This post is part of the Immortal Naturalist's Guide series. The explanation for that series can be found in this post.
Climbing and scaling the golden pillars of Goldspire Island is a mysterious giant ape known as the Spire Crawler. The creature spends most of its time using its hardened fingertips to climb the pillars of the island, digging into the solid gold cylinders to cling to their surfaces. Despite its fearsome appearance, and the fact that it has a mouth, the Spire Crawler does not seem to eat anything, not even sand like the ape-like creatures who worship it. As far as I can tell, the creature is able to absorb energy through its claws from the gold of the spires themselves, and it only uses its sharp teeth in combat. The Spire Crawler spends all of its time not roaming the spires in its home, an ancient fort filled with apes from the desert on the other side of the island. These apes seem to worship the Spire Crawler, working to give it comfort in exchange for small amounts of pure gold scraped from the massive cylinders the Spire Crawler feeds on. Apparently, the apes that worship it are able to eat and digest the gold, as well as other metals and minerals, and they seem to get a lot of energy out of the gold they get from their master.
Aside from absorbing some kind of sustenance from gold, the Spire Crawler's claws are also powerful weapons. Each claw is also able to suck the life force out of living things, something the Spire Crawler is not often able to do in its dry, barren habitat. Each claw, upon close inspection, is actually hollow, like a venomous snake's fangs, and this shape, along with some quality of the claws themselves, removes energy from whatever is impaled on the end of the claws. The one and only thing that seems to really prevent this fate from befalling those who encounter the Spire Crawler is wool. Feeling wool on its claws is very distasteful to the Spire Crawler, to the point that it will even run away if it accidentally pierces some with its claws.
Within the Beast's lair, one can obtain obscene amounts of pure gold by simply joining the ranks of the worshipers and doing a good job. Finding the lair is difficult and dangerous due to its remoteness and harsh climate, but anyone who wants gold without needing to dig it out of the spires themselves will be in the perfect place. As far as I can tell, the Spire Crawler wants to be fanned and have the sand moved around into comfortable shapes to lie on, and it will give each of its helpful followers about three pounds of gold to eat every day. If you do not eat gold, you can hid this from the gold-eating apes and put away three pounds of gold every day. I am sure the Spire Crawler also has a large pile of gold dust in a room of the fort somewhere, but I was unable to find it during my stay.
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