Most caterpillars form a cocoon only when they are ready to pupate. A caterpillar of the Psychidea family, or bagworm moths, weaves its cocoon as soon as it hatches, and moves about within its bag, somewhat as a hermit crab moves about within its sheltering shell. Maturing, the male bagworm transforms in to a moth and tracks down the pheromone trail of the female. The female, in contrast, has not even that short flight; when she transforms, her wings and legs are but vestigial - if she has any at all. She wait for the male to come to her, still enshrouded in her bag, and, when they are ready, lays her thousand eggs without ever leaving her bag.
The bag is tough and fluffy and studded with detritus. The detritus provides excellent camouflage. Being at once tough and fluffy, the bag is very difficult to strike through; it absorbs 90% (rounded up) of all ordinary physical blows, be they blunt or sharp. If the detritus includes fragments of hard wood, scales, or pebbles, the armoring value of the bag is increased. Just as important from the worm's point of view, the bag tastes like putrid cotton; no predator would want a mouthful of that foul shroud.
Because the worm makes such clever use of local materials, the bag's camouflaging qualities are quite superior.
While real bagworms feast primarily upon cedar needles and the leaves of arborvitae, resorting to other tree leaves when these are not available, fictional bagworm species include carnivores.
| Class: | Beasts |
| Hab: | Anywhere with overhangs; woods or subterranean |
| Fre: | Garden: Ubiquitous, Bag Baby: Common, Cowboy: Rare, Big: Very Rare |
| Num: | 1-10 or 500-5,000; many sorts form colonies; larger less social |
| Lair: | 90%; when they migrate, they do so en mass |
| Size: | Garden: 1"-2" (only dangerous to those under ½ foot long) Bag Baby: 3', 30 lbs.; prey to 8' long/tall, 300 lbs. Cowboy Worm: 6', 200 lbs.; prey to 15' long/tall, 1,800 lbs. Big Bagger: 25', 2,000 lbs.; prey to 50' long/tall, 12,000 lbs. |
| Move: | Slow creep; clings to any surface |
| Def: | Bag; superior camouflage, absorbs 90%+ of physical attacks |
| Att: | "Lassoes" with snare-sack, reeling and suffocating |
| Int: | Barely, but very effective at instinctive skills |
| Spec: | Lift 10 X their weight, throw snare bag horizontally 100 X their length |
| Posns: | Silk (quality varies), incidentals from past victims |
Bagging Bagworms or Head-Hooding Worms
Also called hooding worms, these are the most active carnivores of the bagworm family. They weave extra thick body bags for themselves, to provide extra armoring protection. Then, they weave more bags, these latter snare sacks being thin, supple, and very, very strong. The snare sacks are also outfitted with reeling ropes.
The worms fling their snare sacks, much as a cowboy would toss a lasso, to encompass a limb - or, better yet, a head. Their aim is uncanny. As with a lasso, once the prey is caught, it can be reeled in. Unlike the cowboy, who would not harm his catch, the worm reels in its prey with sharp jerks calculated to cause maximum damage. As the "limb" ensnared is most often the head, this may involve strangulation; a lucky tug may even snap the neck, paralyzing its victim. Being practically airtight, the snare sack also suffocates.
The worm is firmly anchored to the ceiling or overhanging tree limb and it can lift many times its own weight. Once the prey is well off the ground, if it struggles, it it jerked, to cause more damage. Once the struggling stops, the worm may be content to let the prey slowly suffocate; this keeps the meat fresher.
Happily, most bagging bagworms are garden bagworms, under two inches long, and rarely hunt prey of over two or three times their size. Unhappily, the larger species are not as rare as one might wish. The largest, the "big baggers," are thought to prey on titanic subterranean worms when underground, or whales swimming too close to shore in on seas-side cliffs. They have been known to snare entire groups of Adventurers, horses and all, or small ships. Others have been observed aiming their snare-sacks skywards to catch great birds and other flying creatures.
| Class: | Beasts |
| Hab: | Temperate and tropical forests or as cultivated, including underground |
| Fre: | Very common to somewhat rare |
| Num: | 1-10 or 500-5,000; many sorts form colonies |
| Lair: | As cultivated or feral: 1-500 in a group, 1-10 groups near each other |
| Size: | ½' to 3', 5-25 lbs., by species |
| Move: | Slow creep; clings to any surface |
| Def: | Hides in soil-filled, impact-absorbing bag behind screen of plants |
| Att: | Minor bite; its plants may have more |
| Int: | Barely, but very effective as instinctive skills |
| Spec: | Provides niches, care for wide range of plants, some quite dangerous |
| Posns: | Bag o' plants! Some have superior silk |
Planter Bagworm
The basket bagworm weaves its bag in a double shell, filling the space between with a rich supply of soil and chewed plant material to form a perfect potting mix. The worm then plants cuttings and young plants of various sorts through the surface of the outer bag, transforming the bag in to a hanging planter.
While in most cases the plants are used simply to provide a very elaborate camouflage, many planter bagworms find and utilize plants with superior defensive qualities. This may range from simply plants with basic contact poisons, such as hyper-virulent forms of poison ivy, to actively carnivorous vegimals.
While some planter bagworms continue to feed in the normal manner, moving about trees in search of leaves, carrying their planter-sacks with them, others have adapted to make use of the special qualities of the plants they cultivate, such as by ensnaring insects which visit the plants and eating any parasites which might harm their plants. Plants glowing in the care of a planter bagworm flourish.
There are some sylvan communities that utilize planter bagworms, hanging them under eves or from tree limbs where they are both ornamental and productive. Usually, these are insectivorous varieties, else they would harm the trees they depend from. As the season's end, the pupated females' eggs laid, those bags of superior silk may be harvested for fiber or they may be left hanging; the bags, based on sturdy silk, can last as long as three years, even after it no longer contains a worm. Other varieties make silk of poorer quality, which quickly decomposes when the worm is no longer maintaining it.
Subterranean species of planter bagworm may cultivate fungi or stranger growths instead of plants.
| Class: | Beasts |
| Hab: | Subterranean or thick woods, where vapors can accumulate |
| Fre: | Somewhat rare |
| Num: | 10-100 to 500-5,000, by type; colonial |
| Lair: | 90%; when they move, they migrate en mass |
| Size: | 1' to 6', by species |
| Move: | Slow creep; clings to any surface |
| Def: | Surrounded by vile vapors which pool below |
| Att: | Passive; minor bite, if any |
| Int: | Barely |
| Spec: | Bags exude vile vapors; worms are immune to poison |
| Posns: | Toxic bags, alchemical uses; possibly extra corpses in area Select live worms cultivated to manufacture "gas-potions" |
Vile Vapor Bagworms
These bagworms specialize in incorporating unsavory and even poisonous materials in the weaving of their bags. The worms will utilize fungi and mineral dust, ore fragments and the corpses of venomous critters as well as poisonous herbs and berries.
When these noxious materials are woven in, they permeate the silk, and then ooze their noxious qualities as an invisible trickle of poisoning gas dripping down from the bag. Curiously, the vapors are sticky and resist being dispersed. Naturally, this deters all but a select few predators. Curiously, as the gathered bits of herb may include spores or seeds or berries, when the worm finally abandons its bag, the rotting silk, with the detritus incorporated in its weave, acts as a fine compost, encouraging a new crop of poisonous growths.
The result is that the area below the vile vapor bags is a great pool of poisonous gas. While all the vile vapor bagworms in an area will produce gasses with the same or very similar effect, just what that effect may be varies from one location to another, dependant on what poisonous herbs or other toxic materials the worms can find; any kind of poison, from mildly debilitating to quite deadly is possible.
In this diluted gas form, paralytic poisons may merely slow those who pass through the vapor pool. Hallucinogens may merely create mild distraction and poor depth perception with accompanying reduction in skills, especially quick judgment, active physical skills such as combat. Virulently caustic compounds may produce relatively minor blistering, more distracting than damaging.
Naturally, there are Folk who make use of vile vapor bagworms, cultivating wild varieties for domestic use and breeding more specialized variations.
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