Pismire
“Imperial Ant” © Yuke’s and D3 Publisher, accessed here
[A new wave of themed monsters starts here; I’m digging through medieval bestiaries, Greek histories, folklore and other sources to find some monsters of the greater European world. This is my take on the gold-digging ant, which as @a-book-of-creatures describes here, is probably a marmot through several layers of mistranslation. The Herodotus version doesn’t really say what they do with the gold. So my inspiration was to draw on the properties of the gold group metals to conduct electricity. I was surprised to find I wasn’t the first person to make this connection: the image is from the game Earth Defense Force: Iron Sky, where one of the DLC packs features golden electrical ants as an enemy.
The name, by the way, is an old-fashioned word for ant or anthill. It’s related to the smell of formic acid smelling like urine (I guess; I don’t think there’s much resemblance), and evolved into the modern term “pissant”.]
Pismire CR 4 N Magical Beast This giant ant is the size of a small dog. Its carapace is a gleaming yellow and the smell of ozone surrounds it.
Pismires are sometimes referred to as “gold digging ants”, but the truth of the matter is that they are interested in many forms of precious metals. Gold, silver, and copper are all a part of their diets, although they only require trace amounts. These metals infuse their carapace and their nervous system, granting them electrical abilities and the ability to move at lightning speeds for short periods of time. The rest of their diet is carnivorous. As such, they attack travelers and caravans for both their coins and their flesh, and looting a pismire nest in search of their precious gold is an activity fraught with peril.
Pismires are eusocial, like other ants, but have small colonies due to their large size and unique dietary habits. A pismire queen does not leave the nest except in order to mate and found a new colony when she is young, but is certainly capable of defending herself and her brood. A pismire queen is a pismire with the advanced and giant simple templates. Instead of the zip zap special attack, she has a breath weapon, dealing 3d12 electricity in a 30 foot line, usable once every 1d4 rounds (Reflex DC 20). A pismire queen is a CR 6 monster.
