ruthlesslistener:

Wyrm defense mechanisms

(yo@ganymedesclock, I heard you were wondering about what a wyrm’s defensive behaviors would look like, so I decided to just write up my thoughts on that in a separate post rather than a simple reply)

To be a wyrm is to demand a great territory lush with enough foliage and animal life to sustain the ever-growing body of a massive magical organism, and to be ever-growing is to eventually demand the ascension into godhood so that an individual’s power and life is not wholly dependant upon the land for its continued survival. As such, an adult wyrm would not just demand a territory that can reach hundreds of miles in length (be it across the surface or underneath the earth), but would also require territory suitable enough to fit both its needs, and the needs of sapient bugs capable of worshiping it. I personally view wyrms as being well suited for going long periods of time without food or water, being able to sustain themselves on the raw magical energy of the Wastelands, but the fluctuating currents of said magic are not dependable enough for continuous survival, so claiming a territory and eventually ascending into godhood is an inevitable necessity in the life of a wyrm. This, of course, means that resource scarcity is always a threat, and that competition is extremely high. As such, wyrms are highly territorial, aggressive creatures that have no qualms to resorting to cannibalism and very little problems with hounding out anything that dares to threaten their status as the top god of the region, which in turn means that their defensive behaviors are highly varied to match different levels of aggression, and to potentially neutralize dangerous situations if they know that they do not have the chance to survive.

(The claiming of such lands and the continuous aggressive drive to maintain territory also serves to create small, magic-calmed oasis-like areas of safety on the Wasteland’s perimeter, preventing its growth and encouraging an abundance of biodiversity within the pocket that are capable of retaining minds not scoured away by the wild magic of the Wastes. This in turn allows for smaller Higher Beings to propagate in addition to the wyrm’s own young, but that whole cycle between a large, powerful Higher Being magically terraforming a pocket of land to be more suitable to civilian growth is an entirely different topic from wyrm defensiveness altogether. It more just shows how wyrms offset the massive calorie count they require.)

Common wyrm defensive traits:

Okumaya devam et

Aren I greatly cherish this metapost but I think by far my favorite part is the fact that we seemingly independently settled on the conclusion of Startled Artichoke PK.