#benign creature

[spidermilkshake]

Ancardia's Unusual Animals--the Ningen

Classification: Monstrosity (arthropod)

Habitat: Antarctic ice shelf close to the poles, rarely in the shallow areas of antarctic seas.

            The Ningen is one of two large crustacean species of the open oceans that has long been subject to many superstitions and legends over the Ages. The ningen, however, avoided the worst of the strange tales for a long while by simply avoiding acknowledgement for a while; many Sostunian fishermen, whale-spotters, and seal-hunters have passed a browsing ningen by simply by moving calmly by and mistaking the top protruding carapace of the beast with a bit of floating iceberg. The ningen is overall slightly larger than its relative of the tropical seas, the umibozu, with a similar length but an average weight of 26,000 pounds. Similar to the umibozu, the ningen is mostly built of armored carapace chunks that protect it from most conditions and natural predators, with an underlying layer of buoyant fatty tissue further protecting the vital organs. The ningen’s diet only differs by slight amounts—the species lives mostly on larval crabs, fishes, and jellyfish, with the occasional fortunate happening across clouds of small krill.

            The Ningen avoided most research interest for a long time due to its remote habitat and its camouflaging coloration in such an environment: Exclusive to ice seas in the far south of the antarctic polar regions, the ningen’s adult color is a soft pearly white all over, including on the eyes and eye covers, and owing to this specie’s disinterest in spyhopping above the surface of the oceans, the nigen’s upper carapace ridges are easily mistaken for drifting icebergs. The ningen is harmless if unprovoked, and typically breeds every four years at the northern end of its range around several old volcanic reefs. Some four months later, smaller versions of the adults rejoin them at the polar south, leading most to believe the ningen use a sea turtle-like cycle of egg-laying and abandonment with a homing instinct built in to guide the surviving young to their ideal range.

[spidermilkshake]

Ancardia's Unusual Animals--the Umibozu

Classification: Beast (arthropod)

Habitat: Temperate seas off of the Ayn Coastlands and Silver Coasts.

            Umibozu are one of two species of open-ocean crustaceans which have attracted a huge amount of superstition and folklore legend amongst the Ancardian sailors for many Ages. For a long stretch of this time, truthful, evidence-based facts around this species were not widespread, and it is only in the late 12th Age that real research discovered several of the natural habits and behaviors of the Umibozu (with the Ningen to follow hundreds of years later, due to harsher conditions for research).

            The Umibozu is the smaller species of this surface-loving, open ocean species of peculiar crustacean, with a protruding, oval head with an eye and mouthpart placement that resembles a vaguely humanoid shape from a distance or through the distortion of water. It has a stubby body and elongate upper limbs with long, feathery plated fins, and a series of tail fins that extends from the end of its body like that of a lobster or shrimp. Adult Umibozu measure anywhere between 10 and 13 meters in length, and avoid most predation by living spread far apart in the pelagic seas of the surface, as well as being fairly nutritionally sparse due to a diet mostly made up of jellyfish, comb jellies, loose kelp and the odd clusters of copepod and diatom plankton. The plating of an Umibozu makes up roughly a quarter of its body weight, with much of the rest being a spongey fat tissue that assists in buoyancy and additional padding from harm over their vital organs. It is usually dark in color—either pure black, dark brown, or a mottled brown and deep green. The umibozu is well-known both in frightful legendary stories and modern tales of fishermen in the East Aulain Ocean as being fond of spy-hopping like a whale, which is thought to explain the older tales of it as a humanoid giant of the oceans. When its head and the base of its flipper limbs protrude above the sea surface for a moment or two, it can be misconstrued very easily as a human-like bald head and shoulders, especially if seen in dark or stormy weather (which is when the umibozu is most likely to spy above the sea surface). For the majority of the sunny and clear days, umibozu are largely invisible except to those passing directly beside them; they spend days and nights slowly trawling back and forth over open ranges of ocean after their tiny prey. At some times of high comb jelly and jellyfish reproduction, the umibozu emit a deep infrasound call to others of its kind, and large groups of it meet over shallow rises in the deep tropical oceans which had once been volcanically active. For a few weeks, the gathered umibozu seem to mate, then disperse, though no young are ever observed to emerge at the site of the gathering. Some time about four months later, tiny umibozu have been observed around tropical mangrove inlets in various places of the world, but so far no one has ever been able to confirm whether these young umibozu arise from drifting eggs, from migrating larva, or from young from live birth by adult umibozu in the area. The zoological world is still in a gridlock over what the exact method is…

            In terms of humanoid encounters, umibozu are fairly safe to encounter while swimming near sandbars, reefs, and boats. They usually ignore humanoids, but are sometimes drawn to the bright metallic shine of protective goggles or anti-shark chainmail. Some have reported that idle umibozu, especially those which are seen spy-hopping, are somewhat interested in humanoid divers and will allow them to safely approach. If harmed, most umibozu will flee at a surprising speed, but if left alone, umibozu are generally just floaty obstacles at the worst.