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The Worm That Walks: Difference between revisions
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Sometimes, when you want a [[Grotesque Gallery|really scary]] monster, a [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|giant insect]] just won't do. They've been done to death and look really [[Special Effects Failure|cheesy]] to boot. But you still want a bug monster - what do you do?
Well, you call this guy. He isn't just ''one'' bug, he's ''[[The Swarm|millions]]''! Millions of tiny creepy crawlies make up his body, as if his entire body is composed of [[Synchronized Swarming]] controlled by a [[Hive Mind]]. Sometimes it's worms, sometimes it's insects - [[Everything's Worse with Bees|bees]] are always good - and sometimes it's just any creepy thing you can think of. Don't worry; The Worm That Walks can make them all into [[Nightmare Fuel|fuel for subconscious terrors]].
An extreme version of the [[Totem Pole Trench]]. See also [[Combining Mecha]] for the mechanical counterpart of this trope.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* It's technically "the swarm of frog fetuses that crawls", but [[Mortasheen]]'s [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/ovulooge.htm Ovulooge]fits here like a glove. For a more traditional example (even though they don't quite look the part) are the Wormbrains. In their case the creature itself is merely a (Usually [[Once Was A Man|formerly human]]) meat puppet for the billions of parasitic worms living inside of it.
* The [[Trope Namer]] is the D20 version of ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]''. It appears in the original Chaosium version, in the supplement ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' (1982), but was called "the Crawling One."
** It was based on a creature that appeared in the [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] story "The Festival":
{{quote|''"[H]appy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For…the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."''}}
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