Cantankeri

"The Cantankeri are lumbering, half-fossilised isopods that will attack anything they disapprove of. Given that they are very ancient and murderously grumpy, that means almost everything."

The Cantankeri are large, floating isopods with a very grumpy disposition. Their bodies are made almost entirely of stone, likely as a result of sleeping inside of rocks for a very long time. They seem to prefer to slumber near large stores of hours, a fact that proves very inconvenient to anyone trying to mine hour geodes. Cantankeri are best known, however, for their terrible tempers. Reportedly, they have a murderous hatred of everything "new" - a category that, due to their extreme age, seems to include almost everything.

In rare cases, moments of bitterness can form into hour geodes inside of a cantankeri's heart, making them grow in size and form extra layers of rock over their bodies. These elephant-sized isopods are called Bull Cantankeri and are treated as kings among their kind. Smaller cantankeri can sometimes be found tightly clinging to the stomachs of their larger kin, though the reason for this behavior isn't clear.

According to skyfarers' tales, the cantankeri lived on their own planet a long time ago. But as its condition deteriorated, they refused to solve the problem or leave it behind; instead, they chose to burrow into its crust, and slept there until it was destroyed, leaving them to roam the new and unfamiliar skies with endless bitterness.

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  A typical Cantankeri.
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  A Bull Cantankeri.
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  A small herd of Cantankeri colonised by a very aggresive fungus.