Feaster

Feasters were (or *are*) gargantuan, vaguely cephalopod-like creatures in the Dreadlands that are, besides the Titans and Dread Titans, the largest creatures ever recorded. Feasters were intelligent animals, likely being roughly as intelligent as modern cephalopods, which are some of the most intelligent marine animals. They were also clearly capable of using magic, since this is the only feasible explanation for their ability to float around the Dreadlands in the empty space between islands, but whether they did this consciously or passively is unknown.

Feasters are also known as Island-Eaters, for the simple reason that they ate the floating islands and rocks that were suspended in the magical nebula of the Dreadlands. Much like the Vampires, it is theorised that they did not care for the nutritional value of their food and actually gained nothing from the material, but rather they consumed the magical energy contained within - as well as the life-force of any organisms that lived upon the island. Feasters also had a habit of eating other Feasters smaller than themselves, since Feasters were the single most concentrated source of consumable magical energy in the Dreadlands - besides the Dread Titans themselves, who were simply too strong to challenge.

Feasters could not possibly hope to eat an island whole, so they used their many tentacle-like arms to break up an island into smaller chunks which it could then chew. Mothers and their children often worked together to break up islands and divide the bounty between them, but such behaviour was never observed in any other case; fathers left their children and mates quickly after their offspring were born and became competitors to them, and siblings also became competitors after they grew old enough to venture out on their own.

Feasters were also observed in every single Dreadstorm, drawn to the powerful concentration of magical energy which they could feast off with ease, without having to spend energy cutting an island down to size. It was very rare for their main bodies to pass through the rift, but they would sit at the edge of the rift and let their feeding arms hang down, drawing energy from the rift and from the unstable local Magestream. Feasters who grew large enough off this behaviour would have tentacles long enough to begin taking food from the ground below.

## Physical Traits

Feasters somewhat resembled gargantuan squids, with ten tentacle-like arms protruding from a relatively sleek main body, surrounding a huge mouth with multiple layers of black teeth designed to tackle every possible manner of material. These teeth would frequently break in the process of chewing the hard rock of their food source, but much like a shark these would grow anew quickly, often going through at least one entire set of teeth per feeding session. The twelve arms of Feasters did not have suckers like that of a cephalopod, but were weakly magnetic, and nine of the ten were covered in sharp spines which provided grip, or could simply be used to impale things to keep them in place. The arm without spines contained sexual organs and was used for mating, so it could not have spines due to the risk of harming their partner.

The flesh of a Feaster was speckled dark grey in colour, but most of their body was covered in a hard and rough grey exoskeleton which greatly resembled rock, and probably did consist of similar minerals to the rocks that they consumed. This rocky armour plating was an effective deterrent against parasites and provided protection from other Feasters. Their four large eyes were the most significant weak spot in their body, but their eyelid muscles were capable of clamping shut with extreme force to protect them from harm. These eyes varied in colour; amber, red and violet have all been reported.

To accomplish their feeding behaviour, Feasters obviously had to be extremely large. A newborn Feaster hatched from its egg (which was carried inside the mother) was approximately the size of an average two-storey residential house, but adult Feasters could become substantially larger, reaching the size of mountains. It is unclear whether Feasters would grow indefinitely until their death, and whether it was possible for them to die of old age, but it is likely that they would inevitably reach a point where they could not grow any further without their food requirement becoming greater than what they could possibly consume, much like Bloodvermin Ogres. If it was the case that they could not die of old age - which is likely, since almost all creatures in the Dreadlands were this way - it is likely that the supposedly natural deaths of the largest Feasters were the result of them outgrowing their food source and starving as a result.