Haragijalea

Mesmerizing

It's a twisted compelling thing. Squat, dark brown, almost black, it has tunnels and turns with tiny black alleys that one could get lost in. Soft wax seals deep inside the twisted mess cover many of the openings like the dark wax plugs that are extracted from infected ears. One suspects that there is something wrong with the Nest. Something not quite of this place.
Suspicions are so often correct.

Born of Magic

The Nest was born of desparation, the desparation of a single mother who needs to feed her child. Tharidoter, a potter from a long line of potters had skills, but no business sense, and no protection from the human predators who threatened her and her child Eliza. When her widowed father, and then her husband died, she fell into extreme poverty and almost lost her home and studio. Fortunately, she had enough homesteading skills to keep them alive - but barely. She was almost ready to sell her home and the pottery studio that was her entire life when a man came through the door.

"I hear you've some skills with pottery," the tall man said surveying the studio slowly and settling finally on her. "I have a commission I'm interested in letting. I pay well."
"What are you looking for?" she asked, meeting his dark eyes then glancing away quickly.
"A device. A gateway. I need it to let things in from - well, somewhere else."
"Another world?"
"Yes, in another plane."
It was probably doable. There was a pattern in the book she kept under the floorboards in her room for an item like that, a bowl. Her eyes darted briefly towards the kiln. She looked back at him, and her hands fluttered and came to rest on the table in front of her. "What things?" She asked.
He reached into the money pouch at his belt and pulled out a huge dead bug. "These. Just the males. You can't let the females in." he said staring at her intensely.
She picked up the palm sized bug and examined it intently. From the top it had a shiny black caracapace with huge transparent wings and spindly legs. Pincer-like jaws and miniature appendages with serrated edges protruded from the hole that was obviously its mouth. Underneath though was a very different story. Underneath it had a soft loose pouch of saggy scaly skin folded up against the belly. "What is it?" she asked. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Haragijalea. Flesh eating beetle." he replied. "They're scavengers. They'll eat anything, as long as it's dead. Voracious buggers."
Her eyes grew wide, "What do you need such a thing for?"
He straightened. "I'm a hunter," he replied and smiled easily. A little too easily. "I want to clean up after myself when I hunt. I spend a lot of time in the wild. If I don't clean up the leftovers after I butcher my kills, the wildlife comes after me. A couple dozen of these bugs," he picked up the wasp, "will strip the leftovers of a large carcass in less than an hour."
She stared at his craggy face with its easy smile that tilted his lips. He was lying to her. She wasn't sure what about, but there was a lie in there somewhere. Something bad. She looked over at the chair that Eliza usually sat at, the racks of bisqueware, the cold kiln. She would have to sell her home and leave if she did not bring in a commission soon. Her family heritage, her livelihood. Everything she had ever known, gone.
She set the bug down on the table in front of her.
"Just the males?" she asked.

Deadly Life Cycle

The Haragijalea or flesh-eater wasp is extremely rare, and little enough is known of it. It is a swarming insect that eats carrion, and a small swarm has the capacity to strip a small dragon to the bones in a matter of a couple days. Haragijalea will not stop with meat, they will devour bones as well as flesh. When the finish with a carcass, there is typically nothing left. The insects will prefer dead animals, but will attack and eat the living if no carrion are available.
No female Haragijalea have ever been found, alive or dead. There is good reason to believe that the insects are imported into the world through a magic portal that prohibits the female from crossing over into Arrhynsia, probably a good thing as it is not difficult to realize that it would be a very aggressive and threatening invasive species. Without a female, the males die after three weeks, and are typically found in large piles indcating swarming behavior, the land around them stripped bare of everything alive.