Critter File : Tapeslugs
By Rix

Also known as Doleth worms for the name of the first colony on the planet where they were found, they were later given the moniker 'tapeslugs' for some of their similarity to tapeworms, but having the appearance of a long, sluglike body. At their core, they behave like tapeworms in many ways, growing parasitically inside the body of a host until they reach a particular size and they are 'born'.  Singular tapeslugs are relatively harmless, and even in small groups, they aren't dangerous, per se.  Normally a deep blue-green in colour, tapeslugs can range from ten centimetres to long and two centimetres wide wide, to almost a metre in length and ten centimetres wide. The underbelly of one is soft and slippery with a usually-inert slime coating it, with a damp hide on the back. They are possessed of a natural bioluminescence.

It is when the tapeslugs are ready to lay eggs and breed that they can be considered somewhere between a nuisance and a serious danger. When ready to breed, their skin flushes a deep pink-purple and the slime becomes a powerful relaxant and aphrodisiac. When a potential host is found and comes in contact with enough slime, the tapeslugs will strike.  They will crawl into a host's body, male or female, and begin to lay eggs within the digestive tract and / or womb. Small enough tapeslugs will also invade the urethra and seed the bladder, and occasionally with males will harvest sperm that will be corrupted in order to fertilize further eggs.

Over the course of weeks, the eggs will hatch and grow like tapeworms, leeching off the bloodstream and nutrients in the body until large enough to detach and emerge.  Only a limited number of eggs will mature at a time, and depending on the number of eggs laid, one may be infested for years.

Symptoms are similar to any other parasitic infection, though increased appetite is more common.

Tapeslugs have a sort of pseudo-hive consciousness that allows them to coordinate when in a group.

There is much more danger when there are enough of these creatures to form a full nest, and their breeding process becomes significantly more elaborate.

Upon reaching an overall group mass of roughly eighty kilograms, tapeslugs will, as a group, form a nest underground. Their mass will form the wall of the nest, and they will merge together into a flesh nest. From this point forward, they will form a sort of hive, with the remaining tapeslugs repurposed to seek out food and bring it back to feed the nest itself. In order to grow the nest, a pod is formed against the wall of the nest, with a tubular opening burrowed to the surface. If a suitably-sized creature is found, a large host of tapeslugs connected to the nest will grab them and pull them down into the pod. From this point forward, the victim will never be seen above ground again, and their entire life will be spent in the pod, unless rescued.  The fleshnest will draw the victim's limbs into the walls of the nest, and more of the nest will invade the brood-host's body, continuously filling the body with larval tapeslugs in an accelerated and incredibly invasive process. Kept subdued with chemicals, the broodhost will eventually become unable to survive outside the pod, with atrophied muscles and increasing elasticity of the broodhost's bowel, stomach, bladder and/or womb. In one rare case, it was shown that one broodhost had survived for twenty years, nearly unrecognizable from the bear that it had been.

Once a broodhost is secured, the opening is sealed.  When the nest grows large enough to require it, a new pod is prepared and a new trap is made. The largest naturally-occurring fleshnest had nearly seventy broodhosts in five different chambers, and was the size of a small apartment building.

It was discovered roughly fifty years ago that tapeslugs are highly nutritious and require very little maintenance, to the point that there are a number of factory farms on multiple colonies that are carefully managed tapeslug fleshnests, usually with goats or sheep livestock used as broodhosts.