Killing giant scorpions

[eliec]

Hey all

I'm working on a piece where the enemy minions can best be described as "chitinous".
I was wondering, what would be the best way to kill a scorpion, centipede, or lobster that you can't really crush?
Is it possible to bleed them out like mammals? Would you have to hit their vital organs instead, and where would those be logically placed?
Is it possible to incapacitate them by cutting through the back plates to the spine, or do you have to target the area between the spines?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

This is all conjecture really, and that's fine. It's what this forum is intended to be. You can do about whatever you like with fantasy creatures but I like where your thinking is, linking your decisions to creatures we're all familiar with in reality.

If it were me, and I had to fight a creature as you describe, I'd want a weapon meant to cave in armor. A nice war hammer or mace, maybe even a heavy pole-axe should bash, crush, or split an exoskeleton nicely. I'd stay away from most slicing and piercing type weapons.

 

[Guy]

Another way is to stab them through the joints. Have you considered the possibility of chemical weapons, something that would suffocate the creature? I would think that regardless of how well armored the creatures are, they still have to breathe. Or perhaps something heat based, either fire or magic. Roast them inside their natural armor.

 

[stephenspower]

For reference, here's the giant scorpion scene from the original (and far superior) Clash of the Titans.

And here's the scene in the remake.

In my novel the characters have to deal with giant crabs. A spear and sword work well, but they aren't as huge as those in the Clash movies.

 

[eliec]

The protagonists are medieval level or earlier, and fighting them in mountain passes so I'm not too sure about gases, flames, or otherwise. Also this is a very low-fantasy setting: There is some esoteric magic, but no fireballs.

I'm still working on the minion concept, actually. I want something large and brutal, but that has that same skittering, armored feel that makes scorpion so repulsive to most of us. One of my possible concepts even looks like a chitin-armored bear with a lamprey mouth and mantis-like pincers coming up from the shoulders (I hope it doesn't come across as quite that silly in the scene)

 

[Guy]

Sounds kind of cool. I'd say your options are crushing (maces, hammers, etc), stabbing through the joints (perhaps with a poisoned blade?) or cleaving through the shell, but for that, as T. Allen said, you'd need something heavy duty like a halberd, pole axe, something like that.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Just a thought but a noose might be a good idea. I'm thinking one around the tail to stop it striking, and one around each of the front pincers. Then once it's trapped a good solid blow with a long handled battleaxe depending on how big it is and how thick the chitin.

Alternatively since you're on a mountain, someone with a long pole to simply get the end underneath it from the side and push it off.

Also do they burrow? If so cover their burrows with something heavy so they're trapped then let them suffocate or starve to death. (I used this against a manticore in Wildling and always thought it was a clever way to kill something so obviously deadly. I think in fantasy at least too often people want swords and battleaxes, blood flying and lots of screaming etc, but more often in real life you really want to avoid that and do something smart instead. So why shouldn't our fantasy heroes?)

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Joe the Gnarled]

I agree with T.A.S. You would probably want to invest in armor defeating weapons. Personally I would want something with range if I were fighting a scorpion. Maybe a bow with amour piercing heads. Or a heavy pike. A phalanx formation might have a good chance.

Here is a website I found with scorpion anatomy:

Anatomy of scorpions

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Maybe a bow with amour piercing heads.

A bodkin point....

 

[buyjupiter]

Elephants! If I were trying to fight some creature in massive armor I'd want something that could do serious crushing damage. And if Hannibal got elephants through the Alps.....

 

[Terry Greer]

Go for the eyes and use fire to burn off sensory tactile hairs.
But chemical weapons are best - insects have to defend themselves anyway they can - for example:

Bombardier beetle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

another exaple would be ants (such as the wood ant) that spray formic acid our of their arse to deter predators.

 

[eliec]

Thanks a bunch, guys.
I think I have a variety of ideas to use here, between pikes, crushing weapons, and the noose-immobilization idea. Hopefully I'll put something up in the Showcase section soon.

 

[wordwalker]

The classic ways to hurt something in armor are to think about not hurting it at first, just slowing it down so you can escape or set up your attack. Things like:

• Ropes, nets, or groups of people dragging it down. Peasants could kill a knight by "dogpiling" him and stabbing through his visor. Like Greg said, throwing a noose over its stinger is a good start.
• Smoke or flash powder, a variation on "go for the eyes"; blind is blind. --Except this doesn't work on scorpions because they "see" more by feeling vibrations in the ground. Get a lot of "beaters" to pound on the ground at different places?
• Footing. Find or make any kind of unstable ground.

If the thing is a scorpion with a stinger as well as armor, it's going to be nasty because a lot of these methods involve getting in close, which is just where you don't want to be when it's waving poison around.

Still, if it's a mountain pass, there's always the ready-made weapon available: rockslide!

 

[chrispenycate]

Can't cut through its spine; it's an invertebrate, so has less centralisation of the nervous system. Does not make for genius, but arthropods in general have opted out of intelligence as evolutionary progress.

As this is fantasy – after all, scorpions' respiratory systems are better than insects for scaling up, but I doubt whether you could get a viable specimen more than a few pounds - why not try for the old chestnut of the scorpion stinging itself to death? A clockwork buzzing mechanism, that sounds like a parasite trying to bore through its armour, and round comes the venomous tail to swat it, and the beast is writhing in agony?

 

[deilaitha]

 

[Lycan999]

Still, if it's a mountain pass, there's always the ready-made weapon available: rockslide!

I agree bugs (don't correct me) should be crushed. If they are to big to step on, get a couple hundred tons of rock to do the job for you. Deilatha's idea might work to.

 

[BronzeOracle]

Hey all

I'm working on a piece where the enemy minions can best be described as "chitinous".
I was wondering, what would be the best way to kill a scorpion, centipede, or lobster that you can't really crush?
Is it possible to bleed them out like mammals? Would you have to hit their vital organs instead, and where would those be logically placed?
Is it possible to incapacitate them by cutting through the back plates to the spine, or do you have to target the area between the spines?

If you're on foot then go for the weak points - eyes, sensory limbs/antennae, breathing parts. If its a giant arthropod it cant use spiracles / air tubes as its body is too thick, so must have some type of lungs so gas, acid, fire etc could hurt these - say the medieval equivalent of molotov cocktail / burning oil, perhaps if you're underneath it you could stab into its breathing parts. Really these things are the mythical/fantasy version of tanks so very difficult for foot soldiers to take out, you need something bigger like artillery, magic, fire, traps etc.

 

[glutton]

Jump on its back, grab its stinger and make it sting itself to death XD

 

[wordwalker]

Since it's in the mountains, I'm with Psychotick: push them off the edge. Or for something less simple but more impressive: rockslide.

A lot of this depends on just how strong you want the armor to be, of course. If it's as good as iron plate armor, the big crushing weapons (or at least a greatsword) look pretty good. There's also the pick, but that's a gamble: it might drive through plates but it could easily glance off, or hit something less than vital and get stuck. We had a thread a few months back (that referenced a couple of others) about dragon-piercing weapons.

--One key point: if they aren't actually at the level of being arrow-proof (or partial to ambushes) a few archers can kill them more easily than anything. Remember: hunting bows shoot through deer, and at close-ish range longbows shoot through knights' chainmail.

But if the armor is plate-level--or better--in strength, how complete should it be? The more joints and unprotected spots it has, the more precision thrusting weapons might work. If the beast is more a "natural"/mutated lifeform it's probably got more vulnerable spots than a suit of armor, but if a wizard has engineered it just to fight it might have almost no weak spots. If they really are bug-like, there might be two problems about hitting them in the joints:

• insects and other simple lifeforms have a simple nervous system and organs, so it's hard (and slow) to kill them with anything but a massive wound
• scorpions find their prey more by tracking vibrations in the ground than by sight. They might be the one creature who could be turned into something with perfect armor and no eye-slits!

But if the armor's really good and no boulders are handy, there's still one option: wrestle the things. As knights occasionally find out against really determined peasants, being half-invulnerable doesn't give someone any more raw muscle power, when three or four people tie up its weapons with whatever they can and then just sit on it and get out the daggers. Or carry it over the mountain ledge and drop.

And then, a good long fall has enough force to kill anything made of meat. Period.

Unless, on the way down, it sprouts wings.