From the Stars Without Number Compatible – Alien Database
Echo Sonar. The hook horror can emit clacking sounds with its exoskeleton. In a subterranean environment, these clacking sounds can produce an echo that works as an effective sonar. Hook horrors can use their Notice skill check up to an average distance of 100 meters. The echo sonar cannot pass through solid walls but can detect shapes in caves and tunnels with curves and sloping passages.
Grasping Hooks. If the hook horror hits with both hooks, it automatically hit with its beak and maintains the grasp on the target. The target can attempt an opposed Exert skill check against the hook horror to get free of the grasp.
COMBAT & TACTICS
Hook horror hunting technique relies on silent approaching and surprise. Their sonar-like ability is even more dangerous than its natural weapons. Where many technological gears may fail to recognize or identify shapes and formations located underground, the hook horror’s sonar seems to be flawless and the closest thing to perfection. Millions of years of evolution have created a creature that can detect things like fungus, mold, and oozes, so xenobiologists speculate that the Hook Horror can detect the air moved by the breath of a living creature.
DESCRIPTION
Hook Horror are bipedal tick-like creatures. They are from 2 to 3 meters tall and their body is covered by thick silicate plating, spikes, and barbs. They have a small head, which mounts a beak-like mouth, while their superior limbs end with an extremely sharp hook-like claw.
HABITAT
Hook Horrors dwell in subterranean caves that usually span miles wide. Inactive volcanic areas are also one of the favored terrains of these creatures, as well as mining facilities too close to their hunting grounds. Hook horrors are extremely efficient predators and when matched in their territory they usually gain the upper hand.
BIOLOGY
Hook horrors feed on fungus, mold, oozes, and other small living beings that populate the subterranean world. As soon as the first mining companies came into contact with these creatures, Hook Horrors quickly adapted to prey upon miners and personnel in general. Once a hook horror tastes the meat of a humanoid,
it will try to feed more and more, to the point of developing a sort of addiction. Scientists believe it is possible to “tame” these creatures. Some corporations are planning to implant a sort of neural interface to their synaptic system, and they think they can be successful due to the small size of the brain of these creatures.