Dugruggle- The Bathead Horror

World: Jotunheim

Diet: Meat and fungus

Height: 34’4″

Lifespan: 170 years

Habitat: Caves, mountains, plains, forests

Activity Cycle: Cathemeral

Never far from the surface of Jotunheim, a creature that is two and one at the same time trawls the caves that connect the surface and underworld. Its body is a bastion of strength, armed with powerful claws to dig into the mighty hives of the termiterror and rip chunks from their fungal farms like they are devouring a rotten carcass. Its head, popping off while the body rests, is more active predator, flying out of the caverns to hunt at night. They come together mostly to rest, one part of the body always awake while the other dozes.

Dugruggle add another two bodies to the equation with their propensity towards monogamy, taking a mate for life. The pair marks their territory with claw marks in grand x shapes, one overlapping the other so that their scents mingle. Dissections have revealed that the head and body of a dugruggle are opposite sexes, but the actual reproduction of the species and juvenile individuals that have not left the home cavern of their parents have never been observed. The parents show their highest aggression when caring for their young, which seem to always consist of a single offspring once every decade. This is generally the time they are most dangerous to anything as small as a human, as few creatures of that size pique their appetites.

The head of a dugruggle is mostly an aerial hawker, catching smaller prey on the wing. Their enormous eyes can spot the smallest prey in the blackest night, though without a magical edge, they don’t function in the total darkness of a cave. Their navigation in truly complete darkness is based on an exacting memory, derived from the link they form with their body upon roosting. The body is, in contrast blind, navigating by echolocation, part of how it easily detects the weakest points of a termiterror hive to break into. The same supersonic calls the creatures use to navigate can also function as a weapon, being painful or even fatal to smaller creatures.

Fire giant communities often live in symbiosis with termiterror colonies, and as such they frequently see dugruggles as a particularly dangerous pest. Unfortunately for the dugruggle, their superior strength is no match for the ingenuity of the more intelligent giants, who simply redirect channels of magma into their dens and call it a day.