Spineworm Throng
Ash and Ruin Creature Feature
This is the third of a set of entries intended to reveal some of the world defining creatures of the world of Ash and Ruin. Why are we averse to corpses? In the modern day, we understand disease and plight in a very scientific way. In our own past, we had no such understandings. For that, our myriad cultures cultivated their own reasons - reasons we today might call superstitious. Nonetheless, they served well enough to encourage us to dispose of the dead in hygienic ways. For the Hern of the Kanhern Territories, the reason to avoid a corpse is terrifyingly tangible. Enter The Spineworm. More to come soon. In the meantime, face your own tribulations with The Crucible Edition.
A spineworm is a type of carrion insect resembling a centipede, featuring sharp, bone-like protrusions all about its body. As skin-crawling as it is, the appearance of the spineworm is made all the more repulsive by its function.
The life cycle of spineworms starts when a broodmother injects her eggs into the orifice of dead body. The hatchling worms feast on the insides of the corpse, guarded throughout the feast by the flailing broodmother and a group of males praetorian males. Within a day’s turn, the worms grow up to half a foot in length and form a pulsating mass that flows in and around their feast. When the carrion offers no more sustenance, the hatchlings consume the mother and her entourage before moving on to another food source. As they mature, they breed and form smaller swarms, each led by a broodmother.
Spineworm Plight
The Hern are sure to purge to the wilds around their holds of carrion, and certainly bury the dead after a battle. Should corpses fester en mass for too long, spineworms will flood the region. This is of concern to the Hern, as spineworms aren’t always able to distinguish living from dead. If next to an abundance of corpses for long enough, they can migrate from those corpses to nearby holds, becoming a horrifying plight of legion stinging, biting insects.
Those attacked by a spineworm throng, whether swarmed in a panic or overcome in their sleep, can just as well be impregnated by a broodmother and soon after consumed from within by her progeny. Legend tells of an entire clan consumed by a spineworm plight in a single night, after a glorious victory, having skirted the duty of tending to the corpses of their foes in favor of celebration and feasting.
Purging Paste
The notorious gurun berry of the Territories produces a mealy black paste. Within minutes of ingesting the paste, the consumer will become ill, oozing sick from every reasonable hole. Soon after, any resident small spineworms will ooze from their nested orifice as a congealed muck. Although unpleasant, it is considered a better option than the alternative.
