Recently I had the misfortune to witness at a friend's house what happens when someone leaves a bag of garbage for a couple of weeks while they are gone on vacation: maggots, and swarming flies that filled the air so thick that one could breathe them in if not careful. Of course, with Age of Worms fresh on my mind this got me to thinking of a way to use this as inspiration for a cool encounter in the Age of Worms adventure path.
There are flies in the real world that lay their eggs in human beings, which then hatch and eat their way through the host's living flesh. I have little doubt that such real world nastiness had some role in inspiring the Son of Kyuss, and therefore inspiring this whole adventure path. But I don't think among the various new monsters for the path, any of them made use of this source of inspiration directly.
I think I'm going to try to stat up a new monster: Wings of Kyuss - a swarm of flies that lays Kyuss worm eggs on sentient creatures in the area it covers as part of its swarm attack - with anesthetic effect so that it takes some kind of high skill check to even notice anything other than flies buzzing about and occasionally landing briefly on the victims.
Any suggestions for any swarms already statted up that I can use as the basis for this monster?
Dude, this is an awesome idea. Please share your stat bloc when you're done. What a marvelous encounter for the jungle outside the ruins of Kuluth-Mar!
I don't have the original handy right now, but hellwasp swarm might be a good starting point. I think it's either in the MM or the FF.
Perhaps after they lay their eggs, a new kyusswing (or whatever you want to call them) swarm emerges from the newly created spawn of kyuss. You could even have spawns of kyuss with these swarms buzzing inside them...cut them with a piercing or slashing weapon and the swarm attacks.