Annuk Silk Worms and Moths

Silk worms are a species of Annuk. When they mature they go through a metamorphosis to become moths

Anatomy

In youth, silk worms have many legs that drag their long, multi segmented bodies. 3 feet high and 6 feet long. Moths are about 8 feet tall and 15 feet wide when they extend their wings.

Life cycle

Slower than most, they tend to live sedentary lives in city markets or desert trade outposts, buying low and selling high, using the profits to feed their seemingly endless appetites. As the mature, they begin to produce silk, and eventually need to wrap themselves into a silk cocoon in order enter a metamorphosis. Those that survive the metamorphosis go on to become moths.

Life, Culture, and Breeding

Silkworms living in the city will make their cacoons in a public vault, while those on the outposts will turn to their clan for protection. Since cocoon silk is very valuable and loses its quality after the metamorphosis, bandits will often infiltrate vaults or raid outposts to steal them, killing the silk worm, and then ironically sell the silk to silkworms who own the textile machines.

Moths are common in merchant caravans, but both the males and females join the worker bees in their pollination activities. Like worker bees, they use pheromones to harvest semen and later impregnate females. Moths mate toward the end of their lives, males dying in the mating process. The female lays eggs in their mate's carcass for its offspring to feed