Draught Moths
The pale moths that ride the draughts of the Deeps' vent runs, whose settling in a run tells the crews the vent has stopped drawing.
Overview
Draught moths are small pale moths that live in the vent runs of the Deeps and the lower Ironspine, riding the moving air up and down the shafts. While the air moves they fly with it. Where they settle thick on the walls of a run, the draught there has stopped, and the Kobold crews who walk the vents read that as plainly as the Dwarves read a finch.
Appearance
A draught moth is the size of a fingernail, its wings white to pale grey-buff, dusted with fine powder that comes off on the fingers, its body furred white, its feelers feathery. Its eyes catch lamplight red. In a moving draught a cloud of them drifts along like dust in sunlight; settled, they rest flat against the stone with their wings spread, so that a wall where they have gathered looks frosted.
They make no sound. A run where thousands have gathered and died smells of dry dust.
Habitat and Range
Draught moths live in the vent runs, air shafts, and service galleries of the Stonewake Deeps and the root workings of the Ironspine, wherever air moves through stone and lamps burn. They do not live in still chambers for long.
Behaviour and Temperament
They feed as caterpillars on the mould and fungus that grow in damp vents, and as moths hardly at all. They fly towards lamps and with the draught, and they settle where the air stops moving. They are harmless and do nothing that people would call behaviour except follow the air.
Life Cycle
Eggs are laid on the damp walls of the vents, and the pale caterpillars graze the mould there before spinning cocoons in cracks. Moths live a few weeks, and there are always more.
Uses and Dangers
They give warning. A crew walking a run notes where the moths are flying and where they have settled, and a run frosted with settled moths is a run where the vent has stopped drawing: a silted fall, a stuck trap-door, a pressure gate closed. The crew clears it or marks it. The moths do no harm, though a cloud of them in the face makes a lamp gutter.
Lore and Belief
Kobold crews say the moths are the vents' breath made visible, and count them among the signs their sound codes and warning marks record. Dwarves of the Deeps call a dead run "a moth wall". Some Kobold underhouses say the moths carry away the last breath of those who die in the vents, and do not kill them.
Where It Appears
- Overview: Animals