OOCIt's been suggested that I post a write-up here. By all means tear this apart, but I would really really appreciate input most on how to order/organize sections so that it all flows smoothly. I want it to be easily readable/understandable, like articles are in the wiki. Thank you to anyone who gives their time!
GRUUBAR
Gruubar are tiny, parasitic arachnids that live in large colonies. These creatures are thought to have mutated in the Valterrian from some sort of typical arachnid, most likely ticks. Unlike their ancestors, however, these bugs no longer feed on blood but on all forms of djed.
During the cold seasons, gruubar infect a warm-blooded host body, like that of any large mammal (including humans). Through the use of webbing they eventually gain control and manipulate their victim's movements.
Gruubar tend to be found in Cyphrus, but will thrive in any warm climate that supplies enough djed (Falyndar, for example, is both hot and high-djed).
There are three types of gruubar: female gruubar (Stingers) that inject their viral essence into a host's body, Viral gruubar (ichor) which sit dormant in the host body until conditions are ripe for reproduction, and male gruubar (Webbers), which wield the power of djed webbing to infect and control their host.
FEEDING AND HOSTS
All gruubar have no mouths, but feed on djed in any animate form through djed-sensors in their legs. It is unknown if they can consume djed from regular inanimate objects, but they may consume from wild djed pools caused by djed storms, natural djed, and even djed laid down in glyphs, magecrafting, animation, malediction, architectrix (lost discipline), and webbing. Gruubar cannot consume personal magic except for shielding. They seem to have a taste for pure djed, the purer the better. As such, gruubar prefer to feed on humans* and other soul'd creatures like animals, though they will also feed on plants and even other monsters or artifacts. Gruubar never feed on Ghosts, as their djed is not able to be sensed. Likewise, they can feed neither on a god or alvina, or on divine magic.
Female gruubar tend to seek out hosts which present an unlimited and reliable source of djed; they prefer hosts with large amounts of active djed. Magic-users are particularly fond prey and make excellent hosts. Despite that, a host may be any warm-blooded animal that will provide enough heat for the gruubar inside to survive through Winter. Grubbar are susceptible to cold, and any Stingers that have not infected a host by Winter will die from exposure.
*A human host refers to any and all applicable humanoid races, excepting Ghosts and Nuit (which are unliving), and Pycon (which are made of clay).
APPEARANCE AND TYPE
STINGERS (FEMALES)
--Stingers look essentially like ticks. They are half the size of a pinky-finger nail with their eight legs outstretched, and are an indistinct brown with no unusual markings. Stingers, like all gruubar, have no true eyes, but see through reading the djed of their surroundings and prey. As their name suggests, they have a lone stinger: the front-right leg of their bodies is an inflexible hollow tube used to inject a virus (the Viral gruubar) into their chosen hosts. Stingers also utilize webbing glands situated at the tip of their abdomen, much like spiders. Their webbing is not magical, but made of a typical, hardy silk.
A Stinger's main objective is finding a suitable host to start her own colony in.
WEBBERS (MALES)
--Webbers' bodies are tiny (as small or smaller than the point of a pen) and black, and as such are extremely difficult to see. Their legs, unlike Stingers', are long and almost elastic in nature, which they use to bury into their host's tissue and thread into the djed pathways; they also use their legs to feed off a host's djed. Their spinnerets produce true djed webbing, an insubstantial and invisible form of magic exactly like the Drykas' webbing in the Sea of Grass.
A Webber's main objective is to spin djed webbing through the host's body. Webbers eat away at a host's djed pathways and replace that djed with their own webbing in order to control the host's body and movements. This is a gradual process which, if resisted, usually proves fatal for the host.
VIRALS
--Virals are unlike other gruubar; like viruses, they are not truly living. Instead of having a physical body, they take a black, amorphous form like the ichor of a Nuit. Virals have never been seen as they cannot be physically removed from their host's body. It is unlikely that this form of gruubar is known to many, if any, people, save perhaps for a handful of experienced Healers.
A Viral's main objective is to begin reproduction at a suitable time within the host. A Viral will remain dormant within the host body until activated by outside stimuli.
LIFE CYCLE
The gruubar life cycle begins when the dormancy period of the Viral gruubar comes to an end. Throughout most of its existence, the Viral gruubar sits dormant within the host, and has no effect on the body.
Not much is known about what awakens a Viral gruubar from its dormancy. Due to the nature of the gruubar, however, it is likely that the stimulation has to do with djed: for instance, if a host body goes through overgiving or an initiation or has a natural increase in djed (as hibernating animals likely do in the Spring).
When awakened, the Viral gruubar initiates reproduction, using its own ichor and the host's tissues to produce unfertilized eggs. These eggs may or may not be fertilized by a male gruubar. Unfertilized eggs hatch into males. Fertilized eggs hatch into females.
After hatching, both sexes go through a short larval stage where their forms are indistinguishable from one another. The ratio of males to females will vary based on the time of year.
Male gruubar, called Webbers, will never leave the host's body where they are hatched, and are incapable of living outside of the host.
Female gruubar, called Stingers, develop in the host body and then dig their way out of the host's tissues and into the outside world. Female gruubar may exit one at a time, or en masse.
When a female gruubar leaves her hatching host, she seeks out nourishment and her own host to infect. When she finds a suitable new host, she stings it and injects into it her own essence, the Viral gruubar. With her essence gone, her body is just an inanimate husk. As such, a female gruubar can only ever sting one host before her body perishes and her essence becomes the Viral stage.
BEHAVIOR
The gruubar's behavior changes based on season. Most observable behavior is performed by Stingers, as Stingers are the only form able to survive outside a host.
--WINTER
In Winter, Stingers must stay out of the cold. In the mid-to-late Fall, Stingers begin their search for a suitable host to infect. They may pass up one host in favor of another.
In Fall or Winter, an activated Viral will produce mostly male young (Webbers) and a few females (Stingers). The Stingers will remain within their hatching host unless a new and better host is nearby. As a Stinger may not live long outside in the cold, few are produced to infect new hosts in Winter.
--SPRING AND SUMMER
In Spring, an activated Viral will produce a new generation of Stingers to go out and find their own hosts. When outside warmth is sufficient, usually in mid-to-late Spring, the Stingers will burst from the host body and into the outside world. At this time they live off the land and may feed from any number of high-djed sources without infecting a host. They will search for the host with the most amount of djed, and will only settle for less if Winter draws dangerously near.
During this searching period, sister Stingers tend to remain together until one by one they find a good host. These swarms of Stingers may combine with other swarms to increase their numbers. If too many Stingers swarm together, the balance of ecology in an area can be threatened, as the Stingers will feed on any and all sources of djed, plants, animals, or otherwise. They may decimate entire areas of djed, leaving the land parched of all life.
Stingers search from host to host by crawling along the ground or vegetation, by hitching rides on unsuspecting animals, or by ballooning. Stingers can produce silk which they then manipulate into shapes that allow them to catch the breeze and fly.
FALL
When the weather starts to turn colder, any Stingers left without a host will begin to search in earnest. Swarms will break up and scatter. Sometimes Stingers will be seen competing for the same host by fighting to the death (death usually occurs when the opponent's stinger or other legs are ripped off). Stingers will never try to inject a host that is already injected by another. Most Stingers will die from the cold or natural predation before finding a host to inject.
HOST BEHAVIOR AND ATTACKS
The rare times that gruubar numbers swell, they tend to use their hosts to collect together in huge groups. There have been sightings of hundreds of assorted hosts walking around together. These groups of gruubar, if left unchecked, will prepare their hosts by producing many thousands of Stingers inside the hosts' bodies. Then the groups will launch attacks on entire herds of animals or even human settlements such as cities, usually in the Summer or Fall; this an attempt to grow their numbers even more.
Prepared gruubar hosts will not need to fight in the typical sense, but will explode out their Stingers to infect everyone around. Protective gear to prevent stinging is essential to surviving the attack uninfected; so is destroying all gruubar through any means, usually with the help of ice reimancers or even Reavers.
While perhaps just intelligent enough to copy some crude human speech (grunts, howls, screams, calls), it is unlikely that gruubar controlling a human host would be able to learn precise combat, farming, or any other complex human skill. It is also unlikely that they are smart enough to infiltrate cities by making their hosts act like regular humans; their actions and attacks tend towards power rather than subtlety.
Gruubar have the potential to be used as a weapon by an immune race (like Nuit, for example) against those susceptible, a sort of monster warfare. A gruubar host or two smuggled into a city would be as effective as a bomb, or perhaps worse.
Even when not directly attacking, gruubar prove troublesome as their host bodies still need to eat and drink, and so will end up competing with regular humans for survival resources. Gruubar hosts together may overhunt or devour whole fields of crops. Hosts are forced to eat to excess so that their bodies may stay strong, healthy, and useful to the gruubar; overeating also enables the body to produce more djed.
NUMBERS AND LIMITS ON POPULATION
Despite reproducing in large numbers (one colony can have many thousands), gruubar are not especially common; in fact they can be quite rare. This is due to a number of reasons:
- Most Stingers will not find an appropriate host before Winter, and so will die before injecting their essence.
- Both Virals and Webbers (the two reproductive agents of the species), are unable to live outside of a host's body. Stingers merely carry the next generation of Virals and do not reproduce themselves.
- If a colony of males is created in an 'unsuitable' host (a host that rejects the colony's machinations), then that colony will kill the host and abort.
- Virals can stay dormant for years, even whole lifetimes.
EFFECTS ON THE HOST BODY
Viral gruubar are not readily detectable, especially in their dormant phase. A host may not know he has been infected or show any symptoms for many years. The only reliable indication of infection is if the host recognizes the gruubar when it stings him.
During the larval stages there are not many symptoms, except perhaps small uncontrollable muscle twitches as the larva imbed themselves into the host body to feed and grow. During the metamorphosis from larva to Stinger or Webber, the host may experience some itching, deep beneath the skin.
When a colony is established and the larva have grown, the Webbers complete their spinning and begin to take control of the host's body. Here the host will begin to lose control of their limbs, actions becoming jerky and uncoordinated while the Webbers learn the host's reflexes and abilities. This is the first real symptom of the fatal infection. After that, the host's body will begin performing without permission.
If the host has the will to try to reject the colony and retake control of his body, he will find himself deteriorating within a matter of weeks as the Webbers gnaw aggressively at his djed paths. He'll lose fine motor control, then larger motions like walking and talking, and eventually, if he continues to resist, the Webbers will attack the djed of his organs and stop his digestion, breathing, and even his heart. Webbers mainly control the body; the brain itself is usually left untouched.
If the host does not fight the infection, he will find himself trapped within his mind as his body is manipulated like a puppet. This is a short horror, usually lasting less than a year, but gruesome enough and so debilitating that the host usually wishes for death. It is almost a relief in the Spring, when the Stingers burst free from the body and the host is torn from the inside out as the creatures erupt from wherever they have implanted themselves within him. Many thousands of Stingers may burst free within minutes. This usually results in blessed death as the host is drilled with tiny holes all over the body.
The true nightmare is if the host does not die from his wounds. Despite being free of Stingers, he will still be infected with both the Viral gruubar and the Webbers, and next year the process will likely repeat.
TREATMENTS AND PROGNOSIS OF HOSTS
Eradicating the infection from a host would be very difficult. All methods of healing are currently speculation.
A Healer may be able to combat the gruubar but it may take multiple strenuous sessions, and it is never a guarantee that some part of the Viral will not remain behind. At the start of treatment, Webbers may be prompted to attack the host's tissues as they feel the Healer's djed begin to kill them.
Subjecting the body to intense cold may be enough to kill internal gruubar, but the body would likely have to undergo dangerous hypothermia, which may end up killing the host itself.
The condition of a host's body after the gruubar have been eradicated is unknown. It is unknown if the djed pathways will regrow after being gnawed away and replaced by the Webbers.
Due to the insidious and fatal nature of the gruubar infection, most recognized hosts will be banished or even executed by their peoples if attempts to heal them are unsuccessful. Animals have been known to distance themselves from pack or herd members that show signs of infection.
OTHER
Stinger silk is quite hardy and can often be collected, though most are not brave or skilled enough to keep a colony to collect from. Braided together, the silk makes a fine but durable, somewhat stretchy string that may be used in anything from stitches to clothes to ropes to fishing line or nets.
