Fleshmongler

Fleshmonglers also known as Visceral Man, Mangled and Warrenborn are creatures native to either the Crossroads of Abyss and Warrens, specifically the Middledeep to Deep sections, or those realms individually.<ref name=":2">

FLESHMONGLER

Also Visceral Man, Mangled, Warrenborn.

---

Relevant Schools: Warrens - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref>

Nature

They are highly territorial, sometimes like that of an animal<ref name=":1" /> other times like a warlord or a god holding its domain. This is in part due to their focus on flesh and partially because should they meat another fleshmongler they will almost inevitably try to attack each other which will often cause them to blend together.<ref name=":5">Behavior: Fleshmonglers tend to be savage and in constant pain in their raw, early state. They want to hurt and to eat and they want to heal themselves, and the line between these things is often blurry: they’re predators and hazards for those who come across them. The individual hunting style and approach of a fleshmongler is varied: one may be the equivalent of a panther, another may just smash everything that moves, gathering up any fleshy pulp that results, and another may be a beast that eats flesh but keeps tendon, fang, and bone, creating elaborate snare traps and biting fang-webs that kill, trap, and wound, giving them more material to work with. Throughout, they may keep choice bits of flesh, incorporating those bits into themselves, they may suck out the body’s natural painkillers to soothe their own aches and agonies, and they may decorate themselves with trophies.

As they stabilize, a fleshmongler will find themselves, usually putting together rudimentary intelligence, ability to interact with others without being violent, and act with more strategy. A furtive fleshmongler that leaves his scraps at the edge of a warrens settlement and collects what the local goblins leave in exchange one month may be capable of speaking the next month, and then may be taking orders two months later. Half a year later, they could move into that same settlement, serving specific needs.

This is, however, a constant struggle and war. Fleshmonglers have short tempers, complex instincts, and a general attraction to flesh. While one fleshmongler may become a distinct individual, they may find themselves drawn to other fleshmonglers, to fight, take them apart, and assert dominance. When there is a disparity of intelligence and ability, the superior fleshmongler may claim the flesh of the defeated one as a prize, but far more often, fleshmonglers partway into a stage of maturity will run into another fleshmongler, and the two will simply tear each other to small pieces (which may become rodent-sized fleshmonglers) or merge into one raw fleshmongler, back at square one of its evolution. The most ‘successful’ will move away from places new fleshmonglers may emerge, or be exceedingly territorial. A settlement will almost never have more than one, and when they do, they will often have an agreement to each keep to one area -- possibly policed by local authorities, who don’t want two two-hundred pound fleshmonglers to crash into one another and become a bestial four hundred pound one.

Fleshmonglers have a particular taste for and affinity for odd flesh. Cancer, diseased flesh, infections, quirks of genetics and scars. These things are delicacies for them, and valuable things they may keep for themselves to catalyze beneficial changes, or things they may turn into gory treasures for sale, which earns them currency they can spend on other things they need. This attraction to strange flesh is likely why they have such a hard time turning down a fight with another fleshmongler (which is so likely to be devastating to them). It is entirely the case that a fleshmongler may go to the dark fall markets that allow them to enter, or to a crossroads market, or send a representative, and have them buy a sickly old man so they can extract the man’s cancer. After, the man could be patched up with scar tissue, sold back to other markets, rented out as a slave for labor with a fleshmongler-made meat collar that will bite their heads off if they try to run, turned into a quality visceral gun, or the healthy remains could simply be eaten, with the cancer being the takeaway prize with greater purposes.

A fleshmongler’s ability to mature, evolve, and become sophisticated is directly tied into their size: more flesh means more ability to evolve. Usually at the middle ground, the end state is an expert - a doctor beyond compare, a chef, a soldier, a weaponsmith, or an artist - anything is possible, but it will almost always have flesh at the center of it. Below that middle ground, they may be limited to the mentality of a dumb child, or even something animal, like a dog. Above the middle ground, they tend to become big threats; a living edifice, a torture godling, or a mountain-sized predator that has perfected its own design. With no need to cooperate or find equilibrium with any society, such fleshmonglers tend to extend their reach and hunting grounds endlessly until put down. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref>

They seek out flesh incessantly, thus when two Fleshmonglers fight each other they'll likely merge together, combining their Self and creating a bigger, stronger Fleshmongler.<ref name=":1">“I don’t really remember. They’re fleshmonglers, deal with it. Um. They’re super territorial, out of some dim sense of Self-preservation, capital S-”

...

“-they stay away from each other because a lot of the time a fleshmongler that fights another fleshmongler just sort of… blends together into a stronger, new fleshmongler.”- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> Because it takes time for them to properly understand their new bodies they tend to have poor dexterity after immediately combining.<ref>“The fleshmongler has a drawback. The longer they’re, well, themselves, the better they are at using their bodies, getting stuff in order. So this one will be big, strong, but clumsy. Not always slow, but clumsy.”- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref>

Appearance

They are hugely variable but have certain motifs that reoccur such as various Teratoma, with odd teeth, hair and eyeballs sticking out of them.<ref name=":3">Appearance: Varies wildly, but at their most common, resemble a teratoma (a tumor including seemingly random body parts, such as teeth or hair) with humanoid or bestial form; parts of them may be keratinized (as per fingernails, hair) and solid, ‘hamburger meat’, open wounds, or misplaced organs and eyes. May later solidify into what are essentially living, gory art pieces. Such things are frequently mistaken for horrors, but are more cohesive in design. Alterations may be whole-body or just one prominent body part, such as an arm or head. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref> They tend to have oddly shaped limbs.<ref>Avery had once read about tumors that could grow teeth, hair, even eyeballs. These guys were like that, but all over. Head to toe. From a distance they looked like people made of wet garbage but once they got closer the smell would hit her and then she’d see it was all body parts. One was long-limbed and skinny, one big and bulky, the last a quadruped who had lost a limb in an accident that had left a gnarly scar that was the least messy or gross part about the creature.- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> While they can be mistaken as Horrors they are not unless they go through a similar issue.

Over time they refine themselves with some fleshmonglers looking like a grotesque artistic magnum opus.<ref name=":3"/>

Formation

As with many others their origins can be varied.<ref name=":4">Background: As with goblins, the specifics on the creation of a fleshmongler are a little fuzzy. There are multiple points of origin, the most commonly observed being the fact a fleshmongler can create another fleshmongler. The name is a portmanteau of Flesh + Monger (seller, as in fishmonger) and Flesh + Mangler, and both owe to a keen awareness of flesh on the fleshmongler’s part. They understand meat, and this makes them exceptional (and exceptionally dangerous) doctors; even a brutish Fleshmongler is capable of deftly pulling an individual apart and modifying them to the point they lose all humanity - a human may be turned into a fleshmongler, reduced down to a weapon with the fleshmongler keeping the choice bits for themselves, to eat or incorporate, or repurposed into a general tool that can be sold. Fleshmonglers are frequently sellers of choice materials for magic item creation, alchemy, and other visceral practices.

Fleshmonglers are most often found in the deep warrens, though they can be spotted in shallow Warrens and Warrens-adjacent realms like crossroads or the Abyss, and some researchers have theorized that the flesh-warping aspects of some regions of the Abyss tap into the gory visceral nature of the deeper warrens, essentially 'fleshmongling' people, to break down identity and form. Softening them up. There are obvious comparisons to be made to horrors as well, perhaps owing to the warped and shifting nature of the deepest warrens, distorting dimension and physicality of as intestine-like tunnels shift and move. In any event, getting exposed to the wrong trap or terrain feature in the deep warrens (or the wrong areas of the abyss, which may intersect deep warrens) can result in becoming a fleshmongler. The agony and process almost always discards the old Self.

In any event, Fleshmonglers and the Fleshmongled are often human or bestial, and have been altered or sculpted, or made chimeric with multiple individuals merged into one. The raw, freshly created fleshmongler can be a messy patchwork of ugly and weird flesh. Over time, if not interfered with, they tend to regain some semblance of individuality, and the gore will organize itself into something that, to those with a certain eye, could be called beautiful. This is a process of evolution within each individual that can be like the ocean - stormy and prone to momentary change in one moment (given a catalyst) and stable and mostly still in other moments. At the tail end of the process, they may permanently stabilize itno other types of Other entirely, whether they're indistinguishable from goblins or a false angel of masochistic torture. Whatever they end up, they tend to retain their keen acuity with flesh, usually through the ability to inflict terrible wounds. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref>

Interestingly given their chaotic nature they can settle into various end states that could well push than out of the fleshmongler category, though they'll usually retain some skills from their old identity.

Abilities

They have a near unparalleled power to reconfigure flesh, either taking it away, adding to it or mixing it with something else.<ref name=":0">They didn’t eat, really, except to store ingredients for later regurgitation and use. They just reconfigured flesh, took flesh away, added it, mixed it, or dismantled living things and then used them as currency to make their way in the middledeep Warrens.- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> They have a preference for diseased or unusual flesh,<ref>They liked diseased and unusual flesh- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> possible examples could be the Mulberry molars that are a marker of congenital syphilis, various types of placentas, or rare and interesting cancers.

Across the great lexicon of magical beings there are none that can match their mastery of manipulating flesh.<ref> A Fae schemes like an ogre is strong, and a fleshmongler manipulates flesh. He’s an expert.” - Excerpt from Pate</ref>

They aren't restricted by limitations of the flesh such as fatigue,<ref>They were faster than her and they didn’t get tired. The big one was slowest- but he was still about her speed.- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> or the need to eat.<ref name=":0" />

They're able to mutilate small animals and combine them with other creatures, infusing them with it's power to animate them.<ref>The fleshmongler stopped running, digging fingers into the squirrel and tearing it apart.
[...]
The flying object was small enough in the gloom that Avery couldn’t see it clearly until its second fly-by pass.

It was a mangled squirrel. And a mangled bird. Flesh mashed together with flesh, bones broken and sticking out, a tattered, strangled bit of tail streaking the back, ulcerous, tumorous. The wings had been left mostly intact, letting it fly awkwardly, hampered by its less aerodynamic shape.- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> This power allows the creature to stretch the flesh of others.<ref>They weren’t as powerful as the fleshmonglers that had made them, but some energy had been invested in them, as a way to keep the mangled, broken bits in their bodies working. As a ‘benefit’, if they could get claws into Avery, her skin wouldn’t scratch. It would stretch. Which made them pretty freaking scary.- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref>

Varieties

Fleshmongled

The creations of a Fleshmongler that can't independently modify themselves,<ref>Fleshmongled have been altered by a fleshmongler but haven’t changed to the degree that they have a fleshmongler’s sense for meat. They are perhaps the lowest tier of ‘wildlife’ in the Warrens. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref> though they can modify others.

Grundum

Abyss dwellers that have wounds similar to the work of the Fleshmonglers.<ref>Grundum - little-used term for frequently observed denizens of the Abyss, who may have been altered through some intersection of the Deep Warrens and some areas of the Abyss - mutating, their wounds becoming mutations in a similar fashion to how fleshmonglers operate. Most often just referred to as abyss-dwellers. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref>

Curator of Flesh

An end state where a Flashmongler takes their focus to superlative areas.<ref>Curator of Flesh - a not-uncommon end-state of individual evolution, taking the expertise a step further into deep research, experiments, and/or religious territories, exploring the reaches of pain, transformation, etc. - PactDice: Bestiary: FleshMongler</ref> Usually more person sized rather than the towering mountains of flesh that some can become.

Corpsemongler

One that works with the dead.

Notable examples

• Grimsly, Cannibalism Chef de Cuisine Curator

Trivia

• There are multiple names for them, some in old English.<ref>“There’s other names for them that are old English or something, but the stuff I read seems to go with whatever is catchiest and modern." - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref> Speculatively, such names might include Dolgswæþ (scar, "woundtrace" or "woundbandage") or Flæscmete ("fleshmeat").

References

<references/>