Cockroaches

From Encyclopedia Ermariana

Common Roaches

Cockroaches are small, highly resilient, scavenging insects. They are known as pests in the cities, but they also pose a real danger to humans through their tendency to spread disease, either directly by their bite, or by stashing trash in human cities.

Roaches provide one food source for Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders (GIFTS), who raise roaches in pens; when the roaches emerge the spiders paralyze them and suck them dry. Conversely, cockroaches also find spiders tasty to eat, although their main diet is nutritious trash.

Giant Cockroaches

Giant cockroaches formed one of the Plagues which swept Valorim in 832 IE. The cockroach plague consisted of many unusual types of magically created roach, including giant roaches, mung roaches and guardian roaches. These unusual roaches were created in the Filth Factory, and no new sightings have been reported since the factory was destroyed.

Giant roaches are essentially a bigger form of the large roach, harder to kill and with a more dangerous bite, and with a capacity for spreading disease generally increasing with size. The largest and most unhealthful of the giant roach family are called guardian roaches. One interesting variety of giant roach is the mung roach, which does not carry disease; instead, it is covered in poisonous mung, which seeps into anything it touches.

Friendly Roaches

The Isle of Bigail in Valorim is home to a colony of friendly roaches. Like the plague roaches, the friendly roaches originated in the Filth Factory. However unlike the nasty roaches, the friendly roaches were born intelligent, and fearing being slaughtered by the humans, they hid in a cave whose whereabouts was a closely guarded secret, but was known to the GIFTS.

The friendly roaches dreamed of peaceful coexistence with the humans; all they wanted was to get along with humanity and collect its filth. The friendly roaches helped the Surface Explorers by telling them the location of the Filth Factory, and thus unwittingly participating in its destruction.

See Also

• The Filth Factory