Hellmouth (entity)

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This page is for the Hellmouth, the eldritch horror in the Utah desert. For the town which borders it, see Hellmouth (town).

The Hellmouth was created at the end of Season 1, when the Forbidden Book was opened. It now gives its name to the Hellmouth Sunbeams.

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The remainder of this article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community.

Description

When the Hellmouth opened it consumed the majority of Moab, Utah. The Hellmouth has always been present in the desert of Utah, although its origin is unknown. While the Hellmouth has been known to appear in different forms to different observers, some features seem to be consistent: teeth, maw, and flesh are words commonly used to describe its appearance.

Fans of the Sunbeams, and other residents of Hellmouth, reportedly experience the "Tug." The Tug is described as a sensation wherein one implicitly knows the relative direction of the center of the Hellmouth in the form of "soft urgent pressure". Iggy Delacruz, who harks from a Hellmouth in an Alternate Reality, has reported feeling two simultaneous Tugs, one toward the Hellmouth on the Immaterial Plane, and another "in a direction that isn't a direction."

People who spend enough time in Hellmouth undergo a transformation known as Adaptation. These people change in some way to allow them to survive the harsh living conditions of the Hellmouth. Known examples include becoming plant matter, growing scales, changing from warm blooded to cold blooded, gaining wolf-like properties such as lycanthropy, and generally becoming less similar to humans. Adaptation is not considered to be painful, and most residents eventually come to enjoy their new features. The Hellmouth Anti-Tourism Board considers Adaptation to be the last stage of becoming a resident of Hellmouth, and will stop attempting to make a visitor leave once they have undergone Adaptation. There are no known cases of residents experiencing The Tug before Adaptation.[citation needed]

Environment and Ecology

The Hellmouth, while destructive, has preserved many aspects of the local environment. While the Anti-Tourism Board mostly prevents needless tourism, the local residents of Hellmouth still enjoy easy access to the many beautiful parks surrounding the town. As local resident Park Ranger has been described as saying, “It’s dangerous of course, the death rate out here is ridiculously high. But who are we to stop people from enjoying the natural world! Getting eaten is just a part of the natural world.”

The presence of the Hellmouth has created a unique range of flora and fauna, with many organisms adapting to the niches presented by the Hellmouth's opening, including a flourishing wolf population.

Observed Species

Various new species of both plants and animals have been observed in the Hellmouth area. An incomplete record of new species is kept by the Hellmouth Community College. This time, the Interdimensional Rumor Mill reveals a Species from IF-43.749 out of its Species Registry...

Yagsnipes (Gallinago Hellinago) are a heavily Adapted species of bird, descended from the Wilson's snipe. Like the Wilson's and common snipes, the yagsnipe is a wading bird with a highly sensitive, probing beak for sensing prey in mud (or salt). Unlike mundane snipes, yagsnipes survive in the biologically challenging salt-slurry pools of the Potash Ponds Mesa, where an entire ecosystem of Adapted algae, invertebrates, fish, and micro-hellbeasts have established themselves.

Yagsnipes appear to have a supernatural sense for finding submerged or buried prey. Their sensitive beaks have adapted to detect vibrations with a set tempo, including heartbeats or other metabolic processes with a steady rhythm. They are often characterised by ornithologists as of a "belligerent" disposition, as they seem to get distracted by particularly "loud" noises and will stab persistently with their beaks to make the offending organ or machine stop. Potash minnows with their hearts stabbed out and left discarded are a common sign in the Ponds for this very reason, and the predation pressure of yagsnipes has forced many Potash Pond animals to make their metabolisms more arrhythmic.

Yagsnipes exhibit natural variation in the range of tempos they detect and respond to, with about one percent of the population more attuned to longer rhythms on the span of hours rather than seconds or minutes. Individuals that take umbrage at even longer rhythms, like the passage of day and night, are often removed from the wild by Hellmouthian ecologists due to their poor survival chances in the wild, and kept and studied in special aviaries.

Yagsnipes are not normally migratory, but healthy individuals will attempt to do so when population density grows too high. Their chances of survival beyond the Mesa are poor, as they will either attack a much larger animal with a heartbeat or beat themselves to death against a piece of machinery. To prevent these birds from being killed by pumas or starving due to a mangled beak, annual culls are organised by the Hellmouth community. Roast yagsnipe is a cherished seasonal delicacy in Hellmouth, which prospective foodies are strongly reminded to not come to try.

Natural Features