Difference between revisions of "Fauna10"

Revision as of 02:53, 22 July 2011

General content: | Felaryan fauna | Felaryan flora | Races | Characters | Locations | History and Lore | Science and Magic | Culture and Customs | List of all available articles

The Felayan fauna is composed of many species from many worlds which makes it very varied and unpredictable. See also carnivorous plants and plant life. These pages feature mostly dangerous or remarkable creatures. There is many many others, from small animals to harmless herbivores, or unreported species that aren't listed here but exist and are part of the great Felarya food chain.

• Jungle fauna - page2 - page3

• Marsh fauna

• Aquatic fauna

• Rough terrain fauna

• Dungeon fauna

• Plains fauna

• Ice terrain fauna

• Dimensionally unstable terrain fauna

• Underground fauna

Threat Ranking:

• Minimal: A totally harmless being such as a mouse or a rabbit.
• Very Low: Mostly herbivores but who can still strike back if attacked.
• Low: Various animals such as felines.
• Moderate: A moderately dangerous Felaryan creature can still be very dangerous in another world. For example a great white shark would rank between Low and Moderate here...
• Medium: A predatory, dangerous and often man-eating creature.
• High: A great predator. Crisis is in this category.
• Very High: A top predator. This creature could take on a small army.
• Critical: In Felaryan scales, very few creatures reach this rank.
• Extreme: A guardian or a mythical creature. Only a god can hope to survive a confrontation with one of these.

Note that threat ranking is based on the threat that the creature represents for a normal human. It's not necessarily linked to the strength of the creature. For example the dryad Cypress would rank very low because she is very friendly to humans, yet she is a powerful being.

Jungle fauna

In jungle of perils

Land Urchin

Size: 30 to 50 feet
Threat: Low

Large globular creatures found mostly in the Jungle of Perils. Their spherical body is a bright red, covered by long and numerous spines. At first glance, they don't possess any visible eyes, legs, or means of propulsion. They do have legs though, but they very small, and allow the creature to move slowly about. Land urchins eat anything that come close enough to their mouth, hidden somewhere on their body. However, compared to most fauna of the zone, land urchins are not very dangerous. Some scientists long believed they are only eggs for a much larger creature though, and it has been recently established they were right. Land urchins are actually the egg form of the Exorilhogg, and immense space monster. Those leviathans are the stuff of nightmare, the kind of which would gnaw on a battlecruiser. Once the egg hatches, the creature just shoots out in to the sky and exits the atmosphere (and thus the Felaryan dimension), which explains why Felarya has been lucky so far to never see the ugly mug of an adult Exorilhogg.

Clobbersaurus

Size: 5 to 7 feet
Threat: Low

This man-sized upright built theropod is mostly found in the Jungle of Perils. It's also widely considered the single most frickin' annoying animal in Felarya by many residents. The clobbersaurus doesn't eat, drink, sleep or do anything except hop around and punch people in the face with its massive, bone-studded fists. The amount of muscle packed into each arm is incredible. It's been witnessed to knock harpies off their feet ! The clobbersaurus tends to pull its punches against humans and the like. No one's ever been decapitated or directly killed in any way by these creatures. Some scientists theorize that instead of pulling its punches, the clobbersaurus automatically adjusts its own personal physical laws so that each punch has only just enough force to knock its victim off their feet (or the equivalent). Nothing else is really known about these creatures. It almost seems as though they derive sustenance from beating people up. Not just people, in fact, as the clobbersaurus will go out of its way to knock anything with a face into the dirt, only to hop away before they can retaliate. Entire platoons of explorers have been given bloody noses by a single clobbersaurus.

Bloodclaw Ape

Size: 5 feet
Threat: Low to Critical in group

A rather small but frightening-looking creature. Bloodclaw apes possess glowing red eyes, ridiculously long arms, sharp fangs and very strong claws, hard as iron. They are very agile and incredibly ferocious, with a blood lust that makes them mindlessly attack the largest of predators... and if these predators see them they will actually flee rather than fight the apes! Indeed, bloodclaw apes are the most terrible threat in the entire jungle of peril. They usually travel in swarms more than twelve thousand strong, and they ravage all in their wake: trees and living beings both. If you ever hear their terrible and recognizable shouts, don't think, just flee. Where the bloodclaws swarms come from remain a mystery. They periodically warp in to the jungle of peril, laying waste to everything for miles around, then vanish just as quickly as they came. The cycle seems to repeat itself every few years. That seems to be a phenomenon that has repeated itself since time immemorial. Even tablets from the Ur-Sagol era mention them.

Dridder forest

Terror Hyena

Size: 40 feet tall
Threat: Medium

Virtually the Dridder forest’s version of the kensha beast, terror hyenas possess only four legs, though they do have poisonous claws like the kensha beast. Terror hyenas constantly laugh which adds to the eeriness of the forest. Although less strong and having less endurance than kensha beasts, these creatures are intelligent and are even able to speak some human words, which is rather freaky and unsettling in its own right. They often travel in packs of five or more, and when they have cornered their prey they always wear wide grins on their face while laughing, laughter that causes many of their prey to go mad.

Gulok

Size: 20 to 27 feet tall
Threat: Moderate

A strange bipedal creature. Their large, bulky body is vaguely reminiscent of that of a flightless running bird, with strong hind legs that the creature use to jump from branches to branches. It has clearly a reptilian appearance though, with a grey and rough scaly skin. It possesses no apparent eyes and a prominent and very large frog-like mouth. They hunt by throwing a weblike material from their mouth and use it like a net. Once the prey is ensnared, they pull the web-sack and its content back into their mouth where it is swallowed. Guloks are known to eat humans, but they don't represent the biggest danger out there. The creature is somewhat cowardly, and will flee at the first sign of serious opposition and they will never attack a group of adventurers, preferring isolated preys.

Skridion

Size: 3 to 5 inches
Threat: Very Low to High in swarms

The skridion is a mean and ferocious flying insect, found mostly in the eastern part of the dridder forest, toward the swamps. They are easily recognizable by the elongated, triangular shape of their wings, the red markings on their back. and their tail ended by a sting, vaguely similar to that of a scorpion. They live in large hives, usually built in the canopy. They form enormous swarms that will aggressively attack any intruder who have the bad luck of walking too close to the hive, be it a lone human or a giant naga. And skridions don't do things half way either, emptying the entire hive in seconds, in order to remove what they see as the threat. If you are the unfortunate target, you are as good as dead. The sting from a skridion is painful but not lethal, but being covered from head to toes by an angry swarm is. It's a serious threat, even for a giant predator, who will barely be able to see them but will definitely feel the thousands of stings. Skridions are believed to be insects who stayed behind after the fall of Supprozad, and thrived in the region, to the dismay of most other living creatures.

Umbra

Size: Varies
Threat: Medium

Long thought extinct in Felarya, several dozen of these creatures still exist in or around the Dridder forest. Because of their unique physiology, their form is never completely fixed. They continually phase in and out of the dimensions of Felarya, with the effect of essentially making them shape shifters of sorts. In their true form you could vaguely describe them as a sort of shadowy fog. Their most common hunting tactic is to conceal themselves in the roots of a tree, or on the ceiling of a cave, and wait for a small living creature to approach before surrounding and enveloping it. Umbras can stretch to remarkably long lengths, and because of their weightlessness they are able to travel with blinding speed through the air like a cloud. Strangely, their semi-corporeal form is as much a drawback as it is an advantage, as a strong wind that any human would mostly ignore would prove dangerous to an Umbra. They also have only a very small tolerance for injury and tend to flee a tough battle, only to come back and strike later. Indeed, if an umbra does find a suitable prey, it will relentlessly pursue it, feeling an unnatural compulsion to remove all evidence of their existence by devouring any who have seen them. Those who have claimed to have seen an umbra are thus usually cast out of their society due to the bad luck that the more superstitious people will see as surrounding them.

• Credits to Tankmasterxyz for the Terror hyena, to Rythmear for the Umbra, to Gregole for the Clobbersaurus, and to Oldman40k2003 for his great help at editing. ^_^