Traveller Animals for the Jungles

Needed an animal encounter table for a job the Travellers are taking in a jungle. The planet is being colonised and has a reputation for the hyper-predatory nature of the wildlife.

4+ on 1D to encounter, rolled twice per day.

The names are given by the colonists, although multiple terms are often used.

2 “Ghoul”

Intermittent quadrupeds with over-long claws on their ‘arms’. These are used to hew flesh from bone, scraping what gobbets are left after others have eaten their fill. If one of their number is injured, they stalk the offending party. Lightly furred, they shy away from the sun.

3 “Mosscrab”

Huge claws for cracking bone and armour alike. Low to the ground, the size of small pigs. Their soft hides often bear symbiotic plant-life which gives them a degree of camouflage. Usually encountered in trios - one of which appears to be the child. If the child is killed, the ‘parents’ attempt to drag the body away and bury it.

4 “Treetongue”

Soft-bodied lengths of muscle which secrete bone-dissolving enzymes, Treetongues descend upon the carcasses left by the others, consuming the skeletal remains. They are also attracted to metals, although it seems to act as a slow poison - slow enough to give them time to thoroughly destroy engines and other complex machines.

5 “Big Fucking Mantis”

The size of a horse with a tough chitin-clad body and scything arms. Noted to be very cannibalistic. Moves eerily quietly apart from their ‘Tiger Dance’ - performed when the gas giant looms large in the sky.

6 “Harpoon Slime”

A rolling bulk of cut-resistant slime which fires bony spines at animal life. The fallen leaves and ground-plants it consumes give it a pseudo-camouflage. The more spines are embedded in prey, the faster it moves - otherwise inching through the jungle floor. Leaves useful paths through the undergrowth.

7 “Stone Giraffe”

A tall, slender-limbed being wrapped in bone-plated armour. Highly resistant to small-arms fire, it has been seen killing and eating animals unable to flee it’s long, loping stride. Otherwise it grazes upon the tall jungle canopy.

8 “Centipede-Lizard”

Eight powerful limbs propel this reptilian behemoth through the trees, dextrously clambering over all obstacles in pursuit of prey. Rending teeth and a powerful jaw enable it to quickly tear apart those it catches - although long basking periods in rare clearings give much of the other life respite. The scales are nearly paper-thin, giving no protection - theorised to allow for easier basking.

9 “Wasp”

Hiding in burrows of softer trees, Wasps jump from hiding to deploy their stingers. The poison in the sting causes humans to rapidly undergo powerful seizures before death - often from cardiac arrest causes by stress. Sufficient sedatives and induced coma has been successful, but requires fast action. Thankfully, the stingers struggle to penetrate anything thicker than light clothing.

11 “???”

No surviving reports from the colonists yet exist. Something like a giant starfish with a shovel-scoop mouth which it uses to dig covered pits wherein it waits for prey, easily carving off limbs with its excavator-mouth.

12 “Nightmares”

Packs of vicious killers which kill large swathes of wildlife before gorging themselves on the devastation, resting for long periods of time. Each is the size of a hairless wolf, propelled by four short powerful limbs. Their mouths are filled with tiny, razor-sharp teeth at the end of long necks which they use to whip prey back and forth, cutting them to shreds. Their hairless bodies are a dull grey-green due to symbiotic algae which feeds on the gore in which they are often covered.