottoman Empire formerly employed tame spiders as living fashion statements, accessorizing the spiders with particular hairdos and outfits. For nearly a century, no society woman would be caught dead without a little crawler of her own racing about on her head. The Anatolian is noted for a highly concentrated venom, which though insufficient to cause much damage to a human, retains a dormitive potency, and can put its wearer to sleep at short notice. 

This trait was much beloved of its owners, as it provided ready escape from dull conversation. However, after an unfortunate incident where the mistress of the Pasha Selim fell asleep under the spider's venom during his Excellency's poetry-recital, the Anatolian Hair-Spider rapidly fell out of court fashion. Extant varieties are not wild, but feral. They are attracted to perfumes and large headdresses, and woe befalls the soldier whose crested helmet has become a lair for such creatures. Once attached to a head, the spider is loath to leave, unless the head is shaved clean or chased off with a specialized spray (its recipe now sadly lost). 

After an Anatolian Hair Spider to a new, hirsute host, 1:6 each hour that the spider's bite induces sleep, with 1HD per spider. Many spiders have been known to inhabit the same head, but only over short periods of time, as they will eventually battle with one another for territorial supremacy. They are also excellent at maintaining hair health and eating ticks and fleas. 

The Jade Locust

Folklore tells of a young girl, sent out by her mother to find food, who instead discovered a colony of locusts in the process of devastating the local crops. However, she noticed that they left behind molted shells of pure jade. She brought the shells, and no small number of the locusts, back to her mother, who reprimanded the girl for bringing back such meager insects. Nevertheless, over her daughter's protestations, she consumed them. 

That night, a whole swarm of angry jade locusts erupted from her body and puppeted her dead limbs like an automaton. This was the beginning of the rule of the immortal Locust Empress. 

Though few today grant credit to such a dramatic myth, the properties of the Jade Locusts are not exaggerated. They do indeed secrete jade dust, and leave behind delicate shells when they molt. And likewise is their consumption a deadly and dangerous affair, as the locust can survive all but the most thorough mastication and retaliate in kind from the inside. Intense pain and sickness precede death, and if the body is not cleansed and burned swiftly, a whole colony will erupt from the body, which soon comes to resemble a mummy studded with mineral wealth. 

The gentle reader may be encouraged to capture a population of such creatures and maintain a farm, by which they could possess an ever-bountiful supply of precious jade. I will not seek to dissuade, except to say that it has long been attempted and rarely succeeded for any length of time, due to the locust's strange migratory patterns. A population may happily stay in captivity for years at a time, but on some inauspicious day will seek to escape to the outside world, prioritizing escape over all other drives, soon leading them to die unless released. 

In such periods, occurring no more than eight times in a century and no less than once, the world's entire population of Jade Locusts migrates to the far east, and when it returns it is much diminished. Tales of their ultimate destination and purpose are many and specious, but one commonality exists among many of the least fictitious: the area in which they congregate is the barren wasteland surrounding an ancient peak, within which is rumored to lie the final resting place of the Locust Empress, whose immortality was underestimated by heroes of yore. 

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I hope this was to your liking, Ro-Man! Until next time, have an excellent week.

HAIL THE JACKALOPE! IA! IA!