Devourers

/Please note - this is in no way a disambiguation of all possible creatures named 'Devourer', as there probably are other 'Devourer' creatures in other peoples' character universes but this is one particular creature concept developed by SpiderBone to the universe of  'The Chronicles of Haud'. Since the author couldn't come up with a better, more "exotic" and original  name, this will be the universal term for these creatures./

Origins

Originally, the Devourer was the Devourer of Souls, cleansing souls* and releasing them as its primary task, living in the dark nothingness between the Worlds. But as the Worlds suffer from an anomaly of an Ancient Soul that hasn't been purified in thousands of years, the Devourer was sent to seek and devour the soul, destroying the vessel (i.e. body) and cleansing the soul.

But as the carrier of the Ancient Soul never stays in one place for long, and The Devourer is already far behind, it began to spawn more creatures of his kind - considering that it has enough mass to give away from its body, so it has gluttonous phases to gather enough mass whenever it wants to 'give birth' to a new Devourer. Sometimes it simply slices a small bit of itself and lets it grow on its own.** Later on, these creatures, often referred to as Children of the Devourer, adapted into different environments, but the role is the same - to devour the vessel that carries the soul inside and purify the soul. (see: Children of the Devourer)

• Soul = as in containing the whole psyche of a sentient creature, including

memories, experiences of enhancement (though limited by the vessel) etc. Usually a soul is reset after taking a home in a newborn vessel with no recollection of past lives whatsoever, but sometimes the memories might stay, partially (e.g.  re-emerging in dreams or under hypnotism) or completely (e.g. remembering everything from the previous life right before death, and after being born, but not being able to express it as the brain and vocal cords still need to develop). This is the reason why Devourer can steal the memories and the abilities of its victim.

• but this is possible only when Devourer concentrates all its willpower into

the small piece before separating it from its body - otherwise it will only be a lifeless piece of meat.

Physiology and Appearance

The original Devourer's (the former Devourer of Souls) features are fairly recognisable - a large black body covered in soft purple fur and slippery mucous membrane with translucent, jelly-like skin, and a white humanoid face not unlike a mask made of bleached bone and marrow, but it morphs pretty much like a face made of flesh but it is colder to touch. Its head is covered with long, black hair similar to a humanoid's, and it has downwards-pointing hairy ears hidden underneath the mass of hair.*** Its neck is long, thick and strong - a thinner or weaker neck couldn't hold the weight of its prey. Only a few have seen and lived to tell about how it has opened its petite mouth into a cavernous, salivating maw and devoured its victim. Its mouth is a crimson-purpleish fleshy pit with powerful jaws covered with one row of sharp teeth meant for gripping its prey (some devourers have gripping teeth at roof of their mouth) and it also uses its long tongue for grabbing its prey as well, but it is inefficient if the prey struggles a lot since the tongue is slick with saliva and merely meant for capturing smaller prey or shaping and accommodating its tongue and mouth for placing the prey inside with its hands down to its narrow throat to swallow. **** Its œsophagus (i.e. gullet) is an extremely stretchy muscular tunnel that pushes its prey down into the stomach with powerful peristalsis. Much like a jellyfish, this creature has an extremely simplified digestive system. The stomach is pretty much the only internal organ it has (even though some primitive forms of a two-chambered heart and two pairs of book lungs can be seen if you look carefully enough) and thus the digestion takes place inside the rest of the body after the meal has been processed into a form that it can be easily absorbed through the porous walls of the stomach into the veins and into its circulation. However, it isn't that simple and it is impossible to explain what exactly happens after the digestion begins. As this creature only feeds on sentient creatures, the stomach walls constrict around the prey as if it was probing them while the digestive fluids start to ooze from the walls, and at some point the process slows down crucially when the Devourer enters a trance-like state when it's reading its prey's memories and absorbing them, and the soul as well. While absorbing the body, the memories and possible abilities stay in the creature's mind, utilising them whenever necessary. The creature absorbs everything of its prey for its own body - bones for its mask-like face, hair to become its own hair, etc. and the small amount of the prey's mass (some of the water in their bodies evaporates, some of it becomes its mucous membrane) is also added to its weight into its body after each meal, which also causes growth in size. All the indigestible or slow-to-digest material, such as clothes, is regurgitated. And the soul, once passed through the creature's digestive tract and circulatory system, is then expelled through the Devourer's porous skin and mouth by exhaling.

• possibly adopted from a race of non-humanoid creatures.

• Devourer always swallows its prey alive because the soul leaves the body

quite soon after death, but once the Devourer has the soul where it wants, trapped inside its body that souls can't exit or penetrate, the processing and digestion may commence.

Children of the Devourer

As mentioned earlier, there are many devourers that spawned from the original Devourer. Here are the key differences compared to their mother: - they are not capable of reproduction. (but that has not been completely proved) - they are not capable of altering their body; they have a fixed number of limbs (which is usually six) but they can regenerate a new limb in place of the one they lost. - they can evolve and grow pretty much like a real animal, (especially when they are born small) with limited metamorphosis with moulting-like processes to grow. - assimilation is limited. They are able to absorb everything just like their mother, but not all of the e.g. bone becomes part of its face, hair become part of its hair, etc. but they can gather tissue around their bodies (not unlike fat tissue) which can later be used to limb regeneration.

But in other points they are essentially similar, e.g. the white face, stretchy mouth and stomach and strictly predatory attitude, with individual changes in the efficiency of stalking. Here is a list about several types of devourers that may emerge, but as new types seem to be born occasionally, they will be added as well.

Gulper - the most common type of devourers. Like most devourers, gulper has four arms - a pair of stronger arms for capturing prey and a pair of small with which it passes the prey into its mouth for swallowing. Its stomach is incredibly stretchy and thus it can hold a meal its own size. The creature size differs from an infant-eating small gulper (also called a baby gulper) to a large gulper that is the size of an adult human, and even larger. There is also a variety of gulpers that have wings, and they burn a lot of energy with flying so it eats a lot.

Zoomorph - a devourer with the body structure similar to of a large animal, but it's face is still fairly humanoid. There are feline creatures such as the heavily built ravagers that pounce on their prey, light-structured runners that exhaust their prey by running after them and there's also ragamuffin that resembles a wild cat, only enormous with thick messy fur covered with wild patterns and with big, upwards pointing ears and a friendly, smiling humanoid face - it is very playful and at first will fool the prey into beliving it's just a harmless kitty cat, but later it starts playing rough on them, maybe let them hang out of its mouth, swallow partially, spit out, start playing again, and it might take hours before it finally eats its prey. Another example of a zoomorph would be a verocodile that bears resemblance to a very large crocodile with six limbs. There are plenty of other zoomorphs, and they will be added later on.

Widowmaker - one of the rarest sort of devourers. Making its appearance more like specific sex (female), these creatures are still regarded neutral. The creature's four arms have become legs and legs become prey-grabbing arms. It has two mouths - the bigger mouth is positioned underneath its belly (where a biped animal's genitalia would be), covered with sharp teeth, whereas the smaller mouth on its face is meant for regurgitating indigestible material. One might call it 'unbirthing' but that is not the case as the vagina-like mouth continues up to its stomach which starts digesting the prey. But if it ate its prey with the upper mouth, it will later lay an egg out of the unharmed prey, possibly for eating it later or for other unknown purpose.

Sea Gulper - despite having the suffix "gulper" in its name, it doesn't have all that much to do with its land-dwelling cousins. This creature does have wing-like fins with which it moves underwater. Bearing resemblance to a deep-sea gulper eel/angler fish, this creature has a big mouth and an extremely stretchy stomach to accommodate larger numbers of prey as well.

Wyvour - a wyvern-like devourer, usually with a rather robust build, covered in thick plumage-fur. The skin-like membrane of the wings is covered with mucus on the front, and they also have bizarre tooth-like spikes to seal all the openings for a soul to escape when it wraps its wings around itself, also with a prey inside. It absorbs all possible nutrients, and afterwards it opens its wings and lets the indigestible material fall onto the ground. It can also devour its prey with its mouth when it needs its wings to fly.

The list will be updated when necessary.

The Devourer concept © 2004-2007 SpiderBone.