Down the Rail we Go.
Greetings and salutations, I am Varys Matthau, Orchard’s Parazoologist Premiere! Heh, no, I don’t mean that with certainty, but, as you well know, I am a studious and avid researcher of the biota that call the curious corners of this vast Verse home! From the Singing Snailwings of Orchard’s Horsehead Nebula to the emergent fauna of the Resurge-Verdance Sector. Yet, all of that is fairly close to home, isn’t it? That is why my next sojourn takes me further afield than ever before.
Lampeter. The decaying behemoth that marked more worlds than the brain could possibly imagine. Many have delved into the history of the Line and the cultures that traveled across it for carousel, conquest, curiosity, and concern, but in those scattered worlds, left to rust and neon in many cases, I have heard that life can still be found.
I don’t mean those of a mind, like you or I, dear listener; no, no, the primal and pristine. I seek to discover what remains of the East’s Wilds… if any are to remain. A risky endeavor, I am well aware. Yet, life has risen from devastation before, as I hope this trip will evidence as I seek the truths of the East.
I have stepped beyond the bounds of the familiar and set forth on my sojourns of calamity, with my end goal writ large: NEON.
The march east has begun, and the first stop is one of marked similarity to the dread power that awaits, but the calamity that gnaws away in this decaying domain, one could argue, is far more eager.
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The Bulwark of Sand
PALISADES
My trip to the Palisades was a rough one, the stink of rot thick in the almost-air, the faint buzzing of a cicada’s wings keeping me awake the entire way. This part of the Line is assuredly battered and bruised, but it is one of the few that remains in active use to this day. Most of my fellow passengers were soldiers, most human, a handful not, many proudly displaying the colors of the Northwestern Cluster Foundation, MOC, and the North Adytite Republic.
When I got off the train, what greeted me was a world of sand and scrub, glittering under the green-tinted light of a shrunken sun. The innermost Earth of the Palisades is still heavily impacted by the force that gnaws away at its doorstep; yet the people here, and more importantly, the fauna, have found ways to thrive.
You will note my phrasing, “innermost earth.” That is because the Palisades have become so heavily and completely interlinked; each earth is akin to a continental plate ensnared in a metaphysical and multiversal Pangea grander than I could ever hope to fully explore during this current adventure. Of course, I could always return, for what I saw during my brief stay in these blighted lands did indeed catch my interest.
The Palisades’ current existence was no accident, nor was their intermingling the calamity that I sought to observe the effects of; no, no, as I have read, and the few natives I managed to speak to across the various “frontier towns” I came across informed me, their interconnectivity was done on purpose.
The magic wellsprings of the earth, ensnared and enhanced and empowered tenfold by the joint might of each world’s various paranatural societies, knit the Ways and numerous other rifts into never-ceasing doorways. The dimensional bleed was endless, and today, natives have stopped thinking of their homes as anything but the Palisades, though there are some demarcations.
Where Lampeter spat us out is known by the locals and visiting soldiers simply as the Middle, a great band of badlands and scrub that expands as far as the eye can see, intermittently broken up by all manner of wind-scoured peaks and plateaus. East and West have little meaning to these people, as, beyond Lampeter’s link, they’re isolated from the rest of the Verse, with the Palisades, in many ways, functioning as a massive ring.
Directly south of the Middle is the River, all that remains of Earth’s waterways, warped and melded into a vast, ever-flowing riverway fed by more tributaries than I could care to count. Further south takes you to the edge of the ring, to Plenty, a fabled Eden, as far as I could figure by asking the natives.
‘Plenty ain’t for us.’ That sentence was repeated over and over, by even the freshest greenhorns off the train, yet none seemed eager to explain to me why. A pact, a promise, a threat, the endeavors of what remains of these world’s original paranatural societies? The lone figure I managed to get to tell me more stated that the Plenty needed to stay untouched. ‘So that things kept flowing rightly.’ When I pressed for more clarity, he scuttled away, revealing insectile features hidden beneath his fraying cloak. The Bugmen, I would come to learn, are akin to lepers, living on the outskirts of the Palisades in countless towns as transient bands, never able to stay in one place. Most are veterans of the war, embattled in this world.
To the North, towards the interior of the ring, the lands grow harsher and harsher, and far less natural, until one reaches the Front, where the slow but constant flow of soldiers. I witnessed them being shipped off with next to no fanfare and a resignation that frankly bordered on nihilism.
The Palisades, as the name implies, are a wall against something horrid, a cage to keep it far from the rest of the Verse.
The Worm, the true source for this land’s sparse and harsh existence, sucks the buffered worlds dry as its daily meal. This consumption is far from passive, with its mouths numbering in the thousands and being far more autonomous than I was initially led to believe.
But I would come to learn the other name for the Front amongst the locals.
Bug Hell.
Tides of thousands upon thousands of alien and unnatural insects carve at the foundations of this vast world’s reality. Without the vast rituals that formed it and keep it going in that distant realm of Plenty, they would long since have spread through the rest of the Verse like a plague. Their forms are countless, and their hunger ends only once slain, and for some not even then.
Their constant consumption has drained the Palisades of their vitality, leaving behind a dry realm of cracked badlands and drifting sands that resembles the harshest portions of Sol’s Mojave or the Great Australian Desert, stained red and green in places where the forces of mortality have clashed with the eldritch insects for generations.
This ‘infection’ has killed off much of the native fauna across the Palisades, but not all of it. Numerous species were not only able to adapt but also to thrive in their transfigured worlds. Some have come to eagerly prey upon the horrid insects. There are even tales of certain beings who descend from trans-dimensional entities, go feral, and help rebuild a functioning ecosystem. Many natives attribute some form of divine intervention to the latter case.
At the same time, those fauna and flora that have survived do, on occasion, show signs of metaphysical corruption that is drawn from the Swarm, giving them markedly insectile aspects regardless of their true genetic makeup.
The Palisades are the first of many examples I present — hopefully—of how, even in the face of an esoteric cataclysm, the natural world can still endeavor to adapt and move forward. The animals to follow, I discovered across my trek, some relatively natural in the grand scheme of the Verse, others divested of the various paranormal powers that battle for the fate of this conjoined world. I suppose it only makes sense to start common and seek the strange, as this entire journey embodies.
Last Look
As stated, I began my venture in the Palisades in a Middle Town, not far from the River, a day's ride, I was informed after getting my bearings. The town was a stark place, towering walls of blood-shaped stone, patrolled by guards with war weary eyes and weather worn feathers, while within the buildings were a motley lot, petrified wood abutting bloodshaped pueblos abutting a towering bank all glass and steel, I even spotted one of the Nälkä-folks living churches poking above the sky line, the whistling moan of it’s iron-tinged breathes seeming to join in harmony with the departing whistle of the decaying Lampeter liner as it vanished back the way we’d come.
If this town had a proper name, I never came to learn it, for the natives seemed more eager to go about their business than speak much about superfluous things with a visiting academic. The Lampeter directory called their stop Last Look, and thus I will refer to it as such going forward. While the natives balked at my desire for small talk, directions, and provisions were another thing, and it was at the general store that I came across the first of the Palisade’s sturdy and unique fauna.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking at first, but with my lexicon at hand, I took to studying immediately. The owner of the beast, interrupting my inspections, additionally proved elucidating, after I managed to explain why I was “Pesterin’ his Ol’Girl”, ha!
Ol’Girl, as I found to be common among her species, was a rotund animal with short, sturdy legs and a rather blocky head. Indeed, my first estimate was that she was a bovine or ovine, with her floppy ears leading me towards the latter. Her muzzle was deep in a feed bag, and I noticed that her blinders didn’t just block her peripheral vision but also fully covered her eyes. Therefore, what immediately drew my interest was her stomping feet. Indeed, feet more akin to paws greeted my gaze, with the back legs ending in a single, dull, rounded toe, while the forelegs ended in three hearty, forward-projecting claws that looked well-suited for burrowing.
So my mind turned to a large rodent or lagomorph, adapted for size and power over speed, to fill in for larger fauna that may have been lost to the constant assaults of the Insects and the alteration of the Palisades biomes. Indeed, she seemed a strong animal loaded down with over a dozen bags about as thick around as my torso.
The lexicon chirped its answer just as her owner did, and thus I became distracted, but he would reveal what it had already discovered in short order.
He was confused by my parlance and chipper mood at first, but quickly surmised that I was a visitor. When I laid out my reasons for coming to the Palisades, he scoffed, but told me to follow him to his farm so I could get a “Selection of critters least likely to crave your innards for a third noon snack.” Oh, I realize I forgot to mention the numerous celestial bodies present in the Palisades. Later, I am a naturalist, not an astrologer, so those musings can wait.
Indeed, I came to know Old Girl and her kind to be a curious and hardy species of equine. One that adapted to a niche I had yet to consider for their ilk. Allow me to present the Burrow Burro (Equus melis)
They are not only among the main work animals used across the Palisades, but are also kept for both their milk and meat, with distinctive breeds intermingling in vast underground warrens. The old-timer, named Jakob Jerinson, was baffled by my confusion, but humored me well enough.
Ol'Girl's Glory
I quickly learned the distinction between Burrow Burro breeds when Jakob pointed toward a beast about the girth and length of a Sol Hippopotamus, which charged toward me and eagerly began sniffing my clothes.
His Guard Burro, bred from the biggest and calmest of the lot, was helpful against the predators, natural, human & alien that occasionally came poking around. Indeed, Burrow Burros are, in his estimation, one part ornery and one part skittish, and what sort you got depended entirely on luck.
Excluding the Guard Burros, I found that most Burrow Burros measured around a meter tall and nearly two meters long. Their fur was soft, and while fairly thin along their torsos and limbs, it grew rather thickly around their necks, which, combined with their thick builds, gave them an almost fur seal-like appearance when lying down. This fur was relatively light-colored and came in a number of patterns, though at least at Jakob’s farm the most common was gray with white stripes.
I observed them and the other farm beasts for several days and quickly noticed a handful of common traits.
They were omnivorous, indeed; when one opened its mouth, I saw an impressive mix of heavy molars and powerful tusks, not to mention the painfully sharp incisors. My calf is still smarting from the “love bite” Ol’ Girl laid on me my third day there. Their preferred diet is tubers, though I observed them trying to eat almost anything, and I believe Jakob spent more time wrestling things away from them than on any other task.
Secondly, while they could move around fine on the surface, though with a slow, plodding gait, they were most active at ‘true night’, a markedly short collection of hours analogous to Sol’s midnight until around three in the morning. Their eyes appear severely stunted, and while bright light seems to disorient them on first exposure, they react very little to sudden motion. Indeed, Jakob said the eye coverings he used were for comfort over practicality, and that he’d ‘never have a burro misplace a step, nowhere, no how.’ I initially believed they relied on a keen sense of smell to guide their paths, but the constant shifting of their large ears and soft brays has led me to conclude they have adapted echolocation. Indeed, most walk with their head hung low to the ground, using their brays to sense faults or loose soil. In addition, the pads of their feet resemble those of pachyderms, which leads me to believe they can also sense vibrations, allowing them to stay in contact and broaden the range of what their echolocation can distinguish. I observed his guard burro find something in one of the warrens, nose pressed against the cavern wall, chirping and sniffing, and then, the next thing I knew, he was wrenching out a horrid fusion of snake and bobbit worm from the wall. It let out a single hissing shriek before he bit down and slurped it up like one of the world’s crunchiest yet paradoxically gelatinous egg noodles.
Thirdly, they are communal animals, perhaps even more so than most equines. The herd cares for young jointly, with all expectant and new mothers readily feeding hungry foals, who are some of the most adorable beasts I have ever seen, I must admit, all fluff and ears and typically covered in dust. Amongst domesticates, it is common to have a few males, of varying breeds, to lessen any possible genetic issues. However, Jakob did tell me on occasion the males could get markedly violent with each other. The herd would need to be partitioned at least until the end of the mating season to stop the rivalry from causing too much damage to any participant.
Their communal nature is most visible when they bed down, as I learned: the males and females sleep in a piled ring around the young and elderly, with the latter forming an additional circle around the young to prevent any of the adults from rolling over in their sleep and falling atop a foal. Jakob told me this was a leftover instinct from before they were domesticated, as a defense against the insects. Indeed, I observed that all adults on the outermost edge of the ring had their faces pressed heavily against the dirt, subconsciously sounding off their echolocation to guard against danger. One faulty footstep of mine sent the entire herd rolling and braying, an almost comical sight if I had not felt so guilty, and then afraid as the guard bull took to charging me.
Furthermore, they are prolific burrowers, spending much of their day underground, modifying and repairing their warrens. Curiously, I noticed that they avoided certain walls in their ministrations. When I asked Jakob, he said that every good farmer on the Palisades knew how to mark the walls they didn’t want torn down, unless they wanted to wake up with their farmhouse buried under a mountain of sand and soil.
Yet when I asked what he used to ward them off, he got markedly cagey. I do believe I pressed on too many times, because after that, he made it clear he thought it best that I continued on my journey.
He was gracious enough to allow me to catalog a number of other fauna that called his farm home. An interesting selection: Tunnel Cats (Mustela amicus), sizable mustelids as “ratters”, though most I observed were largely focused on a smattering of small insects, Harezellas (Odolepus domesticus), gracile, long-necked lagomorphs that grazed the cacti, and Jakob told me were bred for their fur. I was deeply intrigued to learn that the folk of the Palisades got their eggs from a form of neotenic caterpillar the size of a house cat known as Squonks (Titanodanaus neotenis) due to the delightful sounds they make. When prompted, Jakob said that a handful of the invasive alien insectoids had “Given up the fight and gone natural”, which intrigues me greatly. I cataloged the various domesticates and made my way out of town, intending to head northward to see what beasts could be found across the scarred wilderness.
A Barnyard Staple
I admit I was surprised that the first animal I came upon was wild burros! I observed them for a handful of days and quickly noticed distinct differences from their domesticated counterparts.
Their burrows are immense, accounting for much larger herd sizes; curiously, though, what I thought was a tenet of the domestication process, the exposed central chamber, was still found within the wild specimens. My camp was situated near enough to this opening that I could observe their goings-on. Still, the nearest true entrance was over a kilometer away, and a raised hill on the horizon, visible to me, where I saw burros exiting to forage as the last evening set in.
However, it was through these observations that I learned of another key difference. Wild Burrow Burros are far more aggressive than their domesticated kin. Indeed, for an animal that resembles a hybrid of a badger and a zebra, their temperament is much the same. Males were heavily scarred from wounds left by both teeth and claws, and the largest of them seemed to rule the roost, and all proved eager guardians of the central crux, as I found out when the lead stallion and two of the others burst out of the ground. For all their aggression, they do remain as markedly slow, so I was able to scramble away with nary a scratch, though the shock did rattle my heart a great deal.
It turns out, though, that the males were actually the less aggressive members of their herds, with females appearing ready to fight each other at the drop of a hat, or a dirt clump, as it were. Indeed, they seemed primed to snap at the slightest disturbance, which I believe is born of a need to protect their food stores and young from mortal predators, the bugs and other herds. While loud, these interherd fights seemed to do little more than cause superficial damage, with bites to the flanks and shoulders most common.
Lastly, the wild specimens proved far more omnivorous than their domesticated cousins. Their diets, due to the sparse nature of this vast world, are far less stable, and I observed them dragging back all manner of rotting corpses, some so mangled and putrified I couldn’t even begin to guess at their original body shapes. It was then that it hit me just how ant-like these animals actually were, like their original instincts had been overridden. Watching them partition the corpses with their truly mandible-like teeth and first feed the young, the sentinels, the synchronized movement.
This domain has been infested for some time; while I came to the Palisades to prove that life could thrive despite constant assault, I found myself wondering just how deeply the Bugs had pervaded this world.
The Carapace Roads
Instead of turning south, I decided to shift north to see what awaited closer to the Front and what effects it had on the fauna in that region. I’ll admit I turned back to Last Look after I realized the expanse awaiting me, found a mount that would ferry me to my desired destination with little trouble, and found the path to take me there.
Though I suppose I should confirm that, yes, the Carapace Road is not just a colorful term but a reality. Hundreds of meters wide, glittering like a jeweled mosaic, it is a scattershot mesh of insectoid flesh, hammered flat and almost mirror-like in its sheen by the countless boots, hooves, and wheels that have ventured its length. I had wondered how they had not worn through from the constant wear, and got my answer as I watched a crew, with Caprapin and Burros both pulling their carts, go to work repairing part of the Road, slotting in great shards of carapace akin to a child forcing a misplaced puzzle piece to fit.
I could likely have stayed to watch their work for hours and peppered them with questions about what beasts they had collected all that chitin from, though, considering how standoffish folks seem to get when the Bugs are brought up, even in passing, I doubt I would have gotten much. They were so eager to hammer it all into place as well; I can’t help but wonder at the possible catharsis of it all, using the corpses of their would-be destroyers to rebuild their world, minute as it is.
Despite this, the Road was incredibly uneven, pitching and weaving with the angles of the clefts and dunes, sometimes dropping off suddenly, with little but haphazard sandstone stepped dappled with carapace, linking the portioned parts together. Luckily, my mount took it all in stride, a lovely beast named Jemma, a Caprapin.
The Caprapin (Ovigopherus nomadicus), the most trustworthy and curiously common riding mount of the Carapace Road, a path that links the Mid-Towns and funnels visiting soldiers and native fighters onto the Front.
Caprapins are, on average, roughly the same size as riding horses and are still relatively common in Sol. Their long necks end in beaked heads that, in many ways, more closely resemble those of a ceratopsian than either of the beast’s originators, with a long muzzle ending in a rounded beak. What is more, they have teeth nestled behind the beak. Their teeth do seem to have adapted over time to this awkward configuration, with the beak replacing both the lower incisors and the upper hardened palate found in ungulates. Caprapin eyes are goat-like, with a tinted nictitating membrane to better block both the glare of the sun and the gritty sandstorms that occasionally pick up.
Both genders have a set of curling horns, though males tend to grow theirs larger than females.
Then comes the shell, notably shaped less like a true terrapin, lacking the rounded dome, being comparatively slender and far less rigid, with a degree of mobility between the sections more akin to that of a xenarthran or some of the earliest truly armored terrapin ancestors. Notably, the armor is thickest at the shoulders, along the stomach, and at the hindquarters, resulting in an almost natural, saddle-like bowing in the mid-back, where folks are meant to ride. This is a likely purposeful alteration of their design, and I noted several ferals whose shoulder armor had shifted and mutated to develop an “overhang” covering that relatively exposed the region from predator attack.
The parts of their body not hidden beneath carapace and ridged scales are covered in a light fur that ranges from a sandy blonde to a deep rust red. However, I have noticed a continued propensity for both melanism and piebaldism in feral populations. Their fur rarely grows thickly, though I have noticed that some males have sprouted rather impressive “beards”.
Their limbs are well-muscled and slender, and end in hooves that more closely resemble the feet of camelids, though they retain the climbing prowess of the mountain goats likely encoded in their genes.
Rounding off the animal is a surprisingly lengthy tail that ends in a tuft of wiry hair, which they eagerly use as a whip against all manner of biting pests. However, I did notice them using it as lashes to correct other herd members that annoyed them, as well as their riders, which I found out personally, like being smacked by a whip ending in a wire brush.
This animal, I would hasten to say, is not a natural one, but has spread across the Palisades with a stark ease. From what I was able to gather from the natives, it is that while technology can be relied on for travel between outposts within the Middle and Closer to Plenty, much of it runs on solar power, drawing from the surplus solar bodies orbiting the sky. However, some archaic diesel and gas engines remain. However, from what I could tell, such vehicles are relics. Indeed, oil, according to one wanderer I met on the Carapace Road, “done got drunk up by the Worm and its ilk.”
Regardless, the closer one gets to the Front, the more mechanical vehicles begin to act strange, or so I am told. Unexpected failures, stuttering movement, and the sudden alteration of components to resemble insectoid body parts. I suppose this is why the Adytites got involved; their vehicles were already organic and could be repaired more easily, or so I have surmised.
Regardless, the breakdown of mechanical forms of transport necessitated a return to more ‘basal’ forms. Enter the Caprapin. Now it would be easy to think that this creature, artificial as it is, was a gift from the Adytites following their entrance into the conflict, but from what limited resources I was able to pull from local Archives, and those of neighboring systems, the Caprapin predates the arrival of the NAR by nearly four centuries. Of course, it could be said that there was a local band of Nälkä native to the Palisades that has since died out or been absorbed by the NAR. Still, I have found no proof of those claims in my own search and instead think that, rather than carnomancy, the creatures came about in a much more mundane fashion.
Gene-Editing, likely by whatever cultures are hiding away in Plenty, pushed by the conglomerated Foundations of the Palisades. I could go into that a fair bit more, but as I have no desire to see this piece censored due to… privileged information, I will be moving on.
Caprapins have spread across the Palisades like wildfire, and from my observations and conversations with natives I found camped about the Road, they may well be one of the most prolific non-insectoid forms of life in the Palisades.
My mount, Jemma, gave me some insights into their behavior, but I will admit I got sidetracked from my mission to observe a herd as we both drew closer and closer to the Front.
Neither Jemma nor the ferals seemed to care. As I noted, they are not natural animals; more specifically, they are the hybridization of two distinct species.
Tortoises and Caprines of that I am sure, with much of their sequence likely being drawn from a version of the Gopher Tortoise and Big Horn Sheep, though there are signs of other species in their makeup.
Caprapins were created as mounts, with high endurance and low caloric needs, and, regardless of their exact origin, from my observations, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are capable of consuming any flora they come across with few adverse effects, and draw much of their water from the foliage they consume, needing to stop for further hydration once every three months, according to natives I spoke with. Additionally, and curiously, they do not need to stop moving to enter a state of rest; they enter a sort of partial torpor at night, with one hemisphere remaining awake and keeping them moving as long as the rest of the herd does, while the other hemisphere rests. This means they only need to bed down to sleep once a week.
While this trait was most commonly observed amongst feral populations, I believe this capability was selected to ensure that the supply trains and flood of recruits were as constant as could be managed, in an attempt to keep the Front from slipping the then-current bounds. I can’t say how truly successful they were.
Regardless, feral Caprapin show many behavioral traits common to both constituent species, with a marked degree of overlap. Namely, males compete for a mate. While herds can number in the thousands, they are, in truth, partitioned into smaller family groups that the lead ram defends with great vigor against other males. I’m told especially powerful and old rams can have clans of up to one hundred ewes under their direct care, with a smattering of younger, less dominant males interspread. Each clash begins with a hearty series of bellows, their booming calls echoing across the hills.
In some cases, this is all it takes for a younger male to back down, but more often, what follows is the initiating charge. They briefly lock horns, then it becomes a scrambling mess as they kick and bite each other. Their shells and beards tend to keep these clashes from becoming lethal, but I did happen to chance upon one where the smaller opponent got lucky, and by that I mean accidentally speared his opponent through the neck with one of his horns.
They similarly turn their horns and beaks against any predators, natural or otherwise, that come calling, forming a wall of snapping beaks and clacking horns, ready and willing to trample them en masse, and in my explorations, I only saw them choose flight over fight once, but I will get to that later. Again, I must note that their movements are markedly fluid and in sync with one another when facing off against external threats.
Females lay eggs rather than have live young, and during the nesting season, this is one of the only times the animals settle in one place for an extended period. They do not lay individual nests; instead, a clan’s ewes dig and lay in a single wide pit, then gently bury the eggs, with a sentinel resting around the edge as the rams and younger females bring them food. Once they hatch, their attention is communal. However, I did notice that some clans seemed to have designated “nannys” which fed the young a mixture of milk and regurgitated plant matter for roughly the first month, after which they were fully capable of feeding themselves.
Steady-On Steed
My last note regarding the Caprapin is that I noticed several that appeared to have additional alterations setting them apart from their fellows, and, as such, they seemed to have been forced into some kind of exile. However, once I reached the outer edges of the Front, I witnessed a small clan of entirely mutated individuals. These Caprapins had additional eyes, misshapen jaws, and shells that had taken on a glossy, iridescent sheen more closely resembling a beetle's carapace. I have to wonder if their artificial origins have left them more susceptible to mutation than other fauna. However, they are not the only species that has reached prolific numbers on the Palisades that began from human hands. Still, some would argue the human part, erroneously, I suppose.
The Front
The Front is a markedly warped place. A constant buzzing fills the air, and the clouds glisten and shake like a fly's wings. The ground rumbles with the echoing promise of the dread chewing away at the foundations of the world; the water takes on an acrid taste, and the few plants I saw are covered in a glimmering false carapace, with twitching limbs replacing branches and needles.
Beyond that were the scars of war, kilometers of sand made glittering, red-tinted glass, horrors encased within its frozen grasp. Colossal corpses, both distressingly human and only the barest bit insectile, loom like mountains, their viscera picked over by all manner of beings.
Most of them come from the Worm, acid spewing Archon Worms (???), colossal Reaver Roaches (???), and the particularly ravenous and cruel Formiadon (???) but a few are natural inhabitants of the Palisades, Rocs (Gyps immanis) and Cactus Cats (Puma viridaspinas) united briefly in a mountainous feast of decay.
Yet, despite the constant barrage of extradimensional insects tearing into reality in this place, and the might of those few native predators that remain there, there is another animal that natives dub the most savage predators in the Palisades, and often, with large enough numbers, they can chase off even the largest of their competitors.
The Adytite Hyena (Canicorsira nälkäns), as the name implies, were introduced to the Palisades by the Nälkän forces that came to aid in thwarting the Worm’s progress. Over time, they came to develop a number of beasts and entities in their fight against the insectoid tide, but none have reached the prominence on the battlefield of the Front and out in the scarred wilds beyond that these beasts have.
Despite the name, Adytites Hyenas began brewing as a pretty common species of shrew that has emerged concurrently across many worlds of the Verse. Gifted with ravenous appetites, metal-sheathed teeth, and venomous bites, the tiny beasts are terrors of their own diminutive domain.
I imagine these traits were the ones that drew the Nälkän to them when it came to adapting a weapon whose edge would be honed and fed on the enemy itself.
While many in the Verse would refer to the Nälkän’s work as distressing or monstrous, I find their ability to reshape a creature while preserving the basic cohesion of its genetic structure intact and in a markedly healthy state quite fascinating. I have seen the work of other attempts, and there is always something that shifts beyond the expected parameters.
I have noted the curious discohesion amongst some of the Caprapin, brought on by a failing in their own makeup or by the influences of this world; I can’t truly say, for I had neither the time nor the resources to delve into the deep threads of their genetic makeup. On the predators I mentioned above, those not of Worm origin also showed signs of genetic alteration. One Roc I observed had sprouted a secondary pair of wings, fledged not with feathers but the wings of a dragon or damselfly.
Adytite Hyenas show no such mutation. There are a number of oddities I have witnessed in their form, but of the dozen packs I observed during my time in the Palisades, both tame and feral, I saw not a one with a sign of insectoid alteration.
That is not to say they are gorgeous animals, far from it, though they are admitted no uglier than many natural beasts, ha!
The largest specimen I saw stood nearly a meter and a half at the shoulder, though most were about a meter, and nearly two meters long, though much of the latter size is given over to their tails. They have sloping builds, akin to the beasts they are named for, though they are largely hairless, with much of their fur consolidated in mohawks and manes of dense grayish-red fur, slick with a natural oil that helps protect their throats. Their forelimbs are heavily muscled, built for pulling down and holding prey, while their hind legs are digitigrade, aiding them in reaching impressive speeds.
Indeed, despite their far more muscular builds, they can reach speeds of nearly 110 kilometers per hour in a full sprint. This is enabled by one of their main alterations, which shifts their mammalian lung structure toward that found in birds, allowing unilateral breathing, in which each breath out draws more air from additional air sacs attached to their lungs.
Other adaptations include their skin, which is markedly elastic, offering better resistance against attackers with piercing implements, which is quite common amongst the insectoid it hunts. Additionally, their blood coagulates quickly when exposed to desert air, hardening into a pseudo-osteoderm. Indeed, these scabs can actually function akin to built-in body armor, aiding in their defense against attackers or particularly dangerous prey, and I witnessed more than one pack “flagellating” prior to a hunt, tearing at their skin with their and each other with their teeth and foreclaws, aiming mainly for the stomach and flanks. I noted that their teeth were far better at parting their own skin than those of other animals. I would learn the reason for this in time, but luckily for you, you have no need to wait.
Their most prominent weapons are their teeth, namely a serrated set of incisors and a set of shearing molars capable of carving both flesh and bone. These teeth are a distinctive orange coloration, sheathed in a thick iron lining, but the real powerhouse behind their bite is not the force at which their jaw can come shearing down, though I have been told they can easily bite clean through steel. It is instead their venom.
This venom fills the grooves of their teeth, both their incisors and their molars. They can control when they inject it, allowing them to feed without its properties getting in the way, and it has many properties that, at first glance, would lead one to assume it is highly caustic. That’s what I believed on first observation, as it appears to eat through flesh with eager abandon.
It is better to say that their venom is not so much acidic as carnomantic, an investiture of flesh magic that causes the breakdown not just of cell cohesion, but of soul cohesion. Most blood, freshly spilled, carries within it markers of what it was, still living cells choking to death as the liquid cools. In the few bits of remains I could find, the liquid presented before me held no such markers, as if the venom dissolved the very notion of what had kept it alive, leaving it a static slurry.
As the insectoids born of the Worm are not natural beasts, it would make sense for the Nälkän to create something capable of attacking them at a deeper, more esoteric level. It seeks not only to consume their mortal flesh, but their semi-divine souls. I am not sure why I sound so surprised even in this retelling; after all, the Children of Ion have long shunned the power of divinity. Of course, while they are resistant to their own venom, I believe they use small doses to weaken their flesh, at least amongst populations that practice the “body armor” tactic.
Now, Adytite Hyenas are pack hunters, and despite the commonly solitary nature of their ancestors, they have taken well to working in tandem, either born of implanted genetic memory or the simple power of adaptation. Despite this, they do not seem to favor a single leader; instead, they follow the lead of the largest or most tenured hunters, with no clear leader outside of hunts. Indeed, it is fairer to say they are fission-fusion animals, with smaller groups coming together to hunt and, on occasion, mate and then departing once a kill has been consumed.
One wild pack I observed had nearly a hundred individuals, with most lying in wait until their strongest and fastest baited a particular immense Reaver Roach into a box canyon. They descended upon it in a tide, aiming for the joints, eagerly chewing, heedless of how many perished in the moment, driven into a frenzy that left them foaming at the mouths. In the end, the titan collapsed, and they began to gnaw their way into its stomach while it still lived, notably without the clear signs of the venom, an awful pink slurry. I have seen much in my time, but I found my stomach turning ever so slightly at the display and left before the Roach’s cries hit a crescendo.
Domesticated packs functioned much the same way, directed towards weak points in the Line and surgically guided to take down the largest attacking insects before retreating, often dragging “trophies” with them.
I was told by a surprisingly amiable NAR soldier that, despite their fearsome reputation, they can be quite affectionate with their handlers and each other. He also noted that they have no set breeding season, and that as long as food is plentiful, a female can produce a litter of up to eight pups every three months, though few females outside of captivity do so.
When asked how they interact with other humans, he smiled, “Depends on how good you smell, Outlander.”
I decided there that observing from a distance was safe enough, ha!
I could likely have gotten far closer to the Front and lingered longer, but by that point the buzz in their air had entered my dreams, and I felt it thrumming in my chest. I could see it in the eyes of the soldiers that now surrounded me, a glassy opulence to their eyes, they were being eaten just as much as the land, and by the third night the sound of a Hyena snuffling and growling at the edge of my tent told me I needed to turn back before I found in stark detail what it meant to be a “Bugman”.
A Savage Soldier
I had seen how native life had adapted, by their own lot or otherwise, and had seen one introduced species thrive, but there were murmurs of another branch of fauna in the Palisades that I desired to study more closely.
The River
My ride south took me back through the Middle, weaving through the isolated fort-towns and cliff-side pueblos, each with its own bit of defiant flair against the dread consumption I had now witnessed firsthand. I had become convinced that the rust-colored badlands and deserts would go on forever, no matter what my occasional guide promised me when I hit swamp land.
Few trees dotted this marshy expanse; instead, grasses and cattails, near three meters tall, interspread vast prairies of moss and towering cacti that had adapted to a wetter environment by growing laden with all manner of tempting-looking fruit.
The occasional ranch gave way to vast swaths of farmland, with the people working it looking just a bit less wan, acting just a bit more pleasant. I even witnessed the maligned Bugman living amicably alongside non-altered humans.
I suppose it can be said that the more one has, the more one takes for granted, even in a place as harsh as this.
Eventually though I came upon my true destination: The River.
The name is a magnificent disservice, yet it is sensible in a way. Something about ritual that bound the Palisades together, drew the water into a vast continuous circuit, the soul ocean, and source of all waterways, flowing down from the rise it rests within down to the broken badlands beyond, but much more of it slides down the incline into Plenty.
One would think that the constant current would be a source of constant erosion, yet… the shores are starkly static, except for the rare time a storm whips up and causes the river to burst its banks, flooding the swamps and creating hundreds of vast but impermanent brackish lakes that draw life from miles around.
The farms gave way to fishing villages and trade towns, shipping their goods up and down the River at a manic pace, but my focus was on the fauna. These regions were as close as most got to a true bounty, and as such, soldiers would come on leave to relax and take in all manner of pleasures and sights before returning to the gnashing horror of the Front.
And one story that I heard again and again on the lips of soldiers willing to spare me a conversation was of the Great Migration.
I managed to get into a bustling port, right as the fabled Migration passed it by, and truly, it has easily slotted into one of the most beautiful sights I have ever had the luck to witness.
Hundreds of colossal beasts, emerald carapaces glittering like iridescent jewels in the light of the suns, saying nothing of the fountains of mist they sent roaring into the air, creating a great rainbow band.
And then I heard the singing. Like a cicada in intricate duet with the humpbacks of Sol or Vast Lakes Whales of my home Verse.
That was my introduction to the Emerald Leviathans (Levianarceus tranquillitas). From my experiences and the stories of the natives, these beautiful beasts are among the largest found in the Palisades. Their pods typically number between twenty and thirty individuals, but during the Migration, they number in the hundreds, chasing the sudden bloom of algae as it is pushed and consolidated along the River's deep central current.
They are indeed herbivores, though their filter-feeding habits likely pick up all manner of tangential faunal sustenance. Of course, I should note that these animals most closely resemble a millipede, with particular similarities to the vast ancient species Arthropleura (Arthropleura armata). However, their origin is a distinctively unnatural one, being born of the Worm, but more on that later.
Emerald Leviathan females, known as cows, are typically around twenty meters long. In contrast, the largest males, known as bulls, can reach up to twenty-four meters in their largest specimens, though there are tales of a particularly immense bull bordering thirty meters that sticks to the deepest portions of the River.
Despite their colossal size and thick carapaces, which remain markedly free of anything approximating barnacles or algal growth, they are comparatively lightweight, thanks to numerous air sacs that fill their bodies. Indeed, they are rarely able to dive more than a handful of meters below the water before their natural buoyancy carries them back to the surface, necessitating constant fin adjustments. Because of this, they are surface and shallow-water grazers, drawing copious amounts of plant life into their gullets, which open sideways along the undersides of their bodies.
However, they do retain a pair of mandibles, which are articulate and powerful enough to catch and masticate living prey, which they then swallow the slurry of, but natives report this is more common amongst young individuals experimenting or playing, while most adults actually use these mandibles to pluck low-hanging fruit from mangroves and other fruit that border the River.
Indeed, they are capable of rearing up like the millipedes they resemble, occasionally taking on an almost swan-like appearance as they opportunistically feed. However, most of the time they remain horizontal in the water, their numerous small fins giving them a remarkable measure of maneuverability, especially amongst the young, whom I witnessed personally breaching and darting about at speeds that would put the wiliest dolphin to shame. They lack any form of fluke and, as such, more closely resemble plesiosaurs or sea turtles in their movement.
Additionally, their spiracles have moved to their backs, and while they are noted to be able to hold their breath for over an hour, most typically are forced back to the surface by their buoyancy when not endeavoring to stay under every fifteen minutes, sending cascading jets of air and water into the air in a manner akin to the fountains of Sol’s Bellagio.
One final adaptation is that their eyes have shifted to sit on the sides of their heads, allowing them to see both above and below the waves at the same time, thanks to a curious dual-pupil setup.
They are markedly docile animals, despite their origins; indeed, they seem to avoid sophonts if they can help it. But the interactions I witnessed between the native fisherfolk and, in particular, curious calflings were entirely amicable until the mothers eventually called them back with their buzzing, whale-like cries.
The rare times they get violent are during the brief mating season, when the typically loner bulls come together to compete for females. They charge each other, following a bellowing dirge said to shake the very surface of the water and be felt within the heart more than heard on the wind, embracing each other and diving as far as they can, grappling and snapping their mandibles in an effort to prove who can last the longest without needing air. This does, on occasion, lead to one, if not both, of the males drowning, but typically it never gets that far, as the initial clash is often the deciding factor.
Cows, curious about insects, typically have only one calf at a time. However, twins are not uncommon, not laying an egg but giving live birth after a period of nearly seven months, one of the longest insectoid gestations I can think of off the top of my head. The calfling is dependent on the mother for the first year of its life, as its carapace takes a surprisingly long time to harden; it doesn’t take on the telltale emerald sheen until about its third year, instead being a dappling of whites and teals, camouflage against the water’s surface. They will feed on the remains of their mother’s meals rather than attempt to feed independently, though most are able to do so after the first handful of months. After that first year, males will typically depart on their own, while females will stick around with their mother’s pod or, if the numbers are too great, split off with other young females to form a new, more widely ranging pod. I’ve been told that young males will typically hang around these bachelorette pods, learning to compete with one another and offering additional protection.
There is little that can harm an adult Emerald Leviathan, as their carapaces, while lightweight, have a strength comparable to thaumically-augmented titanium, but the young are markedly more vulnerable; as such, they are often preyed upon by the Sinker Crocutta (Lobodon demergatus), a dunkleosteus-analogous seal with a propensity to hit prey from below.
Now, one would think that these animals, being both children of the Worm and curiously docile, would have been taken to hunting them, but this is not the case. The answer as to why is two-faceted according to the individuals I spoke with.
Their carapace is thaumically empowered beyond its abnormal durability. Namely, any sudden strikes against them cause an immediate, intensified rebound in damage; this trait appears to be instinctive. It typically fails to activate only during play fights among young individuals and clashes between bulls. Still, the latter is not universal, and some of the locals told me of particular old bulls knocking their challengers senseless with a recursive burst of energy by letting them take themselves out with a foolhardy charge. As such, any attempts to hunt these animals have led to immediate retribution, leaving battered if not completely shattered boats and maimed would-be “whalers” behind. At the same time, the Leviathans either fled to deeper water or simply kept on eating.
Secondly, while I did say these are normally docile animals, there is one thing that rouses them to anger beyond the mating season.
Other Children of the Worm. While the River is far from the Front, it is not uncommon for an attempt at a new foothold by the Worm, or feral specimens, to come calling. When they do, especially if they dare to intrude upon the waters themselves, the Emerald Leviathans descend upon them. They arrive as if called, possibly a latent connection to the hive mind they broke from, working like a radar system to hone in on the intruder. Still, bulls, cows, even calflings will swarm the intruder, pummeling them and dealing back any damage in flares of energy whenever the other Insect lashes out. More often than not, the intruders are destroyed, with the Leviathans drinking up whatever remains, but in other cases, the Insect manages to flee, especially those that stick to the shores, even with the Leviathans beaching themselves to reach them. These beaches are how the natives came to know much of the internal info I have presented here, as their abilities seem to fade in their passing. However, natives typically try to help the great beasts return to the water, especially since they have, even tangentially, come to the natives' defense in the past.
The Gentle Traitor
The fact that these creatures are so deeply integrated into the Palisades and their eagerness to protect their home has me curious about what else I will find on my later journey. Life is a curious thing, and I have often concluded that it is a force with intention not so dissimilar to any number of divinities found about the Verse. It can even take something alien, a mockery of itself, shaped for ceaseless hunger, and make it fit within the great web. And it isn’t the only one. There is one more creature that calls this vast world home that is worthy of detailing.
The Plenty
After months of trackless badlands baking beneath the light of three suns, the Plenty was a different kind of heat. Sweltering greenery, where rain fell nearly every day, with the faintest taste of iron and citrus, hinting that the constant flux of clouds was not entirely natural. This place was taboo to the natives, but I had managed to find one heretic with a sturdy enough boat to ferry me across. Even then, he warned that he would only wait three days for my return; I would need to swim back across before the masters of this isolated domain found me… if I was not unlucky enough to be found beforehand.
The Plenty is the source of the majority of the food on the Palisades, as well as textiles and medicines, a great strip of endless jungle interspersed with wide, low valleys choked to the brim with farmland. Mountains rose at almost too-perfect angles, cordoning off territories, and even from a distance, I could see the concrete kept home to those who crafted this world into what it is today—the Foundation.
But that was not my focus. Hardly, no, I came in search of a beast, one I had heard tales of everywhere I had traveled, and briefly glimpsed in my time on the Front. The Plenty was their true domain.
Tarrasque (Dracanoforma immortus). Indeed, the Plenty, despite its distance from the Worm’s main forces, was under constant siege, squirming tendrils of partially real flesh reaching ceaselessly to break its boundaries and deposit hordes of Insects, and each time the Tarrasque was said to be waiting. The natives viewed them as guardians, with shrines dotting the landscape, commenting on their eager and brutal slaughter of any Insects that crossed their paths, and on the compacts they had made with the Palisades creators.
I had to see if this was true, and with the brief scan I had gotten of the individual on the Front, combined with my scans of the Insects I began tracking. What awaited me was carnage, which I had not expected to shock me.
Mountains of still-squirming corpses filled the small valley, beyond which I could see yet another farm. Insect forms of all stripes and sizes, including some truly impressive titans, and towering above it all was the horrifically maimed Gate Wyrm (???) itself, an avatar of this world’s would-be devourers, currently in the midst of its death throes.
And amidst the carnage sat three of the Tarrasques. The largest stood atop the Gate Wyrm, greedily tearing off another chunk of flesh with its boxy, almost crocodilian jaws, even as blood poured like waterfalls from a dozen wounds.
The second was on its side, organs spilling into the dirt, head nearly parted from its neck, though its jaws and claws remained clamped within its apparent killer, some dread hybrid of wasp, centipede, and arachnid.
And then there was the smallest, standing in the mouth of the valley, absolutely bathed in ichor, skin sloughing off as it was being eaten by the dread concoction that coated it.
It picked itself up unsteadily, with a shake like a dog removing water, and splattered its decaying epidermis across the grass, and snorted contentedly as a new layer was already taking shape, scales gleaming obsidian.
The one on its side reembowled itself, the organs and viscera twitching and crawling awfully back into its torso, before another head poked out from the stump of its neck, and with viper-like jaws took up the old one and gobbled it down.
And then the largest wrenched the eye it had been working on and crushed it to paste in its jaws, swallowing it down with a contented warble, its wounds sealed and then opened, revealing a dozen eyes that looked around with curiosity and vigilance.
You would forgive me for thinking these creatures were the work of the Nälkä, but when I brought it up with them, they laughed in my face. “No friend, no, the Tarrasque is not of us. They are of themselves alone.”
Adaptation, immediate and intense, that defines the Tarrasque, what keeps them ahead of the Worm, and from what I could gather, is the true reason the Front has stayed where it was for millennia, as half their ilk hide in that unreal borderland, while the rest act as gate guardians of the Palisade’s paradise.
I admittedly had little time to observe them. Still, I believe they are normally solitary creatures, working together only when necessity demands it. However, this does not seem to be born of any true divergence from their kind, as they seemed markedly calm in each other’s presence.
They are Draconoforms, an offshoot of the archosaurs, deemed anomalous by the Foundation and its counterparts across most parts of the Verse due to their sudden emergence of hexapodal locomotion at some point in the past and the emergence of natural thaumic abilities.
In the case of the Tarrasque, their adaptive regeneration seemed to be able to heal them of any wound and bring them back all the better, stronger afterward, with clear adaptations to what had just slain them. However, I did see a level of more intricate control amongst individuals I took to be older. I have no clue what counts as maturity in these entities, but take the larger specimens to be on the older side of things; additionally, I am not aware whether they gestate live young or lay eggs, as Draconoforms practice both forms, depending on where you are in their respective genetic pathways. As the Tarrasque appears to be derived from either the burrowing or semi-aquatic clade, I am comfortable going with the latter.
It is fair to say that these animals appear almost crocodilian in appearance, with wide, low-set stances. Still, their scales at baseline appear smoother and show a greater variety of coloration. The individuals I observed during my time in Plenty had obsidian black, crimson red, and a deep navy blue coloration, respectively. If there is a detail about them that denotes gender, I was not made aware of it. They ranged in size from three to five meters at the shoulder and from eleven to fifteen meters in length.
Additionally, their heads were less like those of crocodilians and, at first glance, more similar to the cranial shapes of mosasaurs or basilosaurids, with thick, peg-like teeth and narrow, rounded snouts. I did see signs of multiple rows of teeth, and perhaps even nested mouths, but I was only close enough once to note this detail, and I can not say I would be eager to repeat it.
Their wide tails appear well-suited for skulling, and I observed them spending at least part of their day in the water, hunting or sleeping, in apparent shifts, with two awake and the other at rest.
At first, I took them to be obligate carnivores, but I did see one bring down an entire tree and consume every bit of fruit and branches it had available before chucking the log at a fellow. This led to a brief confrontation, with wide maws and stomping feet. Still, they eventually calmed and went to groom each other, focusing on a thick tuft of hair-like feathers hanging from the sides of their heads that occasionally covered their big, solid-black eyes. This tress is unique amongst Draconoforms, or so I currently believe, as this is the first time I can report one of their ilk with feathers.
Regardless, more of their behaviors and activities were lost to me. For on the second night, I awoke to find the largest of the trio staring at me from across my guttering fire. Its head was bigger than my tent, and it stared at me with not malice but keen and distressing curiosity, like a cat who had finally sighted the mouse.
As it saw me awake, it leaned a bit closer, a foreclaw raising almost lazily toward me. For a moment, I wondered if my journey would end right there.
Instead, it did something that shocked me even more.
It spoke. Its voice was like the roar of a hurricane and the rumble of an earthquake, swallowing all other noise and shaking my panicked thoughts free.
“You should not be here.”
The Immortal Guardian
And with that, it lowered its claw, snuffing my fire, and swallowing me in utter darkness as my eyes fought to adjust. When they did, the beast had vanished, moving far quieter than anything that size had any right to. I understood the implicit threat in its words and returned to the captain before the first of the suns even began to crest the horizon.
And with that, my journeys across the Palisades came to an end. I leave this bedeviled badlands behind for a domain somehow deader, and yet I have heard that its chill breadth still holds a stubborn collection of beasts.
For life to not only last here but flourish in its way, for life to be awaiting me there, I… I refuse to believe that my experiment will fail at the end of the Line. Yet, the few here I told of my final destination in this world looked at me as if I had fully cracked before their very eyes. These people spend their lives knowing that something from outside reality has come to consume their world; see that, despite it all, nature has continued on, despite all the hang-ups, trials, and traumas, and yet even they believe that the embrace of the NEON is nothing but dissolution.
They… they have to be wrong.
Ah, my ride is here. I apologize for ending on such a dire note, but… I do not believe what follows will be much cheerier. Regardless, the journey continues. I will see you next time when Glacier opens its cold embrace to you. This has been Varys Matthau, signing off.
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