Grick (grr-ick)

Threat Level: Low-Medium

Description

The Grick can be divided into two categories. The Common Grick, and an Alpha Grick. The Common variety can stretch anywhere from 5-8ft long, while Alphas generally stretch 12ft long. Additionally, while Common Grick are uniformly dark green in coloration, with lighter colored bellies, Alphas are exclusively dark blue on top, with yellow underbellies.

Gricks are often mistaken as aloof and somewhat oblivious, but they are usually much more aware of their surroundings than the average human, maybe not an elf. Most assume they can't see, but they can, with tiny eyes that sit to the sides of the beak. While sight is their weakest sense, they see in black and white but in close to pitch black. They can only see about 30 feet in front of them, but this is usually quite enough in subterranean environments. Touch/hearing is their most tangible way of experiencing the world around them. Their body is covered in tiny cilia or hair-like structures that both feel and "hear" vibrations. In a sense, it is all the sense of touch, making them immune to adverse effects such as loud noises as it would take incredible force to break their hearing faculties. The feeling is acute, though, and can seem as if they hear better than even an elf.

Both taste and olfactory are chemical detections by most creatures, and Gricks do not differ in this aspect. They possess a small and short tongue sitting in the bottom half of their beak. Their noses, instead of on the beak-like many birds, are inside on the upper beak's inside. Although, it is not much of a nose and more olfactory pits. This behavior is why Gricks seems to be always "chewing"; they are gulping air to smell. Their sense of smell isn't especially acute, but it does particularly well at detecting poisons and other hazardous material for consumption.

While nowhere near the abilities of a Hydra, Gricks can heal most if not all damage they suffer in a short amount of time. Of course, if they can find the food to do so. This process also speeds up their appetite. Thus, an injured Grick most often starves more often than succumbs to their wounds. They can re-grow every part of their bodies. However, the hooks and beak do take a more extended amount of time. If their brain is too far damaged or too many wounds suffered at once can fell them. Unlike other worms, they can not grow rapidly, and any significant loss of organs is just as fatal as it would be to you and me.  

Behavior

  Gricks do best in areas where they have the advantage of surprise, which is dark or and usually underground. While they live under the surface, they aren't adapted to digging but more to squeezing through crevasses. This inability to dig is why many can be trapped in areas forming a "Grick Pit."

Mudslides and heavy rains can soften the soil enough for Gricks to burst into the night for hunting. While they aren't fast enough to catch anything that can run, they are great at ambush attackers. It's also easy to grab something curios or stupid enough to get close.

Their advantage lies in their incredibly squishable body that can squeeze through cracks as small as their beak is wide. This ability makes Gricks difficult pests to root out of underground structures such as crypts, dungeons, and basements. As a result, their bodies are resistant to impact from bludgeoning and falling from heights.

Gricks are not picky eaters; if it's meat, they eat. Being ambush predators, they are adapted to hiding and surprising prey rather than chasing their food. They can move quietly and slowly by stretching then contracting their bodies with only a slight shuffling noise. This movement is slow and only allows for a short-range lunge at prey. They will often blend in like a rock or some other debris and strike when food approaches. They also do like to climb and drop onto prey as well that they hear beneath them.

With this poor means of catching prey, they often have a high success rate once a target is hooked. With their sharp beak, they immediately begin to feed while hooked and even drill into more gigantic monsters who fail to extract the hooks. This feeding makes for a terrible wound if survived as the Grick will tunnel into the flesh, and being sometimes a yard wide can leave a sizable hole. They can go weeks without eating as it does take days to digest a meal. They are often sluggish and docile during this time. Not a real threat to anything. The more hungry they become, the more aggressive, though.

Gricks hatch from leathery eggs. These eggs are about the size of a grape and usually stuck to walls or ceilings. They rely on unsuspecting creatures to imbibe the grape-looking egg, unknowing of their true origin. While mostly safe to eat, honestly, there is a small chance that a larva can survive and take root in the intestines. The uneaten eggs will perish as the larva can not break the soft shell simply due to size and space constraints.

They begin life as small parasites that eventually eat enough of their victim that they perish. Having a Grick for a parasite at first is relatively harmless, but once it starts to grow in size, sizable portions of the muscles, their favorite meats, can severely deteriorate. The stage of the parasite is slow, to begin with only an inch long for many weeks. Once they start to grow, severe pain starts to set in. If not removed and the host perishes, the Grick will then consume the rest of the body and emerge, usually from the chest and stomach area at a 3 to 4 ft length.

As an adult, they will continue to grow their whole life. It is unknown if they perish to old age; thus, their life-spans are not well recorded.