Pebbleshot
Dungeons and Dragons Monsters - 96 © Tim Morris, accessed at his deviantArt page here.
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin, based again on Tim Morris’s D&D designs. The behavior for the pebbleshot is based on that of solitary wasps and burying beetles, just scaled up.]
Pebbleshot CR 4 N Magical Beast This creature looks something like an insect, with two buzzing wings and a gunmetal gray exoskeleton. Its front two limbs are short and end in broad claws, and its other four legs are longer and more delicate. Orange eyes peer from beneath its proboscis, which is oversized and tubular.
A pebbleshot is an insectoid predator that hunts to provision its young. As an adult, it eats little but nectar and fruit juices, but requires plenty of protein in the form of meat in order to fully develop. Pebbleshots dig burrows using their claws, stock them with multiple corpses (four Medium sized creatures or one Large sized creature is a typical larder), lay a single egg in the pile and then bury it. The grubs devour their stockpile and metamorphose into a hard, nut-shaped pupa, from which the adult later emerges.
A mated pair of pebbleshots often work together to hunt—a female can lay multiple eggs per season, and the male sticks with her in order to guard her and ensure he fertilizes all of them. They make hit-and-run attacks, swooping from the air to get within range and firing hardened masses of chitin from their proboscis. These are the pebbles for which the creatures are named. Pebbleshots can attack with their front claws as well, but these are better suited for digging into soil than flesh, and are used as a last resort.
Pebbleshots live fast and die young, completing their life cycle in a mere year. The adult form is often active for only a month or two before dying, their eggs laid and provisioned.