Starship Troopers: Control Bug

**Name**: Control Bug
**Dexterity**: 4D+2
**Perception**: 3D

* Con: 4D+2
* Hide: 6D
* Sneak: 6D

**Strength**: 1D+1
**Orneriness**: 0D

**Move**: 7
**Size**: ~0.1 meters long

**Special Abilities**:

* **Bite**: STR+0D+1
* **Natural Armor**: STR+0D+2 to resist damage
* **Blindsight 10 meters**: Using non-visual senses, such as sensitivity to vibrations, keen smell, acute hearing or echo-location, a creature with Blindsight maneuvers and fights as efficiently as a sighted creature. Darkness and most kinds of concealment are irrelevant, though the creature must have line of ‘sight’ to a creature or object to discern it. The creature usually does not need to make checks to notice creatures within range of its Blindsight ability. Unless noted otherwise, Blindsight is continuous and the creature need do nothing to use it. Stealth checks made to evade a creature with Blindsight suffer a –1D+1 penalty.
* **Dexterous Attack**: Due to their nimble nature, control bugs are able to use their Dexterity rather than their Strength to attack.
* **Grappler**: Control bugs almost exclusively opt to grapple in combat. Given their tactic of striking from the dark at the backs of their target’s automatically grants the control bug a +2D+2 bonus to grapple rolls.
* **Mind Bondage**: If this creature can grapple a character and maintain that hold for three rounds without being killed or forced to release its victim, it can fire tendrils into its victim’s brain stem and nervous system. These allow the control bug to manipulate the target as if it was the victim with all of its own knowledge added to the victim’s thoughts, memories and person. In essence, the victim remains himself but works for the interests of its Arachnid master in word and deed. Any attempts to detect or control the host or its control bug using psychic powers while the control bug is active suffer a –1D+1 penalty at anything longer than close range. Even then, any successful scans produce a garbled stream of psychic feedback, which, while not harmful to the psychic, it does leave them stunned for one round. This mental slavery ends only when the control bug is forced to separate from its host for any reason.
* **Wall Crawler**: A control bug can climb and travel on vertical surfaces or even traverse ceilings as well as a Terran spider can. While the control bug is doing so it may continue to travel at its base speed and need not make checks to climb a vertical or horizontal surface, even if doing so upside down. A control bug cannot travel any faster than its base speed while climbing.

**Description**: Control bugs are a deadly and dangerous new element of the Arachnid offensive against the advance of humanity. Designed and bred specifically to take over bipedal creatures, control bugs are very potent, albeit subtle, weapons with the added benefit of being almost undetectable should they wish to hide themselves when riding a thrall. They attach themselves to the base of a victim’s skull, which allows them to grapple far better than they normally would and making detection difficult once the command their slave to put on a heavy jacket or top.

**Source**:

* Starship Troopers RPG Sourcebook (pages 211-212)
* Starship Troopers Wiki: Control Bug
* thedemonapostle