Venthusk

The Venthusk is an armored, many-legged grazer of Kela's geothermal vents and the most common large animal in the vent systems the Neron occupy. It feeds on the mineral crusts and bacterial mats that form where hot water meets cold rock, and it lives in mixtures of moisture and toxic gas that kill anything breathing through lungs alone.

Its body is a low, segmented shell of overlapping plates hardened with minerals drawn from the vent water, carried on fourteen short legs that grip wet and submerged stone. It has no eyes. It finds food and its way through the vents by heat and by the vibration of moving water, and when disturbed it closes into its shell and waits.

It moves in loose groups of a few dozen and follows the warm water as vents shift and cool. It never attacks and has no defense beyond its shell.

The Venthusk is the principal prey of the Neron, and much of what the Neron eat, wear, and carry comes from it. Its shell plates turn up shaped into blades and tools throughout the vent ruins. Outsiders rarely take it, because harvesting in the vents means entering Neron territory.