Lexicon:Modern/Skrafna

Skrafna
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈskɾaf.na/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	Kollgar, Ryda, Vaesk, Veisdra

Skrafna — the burrowing predator of worked soil. Comes up through a terrace from beneath.

Notes

A long segmented burrower, eight to twelve feet, plated along the back and blind. The forelimbs are broad flat digging blades and the mouth is a ring of grinding plates rather than a jaw. It moves through worked earth at a walking pace and faster in loose fill.

It does not tunnel through rock and it does not trouble open moorland. It wants deep, turned, watered earth, which in the mountains means a terrace and nothing else.

It takes from below, without warning, and the ground gives way as it comes. A person working a row has whatever time it takes to notice the soil move.

This is why Clearhold’s terraces are stone-faced to the depth they are, and why the facing is walked and inspected on a schedule rather than when someone thinks of it. A cracked course is not a repair that can wait.

Engineered pre-Fall to take an enemy’s farmland from underneath, as the Ryda took it from above.