I am currently finishing off my next big project - the Three Mile Tree megadungeon.
One of the entries in the key begins with the phrase contained in the title to this entry: 'A trap has been placed here to kill hornet-women.'
I know what the trap is. I want you to give me your ideas in the comments!
A fly-man has been staked at the bottom of a well. Actually, a fly-man carcass, stuffed with rot grubs, who impart it jerky motions close enough to those of living prey.
ReplyDeleteIf the bait is disturbed, the well floods from the sides, fouling the hornet-women's wings and sending them drowning to the bottom.
Nice.
DeleteI mean, it's obviously a dire badger wearing an Anne Geddes' style flower around its head.
ReplyDeleteIt has been a long time since I thought of the name Anne Geddes. My mum was really into her at one point.
DeleteA small cache of hornet pupa attached to an intact section of nest paper. The pupa look warm as if alive, but within are squirming, wriggling masses of Sphaerularia vespae - parasitic nematodes which will infect and attempt to devour a hornet-woman who touches the sack.
ReplyDeleteIf the hornet-woman's save is missed by less than 5, she is merely rendered infertile. If missed by 5 or more, she dies horribly and the now-more-numerous nematodes burst forth from her body in 3d4 hours.
Very good.
DeleteIt's a picnic set up with several giant cans of orange soda--assuming hornet-women are human-sized. When the hornet women land on the soda cans and are inevitably drawn to crawl inside the can, the flap closes behind them. A giant obnoxious kid then comes along and shakes the can vigorously building up pressure until the can explodes, launching the unfortunate hornet woman at tremendous velocity against a nearby tree.
ReplyDeleteWasps in summer time. A human universal.
DeleteI remember a bee got into my orange crush when I was a child.
DeleteNo doubt someone has sprinkled hornet-man pheromones just beyond a trip wire connected to a falling block trap. Most other creatures will notice the wire or the smear of ichor on the floor, but love-crazed hornet-women will rush right in!
ReplyDeleteNo doubt!
DeleteAn idyllic flower basking under a shaft of light, but who's pollen has been modified or replaced by a paralytic poison. It only activates after it cools, meaning it's useless in the sunlight, but hopefully hits a lot of them when they head back to the hive.
ReplyDeleteThat might be bee's not hornets lol
Yeah, do hornets eat pollen? I think they are mostly carnivorous.
DeleteImitation bee-person hive coated in contact poison and built into the ceiling of a tall vertical shaft.
ReplyDeleteYou get points for remembering that hornets eat bees, rather than honey.
DeleteA device that sprays random pheromones that confuse the Hornet-Womens' scent cues and cause them to read to one another as members of disparate (and rival) hives. They therefore begin to fight one another (or at the very least become incapable of true coordination or mutual trust). This obviously can't deter a lone Hornet-Woman, but if she's alone she's probably a sick outcast anyway. Or a queen. Let's hope the queen doesn't end up attracting members of multiple hives since she now smells like all of them... The First Hornet Empire.
ReplyDeleteHornet Empire is a good title for a module.
DeleteGiant intelligent spiders use themselves as prey, the hornet women paralyse them with venom and take them back to the nest as food for the larvae. Having built an imunity to the wasp venom they don't remain paralysed long enough for the larvae to pose a danger, and instead the spider feasts on the horner women's young.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like it could happen in the natural world.
DeleteI'm going with a naturally occuring fungus which attracts hornet-women with trickery and pheromones, eventually making use of the dead hornets that died to lure in even more hornets.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea that people in hornet country curate a small patch of their garden for this fungus to keep the hornets away from the rest of their property.