#iceworm

[wuzhere75]

New character for ROS. Her bio isn’t finished yet, so she’s not official, but I am still proud to introduce ya’ll to Polar Vortex

[vangold]

Another prompt of the ‘Oh dear, how the hell do I make this Lovecraft-themed?’ brand! XD We searched around haphazardly for quite a while until Subway to Sally's ‘SOS’ spontaneously gave me the idea of playing out the ‘being trapped’ aspect alla The Thing. So ‘I am stuck somewhere in an ice hell with a scary monster". The right creature was quickly found. Rlim Shaikorth - The White Worm. You could assume that it is related to the sandworms from Arakis - except that this monster crawls through the eternal ice. At this point, the horror becomes even more beautiful for me when we leave it open whether Rlim crawls towards the transmitter station to devour it, or whether he stays there, doesn't care about the station at all and just slowly but surely freezes it with his icy, snowstorm-like breath....

Creeptober-Promptlist by @creep-tober

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[boy-he-doin-it]

I'm blocking all handler and corp calls and leaving Rubicon 3 with my wife Carla and our pet iceworm.

Sundays I go fishing with Rusty, and he stays for dinner.

[agentgrange]

[spidermilkshake]

Ancardia's Unusual Animals--The Great Iceworm

Classification: Beast (mollusc)

Habitat: Arctic and Anctarctic seas, concentrated under consistent areas of sea ice.

            The Great Iceworm is a gargantuan species of seaworm which until recent Ages was scarcely researched due to its difficult and remote habitat. The second largest of all of Ancardia’s invertebrates, the great iceworm spends its entire lifecycle in the icy waters of the two polar zones of Ancardia’s seas, depending upon the rich biomass of the oceans below and close to permanent sea ice. It is known to be particularly common in the very southernmost ranges of Sostuniland, where many tens of thousands of square miles of sea ice remain throughout the summer and the density of large calved icebergs remains high throughout the year, but they do also occur in significant populations under the northern ice cap to the far north of Tvearban’s coasts. Like many of the ocean’s largest creatures, it is docile to most other creatures, only feeding on the smallest of lifeforms in its environment. The majority of a great iceworm’s diet is krill mixed with larval crabs and fishes, supplemented by various somewhat larger invertebrates such as basket stars, polychaete worms, and sea spiders. Several species of large amphipods have evolved seemingly to live only on the dead tissue and parasites that afflict the great iceworm, and so you will seldom find one of these huge creatures swimming without an entourage of several dozen to several hundred palm-size red and gold primitive crustaceans.

            While the worm itself is not particularly aggressive, it is possible to startle it which brings on the danger of such a huge animal responding by a defensive thrashing. Its mouthparts are relatively small, but still large enough for bites to be injurious to humanoids, and if directly attacked it will not hesitate to retaliate. Most of the danger from great iceworms comes from their boreholes in the sea ice layer in order to periodically breathe air, which are as wide as the worm’s body itself (usually 2 to 3 meters in diameter) and have been known to very lightly freeze over or have loose snow blow into them, creating a brittle thin area that is not immediately obvious as an environmental hazard. Dropping several meters into below-freezing water in such situations is almost always fatal even with assistance in escaping the frigid water, and so Sostunians living and working around sea ice often are careful to bring walking poles to test the areas along their route for hollow sounding ice and unusually-placed deep, loose snow.

            Great iceworms are extremely large, and vary in size depending on their age and the density of food supply they have encountered so far. Most adults measure a minimum of 14 meters in length as either younger individuals or those in areas with less abundant plankton life, but can also reach astounding lengths of 25 or even 30 meters. The average length is closer to 20 meters, though as newly-hatched larvae they begin life as only about 5 centimeters in length. Great iceworms breed whenever they encounter abundant krill for longer than a few weeks at a time, and can breed multiple times in a year (though this is very rare), and will either seek out a mate or undergo parthenogenesis if a mate is nowhere to be found. Eggs are laid in masses on the underside of sea ice, in bundles of 20,000 to 40,000 at a time, though most will be picked off by various sea life before hatching. A larval great iceworm grows exponentially in its first year, usually reaching several meters very quickly. Before reaching adult size, juvenile great iceworms are subject to predation from a number of sharks, other large worms, seabirds and seals. Great iceworms are not known to die from old age, their population mainly being controlled by parasite numbers, predation on larva and eggs, and scarcity of food.

[incyray]

Normal people: Iceworm scary, avoid! Run! Me: haha Iceworm selfie go brrr

[puppetmaster13u]

Hey, a progress sketch, who would have thought? Yeah um, so I am really excited for Below Zero to be fully released and played through part of it again. Came across the Ice Worm corpse, and well, we never know how it died- but one can see it was a violent death.

So, an idea: Bigger iceworms eat smaller ones that make their way into their territory. Especially if there’s food around that the smaller one is trying to steal. 

[bugsaremypassion]

while looking up holidays on my birthday i discovered the the cordova iceworm festival, which is a festival named after the iceworm, a small black worm that lives in glaciers 

this is honestly a cause i can get behind