Ice Strider

From Reach

"Three things I hate about striders: the spikes, the poison, and the serum. If the spikes don't get you, the poison will... and the serum? The serum's not much better than the poison." - Yang "The Bear" Matthews

Morphology

Striders are uniquely adapted to the perpetually frozen parts of the Polar Regions. Four, long, spindly six-jointed legs hold an oval body a full three meters away from the surface of the ice. Two large, toothy maws take up most of the surface of the body, each capable of tearing a man in half. Each leg ends in a half-meter long barbed, bony spike. These spikes bury into the hard ice, allowing the strider to climb sheer glacial walls and even suspend itself from cave ceilings.

Life Cycle

Striders are utterly solitary creatures. An adult strider generally prowls a territory of three to four kilometers, charging and attacking any organism that dares to enter. Females lay soft, unfertilized eggs in a pool of hormones on the bare ice and abandon them. Eventually, the eggs freeze over, and the female moves on to other ground. Frozen eggs remain alive for several hundred years, waiting until a male claims that turf and discovers the hormone-rich ice. The male then fertilizes the egg. A young ice strider, with fully developed spikes, bursts out of the ice three months later, and is promptly driven off by it's father. Striders grow quickly, reaching full size in less than a year, and living in the wild for up to 30 years.

Hazards

Ice Striders are dangerous animals. They are aggressive to the point of suicidal, and have been known to attack heavily armed caravans. They generally attack by charging intruders and stabbing with their leg spikes. The barbed spike penetrate the engine block of a light vehicle, or impale a man. A strider that successfully impales a target, will try to pull it into the closer of their two maws, each capable of tearing a man in half.

Near-misses can be just as dangerous as the spikes are covered with hundreds of razor sharp barbs that carry a lethal toxin that shuts down the peripheral nervous system. The victim immediately experiences a rapidly growing numbness, spreading from the point of exposure to the whole body. Within minutes, the victim experiences full flaccid paralysis. A few hours later, the paralyzed victim loses consciousness, falling into a coma, requiring life support, and suffering irreversible nervous system damage. No one wakes up from Strider-induced coma.

Fortunately, a serum exists which can counteract the venom if administered before the coma's onset. The serum counteracts the venom's effects by overstimulating the same nerves the poison targets, replacing the numbness and paralysis with a painful burning sensation and muscle spasms over a period of four hours. Serum experiences vary, but a typical patient's muscle spasms are so violent they must be restrained, and the burning has been frequently compared to being set on fire. Many of Reach's hardiest Frontiersmen have permanently ended their polar careers after a dose of the serum.

Strider's sex hormones contain trace amounts of their venom, making them a serious threat to ice harvesting operations, as a single strider egg, if not removed properly, can contaminate a two tonne ice block.

Uses

The government of The Berg has offered a bounty of fifty Tins per strider spike, in an effort to exterminate the creatures and protect their ice harvests.