Black Pine Grub (World Guide, Creature) (Patreon)

Black Pine Grub

Native to the mountain forests of Ki’an’di’va Island, the black pine grub is one of Maria IV’s more notable dangerous life forms. Four to six centimeters long, these off-white grubs appear so small and harmless, and their ministrations so interesting, that few realize their peril until it’s far too late to escape. Fortunately, their native habitat is well separated from modern civilization, and the only victims they snare these days have entered their habitat knowing exactly what they’re getting into.

Black pine grubs live in colonies consisting of between twelve and twenty individuals. These colonies can be found anywhere in their native forests, but prefer the native black pines. Indeed, they will only attempt to fully cocoon victims if there is a black pine nearby to fasten them to. Otherwise, they will simply crawl over an interloper and slowly clothe her in a shimmering layer of tough, mildly adhesive silk. Depending on the proximity of black pines, they may choose to keep crawling over her, in hopes that she will bring them close enough for them to make her their helpless captive.

Should the black pine grubs catch a victim within close proximity to their beloved black pine trees, they will first clad her in silk. Now, however, the silk will be imbued with both mildly sedative and aphrodisiac qualities. While neither of these effects are strong enough to be particularly noticeable to the victim, they serve to make her more comfortable with, and more interested in, the little critters that are crawling all over her.

Once clad in silk, the grubs will begin to attach her to a nearby black pine with long strands of silk. The grubs use various means to slowly walk her around the tree until she is pressed up against its surface. At this point, very few victims will be able to break free of the silk, and the grubs will work quite quickly to ensure that their new captive will have no chance of escape. Within ten minutes, she will be almost fully wrapped in a thick cocoon, only her face left partially free.

During the cocooning process, grub will make its way into the victim’s reproductive organ. There, over the next few hours, it will dissolve in a rare kind of metamorphosis which reduces it to hormones and a vast quantity of quasi-spermatazoa. This results in the maturing and release of between twenty and thirty egg cells, which will be fertilized in short order. Once the remaining colony members sense that their ministrations have been successful, they will cover their captive’s face, and leave her to undergo her own highly unusual metamorphosis.

The fertilized eggs within a black pine grub victim do now grow into new grubs as one might expect. Instead, they fuse with the victim and begin to transform her living flesh into a complete new colony. Excess mass fuels the transformation, and the victim’s genetics merge with the grub’s to ensure diversity. The process is totally painless, and what data has been collected thus far strongly suggests that the victim actually feels intense pleasure. This increases as more and more of her living body is transformed, until flaring to mind-breaking intensity as her brain itself is subsumed.

The victim will survive for nearly all of the ten to twelve day transformation process, all of her vital biology being subsumed along with her brain at the last possible moment. Whether or not she actually dies is a matter of considerable debate, however. Though there is insufficient data to say for sure one way or another, strong evidence suggests that the victim actually goes become one of the grubs, and that this grub serves as the new colony’s ‘leader’.

Due to their remote location, black pine grubs are almost always encountered as the result of deliberate action on the part of their victims. Those who seek such encounters often do so as part of a group engaging in peril-play. They know that their chances of returning are quite dismal, but the prospect of taking home a shimmering, skin-tight suit of one of the rarest forms of silk known to civilization is often just too tempting to pass up.

Pine grub silk-suits can only be worn by the woman they were created upon. In order to make them routinely wearable, their adhesive is neutralized and they are carefully cut open along the line of a special, nearly invisible zip-fastener crafted from stray grub silk taken at great risk from black pine trees where other victims had undergone their metamorphosis. The resulting suits are perfectly fitting, softly stretchy, and nearly indestructible. In addition, they are notable for making their wearer significantly more susceptible to the classes of sedative and aphrodisiac used by black pine grubs. Several weeks of cumulative wear will also make the grubs nearly irresistible to the wearer, virtually ensuring at a second encounter will be her last.

Passage to Ki’an’di’va Island is currently only offered to members and guests of the South City Society For Alien Transfigurations. The only examples located away from the Island are housed in various exotic alien life institutions such as XenoZoo Mashiva, where access is periodically offered to members of the general public. Due to the risk presented by the possibility that the black pine grub might find other species of pine attractive, transport of the creatures without a specific license is prohibited.