Sowverm

As species of vermees were being raised as livestock by Regalian Fossorundis, being protected by them and provided a regular source of food resulted in some of those species to specialize for this new way of life. This gave rise to the Sowverm, a split from their ancestors who specialized in being the “cattle” raised by Regalian Fossorundis.

In many ways, the Sowverm is identical to other species in the Vermees genus group. For example, the Sowverm’s mouthparts assist them with manipulating food, while they can technically still see from the eyes that sit on top of each body segment (minus the first two and the final segment). The species also still possesses large contractible muscles between their segments, which helps with movement. Overall, very little has physically changed with the species, instead most of the changes are behavioral.

For one thing, Sowverms will sit in a chamber dedicated to them, which Regalian Fossorundis use to excrete waste and drop off the dead. These will be in turn greedily eaten by the Sowverms, who grow fat and plump on this nutrient-rich diet. Their Regalian Fossorundi caretakers will monitor the condition of the Sowverms as they grow, making sure each one is getting plenty of food to sustain their growth and whether they are ready to be harvested or not. If a Sowverm is big enough, it will be dragged out of the chamber by the caretakers to be butchered. The meat of these cadoverms will in turn be used to feed the colony, who in turn will produce more waste and dead bodies to feed the other Sowverms.

Like most of their kin, Sowverms are rapid breeders which produce large numbers of offspring. While in most vermees the vast majority of these offspring would be preyed upon by a wide variety of predators and thus have their populations kept in check, this is not the case for Sowverms. Under the watchful guardianship of their shepherds, the Regalian Fossorundis, the Sowverms are able to flourish in large numbers whose growth is only further fueled by the nutrient-rich meals which they are provided. While their stewards due cull their throngs from time to time in order to both fill their bellies and stock their larders for their own offspring, this relationship has nonetheless proven a major boon Sowverms, who have grown quite populous as of late.

The young themselves have shrunken down greatly, being only about one-twelfth the size of their parents, but this means as many as twenty of them can be born at a time. These young mature quickly, being able to breed at just three weeks old and reaching their adult size two weeks after that. Though breeding and growing so rapidly means these cadoverms only live for about a year at most, the Sowverms are often harvested by the nodents long before that. Young Sowverms still secrete a sticky mucus that can adhere to larger fauna, allowing them to hitch a ride on Regalian Fossorundi kings that visit the chamber to eat some of the Sowverm adults. From there, they will be carried by him until he reaches another colony, where they can then grow with the Sowverms already there and breed with them, maintaining genetic diversity. There are cases where these larvae accidentally fall off in the trips between Regalian Fossorundi colonies, which then results in them struggling to survive since they face competition with other species of vermees over less nutrient-rich food sources. As such, Sowverms are almost exclusively found within Regalian Fossorundi colonies.