Sandcretchers / Miragewings

Sandcretchers are enormous insects that reside in many arid places across the world. Once little-understood, in recent years studies into their lifecycle and biology have revealed great lengths about their importance in many ecosystems.

Description

Sandcretchers were once known only by their terrifying predatory form. As adults, they are often called "Miragewings", once thought to be an entirely different species. This continues to cause confusion to non-educated locals and travellers who do not understand their biology, but the creatures can be accurately called by either descriptor, much like you could refer to a butterfly or a caterpillar.
Adults fly mostly at dusk, catching prey as they come out to look for water or food. They lay low in rocky outcrops, using their camouflaged bodies and brown, opaque outer wings to disguise their bulky forms. As they head out to hunt, their true colours are better displayed on the underside of their long, narrow wings, used to startle prey and impress mates. The adults have long slender bodies, ridged with flexible segment dividers that allow for expansion following feeding or when a female is heavily gravid with eggs. Their thorax is ridged and spined, sprouting two sets of weight-bearing legs, and one set of sharpened and curved legs used for snatching prey. Their heads have large compound eyes which are excellent for spotting quick moving prey. Their mandibles are powerful and are known to crush even armoured combatants with a single bite. The tip of the abdomen is decorated with a long, curved Stinger. Though not technically venomous, once weakened, the creatures will secrete a dissolving fluid into the wounds of their prey, turning their flesh slowly fluid to allow for easier digestion. They secrete this enzyme from both their jaws while eating, as well as through their stinger. The lethality of their attacks is usually through wounds caused by the jaws, arms and stinger's sheer force; the enzyme is almost entirely a digestive aid.
The larvae, or sandcretchers, have a robust, fat body attached to a thorax of six crawling legs. They have a prothorax which is reminiscent of a neck, which allows for versatile movement of the head when in a hunting position. The head is large, flattened, and somewhat square, baring huge mandibles which are specially adapted to snapping up prey that stumble within their reach. the frontal part of the body is covered with forward-facing bristles, which allow them to better anchor themselves in the sand. These bristles are also sharp and flexible, and act as weapons in their own right when prey come up against them. These bristles pick up vibrations in the ground, allowing them to know that prey is approaching from an impressive distance.
It is thought that miragewings were part of a much more broad family of related large insects of the same genus, but Tagalornus tagalornus is the the only known remaining species of the group. Wood elf historical legends tell of a smaller creature that appears to be a species of miragewing from the Mourning Peaks and the Cradle Mountains, but these creatures seem to no longer be present in the region, perhaps hunted to extinction by griffons or elves protecting their young griffons.

Life Cycle

Sandcretcher life begins as brutally as it ends in many cases. Due to the arid environment that they begin their life in, an adult female will find or kill a suitably large creature (usually around the size of a horse, or larger is preferable), nestle it into as cool a place as it can find (under trees, buried beneath some damp sand, or under some stones) and will tear the creature open with her mandibles. Miragewings lost their ability to use their stingers as ovipositors sometime in their evolutionary past, and differently to other wasps, they will lay their eggs into the dead creature directly through a specialised egg-laying tract that is only present in fully mature females. The eggs hatch into under-developed larvae in a matter of a week or two (the eggs are often stored for some time in the mother's body until she can find an appropriate laying position, the embryos within forming to more advanced stages than in many other creatures before being laid) each about the size of a pumpkin. They will enjoy an easy portion of their life devouring the often desiccated meal their mother has left them. Following this, they will quite often devour each other, leaving only a handful of the strongest larvae to survive. The larvae move through the dead of night to find a suitable place to create their "pit". There they will eat and develop, sometimes for many, many years, before burrowing down and making a cocoon of sand and silk, to emerge in the next rain as a fully-formed miragewing. Both sexes have equally brilliant wing colours, and will pair up by sparring and flashing their wings, sizing each other up before mating.

Hunting

Sandcretchers as larvae are ambush predators. They create cone-shaped pits of loose sand. These can be anywhere from a few feet deep when the larvae is small, to meters deep as a larger creature. They dig them by using their flattened heads- having marked out the chosen site, the larva starts to crawl backwards, using its abdomen to shovel up the soil. With its huge front legs, it then shifts heaps of loosened particles upon its boxy head, and with a smart jerk it throws each pile clear of the funnel. Extremely sensitive to vibrations on the ground, they await at the bottom, with just the head or mandibles exposed, for prey to arrive. The steep slope and loose grains of the sides of the pit allow prey to avalanche toward the gaping jaws at the bottom of the trap. If prey attempts to scramble up the edges, the creature throws more sand at it to attempt to knock it back in. Usually, humanoid and intelligent creatures are not common prey of the sandcretcher. The pits are quite obvious, and smaller larvae are non-venomous and easily killed with a few stomps or blows to the head. Intelligent creatures tend not to wander into the pits, with the exception usually being curious children or adventurers attempting to hunt the beasts for sport. Their usual prey consists of grazing animals looking for water and food, such as horses and camels. Having said this, there have been instances of people investigating the pits, having been unfamiliar with the tales of what lies in wait below, and the creatures do not discriminate when it comes to prey. These traps take a lot of energy to maintain, and in many deserts, prey comes few and far between. Because of this, the creatures are slow metabolically and can go months on-end without feeding. Their growth and development depends on their sustinence, and in very harsh deserts they may take over a decade before they have caught enough food to metamorphose into an adult. In more fertile areas, it can take only a year or two.
As adults, miragewings are much deadlier hunters. Stray travellers make excellent pickings for the winged predators. Large enough to easily topple a wagon or even in groups, a train- many legends tell tales of how you can repel the creatures from your caravan. They are intelligent hunters, and will wait along roads, animal tracks or at waterholes, laying flat against the sand or rocks, sometimes allowing sand and dunes to blow up and partially obscure their mass. They wait here patiently for hours to days, and when their keen eyes spot movement on the horizon, they will take off in a flurry of speed and sand. They hunt primarily by dropping down from the sky on their prey and grasping them with their elongated, spined front legs. From here, they chew out exposed areas to kill their prey, and eat with assistance from excreted enzymes to pre-digest flesh.

Uses and History

In Sedia, there are documented orcish oral stories of miragewings laying eggs in beasts of burden, and their link to sandcretchers hatching which are thought to have originated before the first age. Wood elf history warns of smaller miragewings that live in the small gravelled edges of the southern mountain ranges, and how the miragewings (Krathetil in the local elvish dialect) were responsible for taking many young fledgling griffons as they learned to fly on the cliffs. Both of these stories seem to indicate that there were Tagalornus species of some description further north historically.
Little is scientifically known about the creatures, but people have utilised parts of their bodies for centuries. Due to their slow growth rate, it is suspected that they are becoming threatened in some places, but no protection has been placed on them formally.
Notably, miragewing digestion enzyme has been used by native Sedian orcish groups for as long as they have history. Though typical nomadic orc territory no longer overlaps with the range of modern miragewings, some still make their way from the Northern mountains to collect the fluid. Known as Midgtik, it is used in preparing food, particularly cheese and meat. The enzyme when diluted with alcohol is excellent at separating milk to make cheese, as well as softening meat while it ages to make it more tender. The orcs once made the hunt of adult miragewings a yearly event, as the enzyme when potted typically lasts around a year before souring. Sedian orcish people have also used miragewing stingers for weaponry and jewellery since the first age, and still make sure to utilise stingers of downed wasps.
Miragewing Stingers are an incredibly prized collectable to hunters, and are often a proud display in a hunting lodge. Often painted or decorated before being hung on a wall or displayed on a ledge, miragewing stingers are quite valuable on their own and can be sold for a large amount to the right buyer.

When it comes to repelling miragewings, there are countless wive's-tales and myths about how to prevent an attack. Many of these tales originate on the road, where caravans and travellers spread these rumours by word-of-mouth. Some of the more outlandish ideas include painting wagonwheels in a very young lamb's blood (which is very counter-intuitive), or plastering cloth wagon covers with horse droppings to conceal the smell of the travellers inside. While many of these methods don't work, there are a few which seem to have some merit. Many regular travellers from Death's Way swear by clean, white travelling cloaks or even better, white cloaks embroidered with beads, reflective scales or paints. The bright glare is thought to confuse the delicate eyes of the miragewings. Another commonly peddled remedy is a poultice made of biletree oil, mint and citronella worn bandaged to warm parts of the body. This mix of oils and scents seems to be at least partially effective at dissuading the insects, some travellers going as far as to apply poultices to their horses' legs as well as their own bodies.

Miragewing sketches by spooktacular

Sketches of miragewings and their larvae from an unknown traveller's collection.

Scholarly Name: Tagalornus tagalornus

Common Names: Sandcretcher (larval form), Miragewing (adult form)

Conservation: Potentially threatened
Range: Sedia: The Deadwoods, Southern Aridlands