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Search for the Weredygo
(Ongoing)
Brought to you by
Earl "Eco-Earl" Osbourne
Host of the seminal documentary series Nature is Sick and proud owner of a magnifying glass. My accent is my copyright, doing impressions of me is NOT ALLOWED.
With photography by
Nina Bleyham
Deep in the Warmwoods lies the Tulo scrook community, who have recently developed an outpost called Bukrik in the sandy Babeenas to the south. The outpost is the attempt of the Tulonians to cultivate a newly developed crop the residents call "Tuddlies." The Babeenas frontier is treacherous, but the Tulonians push forward in the name of culinary enrichment. One settler recounted to me and my scroologist team a tale of a Quizzical scrook that terrorized the settlers, a beast called the Weredygo.
Eager to advance knowledge of the Quizzical phenomenon, I sat down with Peevo to talk about what happened on that day.
AUDIO LOG/peevo_001.ahh
Earl: Tell me about what you saw.
Peevo: OK!! Uhh, ok, so...
The delivery guys had just scrambled over with grub and supplies from Tulik, our old spot. They crossed a bit of soft sand and the the cart just... whooshed down a hole in the ground. I don't think any of the guys whooshed with it, but Guvis promised us jelly sammiches, so it was a real blow regardless. That's when we heard the houghing and coughing.
Earl: Coughing?
Peevo: It was a mouth! With eyes! And big ol' teeth! That was the Weredygo alright. It just kinda watched us for a second, like how you watch someone when you eat the food in the fridge without asking if it's theirs first and you just hope they let you off the hook since it's already in your mouth.
Earl: ... Right.
Peevo: It was like "OOP" and then it closed up. Then it just shimmied under the sand.
Earl: Can you tell me what happened the next time it showed up?
Peevo: Depends. Do you have a jelly sammich?
AUDIO LOG END
My inquiries were cut short. To find out more, I'd have to venture deep into the Babeenas.
Exploring the Babeenas
The Babeenas is one of the hottest zones in the region. In clear weather, scroomen like myself can catch a sunburn in mere minutes. Nonetheless, it remains a tempting spot for scrooks due to the variety of plant life that lives both above and just beneath the sands. Despite seeming barren, the extremophilic plant life that makes its home here has left behind a layer of terra preta. No wonder the Tulonians want to farm here!
Even so, the land was eerily quiet. I trekked across the sands til noon, checking for any sign of this creature. That's when I saw it... our first clue.
Divets, about two meters across. They didn't look like footprints, the sand flowed into it with no sign of an impact.
But they were too uniform and evenly spaced to be part of some geological process. Could it have been the work of a scrook? A proper examination might tell me, but given the story Peevo told, I wasn't gonna step near them.
Further exploration revealed more divets like the previous ones but with the crucial difference that they had some trace quantities of mucus. Practically half of all scrook species on Planet Scremp have their own signature mucus, so this sample will be key to finding our culprit.
Night fell when I found a little nook for my studies, an idyllic pond of clear blue water hidden away where two canyon walls meet. We set up camp and got to work.
It's in moments like these where it's handy to keep that children's microscope set you got for your 6th birthday instead of smashing it against your other toys.
I couldn't stop looking at it. It was inflating and deflating like a bubble. Not the first time a scrook's mucus did that, but when I took a closer look, I saw this "bubble" retained the same density. It was like its cells were appearing and disappearing. Even weirder was the complete disappearance of any sand or sediment. Maybe it eats sand! But then, why didn't it eat the glass flask...?
As I lay in my tent I just thought "Nature is Sick™."
Encounter with the Weredygo
I woke up early the next morning to the sight of our snacks all over the ground. A scrook, maybe even the Weredygo itself, had raided our cooler last night.
We may have had our first fateful encounter with a Quizzical scrook! I just wish I still had my crunchwrap.
It was a blow for the crew, as you can imagine. That's when we saw him. Up high on one of the canyon walls encircling our camp was not a quizzical scrook, but a blue doof with a scabbard made of plag and a half-eaten crunchwrap.
He called himself Caliper. The rolled R's in his accent gave it away that he was from Bukrik, though it begged the question of how long he'd been out here.
AUDIO LOG/caliper_001.ahh
Earl: Hey! What are you doing with my crunchwrap?
Caliper: Relax, dear friend. Go back to your scientistry. I'm on the hunt for my bounty.
Earl: No way, you- wait... bounty?
Caliper: Nyeh-heh... A bounty hunter never tells...
[silence for 4 seconds]
Okay, it's the Weredygo.
Earl: Oh! The Weredygo!
(whispering into the camera) Okay, now we have to be very careful, because if we can get on this thing's good side then we'll be on the fast track to seeing the Weredygo-
Caliper: Who are you talking to?
Earl: The uh, the camera. It's a docuseries.
Caliper: *GASP* a filmmaker! Our fates are truly complected! To have my exploits broadcast to millions of adoring viewers, what a dream!
Earl: A couple zeroes short of that, but yeah!
Caliper: Very well, filmmaker. Stand back and watch as I make movie magic!
Earl: Er, alright. Just tell us where this Weredygo went and we'll go there.
Caliper: Well, that's just the thing. I followed it here.
Earl: H-Here?
[sounds of crumbling earth]
AUDIO LOG END
The rocks beneath his feet began to shift and shimmy. Not a moment since I met this creature and our lives was at stake.
They were so high up, I couldn't see what it looked like... but I did see tendrils. Really long tentacular noodles. Peevo didn't say anything about those.
Nya-haha! That's right, back, you demon-pit! Back to the even bigger pit you came from! HYA! HOAYAH! Hey filmmaker, you're getting this, righ-
[hard thwacking sound]
It's coming towards us!
In an act of genius, our photographer turned the flash on her camera to its "Solar Flare Without The Glare™" setting, briefly stunning the varmint and getting this gnarly shot. Take a look at those chompers!
And yet, it was keeping pace. Everywhere we moved, it sunk into the sand and reappeared again, closer and closer each time. I was beginning to think we were in over our heads.
Before I knew it, I was in over its mouth.
I don't remember much about what happened in that time... I can be prone to fainting.
AUDIO LOG/caliper_002.ahh
Caliper: Oh no no, don't you dare eat this man of science! My reputation won't have it.
Earl: I... feel sticky...
Caliper: You, with the camera, figure something out!
[snapping of a branch]
Caliper: Ugh. It'll have to do. Jam it in there!
[gurgling and hackneyed coughing]
Caliper: Keep it open! I'll finish it off!
[squishy slashing noises, a loud squishy thud]
Earl: Don't try this at home...
Caliper: Eat plag, fiend! Grrh-
[several fwack noises in quick succession, followed by the crashing of rocks]
Caliper: EAAAOOUUGGHH! *pant* *pant* Y-You can't get rid of me that easy! Gah, it's getting away!
Earl: ...