The Salvermo is a tiny worm that lives exclusively within the salt flats of Zemet. It is around the thickness of an ant and twice as long, and its body consists of a single section that is a pinky-white colour, which it moves through the ground by undulating. It can be found in great numbers anywhere below the surface within the region, and feeds exclusively upon the salt found in the ground.
The method by which the Salvermo can subsist off of eating only salt is completely unknown to the people of Pretheya, but it is speculated that the creature has some way of converting it into other minerals necessary for it to survive; or alternatively that its body functions such that it only requires salt to survive. The creature also has a curious tendency to expand significantly when placed in water, bloating to several times its original size. Remarkably, this does not kill it, seemingly owing to a sac-like membrane around its body designed to hold excess fluids.
Cultural Significance
The Salvermo is the only animal that lives in the salt wastes of Zemet other than migratory birds, which occasionally stop by to visit one or another of its lakes, or to feed upon the Salvermo themselves. For this reason, it is of immense import to the Ashborn people, for whom it is a staple of their diet. When it rains within Zemet, tens of thousands of Salvermo begin to rise up to the surface, and then promptly begin to swell up and become immobilised. Seeing this, the Ashborn will rush out of Holy Ridge into the adjacent salt plains and begin harvesting the Salvermo.
Owing to their diet of eating exclusively salt, the Salvermo are - predictably - extremely salty. The Ashborn use them as seasoning for their other foods, such as putting them on bread, but they will also eat them on their own as snacks. Owing to the abundance of salt in Zemet, they are also very easy to keep alive in captivity, and the Ashborn will usually store them in boxes or containers filled with trace amounts of salt, in order to preserve the worms for when they need to eat them. For the same reasons, they are easy to transport, and are often exported to the rest of Pretheya, where they are eaten as a delicacy with a reputation for being an acquired taste.
It is also common for young Ashborn children to steal Salvermo from their containers and drop them in puddles of water to watch them swell up, frequently accompanied by repeated poking with sticks.
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