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October 12, 2007
J - The Jrumiglior
by sven at 8:00 am
Reprinted with permission from Professor Ichbonnsen's Monster Month blog.
The Jrumiglior is unique in the literal sense: only one such animal currently exists on Earth.
It is non-terrestrial in origin, having come to our planet in a meteor approximately 400 million years ago. It is not, however, independently space-faring. Evidence suggests that it was sent here by a second species, as part of a colonization effort.
The Jrumiglior exists in two distinct states: dormancy and activation.
In its dormant state, the animal becomes utterly rigid and its color turns to a slate gray. It is easily mistaken for a surreal stone statue.
Activation is triggered by extreme heat (in excess of 300°F). When the Jrumiglior's environment reaches this temperature, its blood / internal fluids re-liquify, and normal metabolic functions resume.
When dormant, the animal is frozen in a curled up position -- much like a pill bug -- and it is approximately the size of a small car. When activated, it unfurls itself, revealing a form 30 feet in length that is simultaneously reminiscent of a centipede and a prickly pear cactus.
The Jrumiglior has a segmented body. There are ten segments, each with two pointed legs. Internal partitions allow any one segment to be severed from the whole and still continue functioning independently.
Like yeast, the Jrumiglior reproduces by budding. At any particular time, each of the body's segments is likely to have between one and three new "bulbs" growing off of it. The animal is so long-lived, it is essentially immortal. Bulbs develop slowly; there is no record of one breaking off from the main body during its time thus far on Earth. (Given how infrequently the animal has been activated, however, this does not really tell us very much.)
In its activated state, the skin is green, wrinkled, and warty -- rather like a pickled gherkin. Blue vein-like structures are visible beneath the skin. Some of these break through the surface and develop into prehensile tongue-like organs. The creature's dorsal surface is punctuated with beady, jet-black eyes. These begin as cysts, which over time move outward, ultimately erupting through the derma in a largely random pattern.
Much of what we know about this animal's existence -- both on Earth and before coming to Earth -- has been pieced together from archaeology and occult tomes.
The earliest known images of it come from ancient texts that were discovered in Australia. The Jrumiglior appears several times in fragmentary writings attributed to a great race of conical beings, which voluntarily departed from our planet prior to the emergence of dinosaurs.
Images of the Jrumiglior appear again in hieroglyphics that date back to the Triassic Era, which were recovered in the 1930s from a deep, hidden cave in Antarctica. It appears that the creature was kept there in suspended animation for nearly 250 million years. The broken doors of its vault warn of dire consequences for those who would awake the beast. What sort of beings served as guardians, watching over the Jrumiglior for so long? As of yet, science has no satisfactory answer.
It is unclear how the Jrumiglior came into human hands. However, it has been nothing but a curse to those who have tried to possess it. My colleague, Professor Albert A. Zeef, has made an in-depth study of this history -- which I shall only briefly synopsize here...
For at least a thousand years, the dormant beast seems to have been kept in a hidden underground city in England -- whose strange inhabitants ultimately degenerated into cannibalism. From there, the beast was forcibly taken by a certain pre-Christian religious sect, which transported it to the USA -- carrying it underwater through the Atlantic with the aide of a peculiar, blob-like aquatic creature which I am personally unfamiliar with. The Jrumiglior came to reside in a small fishing town in Massachussets, where -- over generations -- the townsfolk have lost their humanity, due to interbreeding with a species distantly related to the Forg.
The last definite location of the Jrumiglior was in New England. A renowned "wizard" stole the beast from the misceginated forg/humans, and concealed it beneath his farmhouse dwelling. Due to an unrelated tragedy, the estate burned down -- and during the fire the animal was temporarily reawakened. This is where the historical record ends.
The Jrumiglior's current location is uncertain -- but humankind has reason to be fearful. Recent re-interpretations of the Australian texts have shed new light on the creature's distant origins -- and its possible future.
References are made to an unknown species living outside of our solar system. Their name, roughly translated: "The Contributors." Apparently Contributors use the Jrumiglior as a midwife to their own young. The beast is mechanically split open and thousands of fertilized eggs are implanted in its central body cavity. The Contributors telepathically imprint programming into the Jrumiglior's nervous system, and then send it out through space to colonize other planets. When the programming is triggered, the animal deposits the Contributors' eggs in their new habitat. Certain secretions from its body jump-start the maturation process, and soon the eggs begin to hatch. Thus, the Jrumiglior serves first as a protective vessel for Contributor eggs -- and then later, when the eggs are exposed and vulnerable, as a ferocious guardian.
From what we can decipher, the trigger which causes the Jrumiglior to deposit the eggs is some sort of alignment of the stars.
During the past year there have been rumors of the Jrumiglior being sighted awake and active near Mt. Etna -- an Italian volcano which is currently erupting. My contacts report that a large centipede-like creature has been spotted emerging from freshly hewn lava tubes... And that it has been seen on the horizon against a sky of fire, looking up -- as if waiting expectantly for some sign.
I for one am profoundly disturbed by the implications. If this creature is indeed the Jrumiglior and it finally enacts its intended purpose, then the extinction of native life on Earth may very soon come to pass.
Yet, there is hope. I have alerted a secret society whose very purpose is to find and contain the "Apocalypse Wurm." Let us pray for their success.
posted by sven | October 12, 2007 8:00 AM | categories: bestiary