Mrrew
Monstercat
whatsthatbug.com
- Name: Vimelea
- Designation: Non-sentient
- Homeworld: Heklor
- Language: None
- Average length of adults: 0.1 meters
- Skin color: Black and yellow
- Hair color: Black
- Breathes: Type I atmosphere
- Strengths:
- Ovipositor: Vimeleas have 7 millimeter long ovipositors, which are used in females for laying eggs, and are useless in males. When ready to lay eggs, a female Vimelea will first bite prey to stun them, then stab them with her stinger-like ovipositor which "injects" her eggs in to the host's system, through the skin. This starts the parasitic cycle of the Vimelea, detailed below.
- Venom: Vimelea have a potent paralytic venom which they use both to paralyze their prey while they eat, and to stun their victims to lay eggs. The venom takes effect within minutes of a bite in human-sized victims, and within seconds in something the size of a Timbili, their favorite prey. The paralyzing venom, though, is not permenant and wears off within 2-3 hours in a human, 5-6 in a Timbili-sized victim. Multiple Vimelea bites can be dangerous, causing the victim to die, or become permenantly paralyzed- unless proper anti-venom is administered.
- Weaknesses:
- Insect: Though they are pretty huge for an insect, they're still small compared to nearly everything in the galaxy, and can be killed just as easily. Order your extra-large fly-swatters.
- Exoskeleton: The Vimelea's exoskeleton is oddly thin and mallable, so the insect can easily be crushed. Also, it's vunrable to many household soulutions, such as the juices of most citrus fruits, which will literally dissolve the exoskeleton, killing the Vimelea.
- Short life span: Vimeleas only live for about a galactic standard month, and if they for some reason don't manage to lay eggs by then, the 'circle of life' does not continue. If someone was able to stop the egg lying phase of the Vimelea's life cycle over the entire population, the species would go extinct.
- Food: Vimeleas need a large amount of food to get ready for egg laying, if the females do not eat enough, they will not lay eggs.
- The gulag plague: For reasons unknown, Vimeleas die almost instantly if they come in to contact with the Gulag Plague, in any form, other then air-borne. As it's all over the galaxy- even if many species are immune to it now- this means Vimeleas would not travel well.
- Distinctions: Vimelea are large wasp-like insects with six legs, two wings, and long attenae. They are known for their long stinger-like ovipositor, which they use to lay parasitic young. A unique chararistic of this species is their mandible structure. A Vimelea has five mandibles around their maw, two 'outer mandibles' which only exsist in order to inject venom in their prey; and three 'inner mandibles' which the Vimelea use to rip and tear at living organisms for food.
- Average Lifespan: 1 galactic standard month for females, three standard weeks for males.
- Races: None
- Estimated Population: Formerly over a hundred million, now a significantly smaller fraction, but an estimate is impossible due to their breeding habits.
- Diet: Meat from nearly any source, living or dead, although eggs must be layed in living meat. Tumbili are a favorite prey.
- Communication: They don't communicate with eachother
- Technology level: None
- General behavior: There are three phases of the life cycle of the Vimelea. Phase I, the Larval stage, takes about two weeks to be completed. It starts when eggs are laid in a living host by a female, which hatch within hours of being laid. The tiny grubs quickly begin to eat away at the flesh, muscle, organs, tendons, and just about anything they can of the host, for the next two weeks. The host only has to be alive until the eggs actually hatch, so if the host dies in the next two weeks then it means nothing to the little grubs. After about a week and a half, the grubs will travel through the skin of their hosts, and lay cocoons on their skin. After a few days, the cocoons break open, and full grown Vimelea will dry their wings on the corpse before flying off to begin phase II.
- Phase II, the Breeding stage, takes another week of the insect's life. In this stage, males do nothing but fertilize females, they literally do not eat, sleep, or do anything else during the Breeding Stage. All male Vimelea die at the end of this stage. Meanwhile, the females form massive swarms to eat as much as possible, landing on any animal they find en masse, and ripping off pieces of flesh until they leave nothing but skeletons behind. If female Vimelea do not eat enough during the second stage, they will be unable to lay eggs.
- Phase III, the Egg-Laying stage, begins when the Female Vimelea build up enough food in their systems to support the growth of eggs. The egg growth only takes a few days, and during teh second half of this week, massive swarms of female Vimelea again travel; the rainforests, landing on their prey in nimbers, as before. Only now, it's to lay their eggs. They lay eggs with their stinger-like ovipositor which injects eggs under the inital skin and tissue layer of an animal. From there, the eggs hatch within hours, and the cycle begins anew.
- History: Vimelea once formed swarms of millions every few weaks, and greatly kept the population of Heklor in check. They are the reason that there is only a handful of animal species on the planet; thousands were driven in to extinction. Mgena civilization could only thrive to to their natural defences that they inerhited from the Timbili, and every attempt to colonize Heklor by non-Mgena species were thwarted by this insects, along with the other creatures of the planet. Although, when refugees from the Gulag plague landed on Heklor it greatly damaged the Vimelea population. Even though the refugees only survived on the planet for a few weeks, several generations of Vimelea were infected with the Gulag plague, which almost drove the entire species in to extinction. Now, only a small number of these insects survive on the planet.
- Notable Player-Characters: None
- Intent:To create the reason that no one has colonized Heklor yet, and to create an interesting new species of insects for Chaos.
Edit: I upped the population, since I am introducing a predator for Vimelea in to Heklor's ecosystem. I hope this is alright.
