Local Guidebooks, abridged: On Owo-Luwo, Egg Eats You
Eggs, being an externalization of the primordial soup from which we all emerge, are an excellent source of nutrients. Eggs, being a still-developing organism encased in a fairly pregnable shell, are an extremely vulnerable source of nutrients.
If you’re foraging wild eggs on the planet Owo-Luwo you might find a dug-out den in the middle of the woods with a bounty of eggs. This could an external chamber of a nest of root-keepers; you need to stay away from those eggs.
Stay for a while and you might see some local fauna come upon the same dug-out and start gulping down the eggs whole. Those that survive will later spit up the eggs to share with their own nests. As you watch the feeding frenzies you’ll see some of the predators start to choke. To be fair, you and I might also choke after swallowing an egg whole. But what you would be witnessing, as the beast falls to the ground, gargling and wheezing, is a different act of predation.
Root-keepers lay two types of eggs, male and female. Male eggs are plain, smooth, nutritious. Female eggs appear the same. More male eggs are laid than female eggs so the predators have a reliable food source, because without the egg-eaters the female eggs would have nothing to eat. The difference with female eggs is moisture, or lack thereof. A female egg is laid inert, and only activated when moisture, such as the saliva of a would-be predator, seeps into the egg’s pores. The sudden drying of the mouth is what keeps the female egg from smoothly sliding down any throats and causes the choking and suffocation of its prey.
Once the female egg is activated and starts developing, it releases gastric juices from its pores and begins to digest the surrounding carcass. The acid is absorbed and emitted, gradually digesting and consuming the prey, like an external yolk sack. Over time the egg will bulge and break, revealing an elastic inner membrane which allows the female to grow larger by the time of its birth than its male counterparts. The larger the prey, the larger the female, creating a more formidable foe when the female root-keepers fight for the position of queen.
