Abeil

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Vassal • Soldier • Queen

Abeils are insectlike humanoids known for their industriousness and their complex social structure. They are commonly referred to as “bee people”. Their society has an expansionist philosophy—a fact that troubles those whose lands they intrude upon. Rather than resorting to war, abeils prefer to overcome rivals through superior resourcefulness and industry.

An abeil looks like a cross between an elf and a bee. A vassal or queen stands more than 7 feet high and has slender but sinewy legs and arms. A soldier is at least 10 feet tall and considerably more muscular than either of the other two varieties. An abeil’s hands and feet have four digits each. Its body is covered with bristly fur, colored in alternating bands of black and yellow. The creature’s head and facial features resemble those of an elf, except that the abeil has black, faceted eyes and long antennae. Like a bee, an abeil has translucent wings.

Abeils speak Common, Elven, and Sylvan.

Combat

All abeils prefer to fight from the sky, making ranged attacks and sonic assaults upon their foes below. If forced to fight on the ground, they coordinate their attacks to make the best use of their ranged weapons (and spells, for those capable of casting them). In melee, they prefer to swarm around particularly tough opponents and sting them with their enfeebling poison.

Abeils fight to the death because they believe that cowardice on the battlefield could doom the hive. They rarely wear armor because it impedes their ability to fly.

Drone (Su): As a full-round action, an abeil can beat its wings to create a droning buzz in a 60-foot spread. Each creature in the area must make a Will save (see below for DCs) or fall asleep as the sleep spell. There is no Hit Dice limit for this effect. Abeils are immune to their own drone attacks as well as those of other abeils.

Improved Grab (Ex): If an abeil hits a single target that is at least one size category smaller than itself with both claws, it deals normal damage and attempts to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity (see the Base Attack/Grapple entry in each abeil’s statistics block above for grapple bonuses). If it gets a hold, it automatically hits with its sting. Thereafter, the abeil has the option to conduct the grapple normally, or simply use its claws to hold the opponent (–⁠20 penalty on grapple check, but the abeil is not considered grappled). In either case, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals damage from both claws and the sting.

Hive Mind (Ex): All abeils within 25 miles of their queen are in constant communication. If one is aware of a particular danger, they all are. If one in a particular group is not flat-footed, none of them are. No abeil in such a group is considered flanked unless they all are.

Poison (Ex): An abeil delivers its poison with each successful sting attack. The DC of the Fortitude save against this poision is listed in the Special Attacks entry for each type of abeil. The initial and secondary damage is 1d4 points of Strength damage for vassals, 2d4 for soldiers, and 1d2 points of Strength drain for queens.

Vassal ⬆️

Vassals are the backbone of abeil society. It is they who provide the menial labor for the hive. They gather pollen, maintain the hive-city, and obey their queen’s every command. Vassals produce the necessary goods for the abeil society, provide both mundane and specialized services, and advance the culture and techology of their hive city. A few even choose to leave behind their mundane tasks and pursue more individualistic paths, such as philosophy, art, religion, and politics. These abeils form an elite conclave called the vassal court that reports directly to the queen and serves as her council.

Combat

Unless ordered to attack, vassals flee combat to notify the hive of the threat. When armed for battle, they fight with light flails.

Soldier ⬆️

These creatures account for fully a third of an abeil hive-city’s population. The soldiers are the queen’s army⁠—​the first and last line of defense for their hive. They are trained to respond swiftly to any danger. Soldiers consider most nearby civilizations to be threats and treat uninvited visitors with grave suspicion.

Combat

Abeil soldiers are often called stormwings because of the thunderous noise they make in battle. They prefer to meet a threat by using their stormwing attacks and bows first, then meleeing with ranseurs and stingers as needed.

Stormwing (Su): As a full-round action, a soldier in flight can hover and deliver a destructive sonic attack with its wings. The attack deals 6d6 points of sonic damage to all (except other abeils) within a 40-foot burst (Reflex save DC 16 for half damage). Once the soldier uses this ability, it must wait 1d4 rounds before using it again.

Special Enemy (Ex): An abeil soldier may select a type of creature as a special enemy. This ability is similar to the ranger’s favored enemy ability, and the soldier may choose from the same list. Each soldier may select only one special enemy.

The soldier receives a +3 bonus on Bluff, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks when using these skills against its special enemy. Likewise, a soldier gets this same bonus on weapon damage rolls against creatures of the selected type.

Queen ⬆️

At the pinnacle of any abeil society is the queen, who rules with absolute power. All the abeils in her realm live and die at her command. Though she was born to rule, the typical queen routinely seeks the advice of her court before committing to any major decisions.

The queen selects a mate from her vassal court and personally rears future queens. Each hive-city maintains 1–5 juvenile queens in addition to the reigning queen. Each such young queen has the same statistics as a vassal.

Combat

An abeil queen can cast powerful spells when threatened, and her poison is more virulent than that of any other abeil. However, she is rarely in combat because she depends primarily on her soldiers to protect her.

Spells: An abeil queen can cast divine spells as a 16th-level druid (spells/day 6/7/6/6/5/5/3/3/2; save DC 15 + spell level).

Abeil Society

The hive-city is the central hub of the abeils’ busy society. Vassals buzz here and there, ensuring that vital city services continue, while patrols of soldiers vigilantly keep the peace and protect the hive against outside threats.

Abeils are highly imperialistic, though they are not so much concerned with conquering other races as they are with setting up new hive-cities. Nevertheless, this goal puts them into conflict with nearly every other race they encounter, since socieities in their path must fight for space and resources or be pushed out by the abeil civilization.

When a hive-city becomes too large, one of the young queens is given a substance called royal jelly, which converts her into a full-fledged queen. She then takes twenty vassals and five soldiers and leaves to set up a new hive-city at a previously scouted location.

Although abeil society is extremely rigid, there is enough freedom within a hive to allow an individual abeil its own choice of profession. Even so, relatively few abeils desire to progress as characters. For those that do, the favored class is druid for queens or vassals and ranger for soldiers.

An abeil PC’s effective character level (ECL) is its class level plus the appropriate modifier: vassal +3, soldier +11, queen +21. For example, a 1st-level vassal druid has an ECL of 4 and is the equivalent of a 4th-level character.

Source: Monster Manual II, page 22. These creatures’ statistics blocks have been updated to version 3.5 as given in the D&D® V.3.5 Accessory Update for Monster Manual II.