The Regressed Mercenary's Machinations - Chapter 35

I am entirely too interested by the Dirus Ents’ biology.

My initial impression was that their tree-like exterior is a shell that the Ents assemble around themselves like hermit crabs – a way to camouflage themselves in their native environment, and also to protect their comparatively soft, vulnerable bodies from attackers.

However, now that I’m thinking about it, Giselle specifically brought lanterns instead of torches, and the Ents seem to have been the main motive for that. That would imply that just jabbing the Ents with torches wouldn’t be an effective means of setting their shells ablaze – lantern oil works because it splatters on the shell and stays there, burning all the while and providing maximal time for the bark to reach its ignition temperature. That’s more what you’d want when trying to burn green wood, living wood that’s still full of sap and moisture.

If the shells are just dead wood, then they’d probably get moldy, damp, and generally slimy over time, which could explain why they don’t catch fire easily. (The artist not depicting their exteriors as properly gross and rotting, if that’s the case, is a slight disappointment, but deadlines are deadlines.)

One other thought I had was that the Ents are doing some kind of freakish ‘tree surgery’, peeling apart living trees and then grafting them onto their bodies in a way that somehow keeps the wood alive and healthy. Not only would that make for a sturdy, self-repairing shell, it would also help mask the scent of the Ents – always a boon for an ambush predator.

Likewise, it would further explain the clouds of steam when the Ents shed their shells – even if their shells didn’t fully catch fire, the burning oil heated the water inside the wood to boiling, forcing the Ents to break their shells and vent the steam before it could turn them into Ent sous vide.

If the Ents’ wooden shells are worth making into armor, though, then that implies they qualify as ‘monster-grade materials’, rather than ordinary wood which happened to be wrapped around a squid-beast. Maybe the Ents can somehow generate the shells out of their own flesh, or they enter into some kind of symbiosis with the living wood which gradually toughens and transforms it?