An Athasian lemming ambush is one of the funniest fates that can befall a traveller - and the deadliest. A single lemming has a furry, tubular body of about a foot in length. Their hands and feet have small claws, but these do very little damage. The biggest terror in a lemming consortium is their great number: lemmings live in cliques of up to one hundred, waiting out their whole life in anticipation of a lone traveller to ambush in a final, glorious kamikaze mission.

Lemmings speak in their own frenetic tongue. Because of their rarity, no human or demihuman has ever learned the lemming tongue, but it is possible for a well-travelled lemming to speak common.

Combat: Lemmings live in places where strangers rarely tread. They are born near cliffs and this is where they stay until they die, waiting for some unsuspecting soul to pass by. Every lemming in the consortium waits in constant ambush, and each individual lemming hopes to give his life in vanquishing the foe. They will actually double-deal and backstab each other in order to be the one who goes over the cliff with the victim.

This strange psychology results in effective ambush. As soon as a lemming consortium notices a victim walking near the cliff, all lemmings immediately charge up and jump on him. They attempt to knock him over the cliff’s edge under their own mass, killing themselves in the process. This is the greatest glory a lemming can recieve.

For every 10 lemmings (30 for thri-kreen, half-giants are immune) attacking a victim, make one attack roll . If it succeeds, the victim is knocked prone. If he stands beside a cliff, he must save vs breath weapon or be knocked off, with all the lemmings still attached. All remaining lemmings immediately leap off after him, unless more foes remain. If they fail to knock the creature over the cliff, or if the creature is not near a cliff, the lemmings may try to drag him to the edge. Each lemming can drag 10 pounds of PC 20 feet in one round (Open Doors roll to pull free).

During an ambush, every lemming is frantic and paranoid of his brethren. They refuse to let the prey out of their sight for more than a second, knowing their kin will attack while their backs are turned.

Habitat/Society: Lemmings are truly miserable creatures. Their entire lives are based around the ambush battle that will eventually kill them. Lemmings waste their lives like this for one simple reason: they are depressed. All lemmings have a constant, gnawing need for suicide. The economical little critters cannot justify their own deaths without giving back to the world in some way, and they consider one of the greatest services to Athas being the thinning of the more intelligent races. Lemming theologians and scholars could cite many reasons for which it is a lemming’s duty to claim the lives of other sentients when they suicide, but they would much rather be jumping off cliffs.

Lemmings live in simple caves and burrows, choosing homes with a good view of a cliff. They eat what they need to survive, taking little pleasure in their diet and subsiding on bugs and fungus. The only thing that makes a lemming happy is a high cliff view - and murder.

Ecology: Lemmings are extremely rare, but every decade or so they have a boom and increase in frequency. Perhaps they are the planet’s way of thinning down the more powerful psionic races? Or maybe they are just another mistake spawned from defiler magic and the Pristine Tower. No-one knows for sure.

Some historians believe the lemmings of the Green Age were nothing more than harmless rodents. They might have hurled themselves from cliffs, but they never took unwilling victims with them.