Urchin

Urchins were a family of marine scavenging animals valued for gems and pearls found inside their bodies.

Description
A typical urchin was 3 ft. in diameter. They were round creatures covered with thousands of 3 inch-long sharp needles. Different subspecies of urchins could be easily distinguished by their color: black, green, red, silver, and yellow.

One of the more distinct subspecies was the Land Urchin. Unlike their distant cousins, they lived on land and moved about on five scrawny legs.

Combat
The Land Urchins were shy critters and only attacked if someone approached them within 10 ft. The main method of self-defense was their paralytic poison that lasted if injected for 36 seconds.

Ecology
Unlike their marine cousins, Land Urchins did not have organ-gems but quite often formed pearls inside their bodies with age. An older land urchin could hold between 2 and 12 pearls. A land urchin pearl was valued based on their shape and size - between 100 and 600 GP each.