I started typing this up in the discord but it was getting really long so now it's a forum post instead.
I couldn't find a codex page for the psychic tentacle beast. There's at least one scene with them I haven't read yet from a lady who experiments on you, but I greatly enjoyed the rest of its content, and couldn't help but do worldbuilding in my head. So, here's a messy pile of headcanons about tentacle monsters.
I imagine they reproduce by mitosis.
A mature tentacle beast will undergo mitosis once it's too large to move around efficiently, effectively cloning itself. The part that buds off will have many of the memories of the 'parent' but might leave some behind. This smaller bud is vulnerable, so it'll scurry off somewhere dark but near a well-traveled path, then cocoon itself in a fleshy egg to protect a fragile body. In this state it emits a psychic song to lure in potential hosts, and once it's taken, it inflicts pleasure upon its prey to loosen them up enough for it to crawl inside any available orifice in that scene we all know and love. It absorbs nutrients from the host so it can grow larger and hardier, while also absorbing some of their knowledge/memories via psychic connection so it can plan out where it wants to be birthed. With that knowledge, it nudges its host toward a population center that's not too policed so it can safely emerge to a place with plenty of prey for its next budding offspring to pick from.
They try to choose locations that aren't close to other tentacle beasts so there's not as much competition for hosts. Ideal hunting grounds have a lot of foot traffic with plenty of hosts to pick from, but not so developed that they could be hunted themselves. If they wind up someplace with few people, or near another tentacle beast's hunting grounds, a mature tentacle beast might abduct an unlucky wanderer and hold them until it's able to bud. This could take hours to weeks of the beast constantly stimulating its trapped prey to keep them both pliant and unable to flee, forcefully feeding them via ejaculation. When the beast is ready to bud the part of the body currently lodged inside its chosen host will split off and nestle fully inside, completely skipping the cocoon phase. The remaining beast will then deposit the host somewhere safe so they can recover.
With the Planet Rush in full swing, many inexperienced adventurers wind up in underdeveloped or distant locations, leading to a boom in the population of psychic tentacle beasts and spreading them across the stars. This leads to densely populated zones where the tentacle beasts must compete more heavily for hosts. Ill-prepared adventurers entering these areas could find themselves at the mercy of two or more tentacle beasts fighting over them. The beasts both bind their prey and race to stuff as much of themselves into all available orifices as possible, wrestling inside their prey to push the competition out. The winner will encase their prey in a cocoon similar to the eggs used by immature buds and carry them away to a den to await the time to bud.
Thank you for coming to my ted(tacle) talk.
I couldn't find a codex page for the psychic tentacle beast. There's at least one scene with them I haven't read yet from a lady who experiments on you, but I greatly enjoyed the rest of its content, and couldn't help but do worldbuilding in my head. So, here's a messy pile of headcanons about tentacle monsters.
I imagine they reproduce by mitosis.
A mature tentacle beast will undergo mitosis once it's too large to move around efficiently, effectively cloning itself. The part that buds off will have many of the memories of the 'parent' but might leave some behind. This smaller bud is vulnerable, so it'll scurry off somewhere dark but near a well-traveled path, then cocoon itself in a fleshy egg to protect a fragile body. In this state it emits a psychic song to lure in potential hosts, and once it's taken, it inflicts pleasure upon its prey to loosen them up enough for it to crawl inside any available orifice in that scene we all know and love. It absorbs nutrients from the host so it can grow larger and hardier, while also absorbing some of their knowledge/memories via psychic connection so it can plan out where it wants to be birthed. With that knowledge, it nudges its host toward a population center that's not too policed so it can safely emerge to a place with plenty of prey for its next budding offspring to pick from.
They try to choose locations that aren't close to other tentacle beasts so there's not as much competition for hosts. Ideal hunting grounds have a lot of foot traffic with plenty of hosts to pick from, but not so developed that they could be hunted themselves. If they wind up someplace with few people, or near another tentacle beast's hunting grounds, a mature tentacle beast might abduct an unlucky wanderer and hold them until it's able to bud. This could take hours to weeks of the beast constantly stimulating its trapped prey to keep them both pliant and unable to flee, forcefully feeding them via ejaculation. When the beast is ready to bud the part of the body currently lodged inside its chosen host will split off and nestle fully inside, completely skipping the cocoon phase. The remaining beast will then deposit the host somewhere safe so they can recover.
With the Planet Rush in full swing, many inexperienced adventurers wind up in underdeveloped or distant locations, leading to a boom in the population of psychic tentacle beasts and spreading them across the stars. This leads to densely populated zones where the tentacle beasts must compete more heavily for hosts. Ill-prepared adventurers entering these areas could find themselves at the mercy of two or more tentacle beasts fighting over them. The beasts both bind their prey and race to stuff as much of themselves into all available orifices as possible, wrestling inside their prey to push the competition out. The winner will encase their prey in a cocoon similar to the eggs used by immature buds and carry them away to a den to await the time to bud.
Thank you for coming to my ted(tacle) talk.