Rimewyrm
Rimewyrms are huge, serpentine burrowing beasts touched by the Everwinter. Like many of the great burrowing worms of Ghur, they are kin to the godbeast Fangathrak, but their exposure to the Everwinter's unnatural cold has disfigured them and twisted them into vessels for spreading the Everwinter's curse from the Deathgorge through Bjarl and beyond.[1a]
Before they were infected by the Everwinter, they were known as greatwyrms.[3a]
Appearance
Rimewyrms have leathery hides the colour of pale flesh and spikes of razor-sharp chitin. The "wyrmways" that they carve through the depths of the realm can be hundreds of feet wide and are often lined with the wyrm's icy blood - liquid so cold that it can freeze outsiders who touch it in an instant.[1a][1c][2a]
Temperament
The Everwinter is not strong enough to kill rimewyrms, but it has wounded them. Their blood has turned to liquid ice in their veins, causing them immense pain. This leads the wyrms to strike out at anything that crosses their path, from humanoid interlopers to fellow rimewyrms. Two rimewyrms fighting can easily crush most creatures under their twisting forms, and even those lucky enough to avoid that fate can be frozen solid by the intense cold.[1a] Some speculate that the blood lining the wyrmways come from the wyrms intentionally cutting themselves with their spines in an attempt to bleed out the cold.[1c]
Life Cycle
Eggs
Rimewyrms lay pearlescent eggs the size of cannonballs in clusters along the walls or floors of the wyrmways. The eggs pulse with a strange, almost mesmerizing glow, and more than one explorer has stolen one in the hopes of riches or arcane power only for the hatchling rimewyrm to emerge and ravenously devour them.[1b][2a] Even those lucky enough to avoid the newborn rimewyrm can find themselves frozen solid by the icy fluid within the eggs.[3b]
Hatchlings
When newly hatched, rimewyrms' jaws are not strong enough to chew through the bedrock and glacial ice that surrounds their hatcheries, and so they hunt on the surface of their birth caverns, eating whatever they can catch. While surprisingly fast and possessing small limbs to aid in grasping and climbing, the hatchlings prefer to hunt from ambush. When they grow sufficiently large that they can begin to burrow, the limbs freeze and wither away.[3b]
Adulthood
Rimewyrms can grow to immense size, and the largest can swallow entire bands of warriors whole without even noticing their presence. Adult rimewyrms reshape the underground landscapes they pass through by carving out immense wyrmways, and can even cause massive sinkholes on the surface as the land subsides.[3a] Many of the elder rimewyrms observed have been noted to be burrowing northwards, leading to speculation that they are attempting to reach their divine primogenitor Fangathrak for some unknown reason.[3a]
Sources
- 1: Warhammer Underworlds: Deathgorge rule book
- 2: Warhammer Underworlds: Deathgorge Organised Play Pack
- 2a: Warhammer Underworlds: Secrets Under the Ice, pg. 15
- 3: Warhammer Underworlds: Wintermaw rule book