The vile slorks inhabit the marshlands of Kidron. The foul smell they exude may once have evolved to keep the primitive ancestors of the Orfites at bay or may be a simple by-product of the organic wastes slorks consume. In any case, these unattractive beasts are given a wide berth by both native Orfites and their less sensitive "guests."
Slorks tend to remain solitary, staking out private territories and defending them from others of their kind. Any garbage, carrion or other wastes within these territories become food for these omnivorous scavengers. It is said that bodies dropped from the High City of Refuge are quickly consumed by the hungry slorks below - dead or alive.
Despite their ravenous hunger, slorks are not inherently aggressive towards other species; their stench is enough to discourage predators from bothering them. They battle each other by gouging with their heavy grubbers - dull claws that dredge slop into the slork's mouth. Xenobiologists observing slorks (with breathers and from a distance!) have noticed that warring slorks keep their trunks clear of an enemy's grubbers. These sensitive organs seem to contain the creatures' olfactory nerves. They rely on this sense of smell as their primary sense. Although the slork have vestigial eyes, they appear to be almost blind and compensate by "breathing" vibrations from the air around them. A slork whose snout is damaged goes effectively blind until the injury heals.
Slorks are strong for their size - about one and a half meters tall when squatting on their haunches - and their hides are thick with blubber. Slork grubbers average about the length of a Human's hand. The slork's most potent weapon, however, is its infamous reek. Even through breathers the stench is noticeable for several meters. This effectively eliminates slorks from Kidron's food chain - nothing else wants to eat them. They need not fight for their food; it comes to them sooner or later.
Once a year, slorks go into mating season and seek each other out. It is joked that slork mating rituals, which involve trading choice bits of refuse, become too disgusting for even xenobiologists to observe! The young are hatched from gooey "eggs" laid in the swamp. These eggs resemble embryos without hard outer shells, and scientists have theorized that the hatchlings absorb nutrients through the membrane of the egg. They take years to reach adulthood - more than Humans - and live for a century or more. | 
