Philagomite

Description

The Philagomite is a small insect-like creature that spends a lot of time living off of the flesh of any warm-blooded race or animal. They can be found in all temperate zones but the warmer climates are their favorite.

Their communities seem to be strictly built of their own families with the queen of the community giving birth to the entire group. When females in the group mate and are about the produce offspring, they immediately go in search of another warm body to begin their own family. They are can only survive outside of this environment for several days. Their favorite tactic is to move into city locations where it is easy to find proper hosts.

When a Philagomite finds a suitable host, it will start constructing a web dome onto the skin. The webbing attaches itself to the skin and the host only feels a slight tingling. Their favorite targets are sleeping creatures because this gives them enough time to build a nest without disturbance. The nest looks like a cocoon made of webbing.

As the dome is nearing completion, the queen will sit atop of it and lay eggs into the inside of the dome. After the eggs are done, the dome is sealed and the queen moves off to die. It takes about two weeks for the eggs to hatch and, once that happens, the children will start eating the host from the inside. Interior walls are built into the inside of the host so that the body does not die off immediately. There is no known way to remove the cocoon and most people just resort to removing the limb.

One important thing to note is that the Philagomite seems to mainly prefer Skin Elementals since they have the body structure that does not change and the nutrients traveling through the blood stream. This has led some wizards to come up with ideas of changing the blood composition in a victim to remove the Philagomite. No known records have been found in which this method has worked.

Interaction

Being a form of insect, there doesn’t seem to be any form of communication with these creatures. Sensitives have a feeling that there is a remedial communication using telepathy but the information is so basic that it is difficult to understand.

Combat

The Philagomite is a fairly easy creature to kill as long as it has not created a cocoon on the body. They don’t seem to have any form of defense other than being inside of the cocoon.

The cocoon, however, is extremely strong. It is tight enough that air or water cannot penetrate it and strong enough that it is immune to cutting and bludgeoning weapons. Acid and other forms of dissolving liquids also do not affect the cocoon.