Monster Ecology: From Rot Grub to Carrion Crawler

One of the most feared creatures for a party of adventurers to encounter by surprise is the infamous Carrion Crawler. This tentacled caterpillar shaped beast stalks through dungeons in search of corpses to eat. Reaching as much as 9' in length at maturity, the crawler is nothing to trifle with.

When Crawlers are ready to reproduce they gather in groups, known as horrors, of up to 6 members, to seek out living hosts to paralyze and into which they lay clutches of hundreds of eggs. Carrion Crawlers are hermaphroditic both fertilizing and laying eggs. Once all members of the horror have deposited eggs into separate hosts they go their own ways and exhibit no parental care of the resulting offspring.

The warmth of the helpless victim triggers the eggs to begin hatching almost immediately to begin devouring the host. These tiny ravenous larva are what we know as Rot Grubs. The larva are highly competitive, racing to eat their path to vital organs and fighting each other to the death for dining rights.

What begins as hundreds of fingernail sized hatchlings dwindles as they consume the living host and each other. As their numbers drop into the dozens the grubs have grown to finger length and nearly twice the girth.

Competition continues over what remains of their now long dead host. Remaining grubs strike out in small groups seeking fresh carrion or warm living bodies to eat.

Upon reaching roughly the size of a human forearm the individual grubs find shelter to begin the next stage in their development. Within a chrysalis the grub transforms into a miniature version of their eventual adult form, the Carrion Crawler.

In their new form they have become dangerous hunters far more mobile and armed with paralytic venom capable of stopping even the largest of prey.

Because of the dangerous nature of both the Rot Grub and the Carrion Crawler, neither form has a natural predator other than those of their own kind.

Rumor is that deep in the Under-realm enterprising tribes of humanoids have trained crawlers as war mounts, but no evidence of this is known. Such a practice seems too hazardous to be worth the required effort.

Among deep tribes tales of enormous Carrion Crawlers persist, though it is unlikely they exist at those sizes.

Pearls of Wisdom: Do oozes create pearls?

We know that oysters create pearls by coating irritants in material to ease the discomfort. Could the same be said of oozes?

Typically an ooze dissolves most objects into a form they then devour for sustenance. The remainder is then ejected from their body to be left in their wake as they continue the perpetual search for more food. But what if tiny particulates sometimes remained, unpassed inside the body of the ooze? Might leftovers of very tiny, dust-like size remain and perhaps act as irritants?

While most oozes would conceal these minute treasures within their opaque membrane, the Gelatinous Cube would be an exception. Older cubes might gradually accumulate clouds of encased particles which if observed in sufficient lighting would help reveal their presence.

 Thousands of these little pearls could be carried about until large enough to be expelled by the creature. Following a trail of pearls through a dungeon or cavern might lead adventurers into great danger as they encounter what looks like a reflective star field ahead in the darkness.

Treasure comes in many forms, but the wise remain cautious about the source and oozes would be a dangerous source indeed.

Monster Ecology - From larval to juvenile to adult forms

Some of the monsters through the history of the game lend themselves to inventing reasons for them to exist. This is an attempt to show how 3 monsters fit together even if going by the rules wouldn't quite make sense. F it, it's magic!

Our subject today is the Roper.

In caverns deep there are horrors aplenty just waiting to make a meal of your frail adventurer. It could be things like the Mimic and it's cousins the trapper, lurker, etc. In this case we're looking at the Roper and what it might look like at various stages of life.

I posit that what we know of as the roper is the adult form of a very long lived monster:

The roper is a strange stalagmite appearing creature, powerful enough to destroy adventuring parties or at least block their way to where they want to go. It can drain the strength of opponents when it grabs them with tentacles and begins dragging them to where it can deliver a savage bite. It is also exceptionally intelligent and knows it can bargin or extort treasure or magic from the potential food in order to avoid a fight and still gain something to lure other easier prey.

The monster is rare and that is a good thing since a monster of such power and intelligence could control or wipe out whole underground kingdoms should a group of them be so inclined. Thankfully then they are chaotic.

But what do they look like and behave like when they are younger and not so powerful?

Perhaps this is their juvenile form:

The much more mobile and vulnerable Darkmantle. In this younger form it is able to fly short distances, create areas of darkness, an ability it seems to lose in adulthood, and it spends most of its time skulking about at the tops of cavern rooms waiting to ambush prey, a trait maintained from when it was in the larval form. This creature is often encountered in numbers since on their own they are fragile and easily slain if the prey are in groups. You can see from this image that it has formed numerous tentacles and begun to take on a form similar to what it will have as an adult. The multiple eyes will gradually combine into a single, large ocular orb and the tentacles will fuse to form fewer, but much stronger appendages.

Moving on to what I believe to be the larval form of the dreaded roper:

These pathetic creatures imitate stalagtites, hanging in larger groups, high up on the ceilings of mineral rich caverns. They have a very strong outer shell formed by absorbing calcium and other rocky minerals. Some might even manage to pick up some small semi-precious stones as their carapace hardens. In this form they are nothing more than hungry ambush predators desperate for anything they can fall on and devour. It is very likely that they can sense the vibrations of movement below and their eyesight, though primitive, is enough to sense light. Through these combined senses they know when dropping down is likely to score a hit on something they might be able to eat.

Once down below they are so slow moving that surviving prey can often slaughter them before the beasts can climb back up to safety. This might account for the large number encountered at any time. Their hardened shells help buy time for some of them to reach safety and grow into the juvenile form.

Of course this could all be a flight of fancy and these could well and truely be unrelated monstrosities inhabiting similar niches in our magic rich world.

Yours with curiosity and imagination,

                                                              Prinportia the Sage, of Loreltarma