Species: Dune Nightmare
Family: Aberration
Risk level: High
Weaknesses: Starvation, Acid
Description: They are giant sand beasts living exclusively on deserts. They thrive in habitats with high temperature and relatively close to other places with thriving ecosystem. This species looks like a mix between earthworms, foxes and moles. Their main body, mainly torso comes from earthworms, but with one altered feature, specifically their skin. It is closer to the surface of bald cats rather than worms. Their arms are based on moles in structure to better dig through the sandy pits, which they inhabit. And lastly, the faces come from desert foxes, but lacking eyes and with added extra heat sensitive tongue to navigate underground and to better find prey.
It hunts near the edges of the desert waiting for some foolish travelers to try to cross it. When they manage to detect someone they begin to follow them, deep enough for the tremors they produce to become almost unnoticeable. They use the heat of their bodies to slowly increase the temperature near the victim for them to more quickly lose strenght. It continues for a few more days, until they either drop dead or come close enough to some kind of setlement, forcing the worm to act earlier than planed. They then dig themself out of the ground and try to rip the person they followed to shreds and then swallow the remnants. The victim usually is unable to fight back, and even if they can it hardly matters, because this monster usually reaches the height of full grown stallions, with greater muscle strenght and speed, so they have rather slim chances of survival.
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The only way to personally hurt this monster is to pour a botle of acid directly on its skin. They are exceptionally weak to this, even to the weakest of acids, like citrus juices. This will unfortunatelly not kill it, but will disctract it long enough to escape its grasp. The is one sure way to kill it though, but it involves starving it to death, which can happen suprisingly fast. This requires to wait around two weeks, and force anyone wanting to cross the desert to stay until further notice. The monster is usually dead by the first week, but in case of some unfortune accident it is better to wait more. By the time the travels are resumed the worm either died, or moved on onto another location.
Personal notes: "Their entire body structure is simply wrong. Normally it shouldn't even function properly. Not only it manages to dig deep enough to be undetectable, but also can detect others on the surface. The level of sensitivity, and pure endurance would be plainly impossible normally. But it sustains itself on massive amounts of life energy, literally forcing its body to work as intended. That's why they require stable source of sustanance, otherwise they will just stop functioning." Unnamed member of Vault of Knowledge