Stinging Flatworms

Stinging flatworms are a hand-sized flatworm slime which lives in the bottom layer of the Strashya Atoll Geyser Column. They secret a toxic substance through their short hooked quills which makes them lethal to consume or be injured by.

If a stinging flatworm is stung by another flatworm, their bodies gradually merge. If this happens frequently enough it can create what is known as Flatworm King—an aggressive and uncoordinated blob up to meters across which encompasses prey for the innermost layer of flatworms to sting, consome, and pass their nutrients to outer layers.

While these flatworms are easily dispatched up, they are also incredibly numerous, and entering the geyt

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Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Amberge Sula Rutas Flatworms

Geographic Distribution

• Strashya Atoll

A bit nasty to step on, but they keep these waters running clean, and it's easy to lure them into traps and dispose of them to get all those nasty toxins out of the water. Course, once the traps fill up they can get real nasty, and start doing more harm than help to the ecosystem.

— Xetto the Pugnacious

Filter Feeders

The flatworms naturally suck up some of the heavier and more toxic elements of the ecosystem. This is by intent, as the flatworms are then drawn into traps and disposed of.

Toxin

The Flatworms produce a toxic mucus as a result of all the heavy elements they consume.

Hiving Behavior

Flatworms reproduce by conjoining and then breaking apart. They merge together through a mutual consumption that leaves them as an entity with a single behavior system and a strong urge to consume. The larger they grow, the stronger this urge becomes until they eventually reach critical mass or are killed by something, at which point their 'corpse' enters a short incubation phase of just a few hours and then ruptures into a fresh batch of tends of thousands of flatworm larva birthed from the genepool of the ur flatworm.

Unwanted Consequences

Unfortunately, try as you might, you won't always recognize the ways in which a genestruct might be invasive or badly adapted. In the case of our flatworms, they're the exact color of a toad that many of the fowl like to eat, and they keep eating the flatworms and dying. We're injecting a new dominant color into the population, which has resulted in some rather beautiful gradients, but the problem is likely to persist for another 5-10 years while the color spreads.

— Xetto the Pugnacious

Eyecatching

As mentioned above, the flatworms unfortunately look tasty to some of the waterfowl

Overgrowth

If not properly disposed of regularly, they threaten to spread poison rather than clean it up

Ramarkably aggressive

A flatworm king will venture into town to follow prey if it is lead to do so, leading to some rather alarming surprise encounter with the townsfolks.