Challenge 3, #3 [GLOGtober]
We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting for this breaking post prompted by this GLOGtober prompt: "Animal-people, for an animal you've never seen made into animal-people before."
His sides are filled out with fat, and the marrow of his bones is moist, while another dies with a bitter soul, never even tasting anything good. “Together they lie down in the dust, and worms cover them."
(Job 21:24-26, NASB)
Wurmple
You will know a Wurmple by a few distinctive features.
- They do not bleed, for they have no blood.
- They can writhe and wriggle like a real worm, for they have no bones.
- Their skin is the color of death, for they have died.
- Their backs are riddled with pebble-sized holes.
- Their eyes, tongue, fingers, and toes are living worms.
The type of worm which makes a wurmple has crawled from the netherworld into our own. They are the color of the cloudy night. They vary in size, some small as my pinky, others as thick as a tree branch. They do not wriggle and squirm as a normal worm does. Their movements are slow and careful, as though thinking.
It takes them decades, if not centuries, to make the journey from below to us. One would think them immortal, spawned from death but never to die. Perhaps missing their home they search out the dead. Why they only consume humans and not other creatures is beyond me. Perhaps they recognize there was once a higher intelligence in a human corpse.
These worms eat their way to the bones of the deceased, but do not eat their flesh beyond what is necessary to reach the bone. They eat the bones of the deceased and replace them with themselves. This is how a wurmple is able to stand and move. Their movements are slow at first, but they learn over time what is "human" movement. Of course, in a pinch, they can writhe with the best of them regardless of the constraints of their puppet.
I praise the gods their victim is already dead. The horror of being alive while manipulated in such way is something I do not want to consider. They are slow but surprising dexterous, able to force their puppet through places a normal human would not.
They eat the same way we do. By this I mean the food goes in the mouth and is swallowed. Well, "food" is a loose term here. I apologize but my words seem to be failing me in describing them. Regardless, what happens after they "eat" is anyone's guess, but the body does go dormant for a time after eating something. I would imagine the worms are eating and not performing the function of "living".
The worms only leave when their puppet can no longer perform its function. Somehow they keep the puppet from decaying. They, in their puppet, can take an amazing amount of physical damage before collapsing. I guess that's a perk of being dead-adjacent. However, the worms are really easy to kill. Just stomp on them and they die like any other worm. Well, "die" is the wrong term. They stop doing what they were doing for a time. Usually within the hour any remains of the worm is gone, absorbed into the ground.
They'll be back.
Wurmple
HD: As human
Armor: None
Move: Half
Punch/Kick: 1D3; infests enemy
Other: As weapon
Some wurmple are advanced enough in their understanding to carry weapons or wear armor. If so, they replace their punch/kick with the appropriate weapon attack and their armor with the appropriate armor.
Boneless: The wurmple is able to squeeze through places a normal human could not, including places at narrow as 3-6 inches, depending on the size of their puppet.
Infest: If the wurmple is in melee range and succeeds in dealing damage, 1D6 worms attach to the target and begin to burrow. The target has 2 turns to remove the worms (as an action per worm) before they get under the skin. Worms under the skin will begin eating bone the following turn.