Bog Shoggoth

It is a quiet night over Ansteva, and the air is still - but that will change soon, as a thunderstorm is forming in the distance. A young male heffalump is traveling, seeking a new herd, somewhere where he might find a young partner unrelated to himself - the reason he left his own family just two nights ago. He is four years old, nearing maturity, and a restlessness within him now compels him to begin a new life.

But if one is not careful, a first adventure may well be their last. 

Tonight, this heffalumps' travels take him through a strangely open plain that breaks up the forest. There is no scent of any other heffalumps having come through recently, which surprises him, for the route appears direct and easily traversed. Instead of crossing along the edges within the woods, he cuts right through, unaware of the danger - or simply too distracted to attend it.

The reason for the lack of trees in this clearing is because it overlies a bubbling underground spring. In many places, this would not be a problem, but the soil here is a very fine silt formed from ancient glacial erosion, and as ground water trickles up from below, its particles become suspended in the slow flow of water. The result is areas of soil liquification, where patches of quicksand have formed along the edges of the seemingly hospitable shallow pools.

The heffalump soons finds itself struggling as it enters the first of the pools to drink, and is unable to escape. The water is only a couple feet deep, but the high water table means that the soil is saturated and provides no support. As it tries to pull free, it loosens the sediment, allowing water to flow more freely, and causing the animal to sink. The quicksand itself is not immediately deadly to a heffalump, for it is a large and horizontally-oriented animal, and as such it becomes mired only a couple of feet deep before its buoyancy prevents further sinking. But all heffalumps know the danger of becoming stuck in such traps near the water, and in seeking a short cut, this one has made a fatal error that its herd would never have done.

The heffalump's escape attempts grow more frantic each minute he is trapped, and his calls bellow across the plain and through the surrounding woods as the storm begins to approach. To a nearby lumpredator, opportunity calls, and it approaches. A trapped, exhausted heffalump this size would feed it for days, and it would be an easy kill. He could simply climb on top, avoiding the muck, and so feed freely without fear of becoming trapping as well. But then a distant sound stops the would-be hunter in its tracks. It is not the growing rumble of thunder. No, it is a quiet rattling noise, almost like small pebbles being poured into a metal bowl. It comes slowly, but becomes louder every minute. The scuttling sound of billions of tiny legs crossing over individual grains of soil, of a billion minute clicking voices coming together into a singular cacophony.

A bog shoggoth, Informonstrum umbramortis (devouring-monster death-shadow.)

The wicked thing appears as a dark, amorphous mass creeping between the blades of grass, an animate oil slick. An evil-looking sludge, it is a liquid mass of eusocial insects working in utmost cooperation. The bog shoggoth is an ant superorganism, and much like its ice age ancestor, it is ruthless - now, however, it is amphibious. Its innumerable components communicate with stridulations of mouthparts; singly inaudible, together they form a horrible rattle of impending death. The bog shoggoth is a capable endurance predator; it is slow over land, but will never tire; "teams" of insects alternate supporting the colony while others rest. Primarily it hunts at night, when it is less visible, capturing animals in their sleep. In water it is faster, as it forms itself a series of paddles to push itself along like a raft and reaches out to snag its victim with tendril-like chains of biting insects. The shoggoth is a threat inescapable to the immobile, and the heffalump is helpless as it watches it approach, cross the water, and engulf it like a cloak. Death is not terribly prolonged but neither is it peaceful, as prey is usually suffocated as the creature sends its tendrils down its airways, blocking them off with their many bodies. It eats its prey from the inside-out, and so bypasses tough hides. The lumpredator flees as soon as the monster reveals itself out of the grass - it knows its place here is not at the top of the food chain.

Yet though bog shoggoths appear unstoppable, they are not as aggressive as they seem. They can so effectively make use of even the smallest scraps of protein, thanks to their countless tiny mouths, that much of their diet is comprised of insects and invertebrates they happen to come across in their nightly travels - most of the rest is carrion and the occasional incapacitated animal. The ultimate scavenger, they appear in the night and hone in on the scent of carcasses, stripping them clean to the bone by dawn, and keeping the ecosystem clean. By day, the creature hides in shaded places, often the burrow of some unfortunate animal. Occasionally it will roost in tall grass and be seen by day in its sleep phase, taking a compact rounded form that lies low to the ground and pulsates rhythmically like a lung, collectively passing cool air through its structure to prevent overheating of the queens and their larvae being housed within the living walls. Only if threatened will it awake by day, rapidly collapsing into a hoard of biting insects and nearly instantaneously re-assembling itself into its mobile form, which may seek to flee or stand and fight.

The shoggoth itself is mostly threatened by parasites - a very wide range of other insects infiltrate it and prey on its individual components, including other ants which mimic its pheromones and eat its own workers, functioning like a cancer within the shoggoth. The next most pressing threat is posed by tool-using animals which will actively destroy the nesting chambers - if all queens are killed the shoggoth will shrink and die as its workers are not replaced. Because it is not invulnerable, the shoggoth is far from overly-confident. Food is not rare in the hothouse swamps, and so these creatures do not need to fight for it at every chance. They are capable of problem-solving in their own way, for each ant functions somewhat like a neuron in its collective brain. This also means it can pick and choose its battles by judging whether it feels it can take an opponent without losing too much of its own mass in the process: though it can kill almost any sort of animal, the bigger the victim the more it can fight back before it dies, and so most often, even this most sinister and alien of hunters will choose the easiest option to feed itself. All of this together means that though the bog shoggoth is found worldwide, in most places it is primarily an elusive scavenger, and so is seen surprisingly little.

But when you do see it, you had best hope that you are not the easiest meal in its sight, because you will not escape if it decides you are.

And the shadow of death is always watching for its opportunity.