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Description

The fields of terrestrial algae that dominate the coastlines provide temporary yet abundant sustenance to a wide variety of creatures. They grow fast in the brief spring and summer, piling up at a rate of nearly a foot a week in optimal conditions, though this is offset by the frequent grazing courtesy of various giant herbivores. Depending on the predominating species and time of year these fields can be bright green, blood red, creamy and pale, or any mixture between the three. In northern regions the dominant algae are most often a green hairy variety resembling slimy, trampled grass, though during the cold winter months this gives way to a crimson-colored successor specialized for the lack of light. In other places the winter algae are brown or grey. Different herbivores prefer different kinds of algae, and different kinds of algae grow in different places at different times.

The algae, by virtue of its incredible growth and hardiness, has sustained diverse ecosystems of fauna great and small in a world that could otherwise not support them. Unfortunately, the lack of differing ecosystems means that virtually every animal is tied to the algae. In this world, to survive, one must either feed on the algae or feed on the things that eat the algae. Because they make for unstable footing, the slippery algae plains tend to favor the large, well defended megafaunal giants over small, swift creatures, who cannot run well on the moist substratum for risk of falling. As a result of the algae's prominence and near total domination of terrestrial landscapes, there is very little variety in the fauna compared to those of millennia past. Herbivores come in two basic varieties: burrowing worm-like creatures and several ton giants resembling crude parodies of elephants and rhinos. Carnivores are either burrowing worm-types themselves or large hunters adapted for tracking their prey over long distances, notably the infamous Drumjaww, who cannot run particularly fast but are well adapted for traversing snow and marshland by way of their wide, padded feet, stalking their bloated prey until the time is right. Also worth mentioning are holdovers from a better time, sapients who evolved in the diverse forests that once persisted in warmer regions and have held on through the harsh ice ages by virtue of their intelligence and adaptability. Despite seeming to be among the most advanced of animals, creatures like ogres and Atrox Sapients are actually living fossils, stragglers from a group that died out tens of millions of years ago.

Here by the coast, the algae grows especially rich and attracts numerous herbivores. Though images of crowded algae plains filled with lumbering giants may come to mind, these habitats are often quite barren and large congregations of animals are rare. A comparison can be found in the deep ocean. Empty and dark most of the time, but the usually scattered residents are brought together in droves by the occasional hydrothermal vent or whale fall. The algae plains mostly belong the worms, especially those that connect to the great tidal flats where the truly giant worms can be found. The bleak and nearly featureless surface is broken by the occasional herd of grazers, though these beasts rarely stay in the same place for long as they are constantly moving, both to find better pastures and elude the predators that often track them. Unlike their contemporaries, however, the pair of Jotun in the background have little to fear. They, a mother and her decade-old calf, have become separated from their pod, but that is relatively inconsequential to an animal that can kill most predators simply by making enough noise. They meander lazily along the flat terrain, making little note of the scene unfolding in the foreground in favor of their unending quest for food.

An immense marine worm has washed up along the edges of the tidal flats, pushed ashore by frothing waves of disturbed sediment and red algae. A day of rotting in the sun has already lured out a huge number of worms and wyrms from their burrows in the mud, as well as a pair of scavenging Nephilim and Atrox Hogs. Most of the scavengers cannot cut the flesh with their own feeding apparatuses, so they must wait for the Nephilim to open up the soft flesh within by way of immensely powerful clawed arms and primitive knives. Despite their hunger, the Nephilim are kind enough to cut in a few places, allowing the smaller animals to feed alongside the hyperintelligent giants. The fatty hide of this polar sea worm will sustain them for weeks on end.

1: Jotun

Jotun are megafaunal, predominantly herbivorous, and the last of an ancient lineage. Large adults are comparable to the biggest sauropod dinosaurs at 50-60 tons in weight, though most individuals reach an average of 30-40 tons. They are tall, bipedal, and despite their slow and seemingly unbalanced nature they are immensely powerful creatures. Curiously, many of the Jotun's extinct relatives were forest-dwelling browsers similar to elk and moose. They had flexed limbs like theropod dinosaurs and a leaner build, which meant they could run quickly. They were also much smaller, at just a few thousand pounds in weight. Jotun are an outlier in their family, having developed their size relatively quickly in response to the lowering temperatures and rich food source in the form of the algae. While their legs are now columnar and layered with immense quantities of fat and muscle, a look at the structure within would betray their ancestry as fast-running, agile creatures. Another relict of this past are their radulae, which, in an incredibly disturbing spectacle, can extend from their mouths some twenty to thirty feet in order to reach the ground. This feeding organ, usually kept curled and warm within a pouch in the Jotun's throat, is slimy, phallic, and highly mobile. Like an elephant's trunk, it allows the animal to feed off the ground despite their immense height, vacuuming up hundreds of pounds of algae (as well as any small animals inside the algae) a day. Indiscriminate in their food preferences, Jotun tend to walk and eat without a care as to the type of algae they are eating. Like many other "herbivores", they frequently supplement their diet with meat, and may show interest in the gigantic carcass before them.

In some ways these creatures are very elephantine. They live in matriarchal pods led by old, experienced females, with the larger and more aggressive bulls tending to be solitary. While the female-led pods migrate south every winter, the bulls stick behind in the freezing tundra, defending their immense swathes of territory from rivals and living off their plentiful fat stores. When spring comes and the pod returns, the bulls will be able to mate with any females that choose to feed in their territory, gorging themselves on algae all the while. The violent bloodbath of winter is forgotten, and the pods find themselves greeted by exhausted and heavily scarred gentleman suitors. Reproducing poses the greatest threat to Jotun of both sexes. Most males are killed on their first winter alone, gored to death by older, larger rivals in their efforts to stake and defend territory. Many young females often come under threat in the warm months when met with unwelcome advances by very large and very promiscuous bulls. Not to mention the arduous pregnancy they must endure afterwards, developed a one-ton calf over the course of four years. It is a slow process in part because of the scarcity of food during winter. Even in the warmer and comparatively well-lit south (grey, overcast skies as opposed to pitch darkness), food grows poorly and thus the female Jotun cycle between periods of feast and famine, albeit at a lesser extreme than their mates.

Jotun exhibit noticeable sexual dimorphism for an odd reason. While males are larger, as with most big and aggressive herbivores, it is the females who have the biggest and showiest tusks. Male Jotun have comparatively short tusks that curve halfway around and jut straight outwards, as if meant for stabbing, while female Jotun have immense tusks that nearly reach the ground in older individuals and curve flamboyantly. This is because the two genders use them for completely different reasons. As adult Jotun have no natural predators, they instead repurpose their tusks for, in the case of the males, fighting rivals, and, in the case of the females, defending calves. A Jotun bull's short tusks, though unimpressive, are excellent for fighting other bulls. Their compact nature means they can easily be driven into an opponent's flesh or catch a blow from a rival. The large and clumsy tusks of the females, though showy, work poorly in a fight and are very resource-intensive to grow. Short, sturdy tusks are far more deadly in a fight. Ironically, this actually makes conflict between bulls safer, as Jotun are much less likely to engage a close rival in an outright physical fight knowing that one wrong move could result in a pair of ten-foot blades being driven up their throats. They often resort to vocal displays and mock fights, excepting the young and foolish bulls who are bullied mercilessly. Female Jotun have a more defensive use for their tusks. While they themselves are not hunted, their calves are veritable feasts for any number of predators. As a result, female Jotun have long, curved tusks that nearly reach the ground, allowing them to sweep any possibly threats right off their feet. Though deadly against fellow giants, a bull Jotun's tusks do not reach the ground and would be useless in defending a calf.

Both sexes, however, share the unique weapon of sound. Jotun are loud. Terrifyingly so. When agitated, they sound like some odd cross between foghorns and trains, only much, much louder. This is devastating to smaller creatures, whose eardrums will literally explode if caught too close to the source. Larger animals often end up stunned and deaf for life. As a result, animals very rarely trifle with Jotun. Even their fellow herbivores give them a wide berth. When hunting calves, predators resort to hit and run tactics and attempt to bleed their victim out, not willing to wrestle it down for fear of their immense mothers. For those of you that recall the story I wrote involving a Drumjaww killing and eating an injured Jotun bull, it was only possible due to the bull having had his breathing vents (and thus means of vocalizing) torn open by his rival. Otherwise, the brute would simply be too loud to approach.

2: Nephilim

Nephilim are a kind of immense, migratory sapient roughly the size of large grizzly bears. Similarly powerful, they specialize upon hunting large herbivores whom they can kill and rip apart with ease. Their forearms are disproportionately large and armored with thick, rubbery skin, terminating in strong but dexterous fingers equipped with wickedly curved talons. This allows them to forage efficiently with or without tools, though the long claws often make delicate tasks difficult. Formerly civilized, present hardship has forced the remaining Nephilim to adopt a more primitive social structure, travelling in small family units in a constant search for food. Unable to properly run, they are nonetheless highly efficient walkers and more than capable of keeping up with the immense rhinos and mastodons that form their diet. Their feeding proboscises, long, delicate structures resembling an anteater's tongue, betray their past as forest dwellers who "grazed" on the liquid innards of pillar trees and probed the muck for worms. As they grew more intelligent and thus required richer food sources, the switch was made towards big game.

Due to their size and harsh lifestyle, Nephilim grow slowly and die young. Their offspring are huge and altricial. Unable to walk until they are nearly five years old, they spend their lives riding on their mother's backs, nourished by regurgitated liquid flesh they drink out of a special pouch in her throat. At about a decade they can use tools, communicate effectively, and participate in hunts, thought they are still fairly childish and inexperienced. At about fifteen years of age, they are fully grown and already developing numerous back and joint problems that will plague them until their deaths. Most Nephilim die at about twenty years of age. It is most often their knees or lower back that give way, leaving them to be cannibalized by friends and relatives left with no other options. Nephilim are so large that they recover poorly, most often not at all, from such injuries. And considering that they must constantly migrate in search of more prey, the alternative to killing an injured tribemate is to simply abandon them to die or sit there and starve with them. Though it is a cruel fate, dying Nephilim willingly allow themselves to be killed in order to sustain those they love. Because they have such a small window to reproduce, females usually give birth only once in their lifetime and often die before their baby can care for itself, leaving it in the hands of its friends and relatives. Thankfully, despite their brutal lifestyle and carnivorous nature the Nephilim make for caring (and incredibly powerful) guardians.

Nephilim are master orators and, owing to their enlarged resonating organs. They can communicate even when miles apart and exploit this ability in order to coordinate hunts and avoid the territory of rivals.

3: Hammerhead Worm

A member of that old and numerous lineage of air-breathing, backboned, wrinkly-skinned “worms”, the Hammerhead can reach lengths of 120 feet and weigh thirty to forty tons. Like most other marine worms and wyrms they tend to stick to shallower waters no deeper than a few hundred feet. This is because they, with their lengthy, streamlined bodies and weak paddled tails, function primarily as immense bottom feeders. There is no whale analogue here, that title belongs to great tentacled gulping beasts and blind, Lovecraftian piscines miles offshore. Instead, the Hammerhead Worm writhes and coils in the dark shade between open water and the tidal flats, nosing around in the cloudy, nutrient-rich water in a constant search for food. Peaceful creatures, the great worms trawl the murky underworld vacuuming up immense quantities of sediment, which they promptly filter out in favor of the organic bits (including numerous small animals) hidden within. Frequently they feed at the surface, devouring the sheets of algae the shade the cool waters below. In this sense they act as one of the coast’s primary ecosystem engineers, clearing pathways through the algae so light can reach the bottom, allowing the growth of the subsurface algae on which many creatures depend.

Hammerhead Worms are, by comparison to their contemporaries, endowed with excellent vision. A pair of large, armored plates behind their head are covered in photoreceptors, allowing the worm to track sunlight and thus the seasons upon which it regulates its life. Like terrestrial herbivores the worms follow the sun and thus the algae, moving up north in warmer times and down south during the infamous “deep cold”.

Their distinctive hammer-shaped head is lined with sensors that allow them to search out food under water. Highly tactile, these sensors can differentiate between different kinds of food near instantly as well as warn the worm of dangerous areas, stretches of ocean where the algae is toxic and would fatally poison them if ingested. It is quite sturdy and reinforced with bone, so that, when threatened, the worm can employ it to disastrous effect. Not that much can threaten a 120-foot marine worm. This then finds its primary use in defending offspring, as the mother worm is in fact a dedicated parent, birthing five or more worm babies that, despite being precocial, will live with their immense guardian for up to two years before striking it off on their own.

4: Atrox Hogs

Atrox Hogs are common and generalized omnivores. They average 300 pounds in weight but can grow much larger given enough time and food. Social but not closely bonded with each other, the hogs form hordes of up to five hundred individuals, travelling the wastes in search of food. They eat anything: algae, bacteria, lichen, slime molds, fungi, mud, feces, bones, skin, carrion, small animals. In sufficient numbers they will not hesitate to chase predators off their kills and devour smaller animals alive. Though common prey of Atrox Sapients, the hogs will not hesitate to turn the tables if given the opportunity, and they frequently conflict with the sapients over caves and burrows, equally valuable to both parties but impossible to be shared. Their radulae are short, broad, and muscular, equipped with tooth-like blades inside that allow them to grind and slice with ease. Hordes of these hogs can be incredibly destructive when they forage in the already depleted pillar forests, owing to their unsavory habit of ripping apart vast swathes of trees and trampling what remains. Knowing this, many of the forests' larger herbivores will attack the hogs on sight, aggressively driving them off. As the hogs tend to prefer the open plains, they are often unwitting to the ways of stealthy forest predators and make for easy meals. Such a fate has befallen the young hog seen above, though its predator may not be much luckier. Unlike their Earth namesake, Atrox Hogs are incredibly stupid and are actually smaller relatives of the planet's "elephants" and "hippos", resembling a hog only at first glance. They communicate by clicking and chirping, though when provoked they do tend to screech like frightened pigs.

5: Ice Wyrm

Named more so for their pale coloration than their affiliation with northern environments, the Ice Wyrms reach sizes comparable to a large monitor lizard and are somewhat similar in their ecological role. Most of the year these small, opportunistic predators are hidden several feet underground, curled up in burrows they dug beneath the muck or small corners in caves. In nature they are slow and sluggish but capable of surprising bursts of speed, though they rarely employ this as most of their prey is found underground. During the brief period of light and (relative) warmth the Ice Wyrms emerge in a feeding frenzy, prowling the algae marshes in an insatiable search for small prey. Never one to pass down a good meal, they frequently scavenge and will occasionally attack animals larger than themselves, even small Atrox Hogs. Prey is incapacitated by way of an extensible, knife-like proboscis that quickly slices arteries and snaps spines, upon striking its quarry once the wyrm will usually not have to do so again and can feed at leisure.

Their padded feet are excellent both for digging and traversing unsteady terrain, and so the Ice Wyrms will often forage on the tidal flats, digging below the surface in order to extract soft-bodied, burrowing creatures more marine than terrestrial. These wyrms can and will swim, but a number of marine predators writhing in the black waters just offshore usually discourage them.

6: Muck Phallus

Yes, that is their name.

A kind of meter-long, burrowing worm, the Muck Phallus is a very primitive member of the worm family, slimy in texture without limbs or notable features to speak of (well…). However, it is in fact a vertebrate, and perhaps the most numerous kind in these marshy stretches cycling between summer birth and winter death. They breed rapidly, giving live birth to hundreds of tiny miniatures of their parents, but practice little parental care. The young worms disperse beneath the algae, where they eat virtually anything capable of being eaten. They reach full size by the end of the warmer months, hibernate in winter, and emerge the next season to make worm babies of their own. A healthy Muck Phallus may live five years and birth thousands of young, ensuring an ongoing dynasty in the face of frequent predation.

7: Stiffback

Dwarfed by the carcass it is burrowing into, the Stiffback is nonetheless the size of a crocodile, measuring twelve feet in length and weighing well over three hundred pounds. A kind of large, terrestrial wyrm, Stiffbacks follow a lifestyle similar to the aforementioned Ice Wyrms but grow much larger, maxing out at twenty feet in length. They are thickly set and padded with muscle and fat, allowing them to burrow efficiently and tolerate the cold but reducing their mobility, hence the name. Shy by nature, Stiffbacks are rarely seen above ground unless drawn out by a carcass such as this. They prefer to nose about under the mud and amidst the sturdier regions of the tidal flats, devouring smaller wyrms, worms, and the occasional Atrox Hog or Sapient ambushed above the surface. Though they tend to overwinter in extensive burrows they dig themselves, large congregations can occasionally be found deep in caves, where they retain some level of activity and pose a threat to Atrox Sapients, who also shelter in caves and are small enough to be considered prey. The Stiffbacks themselves are not without predators, as when caught above the surface they are vulnerable to Drumjaww, Nephilim, and tribes of Atrox Sapients. The southernmost populations can also come under assault by large Quattors and even larger wyrms.

Devoted parents, Stiffbacks are monogamous and give birth to 1-2 altricial young. The new wyrm pups are soft and vulnerable, never leaving the burrow in which they shelter until they are three months old, and even then, they stay close to their parents. The parent wyrms take turns guarding their offspring and foraging for food, which is regurgitated back at the burrow for the young wyrms to feed upon. Because of its environment, the Stiffback is partially endothermic, but reverts back to ectothermy in colder times in order to conserve energy. A similar phenomenon is seen in the Ice Wyrms. While being warm-blooded may be beneficial in the frigid north, the winters are so cold and desolate there is no food to be found, and thus no point in activity. In fact, the wyrms have a slight advantage over creatures like the Jotun, who are warm-blooded year-round and must develop thick stores of fat to survive.

Description

The fields of terrestrial algae that dominate the coastlines provide temporary yet abundant sustenance to a wide variety of creatures. They grow fast in the brief spring and summer, piling up at a rate of nearly a foot a week in optimal conditions, though this is offset by the frequent grazing courtesy of various giant herbivores. Depending on the predominating species and time of year these fields can be bright green, blood red, creamy and pale, or any mixture between the three. In northern regions the dominant algae are most often a green hairy variety resembling slimy, trampled grass, though during the cold winter months this gives way to a crimson-colored successor specialized for the lack of light. In other places the winter algae are brown or grey. Different herbivores prefer different kinds of algae, and different kinds of algae grow in different places at different times.

The algae, by virtue of its incredible growth and hardiness, has sustained diverse ecosystems of fauna great and small in a world that could otherwise not support them. Unfortunately, the lack of differing ecosystems means that virtually every animal is tied to the algae. In this world, to survive, one must either feed on the algae or feed on the things that eat the algae. Because they make for unstable footing, the slippery algae plains tend to favor the large, well defended megafaunal giants over small, swift creatures, who cannot run well on the moist substratum for risk of falling. As a result of the algae's prominence and near total domination of terrestrial landscapes, there is very little variety in the fauna compared to those of millennia past. Herbivores come in two basic varieties: burrowing worm-like creatures and several ton giants resembling crude parodies of elephants and rhinos. Carnivores are either burrowing worm-types themselves or large hunters adapted for tracking their prey over long distances, notably the infamous Drumjaww, who cannot run particularly fast but are well adapted for traversing snow and marshland by way of their wide, padded feet, stalking their bloated prey until the time is right. Also worth mentioning are holdovers from a better time, sapients who evolved in the diverse forests that once persisted in warmer regions and have held on through the harsh ice ages by virtue of their intelligence and adaptability. Despite seeming to be among the most advanced of animals, creatures like ogres and Atrox Sapients are actually living fossils, stragglers from a group that died out tens of millions of years ago.

Here by the coast, the algae grows especially rich and attracts numerous herbivores. Though images of crowded algae plains filled with lumbering giants may come to mind, these habitats are often quite barren and large congregations of animals are rare. A comparison can be found in the deep ocean. Empty and dark most of the time, but the usually scattered residents are brought together in droves by the occasional hydrothermal vent or whale fall. The algae plains mostly belong the worms, especially those that connect to the great tidal flats where the truly giant worms can be found. The bleak and nearly featureless surface is broken by the occasional herd of grazers, though these beasts rarely stay in the same place for long as they are constantly moving, both to find better pastures and elude the predators that often track them. Unlike their contemporaries, however, the pair of Jotun in the background have little to fear. They, a mother and her decade-old calf, have become separated from their pod, but that is relatively inconsequential to an animal that can kill most predators simply by making enough noise. They meander lazily along the flat terrain, making little note of the scene unfolding in the foreground in favor of their unending quest for food.

An immense marine worm has washed up along the edges of the tidal flats, pushed ashore by frothing waves of disturbed sediment and red algae. A day of rotting in the sun has already lured out a huge number of worms and wyrms from their burrows in the mud, as well as a pair of scavenging Nephilim and Atrox Hogs. Most of the scavengers cannot cut the flesh with their own feeding apparatuses, so they must wait for the Nephilim to open up the soft flesh within by way of immensely powerful clawed arms and primitive knives. Despite their hunger, the Nephilim are kind enough to cut in a few places, allowing the smaller animals to feed alongside the hyperintelligent giants. The fatty hide of this polar sea worm will sustain them for weeks on end.

1: Jotun

Jotun are megafaunal, predominantly herbivorous, and the last of an ancient lineage. Large adults are comparable to the biggest sauropod dinosaurs at 50-60 tons in weight, though most individuals reach an average of 30-40 tons. They are tall, bipedal, and despite their slow and seemingly unbalanced nature they are immensely powerful creatures. Curiously, many of the Jotun's extinct relatives were forest-dwelling browsers similar to elk and moose. They had flexed limbs like theropod dinosaurs and a leaner build, which meant they could run quickly. They were also much smaller, at just a few thousand pounds in weight. Jotun are an outlier in their family, having developed their size relatively quickly in response to the lowering temperatures and rich food source in the form of the algae. While their legs are now columnar and layered with immense quantities of fat and muscle, a look at the structure within would betray their ancestry as fast-running, agile creatures. Another relict of this past are their radulae, which, in an incredibly disturbing spectacle, can extend from their mouths some twenty to thirty feet in order to reach the ground. This feeding organ, usually kept curled and warm within a pouch in the Jotun's throat, is slimy, phallic, and highly mobile. Like an elephant's trunk, it allows the animal to feed off the ground despite their immense height, vacuuming up hundreds of pounds of algae (as well as any small animals inside the algae) a day. Indiscriminate in their food preferences, Jotun tend to walk and eat without a care as to the type of algae they are eating. Like many other "herbivores", they frequently supplement their diet with meat, and may show interest in the gigantic carcass before them.

In some ways these creatures are very elephantine. They live in matriarchal pods led by old, experienced females, with the larger and more aggressive bulls tending to be solitary. While the female-led pods migrate south every winter, the bulls stick behind in the freezing tundra, defending their immense swathes of territory from rivals and living off their plentiful fat stores. When spring comes and the pod returns, the bulls will be able to mate with any females that choose to feed in their territory, gorging themselves on algae all the while. The violent bloodbath of winter is forgotten, and the pods find themselves greeted by exhausted and heavily scarred gentleman suitors. Reproducing poses the greatest threat to Jotun of both sexes. Most males are killed on their first winter alone, gored to death by older, larger rivals in their efforts to stake and defend territory. Many young females often come under threat in the warm months when met with unwelcome advances by very large and very promiscuous bulls. Not to mention the arduous pregnancy they must endure afterwards, developed a one-ton calf over the course of four years. It is a slow process in part because of the scarcity of food during winter. Even in the warmer and comparatively well-lit south (grey, overcast skies as opposed to pitch darkness), food grows poorly and thus the female Jotun cycle between periods of feast and famine, albeit at a lesser extreme than their mates.

Jotun exhibit noticeable sexual dimorphism for an odd reason. While males are larger, as with most big and aggressive herbivores, it is the females who have the biggest and showiest tusks. Male Jotun have comparatively short tusks that curve halfway around and jut straight outwards, as if meant for stabbing, while female Jotun have immense tusks that nearly reach the ground in older individuals and curve flamboyantly. This is because the two genders use them for completely different reasons. As adult Jotun have no natural predators, they instead repurpose their tusks for, in the case of the males, fighting rivals, and, in the case of the females, defending calves. A Jotun bull's short tusks, though unimpressive, are excellent for fighting other bulls. Their compact nature means they can easily be driven into an opponent's flesh or catch a blow from a rival. The large and clumsy tusks of the females, though showy, work poorly in a fight and are very resource-intensive to grow. Short, sturdy tusks are far more deadly in a fight. Ironically, this actually makes conflict between bulls safer, as Jotun are much less likely to engage a close rival in an outright physical fight knowing that one wrong move could result in a pair of ten-foot blades being driven up their throats. They often resort to vocal displays and mock fights, excepting the young and foolish bulls who are bullied mercilessly. Female Jotun have a more defensive use for their tusks. While they themselves are not hunted, their calves are veritable feasts for any number of predators. As a result, female Jotun have long, curved tusks that nearly reach the ground, allowing them to sweep any possibly threats right off their feet. Though deadly against fellow giants, a bull Jotun's tusks do not reach the ground and would be useless in defending a calf.

Both sexes, however, share the unique weapon of sound. Jotun are loud. Terrifyingly so. When agitated, they sound like some odd cross between foghorns and trains, only much, much louder. This is devastating to smaller creatures, whose eardrums will literally explode if caught too close to the source. Larger animals often end up stunned and deaf for life. As a result, animals very rarely trifle with Jotun. Even their fellow herbivores give them a wide berth. When hunting calves, predators resort to hit and run tactics and attempt to bleed their victim out, not willing to wrestle it down for fear of their immense mothers. For those of you that recall the story I wrote involving a Drumjaww killing and eating an injured Jotun bull, it was only possible due to the bull having had his breathing vents (and thus means of vocalizing) torn open by his rival. Otherwise, the brute would simply be too loud to approach.

2: Nephilim

Nephilim are a kind of immense, migratory sapient roughly the size of large grizzly bears. Similarly powerful, they specialize upon hunting large herbivores whom they can kill and rip apart with ease. Their forearms are disproportionately large and armored with thick, rubbery skin, terminating in strong but dexterous fingers equipped with wickedly curved talons. This allows them to forage efficiently with or without tools, though the long claws often make delicate tasks difficult. Formerly civilized, present hardship has forced the remaining Nephilim to adopt a more primitive social structure, travelling in small family units in a constant search for food. Unable to properly run, they are nonetheless highly efficient walkers and more than capable of keeping up with the immense rhinos and mastodons that form their diet. Their feeding proboscises, long, delicate structures resembling an anteater's tongue, betray their past as forest dwellers who "grazed" on the liquid innards of pillar trees and probed the muck for worms. As they grew more intelligent and thus required richer food sources, the switch was made towards big game.

Due to their size and harsh lifestyle, Nephilim grow slowly and die young. Their offspring are huge and altricial. Unable to walk until they are nearly five years old, they spend their lives riding on their mother's backs, nourished by regurgitated liquid flesh they drink out of a special pouch in her throat. At about a decade they can use tools, communicate effectively, and participate in hunts, thought they are still fairly childish and inexperienced. At about fifteen years of age, they are fully grown and already developing numerous back and joint problems that will plague them until their deaths. Most Nephilim die at about twenty years of age. It is most often their knees or lower back that give way, leaving them to be cannibalized by friends and relatives left with no other options. Nephilim are so large that they recover poorly, most often not at all, from such injuries. And considering that they must constantly migrate in search of more prey, the alternative to killing an injured tribemate is to simply abandon them to die or sit there and starve with them. Though it is a cruel fate, dying Nephilim willingly allow themselves to be killed in order to sustain those they love. Because they have such a small window to reproduce, females usually give birth only once in their lifetime and often die before their baby can care for itself, leaving it in the hands of its friends and relatives. Thankfully, despite their brutal lifestyle and carnivorous nature the Nephilim make for caring (and incredibly powerful) guardians.

Nephilim are master orators and, owing to their enlarged resonating organs. They can communicate even when miles apart and exploit this ability in order to coordinate hunts and avoid the territory of rivals.

3: Hammerhead Worm

A member of that old and numerous lineage of air-breathing, backboned, wrinkly-skinned “worms”, the Hammerhead can reach lengths of 120 feet and weigh thirty to forty tons. Like most other marine worms and wyrms they tend to stick to shallower waters no deeper than a few hundred feet. This is because they, with their lengthy, streamlined bodies and weak paddled tails, function primarily as immense bottom feeders. There is no whale analogue here, that title belongs to great tentacled gulping beasts and blind, Lovecraftian piscines miles offshore. Instead, the Hammerhead Worm writhes and coils in the dark shade between open water and the tidal flats, nosing around in the cloudy, nutrient-rich water in a constant search for food. Peaceful creatures, the great worms trawl the murky underworld vacuuming up immense quantities of sediment, which they promptly filter out in favor of the organic bits (including numerous small animals) hidden within. Frequently they feed at the surface, devouring the sheets of algae the shade the cool waters below. In this sense they act as one of the coast’s primary ecosystem engineers, clearing pathways through the algae so light can reach the bottom, allowing the growth of the subsurface algae on which many creatures depend.

Hammerhead Worms are, by comparison to their contemporaries, endowed with excellent vision. A pair of large, armored plates behind their head are covered in photoreceptors, allowing the worm to track sunlight and thus the seasons upon which it regulates its life. Like terrestrial herbivores the worms follow the sun and thus the algae, moving up north in warmer times and down south during the infamous “deep cold”.

Their distinctive hammer-shaped head is lined with sensors that allow them to search out food under water. Highly tactile, these sensors can differentiate between different kinds of food near instantly as well as warn the worm of dangerous areas, stretches of ocean where the algae is toxic and would fatally poison them if ingested. It is quite sturdy and reinforced with bone, so that, when threatened, the worm can employ it to disastrous effect. Not that much can threaten a 120-foot marine worm. This then finds its primary use in defending offspring, as the mother worm is in fact a dedicated parent, birthing five or more worm babies that, despite being precocial, will live with their immense guardian for up to two years before striking it off on their own.

4: Atrox Hogs

Atrox Hogs are common and generalized omnivores. They average 300 pounds in weight but can grow much larger given enough time and food. Social but not closely bonded with each other, the hogs form hordes of up to five hundred individuals, travelling the wastes in search of food. They eat anything: algae, bacteria, lichen, slime molds, fungi, mud, feces, bones, skin, carrion, small animals. In sufficient numbers they will not hesitate to chase predators off their kills and devour smaller animals alive. Though common prey of Atrox Sapients, the hogs will not hesitate to turn the tables if given the opportunity, and they frequently conflict with the sapients over caves and burrows, equally valuable to both parties but impossible to be shared. Their radulae are short, broad, and muscular, equipped with tooth-like blades inside that allow them to grind and slice with ease. Hordes of these hogs can be incredibly destructive when they forage in the already depleted pillar forests, owing to their unsavory habit of ripping apart vast swathes of trees and trampling what remains. Knowing this, many of the forests' larger herbivores will attack the hogs on sight, aggressively driving them off. As the hogs tend to prefer the open plains, they are often unwitting to the ways of stealthy forest predators and make for easy meals. Such a fate has befallen the young hog seen above, though its predator may not be much luckier. Unlike their Earth namesake, Atrox Hogs are incredibly stupid and are actually smaller relatives of the planet's "elephants" and "hippos", resembling a hog only at first glance. They communicate by clicking and chirping, though when provoked they do tend to screech like frightened pigs.

5: Ice Wyrm

Named more so for their pale coloration than their affiliation with northern environments, the Ice Wyrms reach sizes comparable to a large monitor lizard and are somewhat similar in their ecological role. Most of the year these small, opportunistic predators are hidden several feet underground, curled up in burrows they dug beneath the muck or small corners in caves. In nature they are slow and sluggish but capable of surprising bursts of speed, though they rarely employ this as most of their prey is found underground. During the brief period of light and (relative) warmth the Ice Wyrms emerge in a feeding frenzy, prowling the algae marshes in an insatiable search for small prey. Never one to pass down a good meal, they frequently scavenge and will occasionally attack animals larger than themselves, even small Atrox Hogs. Prey is incapacitated by way of an extensible, knife-like proboscis that quickly slices arteries and snaps spines, upon striking its quarry once the wyrm will usually not have to do so again and can feed at leisure.

Their padded feet are excellent both for digging and traversing unsteady terrain, and so the Ice Wyrms will often forage on the tidal flats, digging below the surface in order to extract soft-bodied, burrowing creatures more marine than terrestrial. These wyrms can and will swim, but a number of marine predators writhing in the black waters just offshore usually discourage them.

6: Muck Phallus

Yes, that is their name.

A kind of meter-long, burrowing worm, the Muck Phallus is a very primitive member of the worm family, slimy in texture without limbs or notable features to speak of (well…). However, it is in fact a vertebrate, and perhaps the most numerous kind in these marshy stretches cycling between summer birth and winter death. They breed rapidly, giving live birth to hundreds of tiny miniatures of their parents, but practice little parental care. The young worms disperse beneath the algae, where they eat virtually anything capable of being eaten. They reach full size by the end of the warmer months, hibernate in winter, and emerge the next season to make worm babies of their own. A healthy Muck Phallus may live five years and birth thousands of young, ensuring an ongoing dynasty in the face of frequent predation.

7: Stiffback

Dwarfed by the carcass it is burrowing into, the Stiffback is nonetheless the size of a crocodile, measuring twelve feet in length and weighing well over three hundred pounds. A kind of large, terrestrial wyrm, Stiffbacks follow a lifestyle similar to the aforementioned Ice Wyrms but grow much larger, maxing out at twenty feet in length. They are thickly set and padded with muscle and fat, allowing them to burrow efficiently and tolerate the cold but reducing their mobility, hence the name. Shy by nature, Stiffbacks are rarely seen above ground unless drawn out by a carcass such as this. They prefer to nose about under the mud and amidst the sturdier regions of the tidal flats, devouring smaller wyrms, worms, and the occasional Atrox Hog or Sapient ambushed above the surface. Though they tend to overwinter in extensive burrows they dig themselves, large congregations can occasionally be found deep in caves, where they retain some level of activity and pose a threat to Atrox Sapients, who also shelter in caves and are small enough to be considered prey. The Stiffbacks themselves are not without predators, as when caught above the surface they are vulnerable to Drumjaww, Nephilim, and tribes of Atrox Sapients. The southernmost populations can also come under assault by large Quattors and even larger wyrms.

Devoted parents, Stiffbacks are monogamous and give birth to 1-2 altricial young. The new wyrm pups are soft and vulnerable, never leaving the burrow in which they shelter until they are three months old, and even then, they stay close to their parents. The parent wyrms take turns guarding their offspring and foraging for food, which is regurgitated back at the burrow for the young wyrms to feed upon. Because of its environment, the Stiffback is partially endothermic, but reverts back to ectothermy in colder times in order to conserve energy. A similar phenomenon is seen in the Ice Wyrms. While being warm-blooded may be beneficial in the frigid north, the winters are so cold and desolate there is no food to be found, and thus no point in activity. In fact, the wyrms have a slight advantage over creatures like the Jotun, who are warm-blooded year-round and must develop thick stores of fat to survive.