You won't believe these 10 WEIRD FACTS about carrion crawlers!

Adventurers that aren't already paralyzed HATE him!

1. Carrion crawlers were bred by the vivitheurges of a long-dead empire to consume the effluvia of their magical research and refine it into more useful chemicals and narcotics. The strains of grub producing heroin, aqua regia, and other such miracles have all died out, but one breed has survived, adapting to feed on carrion instead of rarified plasma and excreting its "milk", a potent anesthetic, from its tentacle-udders to incapacitate prey.
2. If left on their own carrion crawlers will metamorphose into regular ol' giant psychic boring beetles before they reach two feet in length. Larger specimens are uniformly the result of goblin meddling, with intricate runes of chaos branded on their leathery backs by skilled warp-witches to prevent the final molt. Crawler breeding is a proud tradition among goblin-kind, with frequent "cattle raids" between clans to capture prized specimens, and the most talented breeders command great respect amongst their peers. All agree on the importance of clearing the grubs' droppings, and that while the crawlers will eat most anything, a diet rich in domesticated cat helps promote a long and healthy life.
3. Drow priestesses ride carrion crawlers in their great undulating feast-palanquins, the sedia gustatoria. The priestesses' movements are limited to small gestures and condescending sneers, so weighed down are they by jewelry and towering headpieces, while the crawlers, pampered and bloated, move less than a mile per day. Idleness is the virtue of their station, and the priestesses take great joy in testing others' patience.
4. The paralytic effects of a carrion crawler's touch are not from any natural venom or toxin. Rather, carrion crawlers are psychics, though their minds are too primitive to project any thoughts or emotions beyond a vague sense of revulsion. (This is why maggots are so unsettling despite not posing any physical threat. It's a defense mechanism.) Direct tentacle-to-skin contact amplifies the emotional response a thousandfold, drowning out the brain's own signals in a wave of vermiphobic horror. The implications of elves being immune to this mental paralysis are left to the reader, as are any links between carrion crawlers and those other betentacled psychics, mind flayers.
5. Derro harvest carrion crawler paralytic fluid to use in their gaslighting experiments. Subjects the derro wish to drive mad are restrained, blindfolded, and starved while the fluid, thinned enough to cause only local anesthesia, is painted on their extremities. These extremities are then cut off and fed to the ravenous prisoners in thin slices. When their blindfolds are removed, revealing a bloody plate and a sewn-up stump, subjects are left in a state of mind much more susceptible to further treatments.
6. The Sisterhood of the White Worm is a monastic order inspired by the carrion crawler, which its nuns believe is the most compassionate creature in existence. The Sisterhood believes in a god of infinite mercy and forgiveness who wants to free all living things from the suffering of mortal life - the carrion crawler, likewise, grants the liberation of death without pain. Only after completing enough good works (bloodless assassinations of doctors and midwives) will the nuns go willingly into the White Worm's embrace.
7. Carrion crawlers eat carrion, naturally, but only to breed. The faint glow that surrounds crawlers living in the deepest tunnels of the underworld comes from the grubs feeding off darkness itself - darkness, of course, being not just the absence of light but a living force with will and (apparently) caloric value. This makes carrion crawlers a vital link in the underworld food chain (crawler steaks taste acrid and rubbery, but it beats starving), as well as a natural defense against invading shadows.
8. The touch of a carrion crawler doesn't just freeze you in place - it freezes you in time. The effects usually don't last long enough to make a difference (plus, y'know, you can still get eaten), but while paralyzed the body is suspended between moments - you don't need to breathe, you'll never starve, and any poisons in the body won't take effect until the paralysis ends. In some underworld cultures, hunters and soldiers feed carrion crawler venom to their families in lean times so they'll "rest" for days and avoid the pangs of hunger. The legend of the Sleeping Prince tells of a young boy stricken with fever, whose father had the court wizards design a bed that would drip carrion crawler venom onto his body and keep him frozen in slumber until a cure was found. That was millenia ago - the king and, indeed, the entire kingdom has gone to dust, but the machine still functions, and the boy still sleeps.
9. Due to their great appetites it is sometimes said that carrion crawlers have bottomless stomachs. This is true. Carrion crawlers were created by a mad wizard (of course) who believed in a prophecy: that his soul was doomed to an eternity of torment unless he could recover an artifact buried with a certain corpse. Unfortunately he had no idea which corpse or even what the artifact was. He made the carrion crawlers to feast on the dead, and he put a small portal in each one's stomach to sent indigestible materials to his palace of trash and filth. The carrion crawlers have spread to a thousand worlds and eaten countless bodies, but the wizard is still searching.
10. Maggots grow spontaneously from the flesh of men and beasts, gifts from the nameless god of filth and vermin that waits at the end of time. Carrion crawlers grow from the flesh of slain immortals - dragons, titans, and the most noble of fey. Some day the gods will die too, and from their flesh will grow the nameless god to remake the universe in its own image.

omnomnom