Ugly Bugs That Feed On Fear: Introducing the Marikith to My Players

[Leliel]

Before you ask: Basically, the Marikith are a race of insecticoid predators from the Ravenloft campagin setting that use the enzymes produced by an organism in a state of fear to better extract nutrients from their prey, and as a result try to terrify their unlucky victims before they eat them. The thing is, one of the main villains from a all-werebeast game I'm planning to run uses them as a demoralizer and soldiers, but I am not sure exactly how to do that. So...

How would you introduce these big, ugly bugs?

Couple things:

1) The Marikith are able to compress their exoskeleton, giving them the ability to slip through any gap wider then 1 inch.

2) They also have a hive structure, although this is probably not relevant other than the fact that they have a theoretically infinite number of castes, and thus, forms.

(Chitters).

That was Marikith for "Please Post".

[Miles Invictus]

How do they induce fear, specifically? Is it a matter of changing into a creepy shape? Is it magic or psionic? And what size are they normally?

I'm envisioning a platoon of stereotypically courageous individuals (knights, etc) getting swarmed by these things, too terrified to do anything but curl up into a ball. Bonus points for killing off a PC's loved one.

[Prometheus]

If they are intelligent, or their hive mind (I assumed that's what you meant by hive structure) can be used to intelligently command them, have them perform acts of terrorism. Have them attack commoners or important officials in spectacular ways, multiple places simultaneously. Sure they probably won't get a lot of nutrients the first time around, but eventually and peasant that so much as sees one knows that not only will more come, but they and everyone around them will die a gruesome death. Especially make use of the fact that they can pop out of anywhere and attack in together.

[AKA_Bait]

They should also go out of their way to target the easily freightened. Children, the weak willed, etc. This:

1. Unnerves the local population when their kids start dissapearing/being eaten.

2. Makes the rest of the population more likley to be afraid of the things.