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Please Reblog is Your Blog is Safe for Non-Binary People.

If my mutuals can’t rb this then we can’t be mutuals

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Hyper TLDR AE plot/story synopsis

Astral Echoes follows a group of sophonts in Hoshinrin over a 2 and half year long period, facing some of the most extreme trials and tribulations any person could face, even in this harsh polar continent. All of the group end up stranded in Hoshinrin’s great boreal wilderness, and survival gets complicated not only by their own personal problems and other direct struggles, but by things entirely outside of their control: here, the weather and seasons themselves are commonly a greater threat than any living thing. The situation worsens as new mysteries and sinister truths get revealed regarding what lurks in the wilds, and what the planet itself holds in store for not just our characters, but the whole continent. Even after the group escapes the wilderness, life still often proves hard, and brings a new set of challenges, internal or otherwise. The story is primarily seen from the perspective of 3 avian chimeras: Ari, Kori, and Jei, with shots of things from the viewpoint of other squad members and important characters.

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Hello everyone! I know I haven’t really posted much on this blog in general lately (primarily because of a lack of motivation or much reason to do so + some other broader factors), and there’s been a bit of a drought on Astral Echoes stuff for a while now, but I have good news! Progress on AE has still been going very strong, and there’s been a ton of major developments and refinements. I really just haven’t really had sufficient time or motivation to blast that all onto Tumblr just yet, but that’s going to change!

AE posting is going to begin resumption at some point in December, although things aren’t going to really kick off until February. AE is also going to get its own sideblog (mainly for the sake of organization and so I can use this blog for other things, like wildlife photography posting and birder brainrot).

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appalachia is devastated. towns i loved, towns i visited all the time, are gone. not damaged, GONE. they are leveled to the ground. there is nothing left but rubble and ruin. people are dead. appalachia is poor to begin with and relies on tourism for a lot of its income, and multiple of those tourist locations are just...gone.

my town is okay, but it's flooded and wrecked. trees are blocking all but one way out of our neighborhood. power lines are hanging limp in the roads. we've been without power for over 24 hours and will continue to be without power for likely another 24+. disabled people and poor people are GOING to die from this. gods save appalachia.

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Time to infodump about the animals I'm supposedly a nerd about.

All pictures in this post are N. yvonneae, the southern ningaui (Image credit: Owen Lishmund)

The ningauis (in the genus Ningaui, if you can believe it) are a group of tiny dasyurid marsupials native to the arid and semi-arid regions of Australia. Smaller than their close dunnart relatives (very close, as I will explain later), and with broader hindfeet, ningauis were first documented by western science relatively recently by Australian mammal standards. Although some specimens had been collected previously, being haphazardly assigned to planigales (another genus of miniscule dasyurids), it wasn't until 1975 that the genus Ningaui was erected and its first two species were described - N. ridei, the Wongai ningaui, and N. timealeyi, the Pilbara ningaui. A third species, the southern ningaui (N. yvonneae), was named in 1983.

Oh, and in case you were wondering where the name "ningaui" comes from, it refers to tiny beings from Aboriginal mythology that come out at night, are covered in hair, have notably short feet and eat their food raw. Most of these traits are also shared by these little marsupials, hence why palaeontologist Mike Archer (the original author of the genus) found it to be a fitting name for them!

(Image credit: glandarius)

Ningauis are small - really small, some of the smallest land mammals in fact. With the tiniest individuals being only 5 cm long, not including the tail, they are about the same length as Australia's smallest native mammal, the long-tailed planigale. However, ningauis are significantly chunkier and therefore usually weigh a couple more grams, meaning planigales win in regards to all-around tininess. The very largest ningauis still only reach about 8 cm in length and 14 grams in weight.

What they lack in size they make up for in ferocity however, as they follow the typical dasyurid trend of becoming increasingly savage the smaller they get. Tasmanian devils, despite their reputation, are actually quite relaxed when handled - on the other end of the spectrum, ningauis, which are around a thousand times smaller than a devil, will try to murder you, your family and everyone you hold dear if they find themselves captured. But, despite their best efforts to chew the fingers off of every field mammalogist in inland Australia, they aren't very strong.

remorseless beasts (Image credit: Tina Gillespie & Miss.chelle.13)

These ferocious predators feed on a variety of different prey items, the majority of which are small invertebrates - in the case of the Wongai ningaui, they prefer prey that is less than a centimetre long. However, they will also go after larger prey, having epic duels with grasshoppers, spiders, centipedes and even small skinks which they subdue with a crushing bite to the back of the head. Unlike their dunnart relatives, the shorter, broader feet of ningauis allows them to climb into shrubs and grass clumps.

All ningaui species are extremely similar to one another, so much so that the Wongai ningaui and southern ningaui are almost externally indistinguishable and the Pilbara ningaui can only be told apart by looking at its foot pads, teat number and skull. However, they can usually be distinguished by distribution. The Pilbara ningaui is the most range restricted, being endemic to the central and western Pilbara region of western Australia. The southern ningaui occurs in three disjunct populations across the southern semi-arid zone, whilst the Wongai ningaui is distributed widely across much of the interior. All species show a strong preference for environments dominated by spinifex grass (Triodia), which they use as shelter.

A ningaui takes shelter amongst the spinifex (Image credit: Euan Moore)

In regards to how they are related to other dasyurids, ningauis fall in the tribe Sminthopsini together with the kultarr (Antechinomys laniger, another species I really need to cover sometime) and many species of dunnart (Sminthopsis). However, recent phylogenetic studies have consistently recovered both Antechinomys and Ningaui as being within the Sminthopsis lineage, meaning that both ningauis and the kultarr are, in essence, just weird dunnarts. With Sminthopsis as we currently understand it being highly paraphyletic, a revision of the genus is needed.

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And here’s the moonsprite stuff (kinda delayed since I got distracted and preoccupied by something).

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Here’s the ghostjay design stuff!

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AE posting kinda went on a brief hiatus for a while because I’ve been busy with other things, but I have been cooking a ton of stuff up for it. Most importantly is that several of the sophonts have been getting some major tweaks/reworks. The willowdrake adjustments (which was really just making them more petrel like since it felt more fun and distinctive) will be either added to the old post or given a new one, but everyone else is going to have their updated versions be the first major proper dump posted on them. Most of these changes are because I honestly wasn’t really satisfied with their old states overall and didn’t think they felt unique or derived enough (the ghostjays and warrendwarves especially suffered from this), and kinda felt they both didn’t have enough of an identity and also didn’t really fit in with the project’s current state and vibes well enough.

Out of that bunch, the ghostjays and moonsprites will be first, since they have a lot of that already jotted down. The warrendwarves will be next, and I’ll probably post the brinewraith stuff (they probably won’t change very much since I pinned down their design stuff a lot more recently) in between the first two and the warrendwarves. All of this stuff will be largely just physiology/design stuff with some minor ecology, but the proper culture/civilization/social behaviour/more thorough ecology stuff will probably start getting written down properly (I’ve had a solid amount of ideas in regards to that stuff) after all of the design stuff is finished.

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I love characters with anxiety. Gotta be one of my favorite genders

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I saw a cape barren goose for the first time today and they are now my new favourite birds

Look! They’re literally dinosaur!! I had to do a double take when I first saw one

And look how cute the chicks are!!!

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BIG NEWS echidnas sound like wheezy pigeons

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Bar-tailed Godwit has broken its own record in 2022: a first-year bird (five months old!) has flown 13,560 km—just shy of the direct flight limit of a Boeing 787—from Alaska to Tasmania, seemingly non-stop, in just 11 days (average speed c.51 km/hr).

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The Mighty Loon!

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New design because my home province of New Brunswick won't stop trying to incite a trans panic in schools

(free for non-commercial, nonprofit use)