Maw-Mouth

Maw-Mouth
Category:	Hydra Class

For further reading, see the seminal literature by Abernathy, Kordin, and Li in the Journal of Maleficaria Studies, who discovered that it was possible to direct a communications spell to even a long-digested maw-mouth victim and receive back a response, albeit nothing but incoherent screaming.

–narrative,

Description

Maw-mouths are made up of thick rolling folds of a translucent, glossy mass. Their surfaces are covered with the eyes and mouths of their victims. The mouths of recent victims scream and beg, while long-eaten victims still breathe and occasionally mutter syllables. Their bodies are made up of their victims, mashed up and pulled into the maw-mouth's form. They have tentacles all over which is what they use to pull people in. While digesting a victim, it stays still before moving onto the next meal. While no one is entirely sure what happens to maw-mouths, some wizards have been able to contact humans stuck inside with a communication spell and get a response back. All they get is an unending scream. Most people believe that the consciousness of maw-mouth victims never end, and they both are aware of and feel the maw-mouth eating them until the maw-mouth is killed.

Patience and Fortitude are famous maw-mouths that live on each side of the graduation gates which separate the school between the real world and the void, which is the only exit from the Scholomance. They have been there for generations growing bigger with each graduation group. They are so large that they don't move around and rarely go after the graduating students. Instead, they usually eat up other Maw-mouths or the larger Mals that come within their reach.

How to Kill it

There are only three recorded events of wizards killing maw-mouths, each done by a group of wizards. Only one of them is reputable. Once a maw-mouth has grabbed someone, even a small curl of a tentacle, that someone can't get away. The only way to stop a maw-mouth from eating someone is to give it indigestion by rushing into it with a strong shield. If your shield is strong enough and has enough power, you can push inside the maw-mouth. If you reach the core and destroy it, the maw-mouth dies. Doing so takes an incredible amount of mana. The only realistic goal for a single wizard is to distract it.

In order to take back the Shanghai enclave from a maw-mouth that broke through the wards, Li Feng killed it. He gathered up the remaining enclave wizards and promised eight independent wizards high-ranking spots in the enclave if they helped. They spent a year gathering mana before Li Feng entered the maw-mouth. After three days, he killed it. Three of the assisting wizards died.

During her Junior year, El kills a maw-mouth that makes its way to the freshman level. She kills it by using her shield to push inside of it, then using several of her mass killing spells, one of them over and over again, until it fell apart around her. It took 19 of her filled crystals (Power-sinks).

The Scholomance textbook on maleficaria has only one practical piece of advice about maw-mouths: if you can be killed by something else, take the something else.

Appearances

A Deadly Education

A Deadly Education : In chapter six El kills a maw-mouth that made its way up through the vents and into the library, before heading towards the freshman dorms.

Through the narrative El reveals that a maw-mouth got Gwen by the ankle when she was trying to escape the graduation hall. She still has the scar around her ankle. El's Dad got her free, but he was pulled in instead.

In chapter twelve the team of students on 'The Mission' enter the graduation hall at the far end, almost opposite from Patience and Fortitude.

The Last Graduate

The Last Graduate: A small Maw-Mouth sucks in one of the students and El is able to kill it and pull him out before he dies. Patience and Fortitude are in hiding.

The Golden Enclaves

The Golden Enclaves: A large Maw-Mouth gets into London Enclave and Alfie and a few others go to Wales to get El to help them. El creates her own spell to kill the Maw-Mouths at this point.

El kills a Maw-Mouth at the gates of the Sharma Family Compound.

How it is Created

Major Spoilers for The Golden Enclaves

A Maw-Mouth is created when a new enclave is built. A strict Mana user is sacrificed by being crushed with stones that have been steeped in the enclavers mana. Once the baby Maw-Mouth is formed, additional human sacrifices are waiting, then the maw-mouth is sent out into the world. For every thing 'eaten' by the Maw-Mouth the mana that is absorbed is feed back into the enclave that created it. When a Maw-mouth is killed, the originating enclave is either destroyed or damaged.