#nichetember

[spookygibberish]

Day 3 - Secondary consumer

The Bluethief (Chalybicleps bicolor) is a small Doghawk which feeds primarily on insects (including the Deceitful Hornback), though will readily consume small vertebrates should the opportunity present itself, including songmice up to half its own size.

[tetrameryxx]

I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT NICHETEMBER!! I was just dumb and chose to illustrate a mosaic for effect. Yes I drew all those pebbles myself, yes it was tedious.

Tertiary consumer

Kǎkhtǎtsechgǎ, or blue-faced hammerfowl, are large flightless birds with a terrifying club on the ends of their bare naked wings. They mostly prey on mammals, like small species of horses or jackals, as well as hunting dogs and wandering cats. They are fairly aggressive, and will club and kick humans that get too close, regardless of edibility.

They are highly mobile with strong legs and a long gait, and travel in small flocks when younger. The clubs are also used during the breeding season by males in adversarial 'boxing matches'. The edge habitat along copses of thornscrub and taller arid grasslands is preferred.

Akkrazarans from the area generally hold them in respect, though with the recent influx of traders from the south, fatal encounters with humans have risen. They are not an easy meal.

[moryonenn]

Nichetember 10

Vakju are small, hard-shelled herbivores that forage on the ground with their dexterous front limbs. When threatened they curl up into their shell.

[wormflesh]

I decided to join in on doing Nichetember because I've been burning for worldbuilding stuff lately and it sounds really fun . I love thinking of ways things are connected!

Day 1- producer/ autotroph

Zukule, a lichen type organism that feeds from the abundant iron in Vakkian rocks (or.. iron-like substance), it's found abundantly on cave walls and more fresh breakdown piles.

The taller part of it appears fist and the spore producing parts are the big leafy parts.

[enteragoodnamehere]

Nichetember Day 1 & 2 - haiii these are a day late bc I only decided I wanted to do this for September like. yesterday evening lmao. They're also very messy/sketchy/etc bc I'm trying to take it easy. I always burn myself out on challenges like these and I don't want to do that this time!! uhh yeah more info & images below the cut :-]

So for this I decided I wanted to focus mostly on a desert/arid ecosystem on a (still currently unnamed) mostly-arid planet in the Dead God Whalefall universe. So all (or most, we'll see) of these creatures I'm gonna be developing are desert creatures

Day 1 - Producer/Autotroph

I've been calling these "Bulbous Halobush(es)" in my head as I draw/write. They're small, low to the ground plants that form a ring of "stalks" around a central "bulb". The stalks have small, prickly leaves that get more dense towards the tips. The leaves curve inwards slightly, both to help reduce the amount of direct light they receive and to help funnel any precipitated water down the stem and towards the bulb (or the ground, as the plant has an overall very shallow and far-reaching root system)

During reproduction seasons, the halobush forms these small, flimsy stems in the center of its bulb that have berry-like seedpods attached to them. Its main method of seed dispersal is via consumers, as many different species eat it, and if the pods go uneaten for long enough the halobush will simply reabsorb the material and use it for other processes

I imagine they do something similar to CAM Photosynthesis in order to conserve water, which is also part of the reason they have such small leaves. I also imagine they're commonly used in culinary dishes for the sophonts of this planet as I would assume pretty much every part of them is edible, similar to how we derived broccoli/kale/cabbage/etc from one plant

Day 2 - Primary Consumer

Only 1 sketch for this guy bc I didn't like how the others turned out lol. I've been tossing around the idea of the name "Pola" for these guys. They're small (~rat or guinea pig sized) pseudo-mammalian burrowing creatures. They're technically omnivorous, but most of the meat they consume is insects (or very rarely scavenged from carcasses). They eat most parts of halobushes but are particularly fond of their seedpods.

They live in small family groups, using their large blunt claws to dig out burrows and tunnels as living areas. Fascinatingly, they make the entrance to their burrows much, much larger than they are as depicted in the first image. It's not fully known why they do this, but theories include that it is meant to help with temperature regulation of the burrow, or that its meant to imply that a much larger animal lives inside and is thus for intimidation purposes

and uhhh yeah that's what I've got!! Idk if I'll do every day of this challenge bc my mental health has been so volatile lately, but I hope I'll get some stuff done :-3 thanks for reading!!!!

[sealwithakiss]

miner's bane, a chemotroph that feeds on metal ore (gold in this case) and incorporates the metal into its cell structure. note the relatively small size of the colony- professor torres is shining her flashlight on the most visibly golden section, which is not terribly dense compared to other specimens. This suggests the colony fed on a vein with low gold content; extraction of the roots would likely reveal shallow penetration, with a high percentage of transparent hyphae.

[spookygibberish]

Day 4 - Apex Predator

I was busy playing Silksong and don’t have lore for this one yet.

[spookygibberish]

Day 7 - Hyperparasite

Wiffsps are tiny, herbivorous insects that feed on sap by penetrating phloem vessels with their small, beaklike mouthparts. This particular species is an inquiline parasite of Goldnestling Stemfly galls. Eggs laid on the surface of the gall hatch into larvae which burrow into its interior, inducing the formation of a secondary gall chamber which expands to crush the original Stemfly larvae inside, creating a much roomier, hollow space in which the wiffsp larvae may grow and pupate before emerging to disperse.