#slugcat mythology

[slugcatmusings]

Thoughts on Slugcat Mythology UwU

So for the most part I’ve been musing about biology here, but recently I’ve started musing about slugcat culture.  If slugcats are (as I like to think) a sapient species (if not a very advanced one) how might they perceive the world?

More specifically, because I am a fantasy worldbuilder over a science fiction one and I like coming up with stories about gods and monsters, what might slugcat MYTHOLOGY be like?

Rain World is a very harsh world to live in.  It’s full of deadly weather, enormous predators, abominations of nature, and countless other threats for a tiny slugcat, and unlike their predecessors the ancients, the slugcats don’t yet have the scientific knowledge to understand how everything works.  They’re not a united society, more like a bunch of tribes and loners struggling to survive.  Many things they didn’t understand would be attributed to the work of gods or spirits, and they’d revere things that help a scug clan not only survive, but thrive, and whisper warnings to their pups to stay out of dangerous places.

Perhaps the slugcats have gods of the hunt or the bounty of nature, beings who grant them strength to bring down mighty beasts to feed the clan or gift them luck to find food to bring home to their families.  Or maybe they worship gods who have blessed them with resilience, the determination to keep stubbornly going no matter what dangers the world might throw at them.

There are stories of strange beings which live in the metal mountains that tower above the rains and clouds, who gift knowledge never before known.  There are pictures of them carved into trees and stones, odd tailless gods of another long-gone people chained inside their temples with great halos of pearls circling them like satellites.

The slugcats tell of a plague inflicted on those who intrude on the decaying ruins, one that lingers in the highest, twisting places of the world, and oozes into the depths.  A corruption that consumes the body and in turn forces it to consume, friends turning upon friends, littermates upon littermates, parents upon pups, as it eats the entire world starting from the tallest of peaks.  There are stories of what might happen if its endless hunger consumes all, the world becoming nothing but disease and rot.

There are great heroes of legend, slugcats who ventured beyond their lands to bring home wisdom and lead their peoples into posterity.  There are stories of the messengers of the gods, slugcats chosen to bring the holy words and wisdom of the gods to new recipients, for the cost of never living amongst their kind again.  There are stories of great wars between colonies, of slugcat pitted against slugcat for the struggle of survival.  There are whispers of monstrous slugcats who have bathed in the blood of their enemies and become drunk on the slaughter, stuck in a never-ending cycle of bloodshed and pain.

There are tales of a great sea of gold beneath the earth, so deep below that the rains cannot reach them.  A sea which offers an end to the strife and suffering.  A place where the people of the past turned to, when their gods could not save them, and the realm that chained gods long for, hoping to reach it once they’ve broken their bonds.

There are prophecies of a guide who will one day lead the dying gods to their final resting places, deep beneath the earth.  Of the world one day crumbling, and everything ending in one last dying gasp - for everything lives and dies again, becoming something new, and the world is no different.

[yourfavoritecascade]

some doodles to warm up

Some more abt y I’ve been so absent in terms of original work under cut (a solid bit is directed towards the rw fandom btw):

Ok so I didn’t plan it but I didn’t want to come back fully too soon.

I genuinely just didn’t feel like doing or drawing much starting a few months ago so I kinda fell off the face of the earth art wise. I still liked drawing ofc I just didn’t feel like posting original stuff all that much.

After about a month of just hanging around on and offline I became aware of all the drama and hostility in the fandom and it did not make me very eager to come back right away honestly 

I don’t consider myself a very big creator and I never really have, but seeing & hearing about how some other content creators were being treated did not make me feel great and I honestly felt a little nervous to begin posting again. I’m back now with a bit more motivation and time to chill and post my own stuff, but I’m saying now: I will not hesitate to leave again if the rw fandom especially starts going to shit again.

I’m rlly hoping we’re good for now, obviously some form of drama is unavoidable but it’s felt very extreme recently (actually scratch that it’s always felt pretty extreme for the fanbase imo) and all I want is a place to post my own stuff and observe others.

That’s the basics, along w/ some other real life stuff that really just needed a break to treat for the most part. Anyways, hoping to get back into posting my own cool stuff soon, but after seeing all this over the past year now (and then some holy shit), I will not stay if things get worse again. 

[paradoxbeta]

de ce ai un rain world oc pe nume fat frumos please i must know (also zmeu. i see what you did there)

oh am i excited to talk about this. buckle in because it is a bit much

preemptive tldr: i have a rainworld adaptation of the făt-frumos tales where f-f stars as an overly prideful slugteen (pictured below looking moody) getting a body horror-y reality check

so! the name of this adaptation is the împărăție colony and as mentioned above its my little for-fun project based off of the original făt-frumos stories. for those who don’t know, f-f is a romanian folkloric character

some elements were changed (f-f is no longer the son of a king because there’s only one slugcat colony in this region, so i could only have a prince or a princess but not both if i wanted to keep the generic romance plot) but most were preserved, with f-f still having calul năzdrăvan (now a noble blue lizard steed inherited from his father) and with there still being the classic villains such as both balaur (infamous mutated red lizard) and zmeu (random iterator the slugcats abstracted into the Big Bad)

the story goes that the local iterator is collapsing and its bioprinters have gone haywire, so now it bleeds out nasty and highly mutagenic sludge. the local slugcat colony has not taken kindly to the deadzone and mutated fauna, but they also dont really understand what a bioprinter or hazardous chemical agent is, so they formed a mythological universe around the iterator

his name is zmeu, he’s a wretched 6 legged monster, he’s bleeding poison, he’s representative of all ill will and evil in the world, and all of his children are accursed nightmares. anything that’s been afflicted by zmeu gets the misnomer “child of zmeu” (misnomer because almost every "child of zmeu" was not born that way)

so in comes f-f: he’s the son of rege (who is again not actually the king), and rege was renowned for his incredible fighting prowess until the balaur got the best of him and left him unable to fight like he used to. f-f isn’t supposed to step up to his fathers position yet but his dad’s hand is forced, so he hastily passes on his trusted lizard (calul) and goes hey son, surprise! youre taking the mantle effective immediately

f-f eventually ends up on a mission to go slay zmeu and to find ileana, the colony leader’s daughter, who had gone missing very recently and who f-f also happens to have a fat crush on. so boldly he sets off with calul năzdrăvan

the story starts off very lighthearted and in its own head– f-f is young, rowdy, concerned with superficial things, and he’s had his ego gassed up by his colony which has its emphatic faith in him. he’s in a total fantasy world off to slay this big monster and come home as the hero with the girl, but as the story goes on, things get too real for him. balaur hunts him relentlessly and tests his grit, he sees the extent of the pollution and the environmental havoc, everything he's heard in mythos becomes less of a concept and more a frightening reality, and surviving in rainworld is just plain difficult, so his self confidence wanes. it reaches a breaking point when he eventually finds ileana, who is by now to his horror a child of zmeu

he does find his way to zmeu’s puppet chamber but it doesnt bring him any sense of completion. his only real options are to leave empty handed or to “kill” the puppet, both of which don’t solve anything... its all in all not a fun time but it teaches him some really important lessons about humility and about how small he really is in the world

its not a narratively complex or serious story and it can be cliché or even nonsensical at times, but i have a lot of fun with the characters, and im entertained by the idea of morphing a fun and shallow fantasy shindig into something frightening and slightly depressing over time

(also this ask reminded me to go back and add zmeu to the colony tag, thank you!) 

[niftukkun]

What's in a Name, a short Pokemon Mystery Dunegon: Explorers of Sky comic featuring team North Star!

an exploration on the power of a name, and a lampshade on how characters can tell the difference between two pokemon of the exact same species

(to be named is to be known. to be known is to be loved. to be loved is to be changed.)

~~

details!! :

reiji and circe are, as player character and partner respectively, named from the start.

that faded naming screenshot is from my actual playthrough of the game. heres a clearer version!!

(also the comic panels look like the in-game text boxes and that was very intentional)

naming easter eggs!!

>reiji was a misspelling - i forgot that the japanese for thunder was rai, not rei, so reiji ended up as reiji rather than something playing off being an electric type. a spikey design and feeling for the speech bubble to contrast circe. also thats a pecha scarf because i like not being poisoned. >circe, in mythology, is the daughter of the sun god helios. fire type, daughter of the sun, you get the idea. a more rounded and curly design and speech bubble to contrast reiji. i forgot if circe was wearing the band that increased attack or the one that increased special attack but she certainly is wearing one. >phosphor's name is taken from a game called Oneshot!! the lamp visible in the last page is inspired directly by the lamplighter guys lamp and their speechbubble features a lightbulb, a big plot-important object in Oneshot

>fey is a reference to maya fey from ace attorney!! a purple scrunchie to reference that maya is purple, a magatama both around feys neck and in her speech bubble because thats plot important. the chains in the speech bubble are also a reference to ace attorney and the magatama. the background silhouette is the hazakura temple gates because that case was sure memorable.

>basilisk is a reference to the common water basilisk! so hella water motif and an attempt to merge a wooper with a basilisk. hell yeah.

>rivulet!! rain world rivulet!!!! i gave rivus big ol eyes to a surskit and stuck their axolotl-esque whisker on top and put pink highlights to make a surskit design with a very obvious inspiration. i didnt want to go with a water motif cause basilisk already had that so i made the background silhouette rivulet the slugcat and gave the speech bubble a more wavey look for fun.

>(in hindsight basilisks (walks on water) and rivulets (axolotl) names should have been swapped. that wouldve fit better. but oh well it is what it is and i dont wanna change it)

[pocket-goat]

doodle page of my boy Trouble Abounds (plus some slugcats!!)

there is a colony of slugcats that live directly under his can and treat him as an almost mythological, god-like entity (despite every colony member visiting his chamber at least once in their life)

maybe i'll ramble more about them in a separate post some time <3

[persy-r-bozo]

HELLO HELLO

Im bored and i found out that the lovely soaricarus here on tumblr (Check soar out the rain world art is so pretty oh my god)

anyways-

Soar made a Slugcat genorator

so i generated these lads

I just made these so heres a small improv idea of how they work idk.

The Nymph (I misspelled it :( :

is the name of mythological creatures that live in ponds and rivers. They are always hyperfocused, thus the slit pupils, they are fast swimmers due to the double tails and dorsal fin. they can breathe under water due to the large frills, However they can only breathe on land for a few hours before they need to be moistened, They can eat bubble weed and bubble fruit to moistened their lungs or sacrifice food pips before finding a body of water again.

The Mast Radiator:

Is a moth like slugcat. they are able to glide and fly for short periods of time, often taking rests on building walls before flying away again. Its soul purpose is to eat flora, moss and fruit on its iterators chamber and radio tower. to prevent it from causing rumble or unwanted visitors. vultures seem to avoid it, its theorized that it may be poisonous to the vultures system and the vultures learned. It lives far above he rain. in fact it probably doesn't even know or is aware that the rain exists, if it were to go under the clouds and explore it would die. it does not know what a shelter is.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

explaining all of the names in my pinned post cause why not (excluding eyetrees cause the explanation for that one is in the post itself)

under a cut cause there’sssssssssssssssssssssssss

a lot

creature - i am therefore i think- wait. no that’s not. i therefore think am. yEAH!!,

mako - mako! a type of shark! i like the color of mako and i like its shape and texture too!

egret - a type of bird! only problem with this one is that it’s pale yellow in color, but y’know! bird!!

ermine - stoat winter edition. pretty word. pretty creature. very nice and pretty and soft

squid - 🦑 (squids are cool!! plus the color is nice. yippie)

fisher - type of- what the fuck are they called. hhuh. OH MUSTELIDS!! yeah that’s the one! anyway. they’re cute and fisher is close to ‘fletcher’ which is not one of my names but i like to carry it around with me anyway. it’s very nostalgic and nice

marten - another mustelid. ADORABLE. I LOVE THEM. AHHHHH

moths - i like moths! i also like plural names. moth? nope, moths

bug - i am what i am (afraid)

anomaly - i am what i am (a freak /positive)

chiton - type of funky aquatic creature. they’re real neat!

isopod - i like isopods (big ones though not. not the tiny ones). i have a giant isopod as my computer wallpaper. neat little critters

xylem - i barely struggled through that part of biology i don’t know. part of plants. it’s a pretty word and i like it for that

spooky - spooky scare yippie

spooklight, ghostlight/s - a type of light phenomenon! suspected to be from car headlights, but y’know

? - question makr

petrichor - smell of soil after/just before rain! favorite smell. love rain. love the word. good times

ford, stanford - blorbo

lee, stan - blorbo

mason - blorbo and i keep forgetting to add mabel but y’know what that’s fine

ghost - lil bug you play as in hollow knight!

hollow - lil bug’s extremely ill sibling!

broken - lil bug’s extremely dead sibling!

mossy - moss charger in greenpath

nosk - lil bug’s- oH WAIT NO THAT’S NOT-

hunter - slugcat from rain world!

nsh - iterator from rain world! name stands for ‘no significant harassment’

suns - another iterator! full name is ‘seven red suns’

inv, enot - secret slugcat! funky lad

pebbles - another iterator! full name is ‘five pebbles’

iko - from a game called islets! main character

greybird - from islets! birb

icarus - y’know the story

lycaon, lycan - werewolves are our jam! the ‘lycaon’ spelling comes from king lycaon, the supposed first ever werewolf. i just like the name and werewolf-ness, i don’t. he did fucked up shit (though luckily he’s just a mythological figure as far as i can tell)

kinito - from that game, y’know the one. take me to the void axolotl boy!!

cetus - cetus the constellation! represented by a whale and/or sea monster. personal connection

saturn - favorite planet! as with all of these, pretty word

stardust - pretty word!!!

random note at the end: none of these names are in order of importance, not here and not in the pinned post. ideally (unless you need to use one consistent name), you just sort of pick whichever from the list to use in any given moment!

[groupalpha]

19 or 23 for amalgamation on the scug asks?

Oooo! These ones can't be answered by malgy, so I'll answer em myself :D!

19. What are the inspirations behind your slugcat, if any?

Malgy was inspired by eldritch horrors and such, as well as sea creatures! Specifically Shoggoth and Cthulhu for the eldritch aspect, and Anglerfish for the sea creature aspect. I often take a lot of inspiration from various mythologies and such for what I create. There's also bit of inspiration regarding science experiments and being lost in space vibes thrown in too :D

When I created Amalgamation, I wanted them to look alien and foreign to rain world, yet also like they came from it. Overall, I was going for an interesting look for them. Nothing to make them look overly detailed, but enough to give them a unique shadow amongst all the slugcats! :D

23. How does your slugcat speak? Verbal noises? Body gestures? Drawing? etc.

Oooo! This one is p fun! I got some stuff on it ehehehehhehe!

They communicate verbally, BUT! They also have signs of communicating nonverbal too! This is shown more with body language and such, so here's some of the specifics I do with my art! :D

Usually their lure (light) shows how they feel! Normally it glows a bit, but if scared, it'll glow brighter! Malgy can also flash their lure like a flashbang if too scared or intimidated. They can also make the lure light not glow, but usually this is when their calm or just don't want it to glow in specific.

Another non verbal way (but more of my own stylistic choice) is Malgy's tendrils and whiskers! The more nervous, anxious, or just general fear for Amalgamation, the more angular the whiskers and tails become! Amalgamation is SUPER expressive, hence why I like drawing them so much! :D

Mind my ramble, I just love talking about character's actions and such! ^^

[neattnat]

Saint spoilers!!!

Painted long fur for the first time!

[webdragon444]

Top five fandoms? Please?

Ooooh thats a hard one, haha xD

Lets see… my siblings and I share alot of media, so these top 5 hold a lot of really fond memories for me :)

5. Rain World

Awesome game, literally consumed my every waking moment while playing! I love it when the world building is done through exploration in games, and the difficulty felt pretty fair! My siblings and I were drawing slugcats non-stop the whole time waiting for the dlc, lol

4. Ace Attorney

I’ve just been getting back into this one :D I played the trilogy on my 3DS a while back, and my sibling and I just got the next games, so we’ve been doing silly voices and salving crimes together! Currently we’re taking a break from spirit of justice to finish the investigations spin-offs!

3. Yu-gi-oh

Another one I got into with my sibling! I’m a sucker for ‘power-of-friendship’ type shounen anime, mythology, horror, and dragons! The first manga was pretty much a combination of all of those, so it sucked me in pretty quickly! I’ve watched all of the anime spinoffs up to SEVENS, and I love the card game as well, though the only person I can play face to face with is my sibling xD

2. Rhythm Thief

Fun fact: I actually had the demo for rhythm thief before it came out! I was constantly scanning the e-shop for cool games, and was super impressed with the demo, counting down the days till’ it released! I will never not be upset at the fact that practically no one played it, it was charming and cheesy and fun and clever and I will die mad that it didn’t get the love it deserved

1. Zelda

I was pretty much raised on Zelda, one of my earliest memories was watching my brother play twilight princess, and I’m pretty sure my first video game was ocarina of time! I remember when we played Majora’s Mask(probably my personal fav) my brother made me look away every time the mask cutscene played xD Zelda has always been a big part of my life and something I could connect with people on, It will always be super special to me <3

The order might change, but basically these are the top 5 for me xD

Thank you so much for the ask! Sorry if I’m oversharing, haha

It was definitely tough to decide on just 5, but I had a ton of fun :D

[parageist]

ouuuughh this is so beautiful... the night sky omg

i feel like slugcats would be a very contraversial figure in scav mythology and culture. you can ally with them and bring them pearls and help them fight and stuff, but the only canonical interaction between scavengers and slugcats is artificer's rampage. she would literally be like satan or something to them

THE BRINGER OF PEARLS!

[spotsupstuff]

hiii, your last lineless piece was absolutely beautiful, i wonder if you could explain it a little to me to get a jumping off point for my own research? im curious to know how much of it was picked for the aesthetics and how much of it comes from the concepts you wrote out

i know samsāra is the concept of like.... circular karma present in Buddhism and other religions but i dont understand why the animals in the pieces are there or what they represent. i can see swk, liu er and ma's names/titles written out but the other concepts written are a mystery to me, i tried to look them up but i dont think im putting in the right thing

i know its probably spoons to explain the whole thing so if you dont wanna maybe you could link me a site you used or something ^^ thank you so much, an thanks for posting amazing art ♡♡

jgklsjgkdsmk thank you!!! And of course I can, though u’ll be prolly a bit disappointed to know that the whole piece set is just built upon a crossover between LMK and a game more than something from the actual eastern religions

The animals in the piece are slugcats from the game Rain World, just as well those glowing symbols/signs/characters on the pictures. The “names” of the slugcats (幸存者，僧，猎人) mean the same things as the symbols 👇

(I fucked up the hunter symbol but there’s very little of RW fans so I hope nobody of our little numbers will come to catch my ass for it)

(side note that those smaller symbols along the middle of SWK’s body are chakras n they r very much real. There’s 7 of em usually, but cuz this is Fruit Twins Lore only the first four are drawn. All my understanding of chakras comes from my real life since I Ain’t Christian)

Rain World was my hyperfixation at the start of last year, it’s built around the idea of Saṃsāra and Nirvana, I made the connection between LMK n RW thru the “oh hey, same social circle of religions!”, the slugcats and their titles fit the three main monkey siblings (SWK being an actual monk + vegetarianism cuz of the monking; one of Ma’s themes as a character is surviving like a roach + both her and Survivor lose parents as kids and have to fend for themselves + become strong and kinda ruthless because of their time alone; Six Ear making it an Actual Point to eat more meat than veggies just to spite religions n SWK + excessive killing + fucked karma situation/being revived after dying just like Hunter) n so I went FUCK YEA cuz I’mma slut for parallels

But when it comes to actual research on these kinds of things: the only consistent sources I have is Wikipedia and/or Quora (the most reliant information you’ll Ever get is from the people of the actual culture). otherwise I tend to jump around multiple sites, perhaps my two books of mythology and then cross-reference everything I’ve learned to filter out what I’m CERTAIN is a real thing and what isn’t. General knowledge of the language and culture itself also helps. Look up what certain characters mean more abroadly cuz gtranslate won’t give you the Whole context n check for the context not being explained in too simple western terms. A site that isn’t common enough in my research sprees to call it “consistent” but shows up a lot anyway is journeytothewestresearch. I usually use that one as a final foolproofer or last life line if I can’t find a thing otherwise

[44-moved-44]

This is the Renegade!

Back in the days of the ancients, he was an ancient who rejected the idea of ascension due a huge fear of death + the unknown, and something (likely the Cycle) punished him for it with a series of horrific events ending in him dying and being reincarnated as a proto-slugcat, but with his memories

Because of technically not being a true slugcat, he holds some abnormal qualities, such as having an underdeveloped tail, bunny-like ears, rabbit-like legs, and a more pointed snout

Due to, in the ancient's mythology, there being a prevalent superstition of animals that could talk attempting to ward people away from the Cycle, when the Renegade frantically tried to tell them that he was an ancient and, in his frenzy, insulted ascension and blamed the universe for doing this to him, they removed his ability to vocalise and tortured him for a long, long time, before cryogenically freezing him as everyone ascended

When he awoke, he reluctantly decided to acclimate himself to the wilderness, and try to regain his quiet, peaceful former life

He's my little guy and I love him <3333

I'm bored and don;t feel like working on anything for myself so could people hang me over rw ocs :3

[vendily-blog]

This is really interesting. We do see from Gourmand's ending that they definitely do have oral traditions to go with the drawings of Gourmand's exploits

Which may have been played up a bit, based off how one of the drawings shows Gourmand crafting what appears to be an explosive spear, as well as Moon's dialogue for the Fire Egg:

Healthy one... what is this, and where did you get it? Is this a feat of your own creation? It's a bit unbelievable. A... creature like you procuring something like this would be an amazing accomplishment for your species... Ah, well, if it tells a good story then I won't question it too much~ (Looks to the Moon, Fire Egg, as Gourmand)

So we're already seeing an example of the mythicizing of Gourmand, which could potentially increase as we get further and further away from them in time.

A number of the other stories you describe seem to be retellings of stories told to a slugcat by an iterator. Specifically the Void Sea one. I don't think it's possible to get back up if you drop down into the depths? Not without an absurd number of spears anyway. Void Fluid itself could be seen normally of course, that's the Gutter subregion, but it's not pure enough to have the same effect as a Void Fluid Bath.

There's also thinking about what it must be like to come back from an iterator. You're fundamentally changed after such an experience, especially in the case of the ones brought up to Karma 10, who don't feel some tug still tying them to the carnal plane.

As an aside, only Five Pebbles describes himself as a god, or more accurately, "godlike in comparison" to everything else. This might not be a view shared by other iterators, and thus might not reflect in the general mythology surrounding iterators. This isn't to say that they can't do what might feel like miracles, given Moon in Spearmaster's campaign fills up your belly when you first meet her, Five Pebbles is able to give a few extra cycles to Hunter, and they all can manipulate creatures and items in space without moving an inch, giving the Mark, and also opening the mind to higher Karma levels. And brain blasts.

Between those two aspects, I wouldn't be surprised if two parallel types of myths formed. One showing iterators as all-powerful but also fickle, and that those who visit them (if they return at all), don't come back the same. And one describing specific social rules to follow (sit quietly, don't linger long afterwards, etc.) and bring a coloured pearl, they can grant you incredible knowledge, if your gift pleases them. I mean, Slugcats can absolutely understand the significance of pearls, they would have already understood it to some degree if they ever crossed territories with Scavengers.

But yeah, interesting stuff. I can't say I've ever given it thought before, but that's the fun of discussion :)

Thoughts on Slugcat Mythology UwU

So for the most part I’ve been musing about biology here, but recently I’ve started musing about slugcat culture.  If slugcats are (as I like to think) a sapient species (if not a very advanced one) how might they perceive the world?

More specifically, because I am a fantasy worldbuilder over a science fiction one and I like coming up with stories about gods and monsters, what might slugcat MYTHOLOGY be like?

Rain World is a very harsh world to live in.  It’s full of deadly weather, enormous predators, abominations of nature, and countless other threats for a tiny slugcat, and unlike their predecessors the ancients, the slugcats don’t yet have the scientific knowledge to understand how everything works.  They’re not a united society, more like a bunch of tribes and loners struggling to survive.  Many things they didn’t understand would be attributed to the work of gods or spirits, and they’d revere things that help a scug clan not only survive, but thrive, and whisper warnings to their pups to stay out of dangerous places.

Perhaps the slugcats have gods of the hunt or the bounty of nature, beings who grant them strength to bring down mighty beasts to feed the clan or gift them luck to find food to bring home to their families.  Or maybe they worship gods who have blessed them with resilience, the determination to keep stubbornly going no matter what dangers the world might throw at them.

There are stories of strange beings which live in the metal mountains that tower above the rains and clouds, who gift knowledge never before known.  There are pictures of them carved into trees and stones, odd tailless gods of another long-gone people chained inside their temples with great halos of pearls circling them like satellites.

The slugcats tell of a plague inflicted on those who intrude on the decaying ruins, one that lingers in the highest, twisting places of the world, and oozes into the depths.  A corruption that consumes the body and in turn forces it to consume, friends turning upon friends, littermates upon littermates, parents upon pups, as it eats the entire world starting from the tallest of peaks.  There are stories of what might happen if its endless hunger consumes all, the world becoming nothing but disease and rot.

There are great heroes of legend, slugcats who ventured beyond their lands to bring home wisdom and lead their peoples into posterity.  There are stories of the messengers of the gods, slugcats chosen to bring the holy words and wisdom of the gods to new recipients, for the cost of never living amongst their kind again.  There are stories of great wars between colonies, of slugcat pitted against slugcat for the struggle of survival.  There are whispers of monstrous slugcats who have bathed in the blood of their enemies and become drunk on the slaughter, stuck in a never-ending cycle of bloodshed and pain.

There are tales of a great sea of gold beneath the earth, so deep below that the rains cannot reach them.  A sea which offers an end to the strife and suffering.  A place where the people of the past turned to, when their gods could not save them, and the realm that chained gods long for, hoping to reach it once they’ve broken their bonds.

There are prophecies of a guide who will one day lead the dying gods to their final resting places, deep beneath the earth.  Of the world one day crumbling, and everything ending in one last dying gasp - for everything lives and dies again, becoming something new, and the world is no different.