A jhakar, a stocky dog-lizard hybrid with a pug-like face. Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast.

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The Lore

Kanks are giant, beetle-like hive insects. A wild hive will viciously attack strangers and intruders, but they’re actually relatively easy to domesticate: just start feeding them. After a while, the kanks will start seeing those who bring them food as members of the hive.

Each hive has a queen that does little more than continuously lay eggs. The larvae that hatch from these eggs can specialize in one of two ways:

Kank spitters are the hive’s workers. Their duty is to forage for any sort of organic matter and process it into a nutritive nectar that is used to feed the hive (and extracted to feed people). They can store the noxious byproducts of this processing and spit them at intruders as a form of defense, hence their name.

Kank soldiers are very straightforward: they’re big, they’re strong, they have huge mandibles. Their duty is to protect spitters from threats. When properly trained, they’re also extremely popular war mounts.

The Numbers

Kank queens are too immobile to get combat stats, but we do get stats for the other two types. Both are Natural Beasts with a ground speed of 8 and Resist 5 Acid and Poison.

Kank Spitter

Spitters are Small but not defenseless. They’re Level 2 Artillery with 30 HP. Their bites do a mix of untyped and acid damage. Their Kank Spit has range 10. On a hit it does a little bit of physical damage, inflicts ongoing 5 acid damage, and slows (save ends). If the target was already slowed, it is immobilized instead.

Kank Soldier

These Large kanks are Level 4 Soldiers with 54 HP and the Mount tag. Their bite is rather weak to start with, but it grabs on a hit. Once the soldier has a grabbed victim, it can only bite that victim, but its bite attack gains +2 to attack and +10 to damage.

The soldier can instead choose to inject the victim with Kank Venom (recharge 5+), an attack that targets Fortitude, slows, and deals ongoing 10 poison damage (save ends both). After the first saved throw, this worsens to immobilized.

If serving as a mount, their benefit is Grabbed Advantage: this gives their rider combat advantage against the kank’s grabbed victim.

Kank soldiers don’t have marking mechanics, but they don’t need them. They’ll focus on a victim and try to keep it grabbed by their mandibles, using the venom as a parting shot if they have reason to release the grab.

Encounters and Final Impressions

I keep hearing about kanks in other Dark Sun Let’s Reads, so it’s nice to finally put a (bug) face to the name, so to speak. They feel more interesting to me than crodlus, both because they’re beetles and because they have a use other than “war mount” to their humanoid caretakers.