These formidable beasts shelter in or near cavern environments, feeding on deep-rooted mosses and mineral pools. There is a market for their tough, soft pelts, but in general they're not worth the effort. Light-weight, agile and streamlined, mountain Trudgers nimbly navigate even the sheerest cliffs of Midas. The mountains of Midas are young, sharp edged and steep - all of which suits the mountain Trudger just fine. Their meat is heavily marbled and much sought out - acquire it where possible. Adapted for mostly flat, heavily vegetated habitats, the heavy Trudger is heavily muscled, with plentiful at deposits, but lacks in agility compared to its smaller cousins. The plains Trudger is most commonly located along the band of plains biomes by Midas' equatorial region.
A standard mining tool should suffice to extract most elements, but specific ingredients will have to be shipped back manually. Their skin, muscles and bones are dense with nodules of metal compounds, making them extremely resilient - not to mention valuable to collectors. Perhaps as a consequence of this ability, Trudgers have an astoundingly efficient digestive process and are able to incorporate a diversity of elements into their physical structure. Aqua regia is incredibly corrosive, able to dissolve most metals and - notably - gold. The digestive process takes place at least partially outside the body with the secretion of aqua regia from glands to either side of the mouth (these glands can be carefully extracted and returned for research or used as impromptu grenades).
Lacking a mandible bone, the vestigial forearms and hands act as graspers directing food towards the mouth orifice. Dissection of the latter reveals that the size is due to the partial incorporation of shoulder and upper-arm bones, leading to the startling revelation that they were originally quadrupedal or - more likely - upright bipeds. Though they vary in appearance across the globe, phenotypically they are quite similar: bipedal plantigrade locomotion counterbalanced with a heavy tail region and an apparently oversized head. One branch of the planet's two dominant groups of animal life, Trudgers are near-omnipresent on the surface of Midas, even in otherwise hostile habitats.
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