Project Burner: Concept Art First Drafts Crawler

Next in the sequence of first draft concept art is the Koth Crawler, which is going to be a shambling creature with two multijointed arms, and a long tail. There are no visible eyes, and the head is dominated by two large teeth, sort of similar to the mandible of trapjaw ants. The creature is called a crawler because it has to drag its body with its two arms, getting close enough to bite its prey. I am also thinking that the tail could have a spike, which is less like a scorpion stinger, but somewhat similar to the stinging cells on a jellyfish, but made much larger. As far as part of the wider Koth life cycle, I am thinking this creature is after the walking maw, but maybe not the stage immediately after, as it has shed three teeth, but retained three vague appendages. I am not sure what environmental factors cause this branch in the life cycle in nature, but that might be less relevant since this creature, as well as all Koth creatures are part of a greater Super-Organism. The Koth as a superorganism is not just a hive mind spread across many bodies, but instead, each member has the ability to metamorphize into later stages of development, or even regress into previous forms. I think the smaller Koth organisms could even fuse together to creature new chimeras, in the mythological sense, not in the genetic sense, as for the most part the Koth genome is the same for all members. I also want to throw in the idea of horizontal gene transfer, which can expand or rewrite the existing genome, in instances in which the species would mutate, but that might be too much for one concept art post.