Undertakers

"Don’t follow the tide. Don’t follow the breeze. If the sand shifts wrong, you’re already below."

The Undertaker is a hulking, amphibious crustacean, infamous for its talent in burial ambush, dragging prey beneath earth or sea to suffocate in silty blackness. Bearing the bulk and jagged plating of a crawdad swollen to monstrous proportions, the Undertaker stalks coastlines, deltas, sunken battlefields, and magick-blasted marshes. Its thick body is encased in rust-colored armor, broken only by twitching segments of kelp-mottled shell and barnacle-flecked ridges that shift like shifting stone. But it's not the armor that makes it feared. It's the way it waits, almost reverently, just below the surface, until a hoof, foot, or fin disturbs the sand. Then, with a violent churn, it explodes upward, hooked mantis-blades lashing out, dragging its victim beneath the ground like an offering to some forgotten god of suffocation. The Undertaker does not roar, nor pursue. It buries. It waits. And it remembers.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Undertaker’s body is built low and broad like a crawdad, with a thick, armored exoskeleton pocked by gouges, calcium deposits, and growths of lichen and coral. Its back is a natural reef, often camouflaged by silt and algae, allowing it to vanish beneath terrain with haunting ease. From its sides extend six plated walking limbs, each ending in sharp grippers used for burrowing or anchoring itself mid-strike. But its most fearsome weapons are its front limbs: two long, lobster-like blades, curved inward like grave digger’s scythes, edged in chitin and encrusted with chipped shell filaments that saw through flesh and bone as they retract. Its underside is paler, armored but more flexible, allowing it to curl around prey like a closing tomb. The creature’s head is blunt and shielded, with vertical eyes adapted to darkness and pressure, and a saw-like feeding mouth recessed beneath overlapping shell layers. Its entire body is designed not to chase, but to contain.

Genetics and Reproduction

• Undertakers reproduce in shallow tidal pits or flooded graves, laying clutches of calcified eggs between jagged stones or deep silt mounds. The warmth of rot, warblood, or fresh carrion seems to trigger hatching.

• Hatchlings resemble tiny, armored shrimp and often swarm together until only one or two remain, the rest consumed.

• Juveniles molt rapidly, gaining the ruddy armored plating and stubby fore-blades.

• Adulthood is marked by the full development of the mantis scythes, which do not regrow if broken.

• Lifespan: 8–12 years, assuming the environment can sustain them.

Growth Rate & Stages

Undertakers begin life as soft-shelled larvae within a week of hatching. During the first month, juveniles molt frequently, growing denser armor and rudimentary burrowing claws. Between the first and sixth months, they begin hunting small animals such as birds, fish, or rodents, perfecting the ambush reflexes that define their adult behavior. By six months, the creature reaches maturity, both physically and behaviorally, and may claim a section of shoreline or swamp as its permanent hunting ground. Growth slows drastically after maturation, with the carapace thickening and limb plates hardening into their final jagged form. Adults are solitary, self-sufficient, and mortally territorial.

Ecology and Habitats

Undertakers thrive in transitional ecosystems, places where land and water meet in silence and decay. They are most commonly found in The Bay of Knives, the reef-wrecked cliffs of the coast of Wardsea, the salt-soaked mangroves of the Saltblight Reaches, and the drowned siege lines of western Kathar. Their burrows spiral downward beneath the sand or silt, with chambers hollowed into shell-lined dens beneath fallen logs, sunken stones, or derelict ruins. Wherever bones have piled and blood has pooled, Undertakers are not far behind. Though apex predators, they also function as natural recyclers, removing corpses, halting disease spread, and regulating scavenger populations. Many ecosystems unknowingly depend on their awful efficiency.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The Undertaker is strictly carnivorous. It prefers large, warm-blooded prey but will scavenge carrion if necessary. Its primary method of feeding is suffocation by burial: the creature will ambush its target, slice or pin with its forelimbs, then drag the prey beneath the ground or seabed where air and movement are swiftly extinguished. Once dead, the victim is stored in a hollowed feeding chamber, partially buried to ripen. In times of plenty, a Undertaker may maintain multiple such chambers, each sealed with loose stone or sand, slowly decomposing until the meat is soft enough to consume or feed to hatchlings. They rarely waste kills unless disturbed or forced to flee. The presence of fresh blood increases their aggression, while dry or bony prey is often ignored.

Biological Cycle

Undertakers are active year-round but grow especially aggressive during flood season or when the equinox tides breach deep inland. During lean or dry periods, they enter a hibernative torpor beneath their nests, remaining dormant for weeks or months. While inactive, their bodies darken and accumulate additional shell growths, giving rise to local myths about ancient Undertakers rising from the deep, barnacled and blind with age. Their molting cycle, which occurs once every year or two, leaves behind complete husks that are sometimes mistaken for slain beasts, until travelers realize the shell is hollow and the predator is likely still nearby.

Behaviour

Solitary and ritualistic, Undertakers operate by instinct reinforced through precise, territorial habit. They do not stalk prey, nor chase it, they kill only what enters their domain. Their territories are tightly defined and often marked by unnatural formations: stones arranged in silent spirals, dead seabirds aligned along sandbars, or burial mounds that move slightly between tides. They do not communicate, nor do they tolerate others of their kind nearby. When confronted, a Underaker does not flee, unless outmatched or wounded. Even then, it retreats only to reposition for a better ambush. Some scholars believe their behavior mimics burial rites: feeding burrows are arranged like mausoleums, and corpses are sometimes partially adorned with broken shell or debris.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Undertakers possess an extraordinarily refined sensory system tuned for low-visibility environments. They detect seismic pressure through the soil, registering footsteps, movement, or breath through even several inches of ground or silt. In aquatic terrain, they sense microcurrents and disturbances via filamented barbs that extend from their mandibles and antennae. These barbs ripple with incoming movement, allowing them to map prey positions even in pitch blackness. They also possess chemoreceptive underplates, able to detect heat sources such as living prey or fire magic. Chemical tracking is another powerful tool, they can smell rot, blood, and magical decay in trace quantities, often traveling great distances underground to locate a battlefield or grave-rich site. Elder Gravemakers are said to emit low infrasonic pulses through the ground, which act as a form of echolocation or subterranean sonar. Though nearly blind and silent, their grasp of the terrain borders on preternatural.

Scientific Name

Necracarus sepulta.

Origin/Ancestry

Believed to have descended from ancient amphibious crustaceans twisted by post-Schism fallout and necrotic runoff, Gravemakers are the grim apex result of centuries of drowned evolution..

Conservation Status

Undertakers are not endangered, but neither are they widespread. Their numbers are naturally self-limiting due to their solitary behavior, territorial aggression, and need for expansive, undisturbed hunting grounds. They do not thrive in proximity to settlements or frequent foot traffic, and will abandon a nest site entirely if it becomes too exposed or magickally saturated. Most Gravemakers remain hidden within remote coastal reaches, drowned siege fields, or drowned groves too dangerous for long-term habitation by other creatures. Because of their sheer lethality and unyielding nature, they are not actively poached, few who attempt to harvest their shell or study them in the wild survive the encounter. Attempts to capture or contain Gravemakers for research or display have ended in catastrophe, with the creatures either refusing to feed, self-burrowing into foundation stone, or killing their handlers through sudden stress-lunges. Their flesh is inedible, rancid even before death, and their carapace, while incredibly durable, degrades rapidly outside their natural environment, crumbling into flake and dust once removed from salt or soil. As such, Gravemakers are afforded a rare status in Everwealth: unprotected by law, but untouched by most, preserved not through sympathy but through superstition, terror, and practical self-preservation. Druidic circles and war-shamans occasionally argue for their ecological importance, citing their role in removing the dead and controlling carrion surges—but even these defenders tend to speak of them from afar. In the end, the Gravemaker survives not because it is beloved, but because the world still fears to dig where it dwells.