specevo-hadesarchive

[specevo-hadesarchive]

clades yet drawn

- Cetacea

- Avexiphiidae?

Marsupialiformes

Plantae

Fungi

Theropoda

clades yet posted

Ichthysauropterygia

Chondrichthyes

Ferae

Glires

Squamata

Pterosauria

Pseudosuchia

Osteichthys

Xenarthra

Arthropoda

Weigeltidracidae

Ceratopsida

Cephalopoda

Synapsida (non mammal)

Tetrapoda*

other drawings

Region Apex's (series)

- Leviathans

- Giants of the Dry North

- Southern Royals

- Equatorial Maneaters

- Fortunate Lords

- Mountain Kings (wip)

- Oceanic Vassals (wip) ?

Gods (wip)

People (wip)

North Tundra (wip)

Not So Easy

Not So Easy 2

Beach Bums

hadebiota

testudinata

maritime grazers

ancient relics

posted

[specevo-hadesarchive]

The Fortunate Isle's

a vast shallow plateau, the fortunate isles are a diverse and vast ecosystem unlike anything currently on earth.

the land, however, is not an especially peculiar place, with a significant number of animals being well adapted to cross between islands, such as talos, a massive sauropod, and sun-wing dragons, and both have mainland populations. though dragons as a whole are likely most diverse here, none are truly apex predators. even the great-black, the most heavily built dragon of all, outweighing the taller sun-wing by a notable amount, defers to laestrygons, as the great metriacanthosaurs are much denser and wield venomous bites, which let them take even talos and island cyclope, both of which would otherwise be off the menu as adults. this venom focuses on calming prey down, which pairs well with a bone-crushing bite, though even with the addition of humongous, half-a-meter long talons does not leave laestrygon without competition... or predators

the fortunate isle's most plentiful and diverse area lies below the waves, and this is where hades is perhaps at its most divergent, since much of hades most ancient life took shelter in its deep oceans.

others, however, were, and are, so dominant in surface waters that they had no need to dive deep.

an example of this are ichthyosaurs, dominating due to their ability to change color, which, while useful in open water, truly dominates in the shallows. with ichthyosaurs being the most common prey, yet so difficult to see, anything that can track them without sight would flourish in hades. historically, this came in the form of large ghoti, elasmobranchs, and plesiosaurs of varying neck length. other hunter dabbled, notably therocephalians, but none, even these big three, were truly proficient hunters of this difficult quarry.

in the cretaceous, however, a new sort of predator came onto the scene: mosasaurs. er, stem-mosasaurs, which had already developed many adaptation for aquatic life, though this lineage kept their foreclaws for movement on shore. nowadays, these great lizards have produced the true ruler of the fortunate isle's: typhon. as large a humpback, though longer and with less fat and more muscle, these are venomous, with bleeding bites and saw-blade teeth, though their greatest are the ancestral fore-claws, which, like the laestrygon above the waves and cronus to the far south, pierce into the thick hides and poke deep holes within the organs of prey, typically the lungs which is especially dangerous underwater. they prefer meadows and barrens to the reefs and mangroves, and like many of their kin, known as lamia, they are too dense for open waters.

in such ecosystems, it is often a very different clade which dominates, notably cetaceans, at least in the south, and reef centipedes, aquatic descendents of arthropleuroids which, with their thick armor, can withstand the stinging bites of cnidarians and the often much more painful hadebiota, though these generally prefer deeper waters.

Geography

as with all maps, these will focuse on terrestrial ecosystems, and as with all planetary maps, this will not be especially useful for anyone who wishes to live within the maps boders.

still, they should provide a rough overlay of the biota and appearance of the land within their borders, and thus have some use to researchers and settlers.

[specevo-hadesarchive]

Tartarus

though the mainlands geology is likely older than tartarus, and this peninsula is likely a massive volcanic crater, the life here is FAR more ancient, though certainly no less derived. many species here are downright unrecognizable to anything more specific than "amniota" or "fluffy" and even that can be tenuous. the plantlife is likewise very ancient, with some of the trees being more closely related to certain mosses than any flowering plant. a few relics from before such trees, and even, possibly, before *anything* that could be called a shark, call these forests home, having just survived.

though, such relics could just as well be derived, terrestrial sponges of some sort, especially given the multitude of otherwise fully marine life that is found on the trees, feeding on either aeroplankton of a wide variety, or the jay-sized dragon-stripping frog-mouthed bats that act as a top predator feared by all but the largest animals

the seas around this virtual island are just as diverse, though the fauna is much less ancient. indeed, one would be forgiven for mistaking the hunting porpoise, razor whales, or viper-seals for earth species, particularly the razor whale, though there are quite a few truly ancient clades remaining here, such as the viper seals.

even those therocephalians, however, are nowhere near the most ancient monsters in these old seas, as marine temnospondyls, harvested in the carboniferous, along with peculiar arthropods that have odd four-clawed appendages, which trace their lineage to an even older period, and finally the only truly endemic hadean life, which form most of the deep-sea reefs, and the closely related scylla, which prowls such reefs as an apex predator, though kraken regularly hunt them.

the true apex predators here, however, are the whales, and not just odontocetes, though southern porphyrios are easily the largest macroredators in these seas, and hunting porpoise the most common. cog-tooth whales are still noteworthy, being nearly as large as the physeteroid though much more common, as they have a very wide diet, crushing bone or shell of great mollusc or marine mammal, and slurping up boneless cephalopods or microscopic krill.

both of those are occasionally hunted by the porpoise, and some argue these wide-ranging sea-people are the true apex predators of the southern sea, though they can only do so with help from king serpents, whos greater size and agility allow for hunting of larger prey, though in many cases even these massive plesiosaurs require their smaller, and swifter, allies to harrass and track prey, particularly the color-changing ichthyosaurs and cephalopods.

Geography

as with all maps, these will focuse on terrestrial ecosystems, and as with all planetary maps, this will not be especially useful for anyone who wishes to live within the maps boders.

still, they should provide a rough overlay of the biota and appearance of the land within their borders, and thus have some use to researchers and settlers.

[specevo-hadesarchive]

The Mainland

the largest, and possibly oldest, landmass on the planet, the mainland is an especially diverse area, with a vast difference in it ecosystems from a truly massive coniferous garden in the south, to a dry and desolate rainshadow desert in the north.

the fauna within the two halves is thus very distinct from eachother, especially considering the vast equatorial wetland that separates the two, as life from neither biome is especially comfortable in the water.

for inhabitants of the north, the reason is fairly obvious: extreme aridity. most of this area is a vast, nigh endless prairie, shrubland, or desert, caused by the sheer olympian mountains and the highlands to the west. the open habitats are fairly diverse, with pronghorn, pegasi, peccary, and a plethora of other herbivores thriving here.

this is partially due to diet, with mammals being more comfortable with the angiosperm plants that dominate here than most any reptile.

saurian predators dont face this issue, and while mammal predators are more comfortable with mammalian prey and more used to their tricks, when the only potential trick is high endurance and speed, the efficient respiration of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and dragons beats out any other clade.

the west highlands and east olympians hold a different cast, with mammal predators doing better in these habitats as there is plenty of cover for ambush predation to be a viable strategy, but while the olympians are so unstable that few animals can get much larger than one or two tons, let alone carnivores, in the west there is plenty of room for dinosaurs to get big, with the largest "modern" birds of all time being the apex predators in this region.

the southern forest hold a similar story for mammals, though as garden forests are a gymnosperm habitat regulated by sauropods, its a lot worse for this clade. titanosaurs don't enjoy wetlands, though, so these humid areas are often more angiosperm, and mammals do thrive well in these jungles, though reptile predators have enough advantages that they often thrive just as well. there are a few breakout stars, such as behemoth, star-noses, and wood-eaters, but most simply fall to the wayside.

the temperate wetland of the far south, though, known as the tartaran moat, is a habitat almost unique to hades, and deeply unwelcoming to most reptiles. covered in rivers and ponds, with an exceedingly high water table, it seems like a place where many animals would thrive, but in winter the lakes can freeze more than a foot down, and the land goes from mud-soft to rock-hard. most have a difficult time adjusting. herbivores go from plenty to none, and carnivores go from quick, aquatic ambushes to long, costly runs over the ice. some do thrive, beavers love the cold and wet, alligator can survive freezing temperatures for weeks, and a close cousin to the polar bear makes do, but the region is most often fairly desolate and only gets more barren as you head south, until you reach the wall, and the familiar vanishes with a blink.

Geography

as with all maps, these will focuse on terrestrial ecosystems, and as with all planetary maps, this will not be especially useful for anyone who wishes to live within the maps boders.

still, they should provide a rough overlay of the biota and appearance of the land within their borders, and thus have some use to researchers and settlers.

[specevo-hadesarchive]

Geography

as with all maps, these will focuse on terrestrial ecosystems, and as with all planetary maps, this will not be especially useful for anyone who wishes to live within the maps boders.

still, they should provide a rough overlay of the biota and appearance of the land within their borders, and thus have some use to researchers and settlers.

[specevo-hadesarchive]

Hades: Land of Ancient Gods and Mythic Beasts

a water world much like earth, though twice the size and thus with much deeper oceans. life in hades thus has the chance to survive with much greater diversity than earth, as the deeper oceans act as a vault largely unaffected by most mass extinctions (this is also the case on earth) and the sheer size of the planet means such catastrophes have to be much larger to have any notable effect.

of course, not all causes of mass extinction are one time events, and some will snowball out of control until theyve spread across the planet, as seen in a few particular cases on earth, so its not surprising that hades has lost quite a few of its major clades.