Wildlife & Incomprehensibles

The skies are full of all manner of strange creature. While there are countless natural philosophers and aspiring zoologists, magic’s presence men's that new varieties and types are discovered on an almost monthly basis.

There are two authorities on the fauna found across the skies: the Society of Natural Studies of Dalaam, and the Hunter’s Guild of Crean. The former attempts to catalogue, study and understand, while the latter concerns itself with protecting protecting people, safeguarding settlements and ships, and, of course, hunting.

The Bestiary
The College of Natural Philosophers makes a point of collecting specimens and accounts of every creature it can. It's agents roam the skies, and they often post jobs whenever rumours surface of something new or interesting.

Notable natural philosopher and zoologist Penny Lithu Gorey made a name for herself when she journeyed through each sky, collecting samples and accounts of every creature she could. Her monumental bestiary, Vival Caelum, was the first bestiary to be considered somewhat comprehensive. The College releases a new edition at the begining of every age, spending the preceding storm age compiling and analyzing all received and stored samples, accounts, and statesments of new wildlife.

Wildlife
The vast majority of animals fall into the first two categories of wildlife.

Critter
Mild or passive animals, creatures that live and thrive in the skies, on spires, or flying through the soars. Large or small, these animals pose no immediate threat to people around them. They might be domesticated, but more often than that they are wild—they simply don’t care to interact with civilization. When they do, it is in benign, helpful, or possibly annoying ways, though rarely dangerous.

Beast
Any animal that has the potential to harm is considered a beast. These can range from somewhat benign animals that, while dangerous, provide a solid food source if they can be hunted, to smaller, seemingly-innocuous animals that have lethal abilities. Rean Hunters are consider to come of  age once they have killed their first beast, whatever it may be.

Monster
While many animals may harm or hurt those who come across them, monsters are those beings that actively seek out people as prey or perhaps even for sport. Dangerous, devious, and deadly, monsters are a step above beasts based on their inherent violent and destructive nature. Many adventurers across the skies make careers out of hunting down monsters, or else protecting settlements that have fallen prey to such a being.

Colossus
Any creature that can attack and defeat an airship can be safely considered a colossus. These animals are rare, dangerous, and surprisingly enough, rarely outright aggressive. Windfish (sky whales) are the most commonly sighted, drifting down from the heights of HighSky on occasion. Hunters often dream of pursuing and bringing down the largest of this class of creature, simply known as Leviathans, which rarely make appearance to those who aren't diligently tracking them.

Incomprehensible
Wildlife is inherently natural and, while at times mutated or altered, relies upon natural law the same as Avorals, Humans, Ursa, and Medua alike. Beings considered Incomprehensible are divorced from natural law in some way, either by the wild magic of the skies, or through unknown method or ability.

Spirit
Ghosts, spooks, and shades, these lingering wisps of the dead appear wherever violence or pain marks the end of a life. Many of these are tethered to an object or anchored to a specific location, unable to leave and find peace. While spirits don't often interfere with the living, if agitated or provoked, they may lash out, tormented or haunting those who they perceive as foe.

Horror
Some spirits drive themselves to darker, more demented ends, consuming what they can until they become larger, more clever, and above all, hungrier. Sometimes a spectre will emerge from tombs long buried for reasons unknown, mutated and distorted by a hidden past. Sometimes incorporeal beings from other planes slip through the cracks of reality, becoming unhinged and half-unreal. These beings are aggressive and hunger for life. They might stalk, or hunt, or else lay patient traps in derelicts and ruins waiting for someone to stumble upon their nest. But all horrors view those living as prey.

Terror
These are the ghastly wraiths, the grim spectres of absolute death. A terror that descends upon a town will often bring the entire settlement to ruin of left unchallenged. Their shapes are different and strange, but always horrific, if not in appearance or action, than in utter alien presence, as monstrous testaments to the hungering unknown. Where terrors pass, nightmares and madness follows.

Euclid
Euclid is the classification given to any sentient race. Avorals, Humans, Medua, and Ursa are all considered Euclid, as are the four races below. However, very few examples of the races below live openly, integrating with the other races. Encountering any of these races is rare and possibly dangerous.

Fae
Slipped through the cracks of reality, these magical beings are at once a blessing and a curse to those that encounter them. They delight in festivities and entertainment, but their tempers can spark in an instant, bringing ruin to entire settlements if unopposed, Poisoned by cold iron, fae shift shape between summer and winter. Their magic is chaotic and unknown, while at the same time being iron-clad when bound in contract. Fae are incapable of speaking falsehood.

Wendigo
On rare occasion, a ship lost to the vast empty regions beyond the rim skies will return to the known skies with only a single survivor. This survivor, however, is anything but. Do to a mix of starvation, madness, and unknown wild magic, someone who turns to cannabalism may mutate into a wendigo, a being that feeds on living and freshly dead flesh. At first considered to be monsters—and  still treated as such my most—wendigo retain the intelligence of their former selves, though with radically different personalities. There are currently five known wendigo existing in skies, acting as intelligent and cunning political figures who happen to be monstrous abominations.

Gorger
Infectious sporefruit that inhabit flesh in order to become mobile. Corpses, especially fresh ones, are perfect. As they get older, they become more plant-like and need t9o root. Sterile ones are peaceful and hunted by their own kind. They all worship the leviathans because they are paradise to a forger—endless growth, sun and sky. Older ones are sapient. They seed/rob any graveyard people put up, which is why bodies are dropped beneath the cloudfloor instead of buried. Sterile gorgers dont settle and eat very little. Insane ones are generic skeletals, but the sapient ones form connections with people, asking to be addressed by strange names in an unknown language.

Balancer
Humanoid in shape, deathless, and pleasant in conversation, these beings appear at turning points in history, either to stand by and bear witness, or involve themselves and shape history toward their own ends. Immediately recognizable, though impossible to accurately describe, these beings appear in legend and countless stories, often signalling a turning point in a story, or a dramatic choice that influences every following action.

Biomes
Creatures throughout the skies can be found in multitude, but for pratical locations, they can be divided between the following biomes and areas.

Wilds
These are mountain spires, forests, and jungles in which people are rare.

Soars & Clouds
On the winds and lines, through all three chops of sky live creatures in the air, some of which never land.

Countryside
Where people and the natural world are in constant contact, the edges of civilization.

Water & Rains
Lakes, basins, rivers, and deep wells often host small pockets of hidden life.

Village & City
Where people make their homes, sometimes defended, often susceptible to outside incursion.

Home
Inside a human’s house, an ursa’s den, or a avoral’s roost, there are often intruders or others that live in symbiotic or parasitic natures.