Fauna
From ThornsWiki
This is a list of animals that are unique to Vita. However, Vita is home to a great many other animals that exist on our world. (Think Eastern Europe for Anaxas.) This page will also list some common animals, like horses and cats, that are thought of differently in this world.
You should never capitalize these animal names. These terms are treated like regular words.
Contents
Aquatic Creatures
Ingo (Mugroba, Anaxas)
The ingo is an aquatic relative of the hingle. They live in small colonies consisting of paired individuals that each live in a separate burrow. The ingo only inhabits islands with rocky coastlines that protect them from hunters and storms. They mainly eat kelp but will also supplement their diet with snails, fish or any other available food source.
Ingo are known for their playful nature and relative intelligence. Fishermen will occasionally raid burrows for ingo pups and train them to search for pearl oysters. Ingo's make quite dedicated pets and as a result pirates and fishermen consider it taboo to kill one and generally don't reveal the location of their islands to fur traders.
Ingo are dorso-ventrally quite flat and swim in a manner similar to dolphins and whales. They are roughly 50cm in length and around half as wide. Their hind legs are vestigal and only used in a mating clasp. Their front limbs are comparatively very strong and can be used to drag themselves about land, although they prefer to remain in the water. Their front limbs are also used for fine motor control, although they look ridiculous when used for this purpose. They have a thick subcutaneous layer of fat that protects them from the cold and makes them look chubby and cute.
There used to be a mainland species of ingo with a brown coat, but they were hunted to extinction over a century ago.
Prayer Fish (Mugroba, Hox, Hesse, Bastia)
Also known as the armoured fish, siege fish and death fish. The prayer fish is a largely benthic, heavily armoured fish species that preys primarily upon other large fish, seals, whales, sharks and anything else that is readily available. They're primarily solitary and possess an unusually high intelligence for a bony fish. Occasionally, for no known reason, the prayer fish will amalgamate and form raiding parties. These raiding schools have been known to attack ships, to the point of capsizing them or breaching their hulls. Even the bravest sailor lives in fear of them and their erratice behaviour. The only known means of dissuading them is to pour large amounts of chili powder or other irritants into the water. This is a desperation act that tends to make it difficult to fish for days after and is considered insulting to the god Hulali.
The prayer fish is fairly inflexible where plating is present on its body but has a very mobile tail. It's maneuverability comes at the expense of long distance speed but it is capable of a disastrously fast sprint. This sprint and their tendency to hide near the ocean bed makes them difficult to spot. They're oviviparous and bear live, fully functional young. The young tend to spend about month around their mother, allowing protection while their bone plates fully form. An average adult is 5m in length. Since the species is mildly sexually dimorphic, females usually grow beyond this range as they age.
Insects
Starfly (Anaxas, Hesse)
A large insect, looks like a cross between a dragonfly and a firefly. Leaves a temporary trail of phosphorescent light when it flies. So named because it is commonly mistaken for a falling star.
Burrower Wasps (Mugroba)
Known to the wicks as Hama Koketa, these insects are now very rare, but once filled the desert with their harmonious song.
These large, deadly insects looks like enormous wasps, but are actually more closely related to starflies. They generally grow to 1-2 inches in length, though there are anecdotal reports of individuals up to 12 inches. Unlike wasps, they lack stingers, however, their bite is extremely painful and usually leads to infection - and sometimes death - if left untreated. Their wings make a characteristic hum, and in groups the hum of the swarm seems to harmonize with itself, forming a hauntingly beautiful "wasp song".
They form large underground hives in the deserts of Mugroba, though at one time hives were occasionally sighted as far south as the Talmarma river. The hives are deep underground cities, home to between a hundred and a thousand wasps. Each nest looks from the surface like a large sandy hill, riddled with wasp-sized holes. Since the wasps never breed in captivity, it is generally believed that there is a queen somewhere in the depths of the colony, but this has never been confirmed. The hives are known for their "honey milk", a milky white mush that is secreted by the digger wasps to feed their larvae. Interestingly, the honey has extremely high water content, and in the depths of the Mugrobi desert the nests are often the largest (sometimes *only*) source of water for miles in any direction. It is said that the wasp acquire water by burrowing all the way to the water table deep below the earth, essentially digging a well in the desert for themselves. Alternately, some galdori academics theorize that they condense the water directly from the air, somehow.
The wasps are highly empathic. In the presence of burrower wasps any fear, hostility, or worst of all, panic, is said to provoke immediate attack. wicks and other travelers practiced in dealing with the insects are able to dig up the nests and harvest the milk honey with impunity, simply by carefully maintaining an absolute, unwavering calm. There are tales of Burrower Wasps being trained for use as lie detectors, however, in reality they usually die within days when placed in captivity, and don't seem to be particularly interested in lies one way or the other.
The wasps hold special significance to many wicks, and is often associated with Hulali. They are said to be particularly docile in Achtus, the month after the festival honoring their prime god.
Once common, burrower wasps have been becoming increasingly rare in recent decades, and are now on the brink of extinction. The cause for this is unknown, but old wick folktales claim that the wasps flee the land when hardship is immanent for it's people.