Deep Sea Chocolate Crab

Overview

The Deep Sea Chocolate Crab is obviously a crab which lives UNDER THE SEA in close proximity to the oceans floor. It is omnivorous so it can eat plant-based stuff like plankton, weeds and other small plants, but can also devour flesh and stone if needed. That includes fish, warms, clams, shrimp, other crabs and smaller fish. If angry, the Chocolate Crab will try to ram the angering thing and bite as hard as she can.

Appearence

The Chocolate Crab looks like a walking stone. She has no claws, but very sharp teeth and a mouth which can be opened twice the size of a normal crabs mouth.

Her eyes and the area around the eyes glows orange to red with which they scan the closer surroundings and can see a variant of infrared to spot nearby prey or predators.

Why Chocolate?

When a predator - or a thing the Chocolate Crab thinks of a predator - comes into the closer proximity, it starts to produce a liquid out of a few glands under her shell. This liquid covers the shell with a bittersweet scent which drives off most of the predators.

Most of them. When a Deep Sea Chocolate Crab is killed or has arrived at the end of her life, she is washed ashore. Nobody knew who was the first one, but when a Human, a Dwarf or an Elf licks the shell, it tastes like bittersweet Dark Chocolate. Even the flesh has the taste of chocolate - because of the glands - and even cooked it has a faint taste of chocolate remains.

Usages

When someone finds a Deep Sea Chocolate Crab the best use of it is the cook them. To get the salt out, to make the flesh digestable and to loosen the shell. The flesh should be eaten in a week so it doesn't have a chance to go bad, which is probably next to never the case.

The shell and the eyes can serves as jewelery and the shell as protection, necklaces, small pendants, cups or whatever comes to mind. It is really hard, doesn't break easily and shimmers in a dark green or faint blue.

Crabby Tales

"Hm, oh, yes, that is really good... what kind of fish is that?"
"No fish. A Chocolate Crab."
"A Crab... why Chocolate?"
"Because their defense mechanism tries to scare predators off. And for us it tastes like chocolate."
"Yum."

— Two wanderes at the shore

"I really love this necklace. It is cool on the skin and it sparkles in the sun."

— Woman describing her Chocolate Crab shell-necklace

"He is dying! Medic!"
"What the hell happened?"
"He angered this Crab over there!"
"What? The Chocolate Crab? Is he insane?"
the sound of liquids splattering
"No, dying!"

"If you encounter a living Deep Sea Chocolate Crab, you have two options: leave it alone or kill it fast with devastating force. If annoyed, the Crab will charge - and it can run really fast on the surface - and bonk you. It feels like someone hits you with a club. And if it can get ahold of you, it can chew your arm off. Really, really painful and not so quick as you can imagine.

But if you kill it and survive the battle, you get rewarded with a very unique tasting flesh. Put it in a stew, let it simmer for an hour and enjoy."

— Scholar to a few students

Deep Sea Chocolate Crab by CrazyEddie via Midjourney

Data

-20cm in diameter
-up to 25cm tall
-up to eight legs like a spider
-no claws
-three gobbling jaws
-a lot of teeth
-4 eyes (the rest is just scary nonsense)