Vorgrit

Vorgrit is most often found in fetid swamps, silted river mouths, and the lower caverns of karst regions where rot and leachate create nutrient-rich beds of organic ooze. Naturalists of the Marshwardens guild believe Vorgrit evolved from a scavenging proto-beast that benefitted from co-opting the discarded limbs and parasitic mouths of other carrion feeders; over generations it became a single, mutable feeding mass. Vorgrit does not hunt by tracking prey so much as by responding to disturbance and scent: any large vibration or fresh blood in its vicinity draws it like a living puddle toward the source. Villagers near the Gashfen Mire tell of "the Maw that wears the dead," a Vorgrit that will encase the corpses of animals and unfortunate travelers within its squirming bulk, using rigid bones and crusted armor from previous meals as a crude, shifting carapace. Scholars such as natural philosopher Hadrin Kel of Talver's Compendium have catalogued Vorgrit's behaviors and warned that colonies sometimes form where currents concentrate refuse; these colonies attract predators (and curious adventurers) and can become long-standing hazards to river traffic.

A Vorgrit resembles a bulbous mound of mottled flesh roughly the size of a large human but length variances exist. Its outer surface is slick and semi-translucent, the skin marred by mottled green, brown and putrescent grey patches; beneath that skin, pale muscle bands and the occasional glint of embedded bone are visible. From this core sprout dozens of appendages of differing anatomy: short, knuckled arms ending in grasping pads; rubbery tentacles lined with tiny sucker-ridges; rigid, arthropod-like spines that function as crutches; and several slender eyestalks with beady, lidless eyes. Wet, lipless mandibles ring a central maw that can clamp and tear. The creature's overall silhouette is asymmetrical and constantly shifting—limbs retracting and emerging, eyestalks scanning independently. Scale: about the height of a crouched human when compressed, able to spread to cover an area the size of a low doorway when fully splayed. Texture notes for an artist: glossy, veiny skin with crosshatched cellulite and pitted scar tissue; occasional glistening trails of viscous fluid leave dark streaks on ground it crosses.