Keen Scent. The dire mosquito has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
Stylets. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 17 (4d6 + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the female dire mosquito doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the mosquito's turns, the target loses 17 (4d6 + 3) hit points due to blood loss.
The female dire mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of her movement. She does so after the target dies or the mosquito drains a total of 60 hit points of blood from her targets.
VARIANT: DISEASED FEMALE DIRE MOSQUITOES
Stylets. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 17 (4d6 + 3) piercing damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 13). Until this grapple ends, the female dire mosquito doesn't attack. Instead, at the start of each of the mosquito's turns, the target loses 17 (4d6 + 3) hit points due to blood loss and must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or contract a disease. Until the disease is cured, the target is poisoned and can't regain hit points except by magical means, plus the target's hit point maximum decreases by 13 (2d12) every 24 hours. If the target's hit point maximum drops to 0 as a result of this disease, the target dies.
The female dire mosquito can end the grapple by spending 5 feet of its movement. She does so after the target dies or the mosquito drains a total of 60 hit points of blood from her targets.
Description
Dire mosquitoes are monstrous insects that can be as big as a horse, although their slender bodies and limbs make them far lighter. A female dire mosquito looks just like an ordinary blood-sucking mosquito apart from the size, with a body length from 9 to 12 feet. A male dire mosquito is about two-thirds that size, averaging a little over 7 feet, and unlike natural mosquitoes are active predators armed with slicing claws on their front legs. A dire mosquito larva is an aquatic insect roughly the size of a human called a wriggler by common folk. Wrigglers are quite different from normal mosquito larvae. They resemble hairy caterpillars with broad heads and gills at the tip of their tails and, like the males, are flesh-eaters who actively hunt for food. A wriggler has long mandibles for biting prey and can swallow tiny opponents whole.
Deadly Swarms. Dire mosquitoes congregate in swarms that can number from as little as four up to a couple of score. Both males and females flock together. The males fearlessly defend the females, and fight to the death whenever anything threatens them. The females seek out warm-blooded creatures to feed off, using their lancet-like mouthparts to drain their victims blood. Once a female has drank her full they fly off and rest while their eggs develop and are ready to lay.
Aquatic Breeders. Dire mosquitoes are commonest in hot, humid areas with abundant still water such as jungle pools or tropical swamps. These insects need water for their eggs and young to develop so are never encountered in arid areas such as deserts. A single wriggler can grow in as little as a hogshead of water. The water doesn't have to be fresh or clean as long as it isn't salty. Once a female dire mosquito has gorged herself on blood she produces 10 to 30 eggs. Unlike normal mosquitoes, female dire mosquitoes have can live for years and produce multiple clutches, laying up to 300 eggs in their lifetime.
A dire mosquito egg ranges from the size of a baseball and a grapefruit. New hatched wrigglers are only 8 to 12 inches long but grow rapidly if well fed in warm water. A hungry wriggler will attack anything up to its own size that isn't another wriggler that matches it in size (they have no compunction against cannibalizing wrigglers smaller then they are). They instinctively flee from any creature larger than themselves, so adult humans are not at risk of attack unless the wriggler is almost fully grown at roughly 5 feet long.
(Monster designed by Casimir Liber and Cleon on Enworld.org's General Monster Talk Creature Catalog Forum; originally appeared in Polyhedron Magazine #67 (January 1992) with a credit to Jeffrey Morris in "Monsters - by Network Members.")
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