#deepstalker

I'm pretty sure it's an invasive species. 🧶

Beastember #2 Deepstalker

Drawing this little baby, I was inspired by Compsognathus (a small carnivorous dino) and a lamprey. The second one was a reference for, of course, the mouth. Lampreys are known as water vampires, they use their jawless mouth full of sharp teeth to suck the blood of their victims. This is exactly what I think happens to deepstalkers’ prey – deepstalkers attack quickly, immobilize their prey with venom (Slowing Spit attack lol) and then feed on their slowly dying prey for hours (even days or weeks, if the prey is large like bronto).

Headcanons:

1. I like to think that deepstalkers are smaller than what we see in the games. Given that they a) hunt in packs (which is efficient when your prey is bigger than you – see wolves and lions as an example) and their main prey are NUGS and b) they live in Deep Roads full of small caverns and tunnels – it just doesn’t make sense for them to be this big :D I would say that adult females could be the larger sex (maybe the size of female turkey) but males could be even smaller. I think cat size is a max.

That wouldn’t make them less dangerous for a lost wanderer – imagine a dozen of creatures like that, cutting through your skin, injecting venom in your wounds... it still sucks.

2. Deepstalkers are not immune to the Blight BUT, thanks to their biology and reproduction strategy, they can still produce healthy offspring, even THOUGH they have darkspawn in their diet. 

First of all – slow metabolism. I think they can use food like snakes do – eat one big meal and then just go into few months period of a low energy demand. In these conditions, the Blight induced changes in deepstalkers would also go slower than in a body of a mammal. 

Codex #009

“A fool trusts his eyes. A wise man fears every rock is a deepstalker.”

--Dwarven saying.

Possibly the strangest of all the creatures found in the Deep Roads is the deepstalker. Tezpadam, as the dwarves call them, hunt in packs, generally by burrowing underground and then striking when their prey is in their midst.