Just like roaches, bombardier beetles do exist in the real world, where they are small insects that defend themselves by emitting a burst of hot, noxious gasses with a popping sound.
So just like roaches, let's magnify them a hundred times and make them way more fearsome!
Beetles move and attack exactly like roaches do, but they have an extra attack. If one detects a threat within a 7x7 square, it will freeze up every fifth turn and blast out a pressure wave of toxic, superheated gasses which functions exactly like a fegundo's explosion. Beetles are afraid of the player, soldiers, stalwarts, guards, slayers, adder heads, and briar; essentially anything it knows can hurt it.
Beetles have an especially thick carapace (once used to protect the wings from the explosion, though the wings aren't used anymore), strong enough to withstand any explosion. External explosions will also scare a beetle, provoking it into releasing a sudden blast the next turn. Beetle blasts will scare other beetles into exploding, leading to a long line of blasts one after the other that surely no responsible parent would find danger in.
You could even start a square of beetles into exploding, whose blasts scare the next into exploding, giving you a self-sustaining reaction of bombs! Now wouldn't that be fun.
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It was going well until it exploded.
~Scott Manley
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