Bore worm
Bore worms are the Darklands analogy to surface-world maggots and cockroaches in many ways, though as most things in the Darklands, are much more dangerous than their surface-world cousins, especially when many gather in a bore worm swarm.1
Appearance
Common bore worms of all sizes resemble pink, rotund, segmented earthworms with a lamprey's forward-facing, many-toothed maw. The most common variety of bore worm constantly drip a kind of acid from these mouths in trails and puddles around them.1
Abilities
Bore worms by themselves are not a great threat. However, the creatures tend towards swarms numbering in the tens of thousands. The overwhelming force of such a large number of hungry creatures corrode their prey with their acidic bites and resist most forms of physical assault.12 Bore worms are, however, famously weak against water.2
Ecology
The common bore worm is frequently used as a farming aid in the Darklands due to its excrement's utility as a fertilizer, though this brings some level of danger.1
If bore worms are not kept adequately fed, after a certain point and chemical signal the creatures descend into a cannibalistic feeding frenzy, destroying at least the farmer's supply of fertilizer and likely more. The lone survivor of this experience rapidly grows into a bore worm monarch, an interim-stage bore worm.3
The enormous so-called empress bore worm is the final stage of bore worm ecology. It lives a brief life, focusing only on eating and finding a location that could sustain a new swarm. Once the empress bore worm finds such a site, she dies and produces the next generation of bore worms. Sometimes, the monarch stage is skipped and an empress bore worm is created directly from the bore worm swarm victor.2
Variants
Variants of bore worms exist across Golarion.
Ice worms, often encountered under the Crown of the World, are pale blue. Their acid inflicts rapid frostbite rather than corrosion.1
Lava worms, living in the volcanoes and lava flows of the Darklands, spit lava and fire rather than acid and eat minerals and rocks.1
The great ghoul city of Nemret Noktoria long ago developed an undead strain of necral worms to serve as batteries of void energy.1
Luminous purple mage-eater worms of the Mana Wastes have swarming bites that can disrupt magic cast on a target.1
References
For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 . “Monsters A-Z” in Bestiary 3, 36. Paizo Inc., 2021
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 . “Monsters A-Z” in Bestiary 3, 37. Paizo Inc., 2021
- ↑ . “Bestiary” in Assault on Longshadow, 83. Paizo Inc., 2017