Fantasy Biology: The Nuckelavee
At long last, the keenly awaited monstrous equid, the Nuckelavee of Scottish folklore.
I say ‘equid’ and not 'equine’ because it’s not really a horse, or at least not just a horse. It’s really horse-adjacent but that’s good enough for me. And frankly bizarre. At least all the other monster horses have been of a 'horse plus additional feature’ theme, but the Nuckelavee is something else.
An amoeba, specifically, but we’ll get to that.
The Nuckelavee, and there’s only ever one, they are always solitary, has a long list of fascinating features. Consider them for a moment, because that’s what my Patrons decided I should make a reasonably functional living thing out of.
On land, it looks like ‘a horse with the torso of a man emerging from its back where a rider would sit, but the torso’s arms are so long they touch the ground, and there are no man’s legs. The horse’s legs have fins. The human head is so large it lolls about, and the horse head (which may sometimes be a pig head) has a large mouth, sometimes described like that of a whale.
The horse head breathes a foul, toxic vapor which spreads disease to crops and livestock
Sometimes actually only has one head
Has no skin, instead you see the ‘pulsating muscles’ and black blood running through yellow veins.
But nobody, absolutely nobody, knows what it looks like in the water.
It finds fresh water aversive though, and will not cross it, nor come onto land when it is raining
Yet it is responsible for droughts
It is always, without exception, solitary.
And, you know, ‘always solitary’ isn’t really a viable trait to make a whole species out of, especially for one with such a variable appearance, which leads me to the following conclusion:
The Nuckelavee is a colony.
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