#vermin

WIP of Regis Mantos from Vermin

I've got quite a few things to finish at the moment, and I've also been busy watching a playthrough of a game I'm really enjoying, so my posts will probably be a little less frequent for a while 😭

On a nearly empty Broadway-Lafayette platform a moderately healthy rat just ran past me and disappeared up this conduit. Gave me a look on the way.

it is 4pm on a sunny hot Tuesday - and a fuck off huge Norway Rat just sauntered into my living space while I'm sat here on tumblr.com..

Bold as you please- right through the front door!

Image © Paizo Publishing, accessed at Archives of Nethys here

[The con rit is a Vietmanese sea serpent reported on by Bernard Heuvelmans in his foundational and deeply flawed In the Wake of the Sea Serpents. I was delighted to find it as a Pathfinder monster as of the 2e Remastered Monster Core 1. As a CR 7 monster that looks like a weirdo centipede found in a hazardous environment, I suspect that the con rit is intended as a "replacement" for the remorhaz, which as an OGL creature was left behind in the Remaster. This is a pretty straightforward conversion, which means that I maintained its ability to deal hit point damage with poison (although, like a lot of PF2e monsters, it deals damage and imposes a penalty to certain rolls). I announced that I'd be using poison as a damage type a few years ago to a bit of uproar, but haven't actually applied it very frequently. If you're dramatically opposed to poison dealing hit point damage, just increase the amount of Dex damage dealt by con rit venom.

Edit: Both @glarnboudin and @abominationimperatrix asked why I didn't make it a remipede. And the answer is, I was doing the monster pretty quickly because I was tired and wanted to write something low-effort. I literally didn't think of it. But it's an excellent suggestion, and I am making it so.

If you'd like to support what I do, check out the Creature Codex Patreon here!]

Con Rit CR 7 N Vermin This undulating creature appears to be some manner of aquatic centipede. Instead of scuttling legs, each of its segments bears a pair of broad fins. Its mandibles and antennae sit at the front of an elongated head.

A con rit is a giant remipede with a strong territorial instinct and a strange life cycle. Unlike their smaller kin, con rits have fully functional eyes, and hunt via sight. Their bodies move with smooth undulations, and are counter-shaded so as to be harder to spot from above or below in the water column. As they swim, the plates of their exoskeleton rub together, creating an metallic ringing sound feared by sailors. Con rits are often mistaken for sea serpents or even aquatic dragons due to their serpentine movements and their ability to spray water and venom in a jet from their mouths. Con rits use this ability to pick low-flying birds out of the air, and to knock sailors overboard so they can be consumed.

Legend has it that a con rit is effectively immortal, dying and being reborn like a phoenix. This is a magical interpretation of the unusual con rit life cycle. A con rit is parthenogenetic, capable of fertilizing its own eggs. Con rits lay hundreds of eggs in a secluded spot in their territory but never allow them to develop, culling the oldest eggs by eating them. When a con rit dies, the eggs are left alone, and their development is accelerated by pheromones excreted by their dying parent. The juveniles born first eat the remaining eggs, then turn on each other in a feeding frenzy. Only a single con rit is typically left alive to inherit its parent’s territory. On occasion, young con rits will be carried to another location through water currents or the intervention of other species, but otherwise a con rit remains in its home territory for life. This life cycle is so specific and so limiting of con rit populations that some sages have argued that it is artificial, designed by a sapient species to use con rits as guardians, but no direct evidence of this claim exists.

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