Wyrmm

Wyrmms are not a separate species but the larvae of great dragons. They are uncommon, yet found across most of the known world. Reptilian like their parents, they have dark gray to black scaly hides, with rows of sharp spines, and sometimes barbs or hard chitinous crests, guarding the head and upper shell. They have no wings, legs or arms.

A hatchling is nearly ten feet long and weighs close to 400 pounds (the appendix range starts at 1,000 pounds), and it grows about a foot a year until it reaches its full 20 feet and 2000+ pounds after roughly ten years. All that time it tunnels through the earth eating every kind of underground creature. Wyrmms are the special curse of rock trolls and dwarves, often breaking into their underground strongholds and hideouts, and their twisting tunnels can also undermine the foundations of buildings on the surface.

After ten years instinct drives the wyrmm to find a remote cave, where it wraps itself in a cocoon of earth and pebbles and sleeps, some say for 50-60 years, slowly changing until it emerges as a great dragon.

Young as they are, wyrmms are very dangerous. Their jaws cause terrible wounds and pierce plate armor with ease, and they can coil around a victim and crush it like a boa. They are fairly mindless, guided by instinct rather than thought, and fight only to feed; they will break off to eat a fallen foe, and since hunger is their only motive they rarely retreat. A wyrmm burrows at 10 feet a minute, and its coils crush for 2-12 damage each minute. Its chitinous shell is said to make fine shields, one wyrmm giving enough for 1-2.