Edum

Edou (Singular: Edum) are ravenous vermin that infest areas where the sorg were present.

Background
Edou are voracious and will eat anything they come across. They're particularly fond of the succulent meat found within a sorg shell and will break off hunting (or even eating) other prey if there's an opportunity to feast upon sorg instead.

Edou are no larger than half a foot in diameter, but they tend to move in swarms of dozens or even hundreds. Edou have a thick exoskeleton that resembles the dusty crust of a comet, several sets of pincers perfect for mooring onto spacecraft hulls or the hard shells of their favored prey, a flexible proboscis with a drill-like head, and cavities for expelling vapor jets that allow them to move through the void with both precision and speed.

Motive:
Hungers for flesh

Environment:
Anywhere sorg have ventured

Health:
6

Damage Inflicted:
2 points

Armor:
2

Movement:
Immediate; short when either flying or in microgravity

Modifications:
Speed defense as level 3 due to small size.

Combat:
An edum can attack with its pincers and inflict 2 points of damage to the victim. It will automatically clamp on to the creature it hits and remains clamped until either pried off (a Might task) or killed. The round after it attaches to a target, it inserts its proboscis (ignores Armor) and automatically feeds for 2 points of Speed damage; this damage continues in each subsequent round it remains attached.

Five or more edou can coordinate their attack, acting alike a swarm. When they do, they make a single attack against one target as a level 4 creature and deal 4 points of damage. However, the more concerning thing to the victim is that, following the attack, five or more edou are now attached to its form, and thus each must be killed or pried off individually before the target is sucked dry of life.

Interaction:
Edou aren't mindless, but they are hungry swarm predators, with little fear for their individual continuity.

Use:
A dealer in strange food has a special crystal cage filled with snapping edou. The dealer says that the creatures taste wonderful but are vicious little things. She explains that she found them when they emerged from the side of a curved ruin at the center of a nearby crater.

Miscellaneous
For all their power and mastery, the sorg can't seem to keep edou from infesting their vessels, which indicates a deeper level of edou-on-sorg parasitism than the shelled creatures care to admit.