“`Will you walk a little faster?' said a whiting to a snail,
`There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.'”
Snails are subversive little helically-shelled molluscs that have demonstrated a pronounced tendency to congregate on the periphery of Soft Spots and Weak Points, so long as they impinge upon or access a space that the snails consider habitable. They will not be found clustered about an aperture leading to some hellish place, nor are they fond of frozen wastelands or inundated or airless spaces.
In fact, it is this tendency of the various types of snails to designate livable, breathable, bearable places on the other-side of these mutable junctures that has endeared them to Foragers, Scavengers and other explorers. And it is for this reason that few, if any, of these sorts of people will ever willingly eat a snail, even in the worst parts of winter.
There are rumored to be a species of translucent green snails that can be gathered from underneath the eaves of certain disreputable houses in the Burned Over District that are acutely sensitive to the flow of time and can be used to gauge the aging effects of those Soft Spots that have become unhinged or unfixed in time. One merely places a few of the little snails in close proximity to the Soft Spot and watches their progress. If they slither off into the unseen vortex before the count of ten...you really don't want to go there.
Another very helpful species of snail is the red-banded snails one finds fairly abundantly in the Purple Glow beneath the Red Weed canopies of the boulevards. These flabby little things will spontaneously melt into a horrid-smelling pink ichor when brought within twenty feet of most types of undead. The sticky syrup they leave behind in their sudden demise has been known to dissolve the subtle bonds that hold all but the most heavily reinforced animated skeletons together, making it a useful commodity in its own right. Small wicker baskets and tin cages holding a handful of these snails can be purchased extremely cheaply just outside most bars, taverns or toll-outhouses.
Of course, not all snails are quite as helpful as others. Carnivorous Snails often prowl the crumbling ruins of abandoned Walled Gardens in search of tasty morsels they might catch unawares upon the many forking paths. Dreamsnails lurk furtively along the shallow reaches of the Oneiropelagic zones to prey upon incautious dreamers and dissolute sleepers alike. The dreaded blood-sucking snails of Liboor seem to be extinct, but one never knows when some enterprising debris-picker or rubble-sifter might come across a degenerate swarm of the things in some dilapidated and half-demolished museum or zoological supply house. Packsnails are sometimes used by those headed down into the Near Dark, but they have become much more expensive since they seem to have gone sterile from constant exposure to unwholesome influences such as delvers are prone to encounter. Similarly, the Ridingsnails raised by various and sundry Little People have become increasingly rare as their numbers have been massively depleted by the recent outbreak of Creeping Crud brought back from Zilesia by several dozen Pruztian deserters. The zombified dire-snails said to infest the less well-mapped sections of the Jumbles scarcely bear mentioning...
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Snails are subversive little helically-shelled molluscs that have demonstrated a pronounced tendency to congregate on the periphery of Soft Spots and Weak Points, so long as they impinge upon or access a space that the snails consider habitable. They will not be found clustered about an aperture leading to some hellish place, nor are they fond of frozen wastelands or inundated or airless spaces.
In fact, it is this tendency of the various types of snails to designate livable, breathable, bearable places on the other-side of these mutable junctures that has endeared them to Foragers, Scavengers and other explorers. And it is for this reason that few, if any, of these sorts of people will ever willingly eat a snail, even in the worst parts of winter.
There are rumored to be a species of translucent green snails that can be gathered from underneath the eaves of certain disreputable houses in the Burned Over District that are acutely sensitive to the flow of time and can be used to gauge the aging effects of those Soft Spots that have become unhinged or unfixed in time. One merely places a few of the little snails in close proximity to the Soft Spot and watches their progress. If they slither off into the unseen vortex before the count of ten...you really don't want to go there.
Another very helpful species of snail is the red-banded snails one finds fairly abundantly in the Purple Glow beneath the Red Weed canopies of the boulevards. These flabby little things will spontaneously melt into a horrid-smelling pink ichor when brought within twenty feet of most types of undead. The sticky syrup they leave behind in their sudden demise has been known to dissolve the subtle bonds that hold all but the most heavily reinforced animated skeletons together, making it a useful commodity in its own right. Small wicker baskets and tin cages holding a handful of these snails can be purchased extremely cheaply just outside most bars, taverns or toll-outhouses.
Of course, not all snails are quite as helpful as others. Carnivorous Snails often prowl the crumbling ruins of abandoned Walled Gardens in search of tasty morsels they might catch unawares upon the many forking paths. Dreamsnails lurk furtively along the shallow reaches of the Oneiropelagic zones to prey upon incautious dreamers and dissolute sleepers alike. The dreaded blood-sucking snails of Liboor seem to be extinct, but one never knows when some enterprising debris-picker or rubble-sifter might come across a degenerate swarm of the things in some dilapidated and half-demolished museum or zoological supply house. Packsnails are sometimes used by those headed down into the Near Dark, but they have become much more expensive since they seem to have gone sterile from constant exposure to unwholesome influences such as delvers are prone to encounter. Similarly, the Ridingsnails raised by various and sundry Little People have become increasingly rare as their numbers have been massively depleted by the recent outbreak of Creeping Crud brought back from Zilesia by several dozen Pruztian deserters. The zombified dire-snails said to infest the less well-mapped sections of the Jumbles scarcely bear mentioning...
I imagine Wermspittle as a sort of wet place, like parts of the British Isles or maybe even the Pacific Northwest?
ReplyDeleteIt can get pretty damp at times, especially around the broken cisterns and overgrown reservoirs. Spring and Autumn see a lot of rain, plenty of fog in the mornings, along the low-lying parts as well.
DeleteI bet that dreamsnails would make for some interesting escargot.
ReplyDelete