The Cloafly of the Goblin Kingdoms

The cloafly is flying insect about two feet long with a membranous wingspan twice that length. It has six legs, the front two are hooked. Its face ends in a toothy proboscis. The cloafly is an endoparasitoid that can use the body of another living creature to produce a litter of offspring. The cloafly survives in warm arid environments that are not exposed to direct sunlight. It is active at night coincident with the full moon, making its activity cycle approximately three nights out of every twenty-eight. During that three night period, the cloafly will emerge from its host, find a victim, impregnate it and then die.

The offspring of the cloafly is a translucent sack of worms which will slowly mature in the body they inhabit. A laying female will put between fifteen and thirty offspring into their host. The female worms are genetic clones of the mother and will grow into adult cloaflies after about 28 days of feeding. The male offspring will be a hybrid of the host and the cloafly, but will favor the characteristics of the host body. It will take about three months for the males to emerge as adult humanoids.

The cloaworm must consume about two hundred times its body weight, or more, to reach maturity. This each worm will do, provided there is enough food material in supply. If not, the male worms will be consumed by the females. Therefore the worms are most often kept in refuse pits, where they are fed animal and plant matter by the shovel-full.

The male offspring that reach maturity are capable of reproduction with the species of the host in the usual way. Though they have a tendency to create sterility in the females of the host species after contact.