Grimespawn

Content Warning: Description of graphic violence

Physiology and behavior

A Grimespawn resembles a humongous arachnid or crustacean, with six legs and a spongy shell on its back. Each of the Grimespawn's six legs is thick and sinewy and lined with hook-like protrusions which it uses to capture prey. Despite its formidable size and terrifying visage, the Grimespawn possesses a cunning and stealth that belies its lumbering gait, and the terrifying creature spends most of its days burrowed just below the surface, lying in wait for potential prey.

Hunting

The first sign of a Grimespawn are its lurebugs, insectoid Hatelings that scream and plead like people in mortal danger. The purpose of these creatures is to draw in hapless victims who come to help the ”people” in distress they hear. But this is a horrid trap.

When these benevolent souls rush in, several barbed appendages burst forth from the fetid ground and latch onto their bodies with wicked hooks. In moments, the victims are dragged into the air as the main body of the Grimespawn emerges from underground.

Like a loathsome crustacean, it shakes the dirt from its shell, before the feeding begins. The impaled, screaming victims are brought to its maw, where sharp teeth slice into them. First, the creature flays away the skin, which it eats while the victim is still alive. Then, it carves through muscle tissue to extract vital organs, allowing them to tumble into its mouth, as the lurebugs skitter below and bathe in the blood that rains onto them. Most victims will luckily have perished at this point, but that does little to comfort the next meal on its list, who has been forced to watch all this unfold, hooked onto another appendage.

In a cruel twist of irony, the pleading screams of its actual victims are often ignored by nearby Seekers who might hear them, as they are assumed to be the Grimespawn's lurebugs screaming.

Preventive Measures

While a Grimespawn is a horrid abomination, it and its accompanying bugs are not hard to dispatch by Seekers who stay vigilant, as the creature relies on its victims falling for its trap. Once the trap is sprung, severing its appendages and slaying the bugs is usually enough to cause the Grimespawn to burrow away, if not being so wounded that the Seekers can outright kill it.

Some scholars suggest that the Grimespawn are a twisted nightmare version of the Arachnitha, dreamt up by the Adversary. The Arachnitha take severe offense to such theorizing and point out that the Adversary should not be aware of Nascindor, so it dreaming of its peoples is highly unlikely.

Ignore it. Better to err to the side of caution.

–Seeker to his squire

by Midjourney

_{A pack of lurebugs.}