Endless Blue - Week 51 - Cattel of the Fluid Nations: Barnard's Swallower

Zoology

Cattel of the Fluid Nations: Barnard's Swallower

NOTE: The images and ideas presented here are copyright Alex Ries and based on his Barnard's Swordswallower concept, except for material previously posted in the Endless Blue campaign setting blog.  The use Alex's work here is not meant as an infringement of those rights, and is used without permission.  It does not qualify as Open Game Content as per the OGC document.  If you enjoyed what you have read/seen here, please visit Alex's website at http://www.alexries.com, his blog at http://exozoo.blogspot.com, and his DeviantArt page at http://abiogenisis.deviantart.com.

Barnard's Swallower

Gargantuan Aberration (Aquatic)
Hit Dice: 4d8 +4 (22 hp)
Initiative:
Speed: 20 feet (4 cubes)
Buoyancy: Shoals (adjustable)
Armor Class: +1
Base Attack/Grapple: -3/+13
Attack: Water Slap (1d8 points of subdual damage)
Full Attack: Water Slap (1d8 points of subdual damage)
Space/Reach: 40 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Net
Special Qualities: None
Saves: Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +4.
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 12, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 9, Cha 8
Skills: Hide -5, Search +7, Spot +7, Survival +7
Feats: Improved Grab, Improved Natural Armor, Snatch,  Tracescent
Environment: Temperate, open waters (Shoals)
Organization: Solitary or mating pairs.
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Treasure: None, other than body parts.
Alignment: Always neutral.
Advancement: Young (1HD), Juvenile (2-3 HD), Adult (4 HD)
Level Adjustment: -

A Barnard's Swallower, shown with its "mouth" open and about to feed.

The Swallower is an ubiquitous example of packbreeder success.  It has been credited with domestication by the Barnard family as far back as the Bronze Age, and has served alongside the various piscean species consistently ever since.  Its relatively robust health makes it ideal for areas of temperature extremes such as those in the arctics or tropics, where it fares only slightly less well than in temperate waters.  Thoroughly domesticated, swallowers that are let loose into the wild or wander away from safer currents quickly fall prey to native predators.  Their ability to survive on their own has subsequently been bred out of them as their role as livestock as been bred into them.  The wild swallower has since all but been hunted to extinction by the indigenous races of the Known World.

Approximately 40 feet long from tip of sail to end of net, the Swallower is most notable for its distinctive knife-shape trunk and crop.  The trunk has about the same degree of flexibility as that of a Mer's spine, and trails a ventral fin from tip to neck.  Its epidermis is a blubbery, resilient skin that is a mottled slate grey along the dorsal side and a pale bluish-white along the belly.  A series of six paired openings along the trunk are the gills of the beast.

Barnard's Swallower coloration.

Swallowers are hermaphoditic, with a reproductive system that both provides and receives genetic material.  When the mating season begins, swallowers congregate in wide, open waters and release their seed packets into the currents where hopefully another swallower will swim through the plume of sperm and collect enough to become impregnated.  Self-impregnation seems to be biologically impossible due to the creature's own immune system.  But it is expressly due to this "pollination" method of reproduction that piscean selection could begin the animals'  slow alteration from wild beast to domesticated livestock.

Combat

The swallower is a docile beast, slow to move and relatively weak despite its size.  It makes a poor beast of burden; instead its value to piscean settlements is as livestock.

The ventral fin acts in many ways like a keel, and undulates in a rippling wave to produce forward momentum, much like the fins on the side of a squid.  Normally the eddies created in the currents from this motion would scatter prey in proximity, but the swallower developed a hunting skill to account for this -- it will snap the fin in a strong, sharp swat, effectively smacking small prey with a wall of water.  While their senses are overloaded from the impact of the water, the swallower can scoop them up in its net.  Few so buffeted can collect their wits again before they are engulfed.  Their main diet is comprised of great gulps of plankton that are easily found in the blooming open waters of Elqua, supplemented by the occasional small fish or other animal unfortunate enough to be caught in the Swallower's uniquely evolved digestive system.

Internal Anatomy of the Barnard's Swallower

The bulbous portion hanging down from the "blade" is the animal's digestive system, which parts open in much the same way a bivalve clamshell does.  When it does open, it releases a sheer, billowing "net" anchored to thin limb-like protrusions.  This fine fibered netting is organic in nature -- a silk derived from glands lining the Swallower's bulb -- and is used as a sieve to filter the animal's preferred meal stock from the ocean's currents: plankton.  Much like the massive whales, the gargantuan Swallower is dependent on one of the tiniest species of life for its continued survival.

Living creatures are pushed into this organic colander due to the disruptive currents of the Swallowers fin, where they are caught against the slime covered net.  This mucus is constantly being secreted while the net is inside the Swallower's bulb, and is slightly acidic due to the collection of enzymes that give it the tacky qualities that trap its prey.  As the chemical reactions from the enzymes break down the trapped food, it sloughs down the netting in the form of a nutrient rich nectar, perfectly prepared for digestion.

When the net is closed again, the joint seen at the back of the Swallower bends under the bulb.  There the briny bouillabaisse pools over what constitutes the creatures actual mouth.  An esophageal tube runs back up the back of the Swallower's net limbs, carrying the pre-digested catch to the stomach proper.  The connective netting between the folding limbs is a natural forming silk, that allows water to strain through the membrane but keep its plankton catch intact.  The enzymic acid it excretes to dissolve its prey also wears away at this silk, so the netting is in a constant state of repair.

The Swallower's net grab does not inflict damage.  Instead, it slowly excrete enzymes that kill prey collected in its net.  Treat the enzyme as an Acid.  It can Snatch Large or smaller creatures in its net.

Circulatory System of the Barnard's Swallower

Despite it grand size, the Swallower has an easily mappable circulatory system.  A series of veins and arteries transport the blood over the animal's body by means of small sac-like organs at the base of each gill.  These are primitive hearts, muscular pumps providing the pressure to move blood to needy organs.  Exhausted blood is circulated through the gills by means of small vascular loops.  Due to its lethargic lifestyle, the ponderous beast lacks a powerful central heart like pisceans possess, and as a result over-stimulation has been known to make the creatures faint.  This makes them easy prey in the wild.

Nervous System of the Barnard's Swallower

The neural network of a Swallower is unsurprisingly primitive.  It is of no revelation that the animal has never demonstrated any form of higher thinking skills, despite the best efforts of numerous packbreeders to create a better, smarter Swallower.  At best the nervous system can essentially maintain the creature's autonomic systems functioning.  The most complex thought processes the animal can achieve is feeding and movement, and not always at the same time.  It accomplishes nature's evolutionary requirements, and nothing more, spurring the piscean phrase "dumb as a swallower" for anyone or thing that barely functions above a comatose state.

The intent of selectively breeding Swallowers has results in various fields.  Resources scavenged from a Swallower are:  enzymes for alchemists, silk for weavers, skin for tanning, even meat for eating.

Rumor has it that a tribe of Locanth nomads has begun a concerted effort to re-introduce the Swallower to the wild.  Their packbreeders are attempting to breed self-reliance and animal instinct back into the creatures in order to restore the previously wild version to the shoals of the Gulf of Locanth.

"It is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, but seldom is it less risky..."
-- Sensate rationalization for many of their indulgences.

Endless Blue - Week 40 - The Resurrectionists: Tailors of the Fabric that is Flesh

Sociology

Resurrectionists -- Tailors of the Fabric that is Flesh

Purveyors of the dead, dealers in dark magicks.  These are what the populace would call necromancers, dabblers in the animation of corpses.  But those that seek knowledge of the dead prefer the more neutral title: Resurrectionists.  Despite the conjured image of twisted souls perverting the sanctity of departed love ones to serve out some abstract nefarious goal, the Resurrectionists actually employ their misunderstood art for the betterment of the water world as a whole.  One part caring healer of the sick, another part environmentally conscious recycler, and a final part questor for eternal life, the Resurrectionists see themselves as the answer to the Known Worlds current problems.

Anatomy of an Anatomist

The beginning of the Resurrectionist movement lay partially with the creation of the scientific method of medicine.  To better understand how to combat infirmity and impairment, a healer must understand the underlying principles of biology.  Resorting to battlefield chirurgy can only reveal so much, with the mangled flesh and expended lives strewn across the waters like so much chum.  What few specimens were not scavenged by wildlife or ravaged by saltwater were hardly the best material from which to learn the secrets of how the piscean body works.  They needed better cadavers to examine, fresher bodies to dissect, in order to delve into the mystery of biology.

They turned to the packbreeders of Elqua, asking for the bodies of their expired warbeasts for anatomical research.  In exchange, the Resurrectionists shared insights with the donors to better breed their stock.  This arrangement worked well for both parties, and the knowledge of biology was furthered by fathoms in a reconnaissance of discovery.  But just as the small window of opportunity on the battlefield were mined of all their secrets, so too did the dissection of fauna eventually peter out of insight.  The Resurrectionsists had to face the truth they wished to avoid -- they needed intact, practically fresh piscean bodies.

The integrity of the dead is sacrosanct in nearly all Elquan cultures, and the rites that must be observed to properly ensure the passing of the dead are strict.  Foremost among them is the taboo against desecrating the body.  All dead are to be weighted and consigned to the depths, to sink further and further into the darkness below to become one with the Source.  Even the other religions such as Olyhydranism and Pantheon worship still command their schools to send their dead to the center of the globe.  The mere thought that the body of a loved one would not be weighted and sunk, thus forever barred from returning to their Creator, horrifies the piscean races.  But this tradition of burial is essentially throwing away perfectly good research material to a Resurrectionist.  It was such a loss each and every time blind superstition overrides the potential medical discovery that the Resurrectionists made a desperate move...  They began to clandestinely pay for bodies.

It was a shameful but unavoidable decision.  It had to be done, and to this day the Resurrectionists pay the unscrupulous and nonspiritual to "rescue" weighted bodies for later experimentation.  Delivery of the bodies had to be in secret, with utter discretion and no questions asked.  So long as the body thieves kept quiet about their clientele, the Resurrectionists asked no questions of how or where the bodies were collected.  With this unspoken pact in place, it was not long before the grave robbers began to offer "dead contracts".  Targeted at the desperate and poor, dead contracts were a formal if illegal agreement that the signer would receive payment now, interest free until the day he dies; at which point, the body of the deceased then becomes the property of the signor.  This trafficking of yet-to-be-dead bodies has not gone unnoticed by the authorities, but they can do little about it when the victims are too afraid of the body thieves to come forward.

As this financial arrangement became more and more lucrative, the Resurrectionists improved their healing skills and began to make a name form themselves.  This led to the formation of the guild known as the College of Doctors, established as an organization that garnered the fame from their successful medicine that could never be achieved under the banner of the Resurrectionists.  The organization has grown, diversified, and spread across the Known World.  So large is the organization now that most have no clue of the group's less than ethical beginnings and newly inducted members see it as the idealistic philosophy that the Resurrectionists pretend to be.

Pragmatism vs. Atheism

There is a confusion in the minds of the less metropolitan that the Resurrectionists and the Godless are the same philosophical movement.  This is simply not true.  Granted, Resurrectionist  share much in common with their atheistic counterparts, but the two movements have sharp distinctions.  The Godless espouse that the gods are false, while the Resurrectionists assert that the dead have no need to be revered.  Resurrectionists believe that once the body dies, the animus vitae-- the force of life -- is gone and what is left behind is so much scale and bone.  Whether the force of life simply dissipates or moves on to join with a creator is only of ancillary concern to these animists.  In contrast, Godless do not believe there is a Source or any other creator that collects souls, but life is still precious for the simple fact that it is the only thing in the universe that fights entropy.

Resurrectionists are not evil, and do not view what they do as an abomination against nature.  They are pragmatic, rationalizing that the departed have left this world behind. With their mortal shell cast aside as useless, there is not moral ambiguity in others using it as a natural resource.  It is little different than the piscean use of aquatic flora and fauna as food -- there is not cruel intention in the consumption, just the natural balance of life taking succor from the waters around it.  They would no more blink an eye at using the remains of a piscean as a miner has digging ore from the seabed or a culinist harvesting seaweed from the kelp fields.  It is simply a matter of pragmatism, using what exists as the tools of survival.  Societal mores make their activities taboo, but ethically it is no more antithetical to life as cutting coral for construction of shelters.

The Dead that Swim Once More

Many secrets owe their discovery to the questionable endeavors of the Resurrectionists.  They have contributed to more medical innovation than all other physical arts combined, and those breakthroughs have brought results that would have been declared miracles in earlier ages.  Indeed, it is their study of nature that gave them the ultimate lore -- the ability to make the dead move.

This unique talent traces its origins back to the earliest piscean archeologists whom took a second look at the strange formations in the rock bed.  Once simply regarded as an odd form of pareidolia, it was these early proto-Resurrectionists that realized the stone were actually fossils, petrified remains of living creatures that swam the oceans of Elqua epochs in the past.  They began to excavate these stony bones with an obsessive determination that their kinds still suffers under to this day, collecting the parts, arranging them in various orders as they postulated skeletal arrangement and musculature.  With the advent of Seamus Lorwynn's theory of evolution, they postulated the biology of the past to have parallels in the past, and used the morphology of modern sea monsters as a guide to model the prehistoric creatures against.  Ligaments, muscles, organs, flesh...  all masterfully plotted out in the minds of these imaginative and intuitive individuals so clearly and concisely they could practically make them move as they had when they were alive.  One day, they actually accomplished it, and the first living dead, or golem, was created.

The undead that Resurrectionists animate have more in common with puppets than the unliving, and a distinction must be made between the unliving that Resurrectionists create and the undead that seep down from the Vastness.  The former are vile aberrations of life, fueled by some unquenchable fury to destroy the faintest trace of animus vitae.  The latter are mere animated slabs of meat, muscle tissue given inertia through memory.  These undead are in actuality golems made of flesh and bone, stone and scale.

The first golems were primitive things, made of fossilized bones and clay flesh, lashed together with seaweed and hide, enshrouding a tiny flicker of animus vitae.  They possessed no grace, no beauty -- they were as ugly in sight as they were in function.  Those primitive attempts at bringing to life what was lifeless were things of horror and revilement.  It is no wonder that even today the Resurrectionists must keep their natures hidden from the light of day.

As techniques were refined, the most common form of golem was and still is the homunculus.  Small approximations of the piscean form, they look more like marionettes that living flesh.  But they were the first of the living dead that were imbued with intelligence, albeit rudimentary.  From those lowly beginnings, the Resurrectionists sought greater and greater achievements in the art of reanimation, growing in size and breadth and reach with each passing year.  Word of their discoveries have come under scrutiny of local lords, even the racial governments have looked closely at the potential for "rejuvenating soldiers" that reanimation promises.  Images of highly skilled and utterly loyal Royal Medic Corps being assigned to the regiments of countries' navies, attending to any of the wounded that were beyond saving, applying their craft there on the battlefield.  The details of what those medics would actually be performing are usually glossed over, but it takes little imagination to realize the result would be the cannibalization of the terminally wounded into cobbled together yet functioning soldiers.  The admirals in charge cling to visions that the worst of such behavior would be relegated to the fallen warbeasts of their forces, and are willingly turning a blind eye to the repugnance of the truth.

And with the borders becoming ever so much more restrictive, the conscription of Resurrectionists into the territory wars may be nearer than anyone realizes.

The Paragon Cynosure

Practitioners of alchemy have their Philosopher's Stone; the faithful have their Holy Grails.  There is a equal ultimate achievement among the Resurtectionists, sought as zealously as the Grail and as greedily as the Stone.  This cynosure of all Resurrectionists is nothing less that the resurrection of an extinct species.  Not the paltry animation of golems, but the restoration of the animus vitae in a species that has long ago gone extinct.  Treatises through the generations have posited on what that would mean, ethically, morally, spiritually, but most modern practitioners of reanimation begrudgingly agree that the paragon cynosure, the ultimate expression of resurrection, is to bring back a dead intelligent race.  Nothing else fits the bill better than the mysterious and infamous Icht.

Endless Blue - Week 26 - The Floating Wheel

Anthropogenics

The Floating Wheel

Perhaps the third most important discovery that enabled civilization to flourish, behind language and fire, is arguably the wheel.  Historians and philosophers can argue the details, but work-relieving potential of the wheel has proven itself indispensible in every culture known.  An astoundingly simply invention -- the simplest shape, found everywhere in nature, and refined to become the greatest mechanical tool to push civilization forward -- the wheel's practicality is a little diminished when you can move in all directions.  Wheels essentially need traction to work, and when held aloft, floating in an endless ocean of water, there is little there for the wheel to roll across.  Even if the pisceans of antiquity kept to the sea bed with their wheels, the topography of the ocean floor is rough, usually steep, and most times less solid than packed earth.

This is not to say that the wheel doesn't exist.  I most certainly does, as there just as many inspirations for the shape under the sea as there are above the waves, and the utility of the pre-historical invention is simply too potent for civilization to have "never imagined it".  But on Elqua, the wheel gives up its prominence as the premiere contraption of the piscean mind in favor of a less tangible, but perhaps more understandable, development: domestication.

The domestication of animals as beasts of burden filled the roll of the wheel in Elquan prehistory.  Harnesses or even basic lengths of rope strapped to dolphins, manta rays, and other strong swimmers with high levels of stamina took advantage of the raw strength the beasts possessed to pull a sled or travois.  When loads were exceptionally heavy, the travois would be dragged across the ocean floor terrain, but with sufficient number of animals using their inate buoyancy, the weight of the load could be over come and the essentially be lifted into the water much like a helicopter might lift its cargo.  The domesticated animals, in a way, served as organic dirigibles, carrying cargo that would be impossible to move by hand.

Domestication is the practice of humans to selectively breed compliance into a species for the intent of exploiting their natural traits.  It is not just limited to animals (as expressed in the Packbreeder character class), but also included plants (as employed with the Culinist character class).
On our own world, domestication is as common as the nearest house pet or backyard garden.  Domestication of canis lupus familiaris (the common dog) took place almost 17,000 years ago, and cereal crops like peas and wheat were domesticated roughly 11,000 years ago.  The piscean equivalents would be delphis (pronounced del-fIz, a smaller form of dolphin trapped in a perpetual state of neotony) and the wonder grain ricelqua.

To achieve domestication in animals, the packbreeder needs to produce six criteria in the species.

Placid Temperament -- An animal must be able to adjust to its new environment and not become startled by any little movement or sound.  Essentially, it must modify its "fight or flight" reflex so that it is not the primary reaction to outward stimuli.  A beast that lashes out at the slightest provocation is better suited to become a beast of war, whereas a creature that is skittish and likely to bolt at any time becomes a burden to simply keep in captivity.

Pleasant Disposition -- Unlike the beasts of war packbreeder guide into combat, domesticated  animals must not pose a danger to their captor when held in captivity.  A dog is docile in comparison of its feral fore-bearer, the wolf,

Social Imprinting -- A domesticated animal must be able to accept another kind of creature (in this case, the packbreeder or owner) as the pack leader of it's pack/herd.  Without this implicit subjugation, a species would never achieve the level of dependency needed for domestication.

Captive Breeding -- If the animal cannot breed under the auspices of piscean packbreeders, there is no hope of selectively breeding the wanted traits.  Many animals reproduce in specific places, such as sea turtles along sandy beaches.  This migratory instinct that forces an animal to travel to a specific place to reproduce/give birth prevents the encompassing control a packbreeder needs to modify a species successfully.

Quick Maturity -- Coupled with captive breeding, if an animal does not reach maturity at a relatively fast rate and reproduce a subsequent generation in the lifespan of a piscean, no single packbreeder can fully influence the artificial selection of its traits.  If it would take multiple generations of packbreeders to produce any significant genetic change,  chances are a more fertile species would be better suited for domestication.

Adaptable Diet -- Animals whose diet consists of a single specific algae or species of fish make poor choices for domestication, as their finicky consumption habits require extra effort to cultivate.  Those species that can survive on the left-overs from piscean meals, or even whatever plant life is chanced upon in the immediate area mean less energy is invested into cultivating their meals and that extra effort can be put into whatever chore they are suited to accomplish.

The product of this intense genetic selection is the creation of livestock (animals that can be used by pisceans as sources of food, beasts of burden, or both).  Some animals make better muscle than meal, like the ever-present dolphins and porpoises.  Others are strictly raised little other reason that to be eaten, like albacore.  Then there are those animals used for their industrial applications, such as the oysters used in nacre production.  These species are bred with an marked increase of whatever profitable attribute in mind.  Finally, some species are bred as effort reducers, meant to take over menial tasks that pisceans are too busy or not well suited for, like pilot fish for cleaning and herding animal packs, or the bioluminescent algae used in bale-lights.

Plants, on the other hand, require much less stringent guidelines for domestication due mostly due to their immobility.  Domesticated plants bred for large-scale food harvesting are called crops, and here a culinist's skill can shine.  The application of a skillful culinist's abilities can breed out physical and chemical defenses (such as thorns or sour fruit), shorten germination times, increase harvest yields, or even create brand new types of plant.  An example in our own world is the root known as the carrot.  While most immediately think of the color orange when the vegetable is mention, the truth is that carrots come in a spectrum of colors, and the ubiquitous orange color is just one.  It is believed that the acari is one such result on Elqua, a carefully crafted species of plant that excels at its absorptive abilities when it is hybridized.  The cultivar (cultivated variety) of acari can be almost unidentifiable when compared to the wild variety. except for the tell-tale rubbery skein and gelatinous pulp.

An interesting effect of selective breeding and societal growth has developed into a class of animal that serves no real purpose other than the joy it gives to its owner.  These animals do not provide food, nor do they complete work.  Instead they exist solely at the whim of their master.  Called "pets", these domesticated creatures are usually the result of generations of packbreeders honing a species of fauna into a source of companionship and pleasure instead of purpose and need.  The plant equivalent would be a garden, and the flora of the deep can come in as varied shape, size, or color as the culinist's imagination can conjure.