Insects

In his Natural History, Pliny divides animals into four categories: land animals, creatures of the sea, birds, and insects. ArM5 lists four categories of animals as well: birds, fish, hoofed beasts, and clawed beasts (Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults, Appendix: Mundane Beasts, pages 38–43). The division of land animals into hoofed and clawed is a useful distinction for generating game statistics. Because magical animal stats are based on mundane animal stats, it is difficult to assign stats to a magical insect, without rules for mundane insects. This insert offers information for creating insects, following the guidelines set forth in Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults.

• Insects are Size –15, although larger and smaller types may be encountered. An Ethiopian Ant of Virtue is as large as a dog (Size –1), for example.

• • An insect's Mental Characteristics are as follows: Cunning –1, Perception –1, Presence –6, and Communication –4.
• • Physical Characteristics are bought with 7 points, similar to human characters. Once Physical Characteristics have been assigned, add twice Size (usually –30) to Strength and subtract Size (usually +15) from Quickness, making insects exceptionally weak and exceedingly fast.
• • A mundane insect's basic Abilities are Brawl 2 (bite or horn or dodging), Survival 3 (home terrain), Awareness 3 (food), and Athletics 5 (flying or hopping or scurrying).
• • An insect's Natural Weapon is either a bite (Teeth) or a stinger (Horn).
• • Virtues & Flaws and Qualities can be selected from those mentioned in Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults.

Example Physical Characteristics of Insects

Type	Size S	tr S	ta	Dex	Qik E	xample
Aggressive Flier	–15	–30	+1	+3	+15	Wasp
Non-Aggressive Flier	–15	–29	0	+2	+17	Butterfly
Aggressive Crawler	–13	–26	0	+3	+14	Ant
Non-Aggressive Crawler	–15	–30	+2	+1	+17	Dung Beetle