Helevos Biology & Natural History

Helevos has two categories of life which are mutually incompatible, the viridplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigVirid

Referring to the Virid Kingdom of flora and fauna, toxic to human life., and the greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind..

Green life includes humans, and all domesticated plants and animals which are nutritious and useful to human exploitation. Greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind. life is considered to be soft, benevolent and useful, an essential part of human settlement and civilisation. Virid life is a thing of wild nature, choking lands untouched by human hands with jungles of strangely luminous vibrant green, with stems and ribs of violent red and purple. Viridplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigVirid

Referring to the Virid Kingdom of flora and fauna, toxic to human life. plantlife is non-nutritious at best, deadly poison at worst. There are stories of men stranded on uninhabited islands, starving to death despite gorging themselves on virid fruits.

The two biologies are chemically incompatible, and ecological interaction between wild virid and cultivated green lands the two is limited, although a surprising number of species have adapted to colonise adjoining zones. Natural interbreeding between the two is impossible, and it is also difficult for the two ecosystems to prey on each other, as the nutrients they rely on are, in the main very different.

Introduced plant life suitable for human consumption is a rich chlorophyl green, but due to the high levels of solar radiation, native plantlife has a distinctive lime-green and sometimes purple colouring based on phenophyls. Consequently, “native” vegetation is referred to as “virid”, whereas human friendly life is called “green”. All life is seen by people on Helevos as natural, but there is a cultural distinction between the virid and the green.

Humans are the most evident introduced species. Human colonists first arrived about fourteen millennia ago, and brought with them a host of species necessary for their survival, as the native system is incapable of providing complete nutrition. The early colonists were highly skilled in genetic manipulation, and engineered their own offspring to weed out a number of common diseases and abnormalities. Genetic treatment eradicated most forms of cancers and prolonged life span, although in the millennia since settlement, this has eroded. In fact under evolutionary pressure, life spans have in fact become shorter, because long-lived societies tended to produce social systems resistant to adapt to change. Some cancers have returned as a result, and there are new genetic illnesses, though different to ancient illnesses. The ancients also engineered tolerance to certain native substances toxic to humans, and engineered things such as skin pigmentation to protect against higher levels of solar radiation. They also added the ability to regrow lost limbs, and regenerate severely damaged organs.

Some of these adaptations happened during the late colonial period, so that those who left the early colonies did not have all the same protections. Today there is a mixture of genetic adaptations amongst different population groups.

Humans introduced a variety of domestic exo-species, engineered and adapted for life on Helevos. These species faired well or poorly, and may be grouped as follows:

• First were the domestic livestock used in traditional human societies, particularly varieties of draught animals, food animals and domestic pets familiar to ancient exo-human societies, such as dogs, cats and horses. These creatures were largely unchanged, though they were given genetic treatments to make them resistant to diseases, radiation and certain toxins. The majority of these creatures have long since become extinct, though the greatest diversity of red-blooded offworld species is found in the northern Natorn Isles.

• Next came a host of engineered life forms, created by modifying a variety of off-world species from the genetic library they had brought with them. Foremost amongst these were plants, created to produce resources for the human population without the need to rely on complex machinery. These new plants produced of variety of materials, not only a plethora of grains, fruits, vegetables, spices and other foodstuffs, but also fuels, complex medicines, polymeric resins (such as amberglass), structural building materials (like ironoke and domestic artifacts.

• Some native creatures were also adapted to be a chemical bridge between native and human biology. Grazing creatures such as ovors - a variety of sheep-goat analogue - were engineered to feed on native vegetation whilst providing human-edible meat and milk. Kits are small feline-analogues created in the middle colonial era to control small native pests, but they are now thought extinct.

Many exospecies have now either changed by evolution or become extinct. The majority of domestic species are now only found to any extent in the Natorn Isles, where human occupation has eradicated most of the virid biosphere.

These creatures most famously feature on the royal arms of Sann'al, as they were the traditional battle chargers of the royal house. They featured in the Battle of Four Kingdoms, but by the time of the Hartheranplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigHarthera

The Hartheran Union, commonly named Harthera, is an imperialist maritime nation state dominating the northeast of Anásthias. It is one of the two great powers of the modern epoch, arguably the most technologically and militarily powerful nation in the world, only matched by the vast size and wealth of its neighbour, viridOrorrMEOrorrOrorrOrorrOrorr Conquest they had long been an anachronism. They were kept by the royal house, and bred to a great size.

The creatures are bipedal with a dark mottled leathery skin and neck spines. They are birthed in leathery pouches, typical of larger native species, hidden in nests in cool, shaded places amongst rocks. When they hatch, the infant's body remain inside the pouch, with only its head exposed. Their mouths open very wide like flowers, with a multihued gullet with red, purple and white rills concealing a multitude of translucent sharp teeth. They are extremely venomous at this stage, except to their own kind. Infants feed by drinking blood from their sur: the venom acting as an anaesthetic and anticoagulant. They suck great boluses of blood, and quickly grow to taking meat pieces. They also eat small flying creatures that land on their flowerlike mouths.

The pouch eventually dries and splits with their growth, and at this stage the sur brings them paralysed live prey. The sur leaves increasing gaps between returning to the nest, and eventually abandons them once they are large enough to fend for themselves.

Wiverns remain venomous until they grow large enough to tackle bigger prey by strength alone. Adolesents have bulbous, tear-drop shaped bodies, with large feet, small arms, and small heads. As they mature, their necks grow longer and more sinuous, and their stumpy arms develop wing-like skin flaps which help them balance and run very fast. They hunt by laying in concealment, raising only their snake-like heads to observe their prey.

Bisoan princes traditionally bonded with a wivern from birth. In the high period, kings kept a stable-nest where wiverns were bred for size, appearance and temperament. In later years, princes who wanted a loper-wivern as a sign of his strength and legitimacy - particularly princes in weak governments - had to accompany a hunting master on an expedition into the hills. They had to find a nest, and steal a pouch before the infant had taken its first blood from its sur. When the pouch broke, the master would grip the creature firmly, and with a blunt edge massage the creature's venom sacs until their store of poison was temporarily drained. The master would then order the prince to press the flesh of his arm towards the creature. The infant would bite hard and drain blood - agonising with residual poison, but bearable. The creature would thereafter think of the prince as it's sur, and be bound to him by blood.

The creature would be weaned onto solid meat, and would grow large enough to ride in perhaps four years, during which time the prince would deliberately build a bond of trust. As a fast and venomous creature, small wyverns were perfect defence for young princes against assassins, though household 'accidents' eventually made them unpopular.

They were groomed so their back spines did not grow, their skin regularly rasped with coarse sand so that it became tough. Their riding training began using various native leaves. They did nothing to humans, but gave wyverns a feeling of mild intoxication. The wyverns were fed meat laced with these herbs, then had a harness strapped to their back while they slept. They gradually became aware of it, and often thrashed around, rolling on their backs. With careful training and reassurance they became accustomed to it, and eventually could accept a rider.

Wiverns were fearsome in battle. Not only were they fast and armoured steeds, but their long sinuous necks, sharp teeth and agonising venomous bite made them terrifying to infantry. After the Alsaneth revolution the regicidal regime attempted to exterminate all wiverns from the island. Today they are rare, but still found in remote hills in Besoa and Antyok.

These are highly developed social synapsidae, living in the cold forests of the north. They were once probably found all across the now flooded temperate regions, but now they are only found in Anrelplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnrel Isles

Anrel [ANN-rel], or the Anrel Isles, is the most northerly island group in the Natorn Archipelago. It consists of three major islands and numerous smaller ones. The largest, colloquially if infrequently called Mainland, is divided between the kingdoms of Trésard and Narette. The island, the native forests of the northern continent, and in southern Vulime.

Nesfers are highly evolved omnivores, but they are mostly social hunters. They are tree-dwellers, physically frail but possessing some of the highest intelligence of any native species. Their gift is in their incredible power of mimicry. Once they hear a sound, their incredibly flexible mouth and larynx are capable of reproducing that sound, almost perfectly. This is the key to their hunting.

Naturally, they mimic the mating or distress sounds of any number of species, attracting their prey, confusing it, and drawing it into traps. They commonly use areas of poisonous plants, or tempt prey over precipitous drops, only moving in for the kill once the prey is injured or incapacitated. They also are known to throw rocks, and even use venomous vines.

Nesfers in the north and south have evolved in isolation from a common ancestor, and have different appearance. Different groups, even closeby, use different hunting styles and different tribal 'calls' - something like a primitive languageplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigLanguages

List of human languages and dialects, contemporary and extinct.

Language

language

This is in a series of articles about Languages and Communication.

topics sidebar cult1.

type of native flying lizard, quite small and mostly a predator of small animals and carrion. Spits an acidic venom at predators, which burns skin and fur. This with others was inspiration for the 'dragons' of old mythology. Lives mostly in forests and undergrowth, except for their mating flight when males compete

Plants are divided in two main categories, the virid and the green.

The virid is the native vegetation, indigestible to exospecies and called yabber, or unclean, in the north. Some virid plants actually tastes good and are often as condiments, but a diet of virid plants alone can cause malnutrition diseases and toxicity. Many virid plants, particuarly the purpled-hued or veined, variagated varieties, contain cyanogens. They are mildly unpleasant to some native herbivores, but toxic to humans.

Green plants are the exospecies, essential to human life. Yabber species can eat them and seem to prosper, but on a diet of green food alone they gradually suffer from a bloating disease, symptoms of malnourishment.

wiregrass - grass-like plant which is endemic to both northern and southern plains. Patches of wiregrass are actually one plant, or a family of plants, creating a thick creeping ground cover with characteristic dark green corkscrewing stems. The species most common to Anrel produces spear-shaped leaves and spherical seed-buds which are eaten by grazing animals and dispersed in dung, or carried on skin or fur to be dropped elsewhere. Wiregrass particularly prospers in areas of saltflood, and helps to desalinate soil

ironoke - ironoke trees are a slow-growing hardwood with a huge canopy of green leaves. The wood is very dark, almost black, extremely dense and resistant to fire. The original northern varieties were deciduous, but when introduced to the south some strains adapted, and flourished in some areas where native canopies were regularly destroyed by fire. Ironokes are particularly treasured for building, and shipwrighting. Ironoke seeds are hard and reddish-black. They are germinated by intense heat resulting from forest fires. gamon tree - tree with a pale skin bark, with a layer of fatty tissue beneath surrounding a fleshy, woody core. The tissue is used as a grease, for lubrication, making soap, and even cooking. The fatty resin discourages boring insects and other native invaders. Found only in Anásthiasplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnásthias

Anásthias [a-NAS-thee-ass / ænæsθiːæs], or [an-ass-THEE-as] is an equatorial island continent, heart of the Civilised World. The north straddles the equator and is hot and humid, while most of the equatorial centre is an upland plateau with fertile river valleys, and stretches of arid plains and desert in the shadow of the mountains. The south is temperate but more wild, separated from the civilisations of the north by the almost impassable Harthera. goldwrack, godswrack - seaweed with floating green and variegated fronds. The buoyancy bladders contain a light golden oil, rich in all the essential vitamins, absent from all native foods. These pods also contain the plant's seed. When humans eat the pods and defecate in or near the sea, the seeds germinate, and by this process they have travelled and taken root along all the coasts where humans also exist.

• horsz - these are heraldic beasts in Anrel, famed as a fast, fierce battle charger with iron hooves and vicious teeth. A few sorry specimens existed in the royal Tresardi collection, but they were inbred albinoes. The species is now believed to be extinct.
• ram - the heraldic creatures had ironwool hair, curling long horns and vicious tempers, but in practice sheep became extinct long before the Dragon War.
• ovor - a form of modified sheep, there are many varieties in Anrel alone. They are large, docile beasts with large bodies covered in plates of dense matted hair, like heavy felt. When soaked the hair forms clumps suitable for spinning, and is the base for most textiles in Anrel.
• draughts
• shawsers
• destriers
• galloms
• loper wivern
• lamiedd - colourful form of synapsid primate, small with a long prehensile tail, native to Munatan but found around the world as pets.
• guinniver - very fine long-haired quadruped native beast, bred and cultivated for their silky wool
• turner
• jughead

• Caecilians - this genus of eel-like amphibians is common all over the world. They have no limbs and most species have no tail. They have lungs, and can be either oviparous (egg laying) or viviparous (birthing live young). There are a huge variety of species, ranging from amphibious sea-margin eel-worms, to varieties of tunnel-worm living in caves in the desert. Most are slow-moving but persistent, and some varieties are venomous, though their venom is not very toxic to haemotypes.
• Tetrapod - four-limbed vertebrates
• sequential hermaphroditism - changes gender at different life stage, by age or environment. This is common in native freshwater acquatic species, and in some plains herbivores.