Chapter 21: The Body and Habits of the Barkerlug

Barkerlugs, normally speaking are quite gentle, and will even bark at anything foolish enough to come near it to warn it away. If the barking fails to ward away the incoming creature, the barkerlug will of course eat the unfortunate creature.

They actually have no less than two mouths with which they can do this, mind you, neither of these mouths are on its head. A barkerlug is a barrel-chested blue furry animal. Its legs are a little bit on the puny size, thus it often has trouble running away with its main body. Its head is a round thing with two watery gentle eyes and long floppy ears that fall down the sides of its head. These ears are very fuzzy and a whole ear makes for a decent cloak with very little modification.

They do not, strictly speaking have arms. Instead, attached to their torso, they have two detachable secondary bodies. These bodies are long and wide, with stubby legs, but they can go surprisingly fast, in a kind of awkward crocodile waddle kind of way. The secondary bodies have no eyes or ears, and unlike many eyeless and earless things, are thus blind and deaf. The mouths of the barkerlug are located on these dachshund-crocodile like bodies. These mouths have four tusks, two going downwards and two going upwards. They have sharp woodcutting incisors and thick wood-chewing molars.

Barkerlugs can regrow a body from a secondary body, which is of course also how you get more barkerlugs. You might wonder how trees survive barkerlugs, given the size and appetite of the creatures.

Well, as it happens, technically barkerlugs are a prey animal. While it is quite difficult for a band of goadskull hunters to deal with the beast, there are plenty of things in elconic forests that have far less of a problem dealing with a barkerlug. You see, the barkerlug is unfortunate in that it is on the lower end of power for the larger forestdwellers.

Its size and strength is how it deals with everything weaker than itself. If it encounters something stronger, it’ll just let its secondary bodies run off in different direction while it attempts to distract the predator with its main body. This usually works, because barring a few insane and scary creatures, most elconic predators will choose a big meaty body that is in front of them instead of two that are running away.

Of course the natural predators of barkerlugs are trees that are capable of eating creatures.

For the goadskulls, the issue was that they had to fight the three bodies. No body would flee! Most hunters agree that multi-bodied creatures with one mind can often be worse to deal with than pack animals. The worst of course are pack animals that can form a single mind.

To deal with this mighty beast, one of the best things to do was to use traps and tricks! It was at this time that Kepo would show her worth! She gave ideas to Ulex, and Ulex passed those ideas on to the goadskulls. If they had solely been warriors, they likely would have sneered at the idea of using traps and tricks.

Hunters however have no such scruples.

So then at the bidding of Ulex and Kepo, a deadly web of traps were arranged around the area where old jaggletusk was feeding.

There was, all told, quite a lot of wire and rope. If one paid attention, one would notice that all the rope and wire connected together in three intersecting circles. Along the path of these wires and ropes were a number of hazards. Boulders, sharpened wooden stakes, whole tree stumps, more wooden stakes, spinning rocks, goadskulls and more wooden stakes. The whole section of forest, that was trussed up and fit to burst into a flurry of surprising wood-related death, creaked ominously.

Many creatures that weren’t too stupid had long since fled, and even a few trees had slyly crept away. Nobody wanted to get caught up in something that would likely result in trees flying around free of the anchoring of their roots.

The would be hunters split into three groups, each had to lure and separate the bodies of the barkerlug.

These groups edged closer and closer to where Old Jaggletusk was.