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Main Characters

Trebhum

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trehbumpicture_4.jpg

Bipedal trunked creatures, these are the protagonists of the game.

Action Bomb: The Unstable Body mutation turns the Trebhum into a walking bomb that blows up after a few seconds. The Trebhum will be fine once the dust clears.
Alien Arts Are Appreciated: During the credits sequence, several Trebhum are enjoying a human playground that was expelled from the Cylinder.
Armless Biped: They are essentially a head supported with legs, though their trunks function as an arm.
Be the Ball: Trebhum can curl into balls so that they can roll across the ground, which allows them to travel far faster than they could on foot.
Color Motif: Four.
- Trebhum ruins, shrines, and towers often have sections that glow light-blue/cyan, which acts as a signifier of safe havens - ruins provide a place to learn from elders, shrines have plenty of food and water to eat while providing the ability to raise skills, while towers can temporarily halt the cylinder.
- Orange signifies home for the Trebhum - all of the Trebhum houses found in the game have insides that glow orange.
- Red indicates something that must be noticed - inactive towers glow red instead of blue (meaning that you need to activate them), while the organic cube is red because the mutatation it provides is needed to progress through certain areas, thus the mutation must be acquired to progress.
- Finally, the Trebhum as a whole have a rainbow theme, due to their versaitility - beyond all the various colors and patterns Trebhum can have (to say nothing of how crazy their mutations can get), the crystalline dust that is needed to awaken other Trebhum and level up skills is rainbow-colored.
Constantly Curious: Both young and adult Trebhum exhibit this trait, although it's more prevalent and noticeable in youngsters (e.g. eating whatever they see to find out what happens).
Foil: To the Servants of the Eternal Cylinder - the Trebhum are small, adorable critters while the Servants are (usually) large Mechanical Abominations. The Trebhum are wholly organic while the Servants are Cyborgs. Servants have a uniform color scheme shared across all forms alongside unified body types for each variety of Servant, while the Trebhum come in a literal rainbow of different colors and can have massively varying forms depending one which mutations they possess. The Trebhum created the ruins that dot the landscape while the Servants work to destroy those same ruins. Finally, while the Servants are Unskilled, but Strong entities that rely on their innate abilities to overwhelm opponents, the Trebhum are a Weak, but Skilled race that rely on creative usage of their mutations to outsmart, outmaneuver, and ultimately defeat their foes.
Everything's Better with Sparkles: The Trebhum seem to believe this, as eating a grollusc pearl results in Trebhum getting "shiny and sparky and very attractive, as all Trebhum should be", according to the in-game description of said mutation, and Glickbols tamed by Trebhum with the Hypnotic trunk mutation will emit sparkles from their shells.
Evolution Powerup: Trebhum will physically change whenever they eat Powerup Food, gaining new forms and powers. However, the game correctly labels these as mutations rather than evolution.
Extreme Omnivore: Trebhum can eat a variety of things if equipped with the proper mutations, ranging from plants, to fish, to insects, to animal organs, and even minerals.
Free-Range Children: It's made very clear that the Trebhum you play as are newborns (you outright hatch new tribe members throughout the game), and aside from the occasional elder (Who even then, are too old and weak to accompany them), they have no adults to guide them. This is Justified by the implication that the adults have died off due to the actions of the cylinder and the only thing resembling a parental figure for them to look up to besides the elders is their inner voices (Which is implied to be a Hive Mind) providing them memories.
He Who Fights Monsters: When first getting the Mixer Body mutation, the Trebhum fear that with their newfound power to push themselves up their planet's food chain, they would invoke this trope and become just as evil as the Servants of the Cylinder if used improperly.
It Can Think: Trebhum are far smarter than their appearance would suggest, with the game making it clear that they are a sapient species that has their own culture and mythology. A visual hint to this is that they have forward facing eyes — on Earth, forward facing eyes are usually found on either predators (for depth perception when hunting) or primates (who have complex visual communication). The ruins in the desert reveal that Trebhum are even capable of building aircraft.
Jack of All Stats: Without mutations, Trebhum are still reasonably fast, surprisingly durable, fairly agile, and are able to outright kill small animals by swallowing them whole. Well Trebhum won't exceed in any one field without mutations, they won't lose out in any one field either.
Know When to Fold 'Em: The Trebhum figure out very early on that defeating the Cylinder is more or less impossible, so they don't even try, instead attempting to figure out ways to escape it. Initially, they try going overtop the Cylinder, only to find the area behind the Cylinder to be an inhospitable wasteland. The younger Trebhum have no idea what to do at first, but eventually are advised of a new plan by the surviving elders: activate a floating palace in the desert and flee to the heavens. Hey actually manage to accomplish this, only for the Mathematician to interfere. Despite the Trebhum managing to kill the Mathematician, the Servant's actions leave the palace out of reach, and it disappears completely after the Trebhum finish their third journey into the Mathematician's mind. The final portion of the game involves the Trebhum attempting to salvage their escape plan by contacting a Celestial Trewhaala to ferry them up to the palace.
Kryptonite Factor: The yellow light of the Servants of the Cylinder. Said light outright strips the Trebhum of their mutations, and if the servants are empowered by the Mathematician, it turns red and starts burns the Trebhum.
Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: The ruins you find across the game were once part of a Trebhum civilization, which was apparently capable of genetic engineering based off of some entries in the creature database. Then the Eternal Cylinder showed up and ruined everything.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It turns out that the reason the Cylinder came to the Trebhum's world in the first place was because when the Trebhum first sung to the stars, the Cylinder heard them and was offended.
No Biological Sex: Word of God confirmed that young Trebhum are genderless at birth, only gaining a gender after reaching a certain age.
Not Quite Flight: Trebhum have no mutations that allow them to fly, but they can float if they eat weeping tree fruits.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Hatchling Trebhum are already strong enough to carry the eggs holding their siblings, as well as glickbol, which are as big as they are.
Removed Achilles' Heel: Trebhum shrines encountered from Chapter 2 onwards have the potential to contain a recipe that allows you to permanently unlock a mutation. Not only will this prevent the mutation from being taken away, it also allows you to access it at any point without a catalyst.
Smarter Than You Look: The Trebhum are able to make a number of surprisingly accurate deductions about the creatures and world around them. Among other details, they are able to determine the actual purpose of pearls (at least for Earth's bivalves) and understand the concept of speciation.
Super Not-Drowning Skills: While they rapidly tire from swimming without proper mutations, they never seem to be at risk of drowning.
Super Spit: By default, Trebhum can shoot water out of their bodies to attempt to repel enemies. Killing a Tonglegrop and eating its acid sac upgrades this to acidic spit that can damage and kill enemies.
Third Eye: They can gain this as a mutation, allowing them to see hidden secrets around the area.
Throw Down the Bomblet: Trebhum with the Mixer Body mutation can convert edible items into explosives. There are three types of bombs: bombs that explode into additional bombs (created from items that primarily restore food), gas bombs (created from items that primarily restore water), and high-explosive bombs (created from items that primarily restore health).
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It was the Trebhum's fault that the Eternal Cylinder came to their world. Long ago, when they were an evolved civilization, the Trebhum made floating palaces to sing to the stars and share the joys of existence with other alien races; one of these songs reached the ears of the Celestial Trewhaala. The Trewhaala came to the Trebhum's planet, and both species lived in peace, but their song drew something else: the Eternal Cylinder. The Cylinder, offended by the Trebhum's melody, came into their world and absorbed everything in its path. With the help of its servants, the Cylinder rolled through the planet and drove all those that inhabited it to the verge of extinction, which brings us to the game's events.
Victory by Endurance: This is ultimately how the Trebhum manage to defeat the Mathmatician for good - they avoid all of its attacks until the Trewhaala they are with finally manage to defeat the Servant.
Waddling Head: The Trebhum are on the borderline between this trope and Armless Biped. Which they fit better depends on what mutations they've acquired, with some mutations like the Mixer Body and Water Processing Body making the separation between head and torso more obvious. By default, Trebhum are this trope.
Weak, but Skilled: While the Trebhum as a whole are Jack of All Stats, they're still small creatures that don't have any natural weapons or armor to defend themselves against predators, with their main methods of survival without mutations being to either flee, hide, or try and repel the creature by shooting food or water at them. Mutating, however, allows the Trebhum to unlock powers that can kill just about any other creature on the planet, especially when paired with the Trebhum's intelligence.

Antagonists

The Eternal Cylinder

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eternalcylinder.png

A massive, seemingly unstoppable cylinder that is threatening to destroy the Trebhums' world.

Advancing Boss of Doom: A game-long variant, The Eternal Cylinder serves as one, as it keeps advancing towards your Trehblums while getting faster, requiring ways to delay its advance. It continuousle fl.
Always a Bigger Fish: Rule of thumb — any creature in the game that cannot fly into space or run past a set of active towers will end up flattened when the cylinder rolls. This applies even to the most ferocious predators in the game.
The Assimilator: The Cylinder doesn't so much destroy things as it does absorb and assimilate them, making that which it flattens part of itself. This is why the wasteland behind it is barren - it lierally picked the land clean of useful material.
Big Bad: It is an ever present threat, and given both its behavior and the presence of its servants, it is clearly more than a mindless force of destruction.
Civilization Destroyer: The Cylinder is destroying the Trebhum's world, and its lore entry on the game's website indicate this is just the most recent world it has visited. And one of those worlds it destroyed? Earth.
Creative Sterility: Self-inflicted - the Cylinder abhors difference, so its minions are not unique organisms, but rather imitations of beings it has already subsumed.
Evil Is Burning Hot: The cylinder gradually heats up as it travels, eventually glowing yellow with heat.
The Evils of Free Will: During their third journey into the mind of the Mathematician, the Cylinder finally speaks, revealing that it is destroying and assimilating worlds because it believes separation, and thus difference, is the root of all conflict — and it wants to solve that problem by making everything a part of itself.
Gathering Steam: The further the cylinder rolls without stopping, the faster it goes. This effectively forces you to activate the nearest set of towers to halt it, because you are sure as hell won't reach the next set in time to avoid death.
Generic Doomsday Villain: It destroys worlds and all that live on them, apparently for no reason beyond the fact that it can. Tropes Are Tools, though — the only intelligent beings opposing it are literally children who don't have the capacity to understand complex morality, and the fact that the Cylinder has no motive beyond mindless destruction serves to amp up how scary it is, as it cannot be reasoned with or stopped, just avoided. The full game averts this trope, revealing that the Cylinder actually believes in The Evils of Free Will and wants to assimilate everything to being peace to the universe.
Grey Goo: While it is fairly ambiguous as to whether the Cylinder is at least partially biological or entirely mechanical, this is why the world behind it is so barren — the Cylinder essentially eats everything it encounters, in an effort to end all suffering by absorbing everything into itself. The Trebhum killing the Mathematician in Chapter 3 results in these entities spilling back out into the physical world.
Hostile Terraforming: When the Trebhum appear to kill the Mathematician at the end of Chapter 3, the damage to its most powerful servant causes some of the entities inside the Cylinder to spill out into the Trebhum's world, creating the final, Infected biome.
Invincible Villain: Hurting this thing is impossible. When it starts to move, run. Ultimately, the only thing capable of defeating the Cylinder proves to be the Mathematician.
It Can Think: The first time the Cylinder powers through a set of active towers and generates a thunderstorm to box the Trebhum in, it's implied that the Cylinder does so out of pure rage for the Trebhum evading it so far. This is confirmed when the Trebhum enter the Mathematician's mind for the third time, where the Cylinder finally speaks and gives a motive rant at the Trebhum.
Logical Weakness: You'd assume that the Cylinder wouldn't be able to get you if you hide at a level below its base, right? Nope — the Cylinder will fill these in as it rolls, so there really is no way to escape the Cylinder except by activating a set of towers.
The Man in Front of the Man: While the beginning of Chapter 2 indicates that the Mathematician is the true power behind the Cylinder (complete with a shot where it appears that the Mathematician is pushing the Cylinder), ultimately their relationship is exactly what the Trebhum believed it to be - master and servant. Even after the Mathematician appears to be destroyed, the Cylinder proves to be capable of moving on its own.
Nothing Is Scarier: There are zero hints as to The Eternal Cylinder's origin. We don't know if it's a machine or weapon that went rogue or an Eldritch Abomination from the deepest parts of space. Even after it's revealed to be sentient and on a crusade to eliminate difference and separation because it believes it's the root of all conflict, we still don't know what the Eternal Cylinder is, let alone where it came from.
Orcus on His Throne: Despite being a threat to the entire world, the Cylinder spends the majority of the game resting against towers. This is justified because most of the time, the Cylinder can't move past these towers as long as they are powered (well, it can, but it is implied this involves a lot of effort on the Cylinder's part), meaning that the Cylinder can't move until the Trebhum leave a tower's protected space.
Order Is Not Good: Described as a force of order trying to make the world all the same, as opposed to the Trebhums' chaotic Metamorphosis Monster tendencies - and is explicitly genocidal as opposed to Trebhum being Constantly Curious and family base. The Narrator is speaking from experience, as it's revealed the Cylinder believes in The Evils of Free Will and finds the existence of the Trebhum disgusting.
Run or Die: The Cylinder is so massive and resilient that damaging it is impossible. If it is rolling, running is a must. And even that won't save you if you don’t activate the nearest set of towers - the Cylinder gets faster the point it rolls without stopping, so it will eventually catch up to you if you don't activate a tower.
Shock and Awe: The Cylinder has the ability to fire off lightning from its body, though this appears to be a sort of Desperation Attack, as it only demonstrates this power (in the beta, at least) when it forces itself to power through a set of activated towers in an attempt to kill the Trebhum. In addition to that, it seems to force it to move at much slower speed, than usual, as it can't reach the same "outrun-rolling-Trebhum" speed it otherwise would normally do.
Sinister Geometry: It's a giant, world-destroying cylinder. The insides of it, exposed by the Mathematician's Heroic Sacrifice, seem to resemble a maze of some sort.
The Unfought: While the Cylinder is an everpresent threat, you never get the chance to fight it, mainly because you can't fight it due to its raw power. Ultimately, the Final Boss is the Mathematician, who turns on the Cylinder and destroys it after the Trebhum free him from its control.
We Have Reserves: The Cylinder regularly crushes its own minions as it pursues the Trebhum. If it cares, it ain't talking. Subverted when the Trebhum appear to kill the Mathematician — while the Cylinder only expresses rage at the Trebhum surviving against all odds, as opposed to them destroying its most powerful minion, the fact that the Trebhum killing the Mathematician causes some of the entities stored within the Cylinder to spill out into the Trebhum's world indicates it definitely felt the loss of the Mathematician.

Servants of the Cylinder

In General

Enemies found throughout the world that serve the Eternal Cylinder, and are among the most dangerous things you'll face next to the cylinder itself. They have the ability to take away your abilities, so you'll have to use strategies to help overcome them.

Body Horror: All of the servants more or less possess human parts, a lot of the time being grossly fused to metal parts.
Color Motif: Gold, in this case representing royalty/majesty - the metallic parts of the servants are usually colored gold, and they are the servants of a powerful liege that is literally destroying the Trebhum's world.
Cyborg: Their bodies are composed of a combination of various mechanical bits attached to human body parts. It's unsettling, to say the least.
Enemy to All Living Things: The servants will attack any living creature they encounter, regardless of whether or not it is a Trebhum.
Eyeless Face: Roughly half of the servants lack eyes or visual sensors around what counts as their heads.
Foil: To the Trebhum. The Trebhum possess designs that lean toward being Ridiculously Cute Critters while the Servants are Mechanical Abominations. The Trebhum are capable builders (if their ruins are anything to go by) while the Servants are entities of destruction. The Servants are Dumb Muscle creatures that rely on brute force to solve their problems while the Trebhum use their intelligence to solve problems. Finally, the Servants are artificial entities who are limited to mass produced forms while the Trebhum are natural lifeforms that can mutate to take on a variety of shapes.
Gotta Kill Them All: The servants' main purpose is to not just help kill the Trebhum, but essentially every living thing on the planet.
Humanoid Abomination: While the Servants are definitely cybernetic entities that best fit under Mechanical Abomination, their organic parts are distinctly human. There's a reason for this — they were created from humanity, who have already been destroyed by the Cylinder.
Logical Weakness: Since most servants of the cylinder either lack eyes or move extremely fast, they're extremely vulnerable to tight turns, as they need time to either relocate their targets or adjust their movement.
Mechanical Abomination: They are masses of bizarre technology with human parts attached to them. Calling them weird is an understatement.
Rare Candy: From Chapter 3 onwards, Cleansers, Exonerators, and Liberators will start dropping amber-like items that instantly unlock any mutation you've added to the tree. While the mutation chosen is random, careful usage of this allows you to permanently unlock mutations would otherwise have lost forever due to their shielding ingredients no longer being available.
Servant Race: The name isn't for show — these creatures are implied to have been engineered by the cylinder to act as its minions. They certainly don't seem capable of reproducing on their own at any rate.
Those Were Only Their Scouts: It's Implied that the various servants you come across are actually intended as a scouting force to eliminate potential threats to the Cylinder before it comes in and destroys everything. Notably, despite their powers, they always leave Trebhum ruins to be demolished by the Cylinder.
Unskilled, but Strong: The Servants of the Cylinder are, with the exception of the Witnesses, all capable of easily killing other creatures and not only have innate toughness, power, and speed to go off of, but most also have powerful abilities that let them easily defeat opponents in a straight fight. The tradeoff, though, is that they are very limited in the tasks they can perform and can easily be outsmarted and outmaneuvered, with their abilities having no real capability of doing anything beyond their intended functions (e.g. Exonerators can only use their light pulses to remove Trebhum mutations, as oppossed to outright destroying terrain to find other Trebhum).

The Cleansers

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/servant_cleanser.png

Servants that resemble bipedal human torsos attached to trucks. They're the first kind of servant you'll meet, and they attack by charging into your Trebhum.

Bull Fight Boss: Your first encounter with a Cleanser requires you to trick it into opening up access to a bridge via honking at it and luring it into a chain.
Early-Bird Cameo: Is first seen in a vision provided by Gurumo the Elder.
Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: For once, applied to an enemy - Cleansers cannot navigate over sudden shifts in terrain, so players can escape them by literally jumping onto a slightly elevated platform.
Invincible Minor Minion: The very first Cleanser encountered is impossible to kill, since doing so would make it impossible to proceed further in the game.
Kill It with Water: These guys die on contact with water.
Logical Weakness: Cleaners are incredibly Top Heavy, having a truck for a head, so it's fairly likely that they don't have the arm strength to lift themselves up over sudden shifts in terrain.
Man of Kryptonite: Its "headlights" can remove any mutations your Trebhum possess, and are your first taste of the servants' power.
Slain in Their Sleep: Inactive cleansers can be killed without waking them up.
Violation of Common Sense: Even though the game implies that this thing is a major danger, you still need to wake up the first cleanser you encounter in order to progress. Then again, the baby Trebhum are curious.

The Mathmetician

A huge servant consisting of several human bodies fused to one another, complete with a mechanical device on top. Large and mysterious, they will eventually make their appearance late in-game, utilizing multiple abilities against you.

Barbie Doll Anatomy: The Mathematician has a mostly human body (excluding its head) and very clearly lacks any genitals, though it does has male nipples on its chest. Originally, the female torso in its right leg had pronounced breasts, but these were later removed.
Body Horror: Beyond being a human torso with one leg ending in another torso that has two legs and having a human head looking through a fissure in its chest, after getting blasted by the Trebhum with a giant laser, a good chunk of the Mathematician's torso and most of its left arm have been blown off, leaving a nasty looking wound behind.
The Dragon: The Trebhum's collective memory indicates that this thing is the greatest of all the Cylinder's servants.
Early-Bird Cameo: Is first seen as an image in a Trebhum temple, after which its physical form is seen walking behind the Cylinder.
Final Boss: It's the very last boss fought in the game, as it launches an attack on the Trebhum's sky palace in a final effort to kill them.
Full-Frontal Assault: Originally, the human torso in its right leg was distinctly female and had exposed breasts. The current model is more ambiguous gender wise and has a smoothed chest area.
Heel–Face Turn: Once the Trebhum defeat the Mathmatician for good, they proceed to free it from the Cylinder's control, after which it aids them by beating the Cylinder a bit, then allowing itself to be reabsorbed by the Cylinder, which ends up blowing a chunk out of the giant rolling pin, finally defeating it.
Humanoid Abomination: The most humanoid of all the servants, which only accentuates how wrong this thing is.
I Am Not Left-Handed: Pulls out several additional attacks (guided stomps, a beam of cylinder light fired from its right hand, and a massive area of effect cylinder light blast from its face) for the final battle.
Javelin Thrower: It can throw spears whose rear ends contain Witnesses. One of these is what killed the Trewhaala found just before the tower where you go over the Cylinder, another trap the player on a toxic island and forced them to learn how to make mutations immune to theft, while a third injures the last Trewhaala the player calls, forcing the Trebhum to go within the face-shaped formation to retrieve the final portion of the Trewhaala artifacts.
Kaiju: This thing is so big that it can climb over the Cylinder.
Single Specimen Species: The Mathematician is indicated to be the only example of its kind among the servants.
White Void Room: This is how the Mathematician's mindscape is represented, and is accessed via the portal in the Mathematician's head. The first time you enter, the room is mostly featureless, barring a pathway for the Trebhum to follow. The second time, the room becomes much cleaner and is arranged like a small town/city. During the third encounter, the area is in disarry due to the Trebhum appearing to kill the Mathematician, with strange, oddly colored plants breaking up the monotony. The final visit has the background completely shattered, signifying the Trebhum's triumph over the Cylinder.

The Witnesses

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/witness_model.png

Small servants that resemble cameras held by a pair of hands. They fly around certain areas, utilizing their spotlights to spot enemies and alert nearby servants.

Harmless Enemy: Downplayed - they aren't capable of doing any damage to Trebhum on their own, only taking away their mutations. However, Witnesses can tell other servants where Trebhum are, can be stored inside a Unifier to act as its eye, and if powered up by the Mathematician, the Witnesses' light will actually hurt you.
Kill It with Water: They won't die from it, but shooting them with water will short circuit them, leaving them temporarily stuck on the ground and this vulnerable to attacks from other creatures or Trebhum. Submerging them in lakes, though, will eventually kill them, as the take damage while in the lake and can't regenerate from it, and will never be able to escape.
No-Sell: Are completely immune to damage from bombs.
Oculothorax: Aesthetically, they resemble this, with their camera lens looking distinctly like a human eye.
Patrolling Mook: They act as scouts for the rest of the Servants.

The Unifiers

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/unifier_model.png

Tall entities resembling bacteriophages that wander the landscape blind, but are still capable of delivering bolts of electricity from their bottom batteries.

Cutting the Knot: Both times it is faced as an end of chapter boss, you're encouraged to defeat it using either its own projectiles (Chapter 2) or the explosive body mutation (Chapter 4). Both times, you can also just hit it with bombs produced via the Mixer Body mutation.
Flunky Boss: Most Unifiers the player fights are rely on controlling wildlife via parasites. Killing all of the parasites will destroy the Unifier.
Logical Weakness: As they lack eyes or an equivalent sensor, a quiet Trebhum can easily sneak past them.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The corpses of several unifiers can be found around a dead Celestial Trewhaala, implying they had a massive battle that lead to both parties being slain.
Rocket Tag: The final boss of Chapter 2, Across the Snow, is a Unifier examining Trewhaala crystals. To defeat it, you need to catch the crystals it heats and fire them back at it to gradually destroy the Servant. The one encountered as the penultimate boss of the game can also be fought this way, but you're encouraged to use the explosive body mutation to take it down instead.
Shock and Awe: They attack by shooting electricity from their bottom-mounted batteries.
Who Even Needs a Brain?: Their cranial cavities are hollow and clearly lack any brains or equivalent organs/components. Instead, they carry either a Witness or an object of interest to the cylinder — either a Trewhaala crystal or a Trewhaala mutation catalyst.

The Exonerators

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/exonerator.png

A servant taking the form of strange vehicles with baby mouths in front. They drop from the sky in pods to pursue and run over trebhum and other lifeforms.

Achilles' Heel: They hit hard and are very fast, but tight turns can easily thrown them off-pace, especially since their cylinder light attack has a long recharge time.
Elite Mooks: Fast, strong, and packing cylinder light, these things are a challenge even for experienced players.
For the Evulz: Given that the Cylinder has no reason to waste resources on killing the native wildlife since they will all die wherever it rolls, this seems to be why Exonerators attack the Gaahrlings.
The Ghost: You can only find them in the currently inaccessible desert, with most of the info on them coming from Let's Plays and developer livestreams.
The Juggernaut: These things will plow through rock formations that would stop other servants in their tracks.
Jump Scare: They will drop from the sky with little to no warning, which can catch players off guard.
Kick the Dog: Can be observed killing Great Gaaahrlings if they run into the creatures.

The Hand of Fate (Unmarked Spoilers)

Hand of Fate

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hands_of_fate.png

A bizarre Servant consisting of an organic ring covered in human fingers and controlled by a strange tentacle. It is one of two bosses in Chapter 3.

Achilles' Heel: The Hand of Fate's only weakness is that its fingertips are extremely sensitive, so a sufficiently heavy collision (like with, say, the desert Trebhum house on the disc) will cause each one to let go.
Body Horror: Its body is best described as an organic ring made of fingers, which is commanded by a Klaborok tentacle tipped with eyes and teeth.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Ultimately defeated when the empty desert Trebhum home it was using to try and crush the Trebhum smashes its fingers in, resulting in it being crushed by the lens it was holding.
Schmuck Bait: The game makes it fairly obvious that the lens the Hand is hiding under will involve a boss fight - the narrator notes that the Trebhum are scared of what servants the Cylinder might throw at them now, the Lens is the only one that doesn't have some other challenge you have to solve to beat it, and it's buried such that you won't be able to get off of it until the lens is already in flight or have a dedicated jumping mutation. But you still need the lens to escape the Cylinder, so you have to activate it.

The Liberators

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/liberator_model.png

Perhaps the most unsettling human of the Cylinder's servants, Liberators initially exist in a state of dormancy, only going to battle when roused by their master.

Bizarre Alien Locomotion: It moves by rolling those wheels in its hands like someone using a wheelchair.
Feed It a Bomb: Defeating the Unifier requires hitting it in the head with explosives, either the various bombs created via the Mixer Body or a Trebhum with the Unstable Body mutation.
Gravity Master: Pulls in Trebhum with an antigravity beam.

World Creatures

Savannah

Hophopops

Aricada Luminata

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hophopop.png

Grasshopper-like animals that hop around the Savannah in herds, defending itself via releasing strange pods.

Cruel and Unusual Death: If you manage to kill a Hophopop, its halves will split and fall apart.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Their long legs, herbivorous diet, and herding behavior makes them equivalent to antelopes and horses.
Herbivores Are Friendly: They won't actively try to attack your Trebhum in any way, instead fleeing if close enough.
Hoist by His Own Petard: They try to distract enemies via releasing edible pods from their bodies. However, it can only done four times, and a persistent Trebhum can kill a Hophopop by making them release them all.

Sack Flies

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sack_fly.png

Flying insects that store tree sap in organic sacs.

Helpful Mook: Their sacs release a gas that restores stamina, which can be really helpful if the Cylinder is rolling.

Shelled Grollusc

Oikoscaphus variabilis

Strange, timid molluscs that live in large, shiny shells. Normally slow-moving, they have the ability to leave their shells to get nearby fruit.

Artifact Mook: The release date trailer indicates that you will be able to encounter them in the Desert as well as the Savannah. Somewhat justified by how their shells would allow them to resist most desert predators, excluding of course the Klaborok.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: While they look and behave similarly to snails, niche-wise they're equivalent to ankylosaurs, glyptodonts, and large tortoises, being heavily armored terrestrial herbivores that are immune to attack by most predators.
Perplexing Pearl Production: Grolluscs can produce pearls, which they guard fiercely. The Trebhum have no idea what the pearls are for - the pearls might be used to trap foreign entities (the actual purpose of pearls for bivalves, which is a pretty impressive line of thought for literal mouths on legs), but the Grolluscs' aggressive defense of said pearls indicates that they have some other purpose, with reproduction listed as one possible function.
Shed Armor, Gain Speed: With their shells on, they aren't too impressive, so leaving the shell allows them to move fast enough to grab far away fruit and return quickly.

Tonglegrops

Tonglegrop

Glossosphairium polymorphum

^{Tonglegroplet Stage}

^{Glickbol Stage}

The apex predator of the Savannah, the Tonglegrop is particularly notable for its bizarre metamorphosis.

Acid Attack: Their main method of attack is continuously spewing acid at nearby Trebhum and other prey.
Always a Bigger Fish: On the giving end to the Omnogrom, which will avoid adult Tonglegrops. All version of the Tonglegrops are on the receiving end of this trope from the Celestial Trewhaala, though, since they cannot defend against its lightning attack.
Animal Stampede: While all animals will book it when the cylinder starts rolling, Glickbol really invoke the stampede feeling, since they are the most gregarious animals in the game. It's not uncommon to see over a dozen fleeing toward the next set of towers to escape the Cylinder.
Artistic License – Biology: The life cycle of the Tonglegrop, with herbivorous juveniles and carnivorous adults, seem to be based on frogs, whose tadpoles graze on algae but as adults eat insects and small animals. However, with a creature this size, it would make more sense for it to be the other way around: young need to grow fast and would benefit from a nutritious protein-rich diet, while adults would need a more abundant food source to sate their bulk now that they have reached full size. Mitigated in that their compendium entry states they are omnivores.
Bizarre Alien Locomotion: Besides walking, Tonglegrops are also capable of rolling on their acid sacks. Glickbols just roll around like balls.
Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Starting out as eggs, Tonglegrops become sentient before hatching, and while still within the egg, obtain nutrients via absorption and move by licking the shell. These creatures are known as Glickbols. Eventually, these turn into bipedal herbivores known as Tonglegroplets, which develop a large acid sack in their rear. Those that reach adulthood become Tonglegrops, which are bipedal predators that spit acid and have acid sacks so large that they can roll around on them from time to time.
Boss in Mook's Clothing: Tonglegrops are some of the most dangerous creatures in the game, and can only be defeated through careful planning.
The Constant: Tonglegrops and their various life stages are so far the only creatures that can be found in every biome — variants of the Tonglegroplet and the Tonglegrop can be found in the Tundra and the Desert, respectively, and Glickbol can be found in all of the biomes in the game — even the Infected biome.
Elite Mooks: Tonglegroplets are a significant upgrade over their Glickbol form, and need a fair bit more strategy or damage to overcome.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: All three phases of the Tonglegrop's life cycle fill three different niches animals from our world would fit.
- Glickbols are one of the smallest creatures of the Trebhum homeworld and would most likely fit the ecological niche of being an easy meal like rodents of our world.
- Tonglegroplets with their high territorial nature for their nest can easily be synonymous with large and similarly territorial herbivorous mammals such as Bison and Hippos.
- Lastly, the Tonglegrop itself is analogous to the towering land predator niche last seen with theropod dinosaurs.
The Goomba: Glickbols are the most common damage inflicting enemy in the game, and also do an absolute pittance of damage (Word of God is that they do roughly 1 point of damage). Combined with how easy they are to kill, and they are this trope.
Herbivores Are Friendly: Glickbols are technically herbivores, and only attack if you try to steal one away from its siblings (presumably to eat). Averted with its later stages though.
Not Completely Useless: Glickbol heads give one of the few detrimental mutations in the game, temporarily making any Trebhum that eats them legless. However, if you have a Trebhum with the mixer body mutation, you can use Glickbol heads to create energy bombs, the most powerful bombs available from said body. Additionally, the heads also provide health, making them an option for healing if you are somewhere far away from danger but need healing badly. If one of your Trebhum has the Hypnotic trunk mutation, this would mean your tribe would basically farm Glickbol to be used as bait to lure away predators or repurpose their remains to make hunting stronger prey easier.
Takes One to Kill One: Tonglegrops can be tricked into killing each other by making two of them collide. Both will die from the collision.
Took a Level in Badass: It's hard to believe that the cute little Glickbol turns into the monstrous apex predator known as the Tonglegrop.
T. Rexpy: With their towering bipedal size compared to a Trebhum and being feared by most prey animals on the Savannah, it's easily to infer that these creatures are similar in many ways to large theropod dinosaurs in our time.
Xenophobic Herbivore: Tonglegroplets do not appreciate their personal space being invaded. Unlike adults, though, they won't actively hunt the Trebhum and can be repelled via the Deimatic Trunk mutation or being sprayed at.
Wing Ding Eyes: Dead glickbol have big Xs in their eyes.

Omnogroms

Omnogrom

Stomatotherium omnogromis

A strange-looking Savannah dwelling predator, with a mouth taking up most of its body.

Attack Its Weak Point: Their eyes are their primary weak points. Hitting them with water will make an Omnogrom retreat. You even get an achievement the first time you do so.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Even though it is a carnivore, it has blunt (and surprisingly human-looking) teeth.
Cephalothorax: Its entire body is essentially a giant mouth with legs on either side.
Eye Scream: Shooting their eyes with water is one way to repel them. You even earn an achievement the first time you do so.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: To large terrestrial land predators, but since they are apparently able to eat plants, their closest equivalent on Earth is actually bears, as they are omnivorous macro-predators that are found in woodland and tundra environments.
Logical Weakness: As it has quite literally on opposite sides of its body, it is something of a Living Motion Detector and won’t always notice Trebhum near it.
Shown Their Work: Its blunt teeth imply it is durophagus like hyenas, who have blunter teeth than many other carnivores so that they can crush bone. The fact it can eat Shelled Grolluscs supports this line of thinking.
Vegetarian Carnivore: They will eat plants thrown in their path by Trebhum, surprisingly enough.

Onkifurts

Aerocherus olidus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/onkifurtmale.png

Aerial predators that move around via gas sacs and gas expulsion, utilizing poisonous gas and brute strength to hunt prey.

Attack Its Weak Point: The easiet way to get female onkifurts off their nests is to shoot water into their mouths. You even get an achievement the first time you do so.
Deadly Gas: One of their main methods of attack is expelling a gas that poisons predators and prey alike. Thankfully, this is nullified if your Trebhum have filtered trunk mutations.
Dumb Muscle: Can be tricked into incubating Trebhum eggs, despite Trebhum eggs looking nothing like Onkifurt eggs.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: To birds of prey, being aerial predators that descend upon grown dwelling animals when hunting. They're far less agile on the ground than raptors, though.
Faster Than They Look: Don't be fooled by their balloon-like bodies and slow speed. These guys can move very quickly once they spot your Trebhum, and they can move even quicker by expelling some of their poison gas.
Helpful Mook: Downplayed, but if you are in need of more Trebhum and can't find any heat sources, you can instead place Trebhum eggs in Onkifurt nests if they leave, leaving the Onkifurt to heat up the eggs once they sit on them.
Living Gasbag: They move around in the air via green gas sacs.
Secondary Sexual Characteristics: Male Onkifurt have a dark pattern on their bills that females lack. So far, Onkifurts are the only animals in the game to display sexual dimorphism.

Springworms

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/springworm.png

Small, springy worms that filter food as they move on the ground.

Bizarre Alien Biology: Given that they provide the Water-Processor Mutation, it's implied that they're capable of absorbing water so efficiently from food that they completely remove its nutritional value.
Tastes Better Than It Looks: Not the worms themselves, but their waste from eating, and Trebhum can eat it.

Tundra

Tripobosh

Polyrinus pilosus

A common bird-looking predator that is blind, instead relying on its three noses to locate prey.

Bizarre Alien Senses: Those antennae on their heads? According to the compendium, they're actually atrophied eyes.
Blind Mistake: It's really easy to trick them into jumping into toxic pits because they have very poor eyesight.
Early-Bird Cameo: You can find some in a part of the Savannah that connects to a patch of Tundra during Chapter 1.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Being bipedal predators covered in fizz, they fulfill the same role as terror birds and dromaeosaurs. They are much dumber than either, though, and hunt entirely by smell, lacking the keen eyesight the other two had.
The Nose Knows: Since they rely on their three noses to sniff out prey, they're pretty good at tracking down nearby Trebhum and other prey. While in the beta there was no way to throw them off your scent (in part because you weren't actually supposed to get far enough into the Tundra to face them), the full game has special plants that produce an odor that repels the Tripobosh and resets their tracking of you.
Logical Weakness: Being blind means you can't see what's in front of you. In an environment filled with obstacles like chasms, an unwary Tripobosh can die or lose its way very easily. Additionally, they can be repelled by particularly foul-smelling plants.
Super-Persistent Predator: Once a Tripobosh manages to locate your Trebhum, it will quickly hunt them down until they lose their scent. Running isn't an option since they can outrun Trebhum even at rolling speed, so quick turning is recommended.

Foosh

Folium epicaustum

Small, plant-like organisms that constantly forages for rocks, burning them and extracting energy from the process.

Artistic License – Physics: Their ability to absorb energy by adding a reactant to rocks may mean that Foosh can actually break the law of conservation. That, or the rocks are extremely volatile.
Bedsheet Ghost: They look like a flattened version of these.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Instead of gaining energy either by eating or absorbing sunlight, Foosh will instead extract energy from rocks by burning them until they had enough. This also fails to explain where they get mass to grow from.
Harmless Enemy: The only way you can be hurt by these critters is if you grab the stones they heat right after the Foosh have finished heating them. Foosh are incapable of attacking you.
Helpful Mook: Provide them with rocks and they will turn the stones into a source of heat in the frigidly cold tundra.
Monster Munch: They frequently fall prey to Tripobosh. Vuushlop will also try to hunt them, but they will always aim too high and miss them.
Power Glows: As they heat up rocks, their topmost holes glow red.

Ocular Orthopods

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orthopod.png

Small insectoids that aimlessly wander around tundras.

Golem: According to memory clusters, they seem to be an ancient Trebhum creation.
Hyper-Awareness: The Orthopods are constantly gathering information from their surroundings thanks to their large eye. Therefore, Trebhum gain the Analytical Eyes mutation from eating them.
Small Role, Big Impact: It's a tiny bug that wanders around aimlessly like most other prey-sized animals and it's possible to go through the whole game without paying attention to it, but eating one gives the player Analytical Eyes, a mutation that's extremely helpful in understanding the worldbuilding and lore of most animals on the planet as well as some insights on how the Servants of the Cylinder operate.

Blue Omnogroms

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blue_omnogrom.png

Tundra-dwelling relatives of normal Omnogroms.

Early-Bird Cameo: One can be encountered in the small set of Tundra found just after the first set of towers the player can interact with.
Underground Monkey: They're pretty much Omnogroms, but with blue fur this time.

Blue Tonglegroplets

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blue_tonglegroplet.png

A form of Tonglegroplet that dwells in the Tundra.

Divergent Character Evolution: Implied - the Trebhum note that Blue Tonglegroplets are nearing the point where they might become a seperate species, and their mutation catalyst indicates that a hypothetical Blue Tonglegrop would be able to shoot explosives rather than just spitting acid.
Underground Monkey: They're essentially blue-sacked tonglegroplets. Unlike their Savannah dwelling cousins, though, Blue Tonglegroplets carry a sac that provides the Mixer body mutation, which converts uneaten objects into various types of bombs.

Gargadends

Phaganthus famelicus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alien_pitcher_plant.png

Carnivorous plants capable of limited locomotion and sight, hunting down Trebhum that come too close.

Glass Cannon: They're pretty slow and easy to kill. However, they're very dangerous at the same time, capable of paralyzing groups of Trebhum and eat nearby ones with defensive features like spikes.
Man-Eating Plant: They're plants that prey on small animals and also move.
Misplaced Wildlife: Some show up in the final biome, despite the Gargadend being a Tundra creature. It's implied that this was the result of the Cylinder releasing them, likely acquiring mutations from it.
Overly-Long Tongue: If a Trebhum is close enough, it will snatch them up with a long, red tongue like a frog.
Super Spit: At medium range, they can lob several globs of paralyzing spit at nearby Trebhum, giving the plants time to catch up with them.

Vuushlops

Pterotenax lubricosus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/vuushlop.png

Aerial, one-eyed omnivores that descend to the ground to abduct potential food.

Death from Above: They're flying predators that regularly snatch and kill small animals on the ground, including Trebhums.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: To tundra dwelling birds of prey, such as snowy owls. Unlike raptors on Earth, though, Vuushlops drag their prey back to their nests to eat in peace.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: It takes the role of the Onkifurt as a dangerous aerial predator that the player must watch for once you reach the Tundra. However, while Onkifurts rely on powerful slam attacks and toxic fumes to kill Trebhum, Vuushlops instead use claws to capture Trebhum and drag them back to their nests to be devoured.
Too Dumb to Live: Are known to kill themselves by grabbing Trebhum with the Wheel Body mutation, resulting in them succumbing to Collision Damage.

Frozen Sklaas

Frozen Sklaa

Algidosaurus horribilis

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sklaa_picture.png

Predators that are encased in ice and become active based on the temperature around them.

Bizarre Alien Biology: It has its heart outside of its body and is able to move despite having a body covered in ice. And based off of its name, is apparently a type of reptile.
Body Horror: The main exposed part of their bodies are their hearts which are dangling like thread outside their chest, and they look as if they're decaying as well.
Crippling Overspecialization: Their icy armor and response to heat makes them amazing predators in a cold environment, but at the expense of being unable to function in any other locale — they'll overheat in the Savannah, to say nothing of the Desert. The in-game database notes this.
Degraded Boss: The first Sklaa encountered is a boss that must be killed to progress further. All the rest are optional opponents, and while they have the same health and damage levels, are far easier to beat on account of the player having more space to deal with them.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: As a large predator with numerous adaptations to the cold that leave it unable to function in even mildly warmer environments, the Sklaa is the Trebhum's equivalent to a polar bear.
An Ice Person: The Sklaas dwell in icy armor, and the way they move and sound is reminiscent of a walking ice sculpture.
Logical Weakness: Since Sklaas remain in a state of torpidity until exposed to heat, they can be killed rather easily by simply using bombs, acid, or the cylinder body to hit them withuout ever bringing a heat source near them. Additionally, they can also be killed by overloading said hearts with heat, since they are heavily cold adapted animals. Finally, they're so adapted to the cold that they cannot stand even mildly warmer environments, and will rapidly overheat and die if tricked into entering the Savannah.
Phlebotinum Overload: Sklaa can be awakened from their frozen states by bringing a Foosh-heated rock to their heart, and if addditional hear (more rocks) is provided, they will become faster. Feed them too much heat, though, and they will overheat and die.
Wings Do Nothing: The shape of their arms implies that their forelimbs were initially wings, but they gradually atrophied as the Sklaa adapted to live as a terrestrial predator. Notably, the ice around their fore and hind limbs appears to be shaped like feathers.

Buddugh Gropp

Urozoon Actinostomus

An aggressive herbivore found solely in the Tundra. It was added in the Anniversary update.

Beware My Stinger Tail: Its tail ends in a fuzzy flail, off all things.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Having a defensive weapon on its tail isn't that suprising. What makes the tail club of the Gropp so weird is that it is an organic flail, which tapers off almost to a string's thickness before reaching the actual tail.
Epic Flail: Its tail weapon bears more resemblance to a flail than a club or bladed weapon.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Physiologically, it is analogous to ankylosaurs and glyptodonts, being a large herbivore that defends itself using a weapon mounted on its tail. Niche-wise, it fulfills a role similar to musk ox or mammoths, being a large grazer in a Tundra environment.
The Symbiote: Its mouth tendrils are actually a symbiotic organism that apparently extends all the way to the creature's brain and stomach.
Xenophobic Herbivore: One of the more aggressive animals in the Tundra, despite eating a diet of plants.

Desert

Great Gaaahrs

Aerotherium camelopardalis

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/great_gaarh.png

^{Infant Gaaahrling}

Huge, imposing land animals that stride around open areas, sucking up whatever matter it can find.

Artistic License – Biology: Animals this large are not suited to living in deserts, as they need massive amounts of food to sustain themselves, and their enormous sizes would be make heat dissipation a problem due to gigantothermy. They're much better suited for life on either the Tundra (where gigantothermy would be an asset rather than a liability) or the Savannah (where there much more food available for them to devour). That being said, the desert is the most suitable environment for their feeding style (sand is normally more loosely packed than dirt or snow and thus could easily be filter fed through) and the trailers imply that they may migrate across large areas in search of food.
Bizarre Alien Limbs: They possess three muscular legs placed in a quadruped-like gait. The juveniles take this further by having their limbs start out fused in a monopedal hopping gait aided by their flotation sac.
Bizarre Alien Locomotion: Adults are tripedal walkers, while the juveniles float through the air via an inflatable sac.
Early-Bird Cameo: One can be seen in the distance on the Savannah, apparently drinking from a lake.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: To elephants and sauropods, being absolutely massive herbivores that must cover vast distances to feed themselves. Their feeding method also brings to mind baleen whales and basking sharks.
Giant Equals Invincible: Adult Gaaahrs are too big to be attacked by anything, even including the servants of the cylinder. Only the Cylinder can harm them. Juveniles are also immune to attack by most creatures, with not even Klaboroks trying to touch them, but can still be killed by Exonerators.
Giant Flyer: Since they're much lighter than their balloons, the juveniles are able to float, but their size is still impressive. Adults are far to massive to float, however, and use it instead to stabilize themselves.
Herbivores Are Friendly: A Justified example — this thing is too big to have any predators at adulthood, so it can simply ignore other creatures around it. Juveniles are more problematic, as while they don't actively attack you, they release explosive projectiles like crazy.
Kaiju: At least in comparison to the Trebhum - these things are taller than the Cylinder. Notably, being hit by the Cylinder doesn't flatten them - it instead appears to shatter their skeletons, after which the corpse essentially rolls overtop the cylinder like the avocado-topped trees in the Savannah.
Monster Mouth: The Gaaahrs' mouths are elongated and curved in a way similar to a giraffe's head and neck, and the upper lip is able to curve upwards in a way reminescent of an outdated model of Helicoprion. It's less pronounced with the juveniles, whose mouths aren't yet held high and thus resemble elephant trunks.
Squashed Flat: The only creature in the game that does not suffer this fate if it doesn't manage to escape the Cylinder — instead, they will roll over it, like certain trees do upon being hit.
Throw Down the Bomblet: Gaaahrs have the ability to produce and expel organic explosives from their bodies as a means of defending themselves. Juveniles take this to Grenade Spam levels, as they will not stop making these bombs while they are alive. Occasionally they will drop a variant that doesn't explode, which can be consumed to permanently unlock the Tornado Trunk mutation without using up a shrine.
Vacuum Mouth: Their mouths are strong enough to inhale anything in front of it in a large sandstorm, including nearby Trebhum.

Articulated Angstoks

Tachyphytum multiplicatum

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/angstock.png

A huge insectoid predator that is able grow rapidly towards prey while in one spot underground.

Antlion Monster: The vast majority of their bodies are hidden beneath the sand, excluding the protuberances they grow to try and grab you.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: They're gigantic arthropods that bury themselves in the sand, and they're able to rapidly extend and grow protuberances so their bug-like heads can move. The in-game database reveals that Trebhum believe them to be some kind of carnivorous plant.
Crippling Overspecialization: Ambiguous, but given that they appear to be sessile, they're not really in any shape to escape the Cylinder...
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: They're essentially a desert dwelling version of an anemone, surprisngly enough.
Phlebotinum Breakdown: A non-fatal example, but if they try to expand themselves too much, they'll eventually be unable to produce new protuberances to hunt with.

Treghrum

Polypodus mimicus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trebhum.png

A rare predator that specializes in hunting Trebhum, specifically by using aggressive mimicry.

Big Creepy-Crawlies: Their normal forms look absolutely nightmarish, looking almost like overgrown centipedes wearing Trebhum skin.
Creepy Centipedes: Their true form looks very much like a centipede.
Early-Bird Cameo: First observed as a corpse in a dome within the Tundra Temple.
Hugh Mann: While their disguises aren't entirely bad, they still have some obvious differences to be seen, notably their slanted, yellow pupils and a teeth on their trunks. Additionally, they can be found wandering in the open, while true Trebhum can only be found either collapsed on the ground, resting in Trebhum homes, or as eggs.
Kill It with Water: They really hate water and will hastily retreat if sprayed by Trebhum.
Shapeshifting: Their bodies are designed to fold into a shape near identical to normal Trebhum, albeit with some discrepancies.
Spot the Imposter: If the player has a keen eye, they can tell something is not okay when they suddenly find a new Trebhum out of nowhere.
- For one, the Trebhum are only found either collapsed on the ground, resting in Trebhum homes or as eggs.
- A disguised Treghrum has slanted, yellow pupils and sharp teeth on their trunks. True Trebhum does not have any of those; they even mention the latter in the intro!
- Treghrum hate water, unlike the Trebhum who need it; an excellent way to check is by spraying them with water.
- Lastly, Treghrum can't be selected. If the player tries to switch over to the new Trebhum they found, they will find out they won't be able to. If they try to select them manually, the name with appear as a bunch of question marks and will immediately reveal itself if the player tries choosing them.
Trademark Favorite Food: Trebhum — the fact that they evolved explicitly to blend in with Trebhum so that they can eat the trunked omnivores makes it very clear the Trebhum are the Treghrum's favored food.

Klaboroks

Ammocelyphus inopinatum

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/klaborok.png

Massive alien clams that burrow underneath the sand to avoid the heat, relying on vibrations and their eyestalks to locate prey.

Always a Bigger Fish: Even Desert Tonglegrops are food for these creatures.
Attack of the Monster Appendage: Their sensor tentacles look like snakes and will always appear prior to an attack. Additionally, their Worm Sign corresponds to an animal the size of the tentacle, not the whole klaborok.
Big Eater: Due to their size, a Klaborok can eat anything ranging up to Tonglegrops.
The Ghost: Not the Klaborok, but its ancestor - the very giant spheres found in the desert are actually pearls that were apparently created by a massive creature, which the Trebhum assume was the ancestor of the Klaborok.
Helpful Mook: If you're under attack from certain enemies, you could lure a hungry Klaborok to said enemies to dispatch them. Feeding them anything will also result in the Klaborok spitting out a pearl, which can be used to obtain the Turtle mutation. Additionally, the pearl can also be converted into Processed Minerals via the appropriate mutation, and since pearls can be spawned indefinitely via feeding items to the Klaborok, you can use them to max out every stat in the game.
One-Hit Kill: Their bites are so large and deal so much damage that anything caught in their mouths is already dead. Even Desert Tonglegrops will not be spared.
Perplexing Pearl Production: Klaboroks will produce pearls if you throw items into their mouths. Breaking said pearls and eating their former contents will provide you with the shell mutation.
Sand Worm: Technically they're clams, but their size and burrowing habits are pretty similar to expected sand worms.
Shout-Out: They're one to the graboids from Tremors, being burrowing predators that inhabit deserts and have sensor organs that can be mistaken for animals in their own right.
Swallowed Whole: Anything that doesn't leave the area will be promptly snapped up whole from underneath.
Wormsign: While moving, they leave behind small mounds of sand in their wake. This is a good sign to start exiting the area immediately.

Tetracrabs

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tetreacrab.png

Small, crab-like critters that regularly skitter across the sand.

Four-Legged Insect: It has four legs, while real crabs have ten (albeit with two as claws). Justified in that it is an alien creature that is in no way related to terrestrial crabs.
Harmless Enemy: One of many animals in the game that cannot harm players. It just wanders the desert, at the mercy of a variety of predators.
Power-Up Food: Eating them gives the Trebhum extra legs, making them run faster.

Onogrosh

Monorhinus calvus

A desert dwelling relative of the Tripobosh.

Fangs Are Evil: Unlike the Tripobosh, the Onogrosh has nasty looking tusks.
Monster Threat Expiration: As a reskinned Tripobosh, it has all the same dangers as the latter, but it is noticeably less of a threat than in the Tundra. There are several reasons:
- First, while both creatures have predators that exceed them in threat level (the Frozen Sklaa for the Tripobosh and the Klaborok for the Onogrosh), the first Sklaa encountered is a Boss Battle and others only rarely spawn in the game (it's entirely possible the boss Sklaa is the only one of its kind that you will encounter in a playthrough) while the Klaborok is flat out invincible and can spawn anywhere there is sand.
- The desert has more obstacles the player can use to escape the Onogrosh on than the Tundra did.
- The latter half of the Tundra provides the player with the Mixer Body mutation, allowing them to make bombs to dispose of the Onogrosh from range.
- Finally, the Tripobosh was a Super-Persistent Predator that could only be repelled by retreating into clouds of repulsive smelling plants. Not only do plants that produce this odor also exist in the desert, but they are edible, and provide a mutation that makes you produce that same foul odor, allowing you to repel the Onogrosh with impunity.
Noodle Incident: In its bio, there once was a Trebhum fable called: "How the Tripobosh and Onogrosh Went Hunting Together". Considering the Tripobosh belongs in the tundra and the Onogrosh is native to the desert, the story probably didn't end well.
Underground Monkey: It's a desert-dwelling tripobosh with only one nasal tentacle and large fangs. It also lacks fur so that it can keep cool.

Desert Tonglegrops

Desert Tonglegrop

A desert-dwelling relative of normal Tonglegrops.

Always a Bigger Fish: Finally on the receiving end to a normal creature - the Desert Tonglegrop may eat most other creatures, but it is defenseless against the Klaborok.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's not much to say about this creature, other than it's a Tonglegrop that's grown accustomed to the desert.
Underground Monkey: They're just Tonglegrops with a yellow skin color.

Gharukuk

Opisthopithecus ctenophorus

A tripedal desert-dwelling simian creature with a bizarre form of locomotion.

Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: It can orient its body and limbs so that it can walk upside down.
Bizarre Alien Locomotion: It can rotate its limbs so that it can walk with its back to the ground and its belly to the sky.
Killer Gorilla: It's a predatory ape-like creature and seems to be the Fantastic Fauna Counterpart to a gorilla, though appearance wise it has more resemblance to an orangutan.
Logical Weakness: Its ability to flip upside down and use the spines on its back as weapons is a unique adaptation, but bending limbs that far over is not comfortable - it needs to rest after traveling by like this for a short while.

Corrupted Plains (Late Game Spoilers!)

Yackfurt

Encephalobumbulum miserabilis

A slug-like herbivore, docile on its own, but aggressive in groups.

Mix-and-Match Creatures: Amalgamates traits of the Grollusc and Onkifurt, having the former's body shape and demeanor and the latter's ability to produce toxic gas.
Savage Setpiece: Mess with them only if you want to get sprayed with poison gas.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: It fulfills the role of the Grollusc in the ??? Biome, being a somewhat uncommon herbivore that has a specialized defense to deter predators and Trebhum. Note that you can still find Grolluscs in the ??? Biome, but they are far rarer than Yackfurt.

Roondaslock

Gyroglossus prodigialis

A strange, round sphere-bodied predator that propels itself via pushing off the ground with its tongue.

Artifact Mook: Actually Inverted - it could be ecnountered in the Savannah during the beta, while in the final game it is relegated to the final biome the player encounters.
Be the Ball: Its body is best described as a ball covered in eyes and mouths.
Dumb Muscle: Even though it is covered in eyes, it can often be seen throwing itself into toxic pits.
Early-Bird Cameo: While it is intended to appear in the final, mystery biome, one or two can be found wandering the Savannah in the demo.
Extra Eyes: Literally has eyes all over its body.
Multipurpose Tongue: Its tongue can be used to grab prey or for propulsion by pushing the creature off the ground.

Grashtuub

Tubus Maximus

A tube-shaped scavenger with a massive body.

Bizarre Alien Biology: Its entire digestive system is exposed to the air, yet it is still able to eat things normally. A look inside its body reveals that it is essentially an organic butcher shop, having rows of teeth that rotate so that they can slice up the meat of their prey.
Chest Monster: Somewhat — it is clearly a carnivore that will eat you, but the Grashtuub tends to have valuable transformation items within it.
Extra Eyes: Has multiple eyes all over its tube-like body.
Kaiju: A video of one released on ACE Team's twitter reveals that they're of comparable size to the Great Gaaahr.
Non-Malicious Monster: They look unnerving, but Grashtuub aren't actually aggressive, and the first one encountered can only harm your Trebhum by accidentally stepping on them. The others you encounter have been mind-controlled by Unifiers and thus aren't fighting of their own free will.
Scavengers Are Scum: They're primarily scavengers, and the Trebhum do no like them, both because Grashtuub look terrifying and they eat the corpses of Celestial Trewhaala.
Trademark Favorite Food: Celestial Trewhaala — the reason Grashtuub are shaped so bizarrely is so that they can eat Trewhaala whole (or at least do so rapidly). This is why the Trebhum have to fight one - they need to get a Trewhaala Crystal from the Grashtuub's heart so that they can call a Trewhaala and use it to reach their Sky Fortress and finally give the Cylinder the slip. That being said, the compendium states that they will eat other large animals (namely Great Gaaahr), they just aren't encountered anywhere where this can be observed.

Squadaboo

Kakistoteuthis terriblis

A squid-like predator capable of mind control, which leaps out of the water to grapple into prey. The hapless animal is then marched to its doom beneath the waves.

Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: So far, they are the closest creature in the game to crocodiles and alligators, being acquatic predators that rely on dragging prey into water to make a kill.
Flying Seafood Special: They're flying (well, gliding) squid.
The Ghost: One of two creatures on the website to not appear in the demo. Even glitching into the desert will give no hints about them. They're relegated to the final biome in the final game.
Graceful in Their Element: They are excellent swimmers and capable gliders, but Word of God confirmed that they are very vulnerable if forced to crawl on land.
Hypnotic Creature: They can mind control creatures via grappling with them.
If It Swims, It Flies: Downplayed example, but they are fairly good gliders in addition to being excellent swimmers.
Logical Weakness: The reason they are so cumbersome on land is that they have to crawl on their tentacles - in the water and the air, they use wing like membranes to maneuver themselves.
Not Quite Flight: They cannot fly on their own power, but are capable of gliding.
Octopoid Aliens: Squid examples — they look a lot like vampire squid.

Others

Zooshgargs

Aerotorus trebhumophagus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zooshgarg.png

A bizarre species of hovering, almost supernatural predators that are found throughout the world.

Bizarre Alien Biology: They somehow have the ability to control or perhaps make gravity for both hunting and movement.
Extra Eyes: Has a total of eight eyes, arranged so that it has omnidirectional vision.
Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Yet another bird of prey analogue. Its tendecy to ignore the Cylinder due to its antigravity powers allowing it to escape the Cylinder's wrath is reminescent of how some birds of prey chase fleeing wildlife during wildfires, as their flight allows them to outrun the flames.
Gravity Master: They have the ability to use some form of energy to project a powerful vortex below it, sucking up any unfortunate animals that stray into it. This energy is also what likely keeps it floating.
Logical Weakness: Inverted — they fly so high up that they are in no danger from the Eternal Cylinder, so they never try to run from it.^note
Overly-Long Tongue: It's able to use a long, black tongue to pull in the animals closest to its mouth.
Power Floats: As opposed to traditional methods of flying, it appears to use gravity manipulation to float and maneuver through the air.
Trademark Favorite Food: Trebhum — its specific name literally means "Trebhum eater" and it makes a point of chasing down Trebhum over all other prey. Notably, only the Cactus mutation will protect you from its wrath. However, it can be tricked into eating plants or glickbol.

Celestial Trewhaala

Cetovermis nebulae

A massive, but mysterious creature that dwells in the planet's stratosphere. They are mentioned to have come here via an unknown call on the planet.

Always a Bigger Fish: Late in the first chapter of the game, you find a dead Trewhaala, which was apparently killed fighting several unifiers. It's a stark reminder of how strong the forces of the Cylinder are.
Deadly Gas: Can exhale poisonous gas as a defense.
The Dog Bites Back: After spending the game being speared by the Mathematician if it ever noticed them, the Trewhaala aiding the Trebhum are the ones to fight the giant servant during the final boss fight.
Early-Bird Cameo: An apparently injured one can be found in the second area of the game, coughing against a cliff face. This one poses no threat to players and can be approached without fear. If you take the time to watch, you can even observe it being crushed by the Eternal Cylinder.
Easily Forgiven: While it was the Trebhum's fault for accidentally calling the Eternal Cylinder and almost bringing their race to death, the Celestial Trewhaala don't hate them. The Trewhaala don't regret listening to the songs of the Trebhum as they brought them to their world and allowed their races to live in peace. The Trebhum brought the Trewhaala hope; for that reason, they don't hesitate to help their old friends during the latter half of the game, even when they're on the brink of extinction.
Extra Eyes: Has several eyes on its neck, as well as extra ones on its head.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: It possesses several sets of eyes around its head and neck, although they don't seem to all see well.
Irony: For all of its Extra Eyes, the Trewhaala is shown to have poor vision. Justified in that although it has multiple eyes, their fields of view don't overlap — so while the Trewhaala has fairly good peripheral vision (as evidenced by how they can see you even is you are directly behind their necks), they don't have good depth perception.
Notice This: The presence of a Trewhaala acts as an indicator that a Elder Trebhum is nearby. Late game revelations indicate that the Elder Trebhum still remember how to communicate with the Trewhaala, meaning that the Trewhaala are helping their friends.
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Whenever the Cylinder starts moving, nearby Trewhaalas will retreat to the heavens.
Shock and Awe: It can shoot lightning at enemies. Against anything besides a Trebhum (who will still be heavily injured), the creature hit will not be getting back up.
Space Whale: It's some sort of eel-like whale that dwells in space.
We Used to Be Friends: Trebhum lore indicates that the Trebhum and Trewhaala once used to be friends, but they have become estranged as of late. This is mostly because the Trewhaala are getting massacred by the Cylinder, with the survivors becoming paranoid as a result. The Trebhum Elders still have a bond with the Trewhaala, and ultimately the Trebhum's plan to survive the Cylinder is to use the Trewhaala to hitch a ride onto a spacecraft so they can escape the Cylinder forever.
Worf Had the Flu: The only reason the one encountered at the beginning of the game is crushed by the Cylinder is that it is too injured to try and escape or fight back.

The Narrator

The game's narrator. Despite seemingly just telling the story of the Trebhum, he has his own role to play in this story.

But Now I Must Go: While he somehow manages to survive sacrificing his body to destroy the Eternal Cylinder, his consciousness fades away at the end of the and appears to go dormant until sometime in the future when he retells the tale of the Trebhum.
Fighting from the Inside: He attempts to resist the Cylinder from within its own mind, and provides help to the Trebhum when he can.
Genetic Memory: The Narrator is the genetic memory of the surviving Trebhums, as well as every Trebhum and human that the Eternal Cylinder has killed.
Hive Mind: While the Trebhums have individual minds and personalities, they are able to access this genetic memory of their ancestors, as is the case of the newly-hatched one at the beginning that "remembered" its race's special abilities moments after birth.
Human All Along: He's actually a human who has been assimilated by the Eternal Cylinder.
Lemony Narrator: He has his moments, and really seems to enjoy talking about when the Trebhum act silly.
The Man Behind the Man: He's the Mathmatician.
Memory Jar: There are memories that the Cylinder stole from it. Those still exist inside the Cylinder.
Walking Spoiler: There's a reason this folder has so many spoilers.
Was Once a Man: He's actually the mental remains of a human who was assimilated by the Cylinder.
Wham Line: When the Narrator starts talking inside the Mathematician's mind to represent the voice in there, as opposed to trying to adjust his voice to sound like whoever is there, he uses his own voice, revealing that he is actually inside the Mathematician and is actually a human.

Characters / The Eternal Cylinder

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