114 - The Worm That Eats

Unnatural Entity: The Worm That Eats

"Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head."
- H.P Lovecraft, The Festival

Gluttony is excessive consumption that deprives another of life-giving necessity. It is malignant primacy of personal pleasure and greed that starves those in its wake, like a cancer. It says "my hunger has dominion over you" as it snuffs them out before turning on its owner. That's the criteria for creation of a worm that eats: someone's excessive appetites, appetites which defined them, must have killed or destroyed others before devouring them in turn. While food is the first thing that usually comes to mind when gluttony is mentioned it isn't limited to the gastronomic, drugs, sex, gambling or any other voracious esurience equally qualifies.

Unlike demons, worms aren't the product of unfulfilled obsession, they are the obsession filled past bursting. Buoyed by the death it has caused and darkly reflected in the decay and consumption of its vessel, the hunger refuses to rest. It twists the graveworms, bacteria and carrion feeders (one bizarre example was made mostly out of vultures) who feast on the dead glutton into a rough, bipedal approximation of their image and sends it out to eat again.

Vestigial elements of the original personality persist but worms aren't their parent. They only want to consume in ways that are harmful to others and batten on the resulting suffering. All else is deception. When fat and sleek with other's deprivation they are intelligent and crafty, even charming in the limited ways they have to communicate. They disguise their inhuman nature with heavy clothing and masks, manifesting their power to draw in the vulnerable (once per day an uninjured worm can broadcast a compulsion over 3 miles to someone that shares its appetites, rank 4 stress check on an appropriate gauge if they choose to resist). Only when heavily damaged do these personality vestiges come to the fore. Trying to remember how to fill the yawning abyss inside itself, a wounded worm will idiotically retread the old haunts and habits of its progenitor, starving and barely bothering to hide its nature.

Ultimately bottomless, the hunger will eventually consume itself. The question is how many others will it eat first.

The Worm That Eats, Dead Hunger Walking
Wound Threshold: 50+. Worms start out with normal human wound threshold, but this increases over time as it eats. A byproduct of this means that a worm requires more to sustain itself the greater it becomes and eventually this is unsustainable. Every day a worm takes damage equal to 1/10th of its maximum wounds out of autocannibalism, although this can be mitigated by feeding. Firearms usually do hand-to-hand damage since it doesn't have vital organs, but the GM may allow exceptions.
Feed 100%: Roll this identity when a worm's indulgence seriously harms somebody (mentally or physically), adding the sum of a successful roll to its wound threshold. If they died add 10 points. If this takes it above its maximum then the maximum increases to accommodate. For every point of damage a worm has sustained, this identity takes an equal negative shift. Eventually, unable to feed itself enough, a worm will inevitably collapse.
Echo 25+3d10%: Something of their original life, usually ignored.
Carrionform 60%: This identity covers abilities unique to the make up of a given worm. One made out of maggots could use it to slide under a door or the aforementioned vulture-worm could use it to fly - clumsily. Capped at wound threshold.