#the males have longer display feathers on their tails than the females do

[plural-bees]

how did we miss microraptor day...

well, regardless, have some funny looking birds, feat. a more recent pic titled “little guy conference” , in which there are little guys and they are having a conference

[proton-wobbler]

Round 1, Poll 4

Great Bustard vs European Pied Flycatcher

sources under cut

Great Bustard Propoganda

"they hold the record for heaviest flying bird, and also their name is just SO good. and the males have whiskers"

One of the most sexual dimorphic of all bird species, with males on average weighing about 2.5x more than females.

"In this species, the male has a flamboyant display beginning with the strutting male puffing up his throat to the size of a football. He then tilts forwards and pulls his head in so that the long whiskery chin feathers point upwards and the head is no longer visible. He next cocks his tail flat along his back, exposing the normally hidden bright white plumage then he lowers his wings, with the primary flight feathers folded but with the white secondaries fanning out."

European Pied Flycatcher Propoganda

"little hidden bird, boyfriend was gonna do internship about them so have personal interest"

"This species practices polygyny, usually bigamy, with the male traveling large distances to acquire a second mate. The male will mate with the secondary female and then return to the primary female in order to help with aspects of child rearing, such as feeding."

It seems as if the primary female end up benefiting more if the male does find a second mate, because he will then return home and provide exclusive care to his first brood. Secondary females only fledge up to 60% of their offspring, however as they are raising that clutch alone.

Image Sources: Great Bustard (Marco Valentini); Pied Flycatcher (Lefteris Stavrakas)

[mysticmoondancer]

Peacock Dragon

These dragons are considered as the most beautiful dragons around and they take great pride in that by constantly grooming themselves to always keep their feathers looking gorgeous and pristine. Like actual peacocks, there are two looks them depending on their gender. The males are blue and green with their tail feathers being longer than the females and have eyespots on them. The females are mainly blue with a little bit of green on them and their tail feathers are shorter than the males and don't have eyespots on them. The tail feathers are able to lift up and spread out for display just like actual peacocks can do with their tail feathers. These dragons can sometimes come off as snooty and stuck up, but really, they're actually quite friendly and considerate, too.

[commander-jbennett]

Developing a species. :> As a treat, I'm calling them sarduict(s). (Literally just put a lot of letters together bros.)

Info under read more

They are desert-dwelling beings that are warm-blooded endurance hunters able to easily cool themselves off with a complex internal system so they could keep running effectively rather than waste water by sweating. They are omnivorous though and can rely on roots and other plants when the hunting is bad. They are also known to sit in the rare rain showers or fog to absorb water through their skin.

Adults of either sex have "antlers" that are for display. The antlers are just modified feathers that serve no defense purposes. They have cyan blood that glows in the dark and are able to change color like octopuses to blend into their environment.

They have a dog-like intelligence (which is disputed, their true level of intelligence isn't fully known) and are a pack species that lives family groups. They are also shown to care for their elder and disabled members, often adopting orphans of their species. They communicate through a kind of telepathy to coordinate their actions while hunting and they can detect the minds of other species which makes them difficult to catch unaware. They communicate through a sort of code over longer distances through their bioluminescent tails which can blink on and off. They can be domesticated and trained to do tasks such as hunting.

They are very good parents and hold their eggs within pouches which both males and females possess. Their young then hatch and are able to use their prehensile tails to hang onto their pack mates's tails for transport if their parents cannot carry all of them in their arms. However, they usually only lay 1 or 2 eggs at a time.

They are able to open their jaws to 90 degrees at the widest and possess venomous fangs containing a neurotoxin to paralyze their prey. These fangs are on their second set of jaws which also aid in holding onto prey and guide food into their throats. They can control if they want to envenomate their target or not.

They have five fingers on human-like hands and five toes. Their toes possess hooves at the tips much like tapirs. Their fingers are quite dexterous. They can use simple tools and weave nests. The male actually initiates courtship with a female by first weaving her a nest.

They smell through nostrils like dogs, however they can also smell much like snakes do with forked tongues and a Jacobson's organ. Their nostrils can close to prevent breathing in dust, and they have nictitating membranes that protect their eyes from sand and the suns of their world. They can hold their breath for an hour if they are motionless during sandstorms and always have a sense where up is as well as the general directions of north, south, east, and west.

They can make rather throaty, yet musical vocalizations to communicate over long distances and even sometimes sing just for the hell of it or to even help calm their young who communicate through chirps. Females can be seen initiating courtship through song, and the male would try to copy. However, they can also mimic humanoid speech much like ravens of Earth.

Their ears are rather long, but are pressed against their body, blending in. It is not fully known why they sometimes hide their ears even if they aren't threatened, however it is suspected that they are incredibly sensitive to sound.

Young are covered in feathers which insulate them against cold desert nights when they are too large to remain in their parents' pouches. They lose them when they reach full maturity.

They are immune to the poison of the le-matya among other venomous and poisonous species, and their blood can be used as a general antitoxin in a pinch.

They are known to come to the aid of humanoids stranded in the desert, and an attack from one is almost unheard of unless it is alone due to being sick. When sick with a general disease, an individual will tend to isolate themselves, but remain in the pack and under its care. However, if it is life threatening, it will use the last of its strength to abandon its pack and wander into the desert to die alone.

They mourn their dead as well using complex songs while burying them in sand. Each family unit has a specific mourning song as well as specific greeting songs. When meeting another family group there is usually little to no conflict and they use that opportunity for adult members to court members from the other group. Males usually join the female's family group.

They tend to be rather illusive and shy creatures in general, but they are drawn to music.

They can also stand completely upright in order to view things easier with their sharp eyes that can see in multiple wavelengths and in more colors than humans. Males are a little smaller. On average though, when fully upright, they are around 7 feet tall.

It is speculated that they could possibly eventually evolve into an intelligent space-fairing species in the future.

Honestly they're like dinosaurs mixed with dogs and ravens that have hooves and pouches. They aren't mammals though since they don't produce milk.

Their facial markings are also different between individuals.

[marryjojo]

Male Cardinal vs Female Cardinal- Let’s Tell the Differences!

Few birds are as iconic and beloved as the cardinal, with its vibrant plumage and distinctive song. Found throughout North America, cardinals are common in gardens, woodlands, and urban areas, captivating birdwatchers with their beauty and charm.  However, despite their widespread presence, many people may not realize that male and female cardinals exhibit subtle but distinct differences in appearance. Today,I’m presenting you Male Cardinal vs Female Cardinal analysis.

How to Tell the Difference between Male and Female Cardinals?

Let’s understand the characteristics that set male and female cardinals apart and provide insights into how to identify these striking birds in your own backyard. Coloration Male cardinals are known for their brilliant crimson plumage, which covers much of their body, including their crest, wings, and tail. Their vibrant red coloration is a hallmark of their gender and serves as a visual display of strength and vitality. In contrast, female cardinals sport a more subdued color palette, with primarily brown feathers tinged with red highlights on their wings, crest, and tail. Their overall appearance is softer and more muted compared to their male counterparts. Crest Size and Shape Male cardinals boast a prominent crest that extends upward from the top of their heads, giving them a distinctive profile. Their crest is often more pronounced and erect than that of females, adding to their bold and regal appearance.

Female cardinals also have crests, but theirs tend to be smaller and less prominent than those of males. The crest may appear more rounded or flattened against the head, contributing to their more subtle and understated appearance. Facial Markings Male cardinals have striking black facial markings around their eyes and extending down to their beaks. These dark accents contrast sharply with their bright red plumage, enhancing their overall appearance and making them easily recognizable. Females lack the bold black facial markings of males and instead have lighter, more delicate markings around their eyes. Their facial features may appear softer and less defined compared to males. Bill Color The bill of a male cardinal is typically bright orange-red, complementing their vibrant plumage and serving as a focal point of their appearance. Females have a lighter, pale orange or greyish bill, which may blend more seamlessly with their overall colouration. Size and Shape Male cardinals are slightly larger and more robust than females, with a broader chest and longer tail feathers. Their size and shape contribute to their striking presence and confident demeanor. Female cardinals are generally smaller and more slender than males, with a more streamlined appearance overall. Their smaller size allows them to navigate dense foliage with ease and agility. Behavior and Vocalizations Males are known for their loud, clear, and melodious songs, which they use to establish territories and attract mates. During the breeding season, males may engage in aggressive behaviors, such as chasing off intruders or singing loudly to defend their territory. Female cardinals also sing, although their songs are typically softer and more subdued than those of males. Females may vocalize to communicate with their mates or to defend their nesting territory, but they generally do not sing as frequently or as prominently as males. Nesting and Parenting Roles While both male and female cardinals participate in building the nest, males are primarily responsible for gathering materials and delivering them to the female, who does most of the construction. Once the nest is complete, males may continue to assist by bringing food to the female during incubation and feeding their young after hatching. Female cardinals take the lead in incubating the eggs and caring for the nestlings. They spend the majority of their time brooding the eggs and feeding the hatchlings, while the male provides support by supplying food and helping to defend the nest from potential predators. Molt Patterns Male cardinals undergo a complete molt once a year, typically in late summer or early fall after the breeding season. During this time, males may temporarily lose some of their bright red plumage as new feathers grow in, leading to a less vibrant appearance until the molt is complete. Females also molt once a year, usually after the breeding season, but their plumage tends to remain more consistent in color and pattern throughout the year compared to males. Females may experience slight variations in color intensity, but they generally do not undergo as dramatic a change as males during molt.

Table-Male Cardinals vs Female Cardinals

This table provides a quick reference guide to help differentiate between male and female cardinals based on various characteristics, including plumage color, crest size, behavior, nesting roles, and molt patterns. Characteristic Male Cardinal Female Cardinal Plumage Color Brilliant crimson red Subdued brown with red highlights Crest Size and Shape Prominent, erect crest Smaller, less pronounced crest Facial Markings Bold black markings around eyes Lighter, delicate markings around eyes Bill Color Bright orange-red Pale orange or grayish Size and Shape Slightly larger and more robust Slightly smaller and more slender Behavior Loud, clear singing; aggressive during breeding season Softer, subdued singing; less aggressive Nesting and Parenting Assists in nest building; provides food and defense Builds nest; incubates eggs; feeds nestlings Molt Patterns Undergoes complete molt once a year Undergoes complete molt once a year

How to Identify Female Cardinal at Your Feeder

Here is what you need to pay attention to:

Look for a bird with predominantly brown plumage.Female cardinals have brown feathers with reddish highlights on their wings, crest, and tail. Female cardinals have a smaller and less prominent crest compared to males. Females typically have a pale orange or grayish bill, which may blend with their overall coloration. They may visit feeders to forage for seeds or insects, often alongside their more brightly colored male counterparts. Females are slightly smaller and more slender than males, with a more streamlined appearance overall.

Rare Color Variants of Female Cardinals

While male cardinals are known for their vibrant red plumage, female cardinals typically exhibit a more subdued coloration, with brown feathers tinged with red highlights. However, rare color variants of female cardinals do occur occasionally, although they are much less common than their male counterparts.  Some of these rare color variants include: Leucism is a genetic condition that causes a partial loss of pigmentation in the feathers, resulting in paler or whitish patches on the bird's plumage. Female cardinals with leucism may exhibit lighter, more washed-out colors than typical individuals, with patches of white or cream interspersed among the brown and red feathers. Xanthochroism is a genetic mutation that causes an excess of yellow pigment in the feathers, leading to an overall yellowish or orange hue. In female cardinals, xanthochroism may manifest as a more intense reddish or orangish coloration than usual, giving the bird a striking and unusual appearance. Melanism is a genetic condition characterized by an excess of dark pigment in the feathers, resulting in darker-than-normal plumage. While melanism is more commonly observed in male cardinals, female individuals with this condition may exhibit exceptionally dark brown or black feathers, with minimal red highlights. Albinism is a genetic condition that causes a complete absence of pigmentation in the feathers, resulting in a pure white or creamy appearance. While albino female cardinals are extremely rare, they may occasionally be encountered, exhibiting white plumage with pinkish or reddish eyes and beak. Dilution is a genetic mutation that affects the intensity of pigmentation in the feathers, resulting in lighter or diluted colors. Female cardinals with dilution may display softer, more pastel shades of brown and red, with less saturation and contrast than typical individuals. By understanding these key differences in appearance, bird enthusiasts can confidently identify male and female cardinals and appreciate the unique beauty of each gender. Whether spotted perched on a feeder or flitting through the trees, these captivating birds never fail to delight with their vibrant colors and melodious songs, brightening even the dreariest of days.

FAQs

Do male and female cardinals kiss? No, male and female cardinals do not kiss. They may engage in courtship behaviors such as mutual feeding or beak touching, but this is not considered kissing in the same way humans do. Are male cardinals born red? No, male cardinals are not born red. They hatch with grayish-brown feathers and gradually develop their iconic red plumage as they mature, usually within the first year of life. Which cardinal sings male or female? Male cardinals are the primary singers. They have loud, clear, and melodious songs that they use to establish territories and attract mates. Female cardinals also sing, but their songs are typically softer and less frequent than those of males. What if you see a female cardinal? Seeing a female cardinal is a common occurrence, especially in areas where cardinals are abundant. Female cardinals have brownish plumage with red highlights and may be spotted foraging for food or nesting in shrubs and trees. Are cardinals aggressive? Cardinals can be territorial and may display aggression towards intruders, especially during the breeding season. They may chase away other birds, including smaller species, from their territory to protect their nesting sites and food sources. Do female cardinals turn red? Female cardinals do not turn red like males. Their plumage remains primarily brown with red highlights on their wings, crest, and tail. Unlike males, females do not develop the vibrant red coloration that is characteristic of male cardinals. Read the full article

[adobe-outdesign]

Pokemon Worldbuilding Headcanons

Exactly what it says in the title. Some are based on the game, some on the anime, and some directly contradict both because the Pokemon lore is made up and your feelings don’t matter.

Biology

Pokemon heal faster when unconscious or asleep--thus, they faint easily from pain or exhaustion in order to recuperate.

During evolution, a Pokemon converts itself into energy and reforms itself. Evolution is optional, and a Pokemon can choose if and when it evolves. Evolution is triggered by both an environmental circumstance (ex: winning a battle), and by the Pokemon storing up energy over time until it has enough to transform.

Stress evolutions are when a Pokemon evolves prematurally in order to win a battle or when they’re in a life-or-death situation. This can result in the evolution being smaller than normal and possibly weaker as well.

“Trade evolutions” are a loose grouping of Pokemon that typically evolve when they start working with a new trainer. The exact reasons for the evolution varies by individual, and therefore can have multiple causes.

Ex: a Pokemon may evolve after it learns something from someone else. While the easiest way to achieve this is through trade, they may also evolve by training under a wiser, older Pokemon.

Trade evolutions are somewhat rare in the wild, but not unheard of.

Pokemon that evolve via stones cannot store enough energy to evolve naturally. The stones contain extra energy that they can tap into in order to aid in evolution.

Everstones work similar to sponges; they absorb the extra energy a Pokemon would normally store up to evolve, thus preventing them from doing so. They’re mostly used for medical purposes (as a Pokemon evolving when badly injured could worsen its injuries) and to help prevent stress evolutions in Pokemon that don’t want to evolve.

Pokemon types are based on the type of energy they utilize, rather than moves or appearance. Ex: Charizard is not dragon-type despite looking like a dragon because it doesn’t use dragon-type energy. New energies are discovered all the time and Pokemon are reclassified as needed.

Pokemon typing also changes as they (Darwinian) evolve. A Pokemon that’s normal/grass used to be normal-type, has started to gain grass-typing, and will eventually be only grass-type.

Humans are descended from Pokemon. They used to be psychic-type before becoming normal-type and then losing their typing all together. At this point they no longer are energy-based nor do they lay eggs, so they’re considered a separate-but-related family.

This is why some people still show psychic powers; those abilities never completely went away in some bloodlines.

Pokemon have been domesticated for so long that there’s actually no such thing as a “wild” Pokemon anymore (with the exception of legendaries). Wild Pokemon are technically feral, and any given Pokemon will quickly adapt to living with humans if caught.

Pokemon used to look different hundreds of years ago, and have slowly undergone Darwinian evolution over time as they were domesticated.

“Most trainers will legendaries shortly after their journey starts” statistic false. Most trainers will see no legendaries in their lifetimes. Ash Ketchum, who’s seen every single legendary in existence, is an outlier and should not be counted

However, areas where legendaries are known to live are oftentimes marked as no-catch conservation areas. People will oftentime travel to these parks to admire “common” legendaries (such as the bird trio) in their natural habitats.

Battles

Not knocking out a Pokemon you’re trying to capture is more of a honored rule than a law. The reason it’s done is to give the Pokemon ample time to flee--otherwise, someone may one-shot a Pokemon that doesn’t want a trainer, resulting in the Pokemon being unfairly knocked out and the trainer wasting their time.

If you give the Pokemon time to flee and it chooses to stay and fight, it’s potentially interested in accepting you as a trainer and you just have to prove yourself. If it flees, you should leave it alone.

Pokemon used for battles are specifically trained to not cause permanent harm or injury to their opponents (ex: that fire blast isn’t as hot as it could be, so it’ll only cause minor burns instead of third-degree ones). While the attacks used might look violent and cause some pain, serious injuries are very rare.

Wild Pokemon are also pretty good at restraining themselves if they’re just battling for fun or to test a trainer. They will not, however, restrain themselves if they feel threatened or are hunting. Trainers are advised to use caution when fighting wild Pokemon and return their Pokemon to their balls if necessary.

Psychic-types (Mr. Mime especially) are used to create protective barriers around arenas/trainers to protect people from flying debris and stray attacks.

Refs always have a few Pokemon on hand that know moves like stun spore or sleep powder in order to stop any fights that get out of hand.

Pokeballs

While some trainers different Pokemon by using different types of Pokeballs, decorating them is also a popular way to do it. Some people draw symbols or initials on the buttons, some add stickers, some paint them, ect.

Stores also sell semi-transparent hard shells that snap over the balls. These come in different colors and designs, so you can have a Pokeball that has a galaxy design on top instead of plain red if you want.

Most trainers keep about 40 some Pokemon or less, which they rotate between their party, the PC, and daycares/Pokemon sitters to keep them enriched and active. Some people keep more, but they generally spend all of their time caring for them and therefore aren’t trainers.

The general rule of thumb is to not leave a Pokemon in the PC for more than two weeks. If you fail to take them out after a month, they will be automatically removed and released back into the wild.

Pokeballs create little miniature simulations of nature, making them feel bigger on the inside. Different types of pokeballs have different or more advanced simulations, which may increase how much a Pokemon likes being in it.

Pokeballs create an invisible “tag” for the Pokemon by altering their energy when they’re first caught. These tags affect nothing, but Pokeballs are programmed to automatically check for one before they’ll activate.

Many poachers and other illegal groups produce their own illegal Pokeballs that do not check for tags before capture.

If a Pokeball breaks, it automatically releases the Pokemon inside and removes their tag.

Tags fade after about a month to allow for other trainers to capture a Pokemon after it’s been permanently released. The tag is automatically refreshed every time a Pokemon is brought back into its ball.

The standard Pokeball pattern is based off of the patterns of the Foongus line. Pokemon are very attracted to their markings, so the balls are painted the same to make the Pokemon like them more.

Eggs

Rather than combining genetics, Pokemon reproduce by combining their energy together (this looks a bit like two Pokemon evolving at the same time). Because of this, they lack reproductive organs and chromosomes.

Gender is a loosely defined concept for them. Pokemon can change their sex upon evolution if they want to, and some will change their sex over time (ex: legendaries are usually genderless, but will gain a sex to breed and then lose it again afterward).

If a Pokemon doesn’t display sexual dimorphism, the only way to determine their sex is to have a Pokemon Center do a blood test.

Eggs aren’t laid, but created. The pregnant Pokemon fosters energy in their body. When ready they separate the extra energy from themselves (once again, looks a bit like evolution), which forms into the egg. This causes them no pain, and means they have short gestation periods.

This also means Pokemon never look pregnant. The only way to tell is by getting them tested or paying attention to changes in behavior. Many trainers end up with eggs out of nowhere because they had no idea one of their Pokemon was pregnant to begin with.

In the wild, some species of Pokemon will lay hundreds of eggs (such as fish and bug Pokemon) to ensure their survival. In captivity, Pokemon rarely create more than 1 or 2 eggs at a time, likely because they understand their young are safe with their trainers.

Pokemon develop more quickly in their eggs than IRL animals. They can technically hatch shortly after the egg is made, but they usually spend extra time inside maturing. By the time the egg hatches, the baby already has fur/feathers/whatever, and can walk and eat solid food. This helps ensure their survival against predators.

Young Pokemon are differentiated by being “mature” or “immature”; an immature Pokemon will still gradually grow and change appearance, while a mature one is fully grown until it evolves. A Pokemon cannot evolve until it’s considered mature (excluding mega evolution for single-stagers).

To use Vulpix as a canon example: a newly hatched immature Vulpix is about 8 in tall and has one white tail. A mature Vulpix is about 2 ft tall and has six red tails.

In the wild, Pokemon mostly breed amongst their own species. The exception are Pokemon with uneven gender ratios (so if a Pokemon is 7:1 male vs female, the males will actively breed with anything in their egg group). Inter-species breeding among captive Pokemon is much more common, and usually based on the Pokemon’s personal preferences.

Hybridization in Pokemon born from two different parents is very rare, but it does happen from time to time. It’s more common in Pokemon that look similar or are distantly related.

“Perfect” hybrids, Pokemon that have equal amounts of traits from both parents as well as typing and abilities, are more sought after than shinies. They usually can’t breed due to their mix of energies.

[fleshdyke]

fuck it, i was gonna wait until i finished the ref sheets to post my headcanons, but since my pencil is broken and i can’t draw right now, i’m just gonna make a text post

(please reblog i worked really hard on this)

wings of fire tribe headcanons!

mudwings

large, curved horns. males have larger ones

very big ears

big ol nose. kinda like a dog’s

large, durable teeth that stick out their mouth (top and bottom)

short wings, not great for long flights

two rows of back spines, right next to each other. they split partway down the back and the middle area widens until they’re almost at the sides of the tail

wide, strong tail, sometimes used as a shovel

tail can make a loud drum-like noise when slapped against the ground, and this is often used as a display of aggression and dominance

saliva contains a very mild venom that can paralyze prey if it enters an open wound. can only affect a dragon in very high doses

sleep pretty much anywhere, but often nap buried in mud

bury their eggs in mud and build mounds around them for extra protection + warmth

egg/hatchling mortality rate is very low

eat a diet of mostly meat and swamp birds, but some fish. plants are consumed almost exclusively for medicinal purposes

known for being exceptional chefs

mudwings are particularly fond of spicy food

farms aren’t super common, but many mudwings are ranchers

sandwings

large ears and eyes

very sharp hearing, smell, and sight

small faces, good for digging in sand

very wide wingspan, can fly very long distances without stopping/sustenance

second-best fliers of all tribes, next to skywings

very long, flexible tails

tail barbs make a rattling noise, and can be vibrated in a way that other tribes can’t to make that loud rattle

venom is never used for hunting, because the toxins can transfer to whoever consumes it via the meat and blood

each back talon has a large, sharp sickle claw

sleep most often indoors or buried in sand (they also do this to cool off)

eat mostly meat, but also enjoy plants such as coconut, cactus, and aloe

no “middle class”, most sandwings are either very rich or very poor

trade skills are extremely valuable to most dragons

smallest pyrrhian tribe

seawings

dull teeth, use bony protrusions from upper jaw to catch fish

no external ears

cannot hear anything while underwater, because a fin covers the ear to prevent water from getting in

bodies covered in feelers that can release venom on command

small and narrow wings

short but powerful tail

claws are virtually useless in battle, as they use their pseudoteeth to catch fish, but can deliver venom

fat and blubbery

very smooth and small scales, almost skin-like

sleep either in small coral caves or drifting in the open ocean with half their brains awake

eat a diet of mostly fish and marine animals, but some tropical and aquatic plants

venom is mostly used for hunting, but high doses can seriously injure and kill a dragon

high beauty standards

coral is beloved to seawings, and to harm it is one of the highest offences

skywings

hard, sharp “beak” on the end of their snout (both upper and lower jaw)

branched horns, grow more points with age

pointy ears

long, narrow bodies

very wide wingspan

feathered wings

feathers on the end of the tail, act as a rudder

the more fire, the darker the skywing’s scales

firescales are black and have phoenix-like feathers

sleep like birds, with their head between their wings, but sometimes catch high air currents and sleep while flying

can go for weeks without touching land

eat a diet of fresh meat and occasionally bone shards and marrow. birds of prey are *never* hunted

one of the only farming and ranching tribes

birds of prey are common pets and hunting companions, raptors can form strong bonds with their skywing owners

hold a yearly olympics-style athletic competition, mostly sports, but sometimes gladiator activities are a part of the ceremony

very fond of sparkly things, especially gold

rainwings

small snouts

large eyes, have impressive night vision to help them see in the darkness of the rainforest

small, flexible wings, not good for long-distance flight

long limbs

large claws

long barbed tongue, to reach hard-to-get food

always brightly coloured, often with hypnotic patterns, to ward away bugs

skin is slightly toxic

long midsections

underscales are hard, mostly to protect their tails and stomachs as they swing from rough tree branches

sleep either in treehouses or in the branches

eat lots of fruit, flower nectar, and tree sap. they also eat lots of bugs, and occasionally a fish

talented gardeners, high-class rainwings and royalty often hire florists to decorate their homes with colourful plants

many rainwings care for a wide variety of pets, including parrots, tropical fish, toxic frogs, snakes, lizards, and ocelots

icewings

impressive sense of smell and sight

pointed ears, furry flaps over the ear canal to keep too much cold air from entering

large tusks that jut out from the upper lip

large, furry talons to keep the snow and ice from freezing their sensitive palms

long, sharp claws

large wings with spiky scales on the “hand”, often are used to aid in walking

wings have fur down the edges of the outermost “finger”, and have thick membranes, meaning they are very good insulators

furred mane down the back, which the sharp spines stick out of

breathing in makes the neck spikes clatter together, making a light, tinking, xylophone-like sound

tail has a large tuft of fur to help keep warm while curled up

sleep indoors when possible, but their large talons and claws are good for digging burrows in the snow when needed

eat a diet of entirely meat and fish, as no plants survive in the tundra

icewings are one of the most progressive tribes, despite them being so isolated from the rest of the continent

generally have good relations with skywings and seawings

royals are considered “stars”, and icewing celebrities are often very glamorous and are constantly followed by paparazzi and tabloids

many icewings dye their manes different colours

are much more aquatic than in canon, can hold their breath longer than a mudwing and there is a part of their palace that is underwater

icewings get furballs from cleaning their fur, like cats. it’s kinda gross

biggest of all tribes

nightwings

large ears, which are pointed upwards in a resting position

have a fleshy nose thing, like most bats

have a very sharp sense of smell

small, straight horns

pointy wings

wing membrane connects to legs, which then connects to the tail

long, flexible back legs

sleep upside-down, hanging from rocky ceilings

nightwings are scavengers, and will eat almost anything

very academically-focused

most nightwings are strong believers in the paranormal, and enjoy ghost stories

one of the most scientifically advanced tribes, and despite popular belief, will happily teach other tribes how to build some of their machines, had they ever asked

all tribes

amount of fire/frostbreath varies from dragon to dragon, and it’s just something a dragon is born with. it can’t be changed and dragons have seriously injured themselves while trying to

order of average flight skill, best to worst: skywings, sandwings, icewings, nightwings, mudwings, seawings, rainwings

order of average size, largest to smallest: icewings, mudwings, skywings, seawings, nightwings, rainwings, sandwings

chairs are small platforms or branch-like perches. how common the type of chair is depends on the tribe, as perches are more common in the sky kingdom, and platforms are more common in the sand kingdom. the graphic novel chairs can eat ass

all dragons shed their scales once a year, like how birds molt their feathers. this is an uncomfortable and hormonal time and tempers run high during molting

all dragonets have one large molt around the time they turn five, similar to how children lose their baby teeth. i think either this or regular molting was eluded to in dragonslayer, but yeah

females are slightly larger than males

and we’re done! i don’t have quite enough on the pantala tribes yet to make a full list, but i will update this when i do.

if anyone has any of their own headcanons they’d like to share, please do! and tell me if you’d like me to/you’re okay with me adding them to my list, because i’d love to grow this a little more!

i will post the reference sheets for these as soon as i finish them :>

feel free to use these!! i would absolutely LOVE if anyone did 😭

(mudwing, icewing, and sandwing sounds belong to @skleetheirken, tysm for letting me add em!)

pantala addition

illustrations

[crystal-moon-101]

Species: Arorenda Homeplanet: Suoon Life-Span: 90 - 120 Habitat: Grasslands, Valleys, Forests, Cliff-sides Diet: Insectivore/Frugivore/Granivore Breeding: Sexual Reproduction Sexual Dimorphism: Arorendas have some of the most diverse dimorphism in the galaxy, as not only do females and males look vastly different in design, but their power sets are divergent to one another. It ties into their culture and religion based around the sun and moon. Males are night dwellers, who worship the moon, their colours and powers relating to it. Their colour palettes are often shades of blue, with greens and turquoise shades and highlights. Men are smaller than the females, being defensive fighters, but have longer tail, neck and head crest feathers that are used to display their cold colours, and are often used when looking to impress a potential mate. Females are day dwellers, who worship the sun, and much like the males their colours and powers relate to it. Their colours consist of warm browns,with shades and highlights of oranges and yellows. Females are larger in size, being close-combat fighters, thus having shorter longer tail, neck and head crest feathers to not get in the way. They often use their large size and strength to impress a potential mate. Children, strangely enough, not only do not have their colours when they are young, but also don’t have a gender of any kind. Their genders are, in a way, decided by themselves, based on how long they spend their time during the day, or during the night, and once they’ve reached a certain age they are blessed with the colours representing what time of day they spent the most time with. Their families will hold a massive dinner celebration for them, and by tradition this means the child can pick out their actual name, since growing up they only have nicknames then anything official. Behaviour/Bio: Being very religious aliens, Arorendas have been worshiping the sun and moon for as long as their history has been recorded down, the two space bodies believed to be where they received their powers and abilities, and have thus built their entire culture around them. In their religion, the sun and moon are gods, with the sun being female, and the moon being male, who both fell in love and together created the Arorenda’s homeworld, with female Arorendas being the daughters of the sun, and the male Arorendas being the sons of the moon. Because of this tie to their culture, it’s not uncommon to see them hosting celebrations and praying towards their gods, and they think highly of them. Due to the love story behind their gods, Arorendas are a very romantic race of aliens, and once they find who they believe to be their soulmates, they become very loyal and tend to be mates for life, this has even expended to space travel as they have no quarrels for falling in love with other alien races, and plenty say they make great partners in marriage. Many have even noted that they make great counsellors of love and relationships. Since men are night dwellers, and females are day dwellers, their cities are said to never be asleep, something always happens, dawn and dusk being their most active hours since that’s when both sides of the species interact the most. They spend a lot of their time doing activities related to their religion, whether that be making jewelry blessed by the sun and moon, performing dances and traditional songs, or hosting combat trials for entertainment, it’s not a place to be easily bored by, though it’s recommended to bring earbuds if you plan on sleeping there during a visit.   Arorendas are not ones to push their religion on others, but will happily explain it to you if you choose to ask, and you’ll be sure to know a lot about it if you ever visit their home planet. They can get offended and even aggressive if you are to insult or look down at their religion and gods, and if you can not respect their culture, they can not respect you as a person, even banning people from their home if they push it too far. Typically, most cities are run by a royal family, a queen to represent the sun, and a king to represent the moon. The king and queen are either family members, or connected through marriage. However, some smaller cities don’t have rulers, sometimes either an elected leader, or a council system. Abilities: Males/Females: Flight - With their winged arms, they are able to take flight and are decent at stopping, turning and performing tricks. However, they can not fly long distances, though they are perfect at gliding with the assistance of wind. Talons/Beaks - Being incredibly sharp, their talons and beaks are able to easily slice and crack open things. This was originally evolved to help break open fruits and nuts for them to eat, or dig into trees for insects. But it can be used to defend themselves from predators or foes attacking them. Shining Wings - They are able to concentrate the energy inside them to produce shining lights from their feathers and gems, creating a blinding light of colours that can disorientate others and cause a strong migraine afterwards. It’s often used as a distraction for a chance to strike or to make a clean getaway. They can produce a mild version of them to create a beautiful effect, mostly when showing off during a dance, or to attract the attention of someone they wish to flirt with. Males: Healing - By laying their feathered wings across as injury/wound, male Arorendas can create a healing energy pulse that speeds up the healing process in something, able to close up large cuts and holes in someone rather quickly. This, however, means they can not regenerate areas highly damaged, say an arm that’s been cut off, instead only able to close up the wound to stop the bleeding if the damage is something out of their range. They can also cure mild illnesses and diseases, and anything stronger they can either prolong and weaken for a short amount of time. Shield Casting - They are able to create bubble shaped dome shields around themselves and anyone close enough to them. It’s decently strong, and takes a lot to break, but does require focus and concentration to form and keep up. Night Vision - Due to living a lot of their time in the dark, males possess strong night vision, which comes in handy when hunting for prey or food sources. Night Empowerment - With their lives tied to the moon and night, males have been noted to be stronger during the dark hours, with their powers at their peak when the moon is at its highest point or during a new moon. This does mean they aren’t as strong during the day or anywhere similar to a bright day. Cold Temperature Manipulation - They are able to make the surrounding air near them colder than normal, even freezing, while they are unaffected. They can even make their bodies cold to touch. High-Speed/Stamina/Flexibility - Being smaller and lighter in size, males are a lot quicker on their feet, and are not designed to be close combat fighters. Instead, they work better as medics or as defence, with their healing and shield powers. This also means they can be very quiet, able to sneak around without being noticed. Females: Bladed Feathers - The tips of their wings have bladed feathers, used for slicing and striking within fights, though also used in rituals to reflect sunlight in certain directions. They are also able to super heat their metallic feathers, able to leave nasty burns, though can come in handy during other situations. Fire Talons - They are able to ignite their talons, on their hands and feet, with a blazing fire used to leave burns or set alite to something. One of their most grueling tactics his to latch their talons around a part of you, and keep burning it with their flames, holding on for as long as they can. Blinding Light Immunity - Since they spend a lot of time around the burning light of the sun, and work a lot with fire, females are immune to blinding light affecting their vision, allowing them to have a keen sight without it being blinded. Day Empowerment - With their lives tied to the sun and day, females have been noted to be stronger during the light hours, with their powers at their peak when the sun is at its highest point. This does mean they aren’t as strong during the night or anywhere also dark enough. Hot Temperature Manipulation - They are able to make the surrounding air near them hotter than normal, even burning, while they are unaffected. They can even make their bodies hot to touch. High-Strength/Endurance/Flexibility - Females are bigger in size, and are designed for close combat fighting. This means that while they’re not as fast or quiet as men, they are able to put up quite the fight, and do not back down when danger is around. Weaknesses: Male/Females: When they molt, they are left vulnerable, since they flow a lot of their energy through their feathers. Losing too many feathers or damaged wings will hinder their flight, and they take time to grow back. Cracking their gems can cause issues for their powers, and it causes them a great deal of pain that can hinder them. Talking negatively about their culture/religion can make them aggressive, even acting without thinking. Males: Weaker during the day, or anywhere with harsh enough lighting. Smaller and more delicate than females, and while they know how to fight, it’s not their core strength. Their longer feathers have been known to trip them up, and people have stepped on them, either by accident or on purpose. Female: Breaking their bladed feathers will leave them without their biggest defense, along with taking quite some time to grow them back. Weaker during the night. While bigger and stronger than males, their size can be used against them, along with not being as fast as them.

[uwmspeccoll]

A Goosey Green-Roof Feathursday

MEET HORACE AND MILDRED

For the past week a pair of mated Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) have taken up residence on the green roof outside our windows. They’re an elegant pair, and display gobs of personality. We think they’ve finally gotten used to us staring at them all the time, and we’re hoping they’ll settle down long enough to raise a family. There’s certainly plenty of food, and the only source of predators is from the air (we do have a mating pair of Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) raising chicks on the roof of another building on campus. You can watch them live here, and there are some still images below).

We have named our geese Horace and Mildred and they are very attentive to each other. Their practice is that when one of them eats or dozes, the other plays sentry, keeping a careful guard over the rooftop. You can see in the first three sequence of images above that Horace was nibbling away while Mildred kept guard. She then uttered a few goose-words to Horace, alerting him to our shutterbug presence.

Despite their almost identical markings, it’s relatively easy to tell the male and female apart. In the last two frames, Horace is above and Mildred below. Horace’s head is bigger and broader than Mildred’s and his neck is also thicker. Meanwhile, Mildred has a rather dainty head and slimmer neck. It’s hard to see in these photographs, but their tail feathers are also noticeably different. Horace’s tail is blunt, Mildred’s is longer and tapered, and occasionally a couple of tail feathers will curve up decoratively. She is such an elegant lady!

In the Peregrine images below, the male is the one staring back defiantly at the camera. And aren’t those sleeply little chicks just precious!

View more Feathursday posts.

[mshomestyle]

Tokoyami Fumikage x Reader: Applying crow-like instincts to Tokoyami [Head Canons].

This is from an ask I received, and I’m so happy to do this because I adore Tokoyami. He needs more love. Also, if anyone has any other asks for me feel free to send them!

What would these crow tendencies mean to Tokoyami Fumikage:

(Number 11 involves sex.)

1. “Crows have a varied and evolved language. They can mimic the sounds made by other animals, and they learn to associate noises with events, especially with the distribution of food.“ If you want to learn a new language, look no further than Tokoyami. It’s easy for him to learn a language. If you go to foreign countries that you’ve never been to before on vacation, all it takes is reading a language book on the plane and listening to the locals talk for Tokoyami to be able to parrot back the language rather well, especially when it comes to ordering at restaurants. It’s nice not to need a translator with him around.

2. “Crows are omnivorous, and they don’t seem to be picky eaters. Their diet includes fruits, mice, frogs and carrion.“

“What should we eat for dinner tonight?”

“Whatever you want.” And Tokoyami means it when he says it. He’s not the type to deny anything you chose, and you can sit there and name various places and different cuisine options, and he’ll say ‘yes’ to every one. Anything is fine to him. He only seems into it when apples are involved!

3. “Crows maintain only one mate for their entire life. They don’t reach sexual maturity until they reach the age of 2 but some often wait longer to get their soulmate. Once they find their soulmate, it is a lifetime’s bonding!“ Tokoyami and Hawks have definitely had this conversation before, and they see their love lives in the exact same light. “I’m only falling in love and getting married once,” Hawks says.

“I feel the exact same way.” And Tokoyami has expressed this to you as well. He also has no problem taking his relationship with you slow if that’s what you want. He’ll wait for you no matter how long it takes, and he’ll always see you as his one and only.

4. “ Both parents take care of the babies and help them with feeding. That may not be weird but this is weird – some of the offspring will actually stay back to look after the next batch of babies.” Tokoyami is a very involved father. When your babies are newborns he has absolutely no problem waking up in the middle of the night when they’re hungry to feed them with a bottle. Half because he wants you to get your sleep, and the other half is because he likes the bonding time with his kids. And if you and Tokoyami end up with another baby later in life, when your other kids are older they will help with it as well, possibly even offering to move back temporarily.

5. “A crow is actually a songbird and it has a complex system of calls.“ If you are careful enough, you’ll be able to hear him singing in the shower, and when you do his voice absolutely melts your heart. Tokoyami is a really good singer, though waves that off if you mention it. He does, however, not mind playing his guitar around you.

6. “Crows have such high level of intelligence that it has been observed that if a crow is unable to crack a nut, then it puts it on a highway so that vehicle could pass over it to crack it open. It was also observed that they prefer to put the nut under smaller vehicles so that the kernel is not be reduced to pulp!“ Tokoyami is incredibly smart, and it’s easy for him to solve any problems that you might have. You could be stumped with something all day, but if you take it to Tokoyami he can solve it quickly without fail. And while you’re just looking at him in amazement, especially since he manged to come up with a way to solve it that you didn’t even consider, he just shrugs.

7. “Crows, being the smart birds that they are, investigate an area for possible threats after another crow dies there.“ Tokoyami is a bit more protective than he’d like to think. He doesn’t want you going into any areas that have a large crime rate. In fact, if you’re planning to go somewhere new, Tokoyami will check it out beforehand, whether it’s in person or via the internet.

“Hey, is that Tokoyami and the other guys over there?” Mina asked, drink in her hand. You just rubbed your eyes, knowing that this would happen the second you told Tokoyami that the bar you were going to had a fight happen in it last week.

8. “ Crows will adopt: Cornell researchers witnessed something both heartbreaking and heartwarming: after an adult crow known simply as RV died of West Nile virus, his children were orphaned. Amazingly, his neighbor and crow friend adopted and cared for the baby crows!” It’s no doubt that Tokoyami is a hero. Every time he has to handle a case where a little child is involved and unprotected, his heart breaks for them. You’ve gotten used to him coming home with children saying that you’ll both look after the child until a proper home for them can be found. You don’t mind this at all, and you find it very cute. After all, you knew that if it were realistic for Tokoyami to adopt every child that needed it, then he would.

9. “They can solve puzzles: For a study, researchers once assigned a crow a simple puzzle involving eight tasks—picking up objects, moving them, and other complex steps. The crow had never seen them in sequence before. Yet, the crow finished it easily—the first bird to ever accomplish anything like it.“ If you do not like to lose, then don’t play puzzle games with Tokoyami. It takes him no time at all to figure puzzles out, and he does so effortlessly. You could cheat the system, however, and employ his help when you play with people that aren’t him! Midoriya still can’t seem to figure out how you managed to beat his high score at online sudoku so quickly.

10. “Corvids are all about family: Mama crows don’t push their young from the nest as soon as they can fly.” Hawks and Tokoyami talk about family, too as well! Tokoyami dotes on his kids, spending lots of time with them. He doesn’t force them to make life decisions, but rather gently encourages them, letting them know that they will always have the help of their family. You don’t exactly mind that, in fact, you find it cute. You just wish he would stop spoiling them...Seriously, when you came to know him, you didn’t think the children you had together would have him wrapped around their tiny fingers.

11. “The mating habits of this bird take place on the ground. The male bird has a courtship display of facing the female and fluffing his body feathers. Then he partially spreads his wings and tail and proceeds to bow repeatedly while uttering a brief rattling song. Once a male and female have mated, they perch together and may touch bills and preen each other's feathers.” Before you have sex, Tokoyami likes to make sure he’s nice and presentable, usually. He doesn’t just go it, looking any kind of way. And he also makes sure to court you before having sex (at least for the first time or special occasions.) He takes you to dinner and makes sure to properly seduce you. Once you’re both done having sex, he does an amazing job with the aftercare, holding you close, kissing you, and stroking his fingers through your hair. He definitely wants you to feel loved.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

« Before we come to these difficult matters, I must back-track and say a little about the origin of the idea of sexual selection. It began, like so much else in this field, with Charles Darwin. Darwin, although he laid his main stress on survival and the struggle for existence, recognized that existence and survival were only means to an end. That end was reproduction. A pheasant may live to a ripe old age, but if it does not reproduce it will not pass its attributes on. Selection will favour qualities that make an animal successful at reproducing, and survival is only part of the battle to reproduce. In other parts of the battle, success goes to those that are most attractive to the opposite sex. 

Darwin saw that, if a male pheasant or peacock or bird of paradise buys sexual attractiveness, even at the cost of its own life, it may still pass on its sexually attractive qualities through highly successful procreation before its death. He realized that the fan of a peacock must be a handicap to its possessor as far as survival is concerned, and he suggested that this was more than outweighed by the increased sexual attractiveness that it gave the male. With his fondness for the analogy with domestication, Darwin compared the hen to a human breeder directing the course of evolution of domestic animals along the lines of aesthetic whims. [...] Darwin simply accepted female whims as given. Their existence was an axiom of his theory of sexual selection, a prior assumption rather than something to be explained in its own right. Partly for this reason his theory of sexual selection fell into disrepute, until it was rescued by Fisher in 1930. Unfortunately, many biologists either ignored or misunderstood Fisher. The objection raised by Julian Huxley and others was that female whims were not legitimate foundations for a truly scientific theory. But Fisher rescued the theory of sexual selection, by treating female preference as a legitimate object of natural selection in its own right, no less than male tails. Female preference is a manifestation of the female nervous system. The female nervous system develops under the influence of her genes, and its attributes are therefore likely to have been influenced by selection over past generations. [...]

When we are discussing difficult theoretical ideas, it is often a good idea to keep in mind a particular example from the real world. I shall use the tail of the African long-tailed widow bird as an example. [...] The male long-tailed Widow bird is a slender black bird with orange shoulder flashes, about the size of an English sparrow except that the main tail feathers, in the breeding season, can be 18 inches long. It is often to be seen performing its spectacular display flight over the grasslands of Africa, wheeling and looping the loop, like an aeroplane with a long advertising streamer. Not surprisingly it can be grounded in wet weather. Even a dry tail that long must be a burdensome load to carry around. We are interested in explaining the evolution of the long tail, which we conjecture has been an explosive evolutionary process. Our starting point, therefore, is an ancestral bird without a long tail. Think of the ancestral tail as about 3 inches long, about a sixth the length of the modern breeding male's tail. The evolutionary change that we are trying to explain is a sixfold increase in tail length. 

It is an obvious fact that, when we measure almost anything about animals, although most members of a species are fairly close to the average, some individuals are a little above average, while others are below average. We can be sure that there was a range of tail lengths in the ancestral widow bird, some being longer and some being shorter than the average of 3 inches. It is safe to assume that tail length would have been governed by a large number of genes, each one of small effect, their effects adding up, together with the effects of diet and other environmental variables, to make the actual tail length of an individual. Large numbers of genes whose effects add up are called polygenes. Most measures of ourselves, for instance our height and weight, are affected by large numbers of polygenes. The mathematical model of sexual selection that I am following most closely, that of Russell Lande, is a model of polygenes. Now we must turn our attention to females, and how they choose their mates. [...] So, having accepted the assumption that females do the choosing, we next take the crucial step that Fisher took in confounding Darwin's critics. Instead of simply agreeing that females have whims, we regard female preference as a genetically influenced variable just like any other. Female preference is a quantitative variable, and we can assume that it is under the control of polygenes in just the same kind of way as male tail length itself. These polygenes may act on any of a wide variety of parts of the female's brain, or even on her eyes; on anything that has the effect of altering the female's preference. Female preference doubtless takes account of many parts of a male, the colour of his shoulder patch, the shape of his beak, and so on; but we happen to be interested, here, in the evolution of male tail length, and hence we are interested in female preferences for male tails of different length. We can therefore measure female preference in exactly the same units as we measure male tail length - inches. Polygenes will see to it that there are some females with a liking for longer than average male tails, others with a liking for shorter than average male tails, and others with a liking for tails of about average length. 

Now comes one of the key insights in the whole theory. Although genes for female preference only express themselves in female behaviour, nevertheless they are present in the bodies of males too. And by the same token, genes for male tail length are present in the bodies of females, whether or not they express themselves in females. The idea of genes failing to express themselves is not a difficult one. If a man has genes for a long penis, he is just as likely to pass those genes on to his daughter as to his son. His son may express those genes whereas his daughter, of course, will not, because she doesn't have a penis at all. But if the man eventually gets grandsons, the sons of his daughter may be just as likely to inherit his long penis as the sons of his son. Genes may be carried in a body but not expressed. In the same way. Fisher and Lande assume that genes for female preference are carried in male bodies, even though they are only expressed in female bodies. And genes for male tails are carried in female bodies, even if they are not expressed in females. [...]

This is really a key point in the argument. The rationale for it is as follows. If I am a male with a long tail, my father is more likely than not to have had a long tail too. This is just ordinary heredity. But also, since my father was chosen as a mate by my mother, my mother is more likely than not to have preferred long-tailed males. Therefore, if I have inherited genes for a long tail from my father, I am also likely to have inherited genes for preferring long tails from my mother. [...] The general conclusion is this. Any individual, of either sex, is likely to contain both genes for making males have a certain quality, and genes for making females prefer that same quality, whatever that quality might be. So, the genes for male qualities, and the genes for making females prefer those qualities, will not be randomly shuffled around the population, but will tend to be shuffled around together. [...] These consequences can only be proved mathematically, but it is possible to say in words what they are, and we can try to gain some flavour of the mathematical argument in nonmathematical language. [...] 

It could turn out that the average female preference was exactly the same as the average male tail length. In this case female choice will not be an evolutionary force tending to change male tail length. Or it could turn out that the average female preference was for a tail rather longer than the average tail that actually exists, say 4 inches rather than 3. Leaving open, for the moment, why there might be such a discrepancy, just accept that there is one and ask the next obvious question. Why, if most females prefer males with 4-inch tails, do the majority of males actually have 3-inch tails? Why doesn't the average tail length in the population shift to 4 inches under the influence of female sexual selection? How can there be a discrepancy of 1 inch between the average preferred tail length and the actual average tail length?

The answer is that female taste is not the only kind of selection that bears upon male tail length. Tails have an important job to perform in flight, and a tail that is too long or too short will decrease the efficiency of flight. Moreover, a long tail costs more energy to carry around, and more to make it in the first place. Males with 4-inch tails might well pull the female birds, but the price the males would pay is their less-efficient flight, greater energy costs and greater vulnerability to predators. 

We can express this by saying that there is a utilitarian optimum tail length, which is different from the sexually selected optimum: an ideal tail length from the point of view of ordinary useful criteria; a tail length that is ideal from all points of view apart from attracting females. Should we expect that the actual average tail length of males, 3 inches in our hypothetical example, will be the same as the utilitarian optimum? No, we should expect the utilitarian optimum to be less, say 2 inches. The reason is that the actual average tail length of 3 inches is the result of a compromise between utilitarian selection tending to make tails shorter, and sexual selection tending to make them longer. We may surmise that, if there were no need to attract females, average tail length would shrink towards 2 inches. If there were no need to worry about flying efficiency and energy costs, average tail length would shoot out towards 4 inches. The actual average of 3 inches is a compromise. 

We left on one side the question of why females might agree in preferring a tail that departed from the utilitarian optimum. At first sight the very idea seems silly. Fashion-conscious females, with a taste for tails that are longer than they should be on good design criteria, are going to have poorly designed, inefficient, clumsily flying sons. Any mutant female who happened to have an unfashionable taste for shorter-tailed males, in particular a mutant female whose taste in tails happened to coincide with the utilitarian optimum, would produce efficient sons, well designed for flying, who would surely outcompete the sons of her more fashion-conscious rivals. Ah, but here is the rub. It is implicit in my metaphor of 'fashion'. The mutant female's sons may be efficient flyers, but they are not seen as attractive by the majority of females in the population. They will attract only minority females, fashion-defying females, and minority females, by definition, are harder to find than majority females, for the simple reason that they are thinner on the ground. In a society where only one in six males mates at all and the fortunate males have large harems, pandering to the majority tastes of females will have enormous benefits, benefits that are well capable of outweighing the utilitarian costs in energy and' flight efficiency. 

But even so, the reader may complain, the whole argument is based upon an arbitrary assumption. Given that most females prefer nonutilitarian long tails, the reader will admit, everything else follows. But why did this majority female taste come about in the first place? Why didn't the majority of females prefer tails that are smaller than the utilitarian optimum, or exactly the same length as the utilitarian optimum? Why shouldn't fashion coincide with utility? The answer is that any of these things might have happened, and in many species it probably did. My hypothetical case of females preferring long tails was, indeed arbitrary. But whatever the majority female taste had happened to be, and no matter how arbitrary, there would have been a tendency for that majority to be maintained by selection or even, under some conditions, actually increased — exaggerated. [...]

The key to the argument lies in the point we established earlier about 'linkage disequilibrium', the 'togetherness' of genes for tails of a given length - any length - and corresponding genes for preferring tails of that self-same length. We can think about the 'togetherness factor' as a measurable number. If the togetherness factor is very high, this means that knowledge about an individual's genes for tail length enables us to predict, with great accuracy, his/her genes for preference, and vice versa. [...] The kind of thing that affects the magnitude of the togetherness factor is the strength of the females' preference - how tolerant they are of what they see as imperfect males; how much of the variation in male tail length is governed by genes as opposed to environmental factors; and so on. If, as a result of all these effects, the togetherness factor - the tightness of binding of genes for tail length and genes for tail-length preference - is very strong, we can deduce the following consequence. 

Every time a male is chosen because of his long tail, not only are genes for long tails being chosen. At the same time, because of the 'togetherness' coupling, genes for preferring long tails are also being chosen. [...] The reason there is any momentum in the evolution towards longer tails is that, whenever a female chooses a male of the type she 'likes', she is, because of the nonrandom association of genes, choosing copies of the very genes that made her do the choosing. So, in the next generation, not only will the males tend to have longer tails, but the females will tend to have a stronger preference for long tails. [...] 

If half the females in the population preferred long-tailed males, and the other half short-tailed males, genes for female choice would still be choosing copies of themselves, but there would be no tendency for one or other tail type to be favoured in general. There might be a tendency for the population to split into two — a long-tailed, long-preferring faction, and a short-tailed, short-preferring faction. But any such two-way split in female 'opinion' is an unstable state of affairs. The moment a majority, however slight, started to accrue among females for one type of preference rather than the other, that majority would be reinforced in subsequent generations. [...] Whenever we have an unstable balance, arbitrary, random beginnings are self-reinforcing. [...]

Remember that selection by females is pulling male tails in one direction, while 'utilitarian' selection is pulling them in the other ('pulling' in the evolutionary sense, of course), the actual average tail length being a compromise between the two pulls. Let us now recognize a quantity called the 'choice discrepancy'. This is the difference between the actual average tail length of males in the population, and the 'ideal' tail length that the average female in the population would really prefer. [...] 

In other words, a choice discrepancy of zero means that evolutionary change comes to a halt because the two opposite kinds of selection exactly cancel each other out. Obviously, the larger the choice discrepancy, the stronger the evolutionary 'pull' exerted by females against the counteracting pull of utilitarian natural selection. What we are interested in is not the absolute value of the choice discrepancy at any particular time; but bow the choice discrepancy changes in successive generations. As a result of a given choice discrepancy, tails get longer, and at the same time (remember that genes for choosing long tails are being selected in concert with genes for having long tails) the females' ideal preferred tail gets longer too. After a generation of this dual selection, both average tail length and average preferred tail length have become longer, but which has increased the most? This is another way of asking what will happen to the choice discrepancy. The choice discrepancy could have stayed the same (if average tail length and average preferred tail length both increased by the same amount). It could have become smaller (if average tail length increased more than preferred tail length did). Or, finally, it could have become larger (if average tail length increased somewhat, but average preferred tail length increased even more). 

You can begin to see that, if the choice discrepancy gets smaller as tails get larger, tail length will evolve towards a stable equilibrium length. But if the choice discrepancy gets larger as tails get larger, future generations should theoretically see tails shooting out at ever increasing speed. [...]

Let us first take the case where the choice discrepancy becomes ever smaller as the generations go by. It will eventually become so small that the pull of female, preference in one direction is exactly balanced by the pull of utilitarian selection in the other. Evolutionary change will then come to a halt, and the system is said to be in a state of equilibrium. The interesting thing Lande proved about this is that, at least under some conditions, there is not just one point of equilibrium, but many (theoretically an infinite number arranged in a straight line on a graph, but there's mathematics for you!). There is not just one balance point but many: for any strength of utilitarian selection pulling in one direction, the strength of female preference evolves in such a way as to reach a point where it balances it exactly. So, if conditions are such that the choice discrepancy tends to become smaller as the generations go by, the population will come to rest at the 'nearest' point of equilibrium. Here utilitarian selection pulling in one direction will be exactly counteracted by female selection pulling in the other, and the tails of the males will stay the same length, regardless of how long that is. [...]

Now we come to consider the other possible case, where preference increases at an even higher rate, per generation, than tail length itself does. [...W]hat is needed now is evidence from real animals. How should we go about looking for such evidence? What methods might be used? A promising approach was made by Malte Andersson, from Sweden. As it happens, he worked on the very bird that I am using here to discuss the theoretical ideas, the long-tailed widow bird, and he studied it in its natural surroundings in Kenya. Andersson's experiments were made possible by a recent advance in technology: superglue. He reasoned as follows. If it is true that the actual tail length of males is a compromise between a utilitarian optimum on the one hand, and what females really want on the other, it should be possible to make a male superattractive by giving him an extra long tail. This is where the superglue came in. I'll describe Andersson's experiment briefly, as it is a neat example of experimental design. Andersson caught 36 male widow birds, and divided them into nine groups of four. Each group of four was treated alike. One member of each group of four (scrupulously chosen at random to avoid any unconscious bias) had his tail feathers trimmed to 14 centimetres (about S'/z inches). The portion removed was stuck, with quick-setting superglue, to the end of the tail of the second member of the group of four. So, the first one had an artificially shortened tail, the second one an artificially lengthened tail. The third bird was left with his tail untouched, for comparison. The fourth bird was also left with his tail the same length, but it wasn't untouched. Instead, the ends of the feathers were cut off  and then glued back on again. This might seem a pointless exercise, but it is a good example of how careful you have to be in designing experiments. It could have been that the fact of having his tail feathers manipulated, or the fact of being caught and handled by a human, affected a bird, rather than the actual change in length itself. Group 4 was a 'control' for such effects. The idea was to compare the mating success of each bird with its differently treated colleagues in its own group of four. After being treated in one of the four ways, every male was allowed to take up its former residence on its own territory. Here it resumed its normal business of trying to attract females into its territory, there to mate, build a nest and lay eggs. The question was, which member of each group of four would have the most success in pulling in females? Andersson measured this, not by literally watching females, but by waiting and then counting the number of nests containing eggs in each male's territory. What he found was that males with artificially elongated tails attracted nearly four times as many females as males with artificially shortened tails. Those with tails of normal, natural length had intermediate success. The results were analysed statistically, in case they had resulted from chance alone. The conclusion was that if attracting females were the only criterion, males would be better off with longer tails than they actually have. In other words, sexual selection is constantly pulling tails (in the evolutionary sense) in the direction of getting longer. The fact that real tails are shorter than females would prefer suggests that there must be some other selection pressure keeping them shorter. This is 'utilitarian' selection. Presumably males with especially long tails are more likely to die than males with average tails. Unfortunately, Andersson did not have time to follow the subsequent fates of his doctored males. If he had, the prediction would have been that the males with extra tail-feathers glued on should, on average, have died younger than normal males, probably because of greater vulnerability to predators. Males with artificially shortened tails, on the other hand, should probably be expected to live longer than normal males. This is because the normal length is supposed to be a compromise between the sexual selection optimum and the utilitarian optimum. Presumably the birds with artificially shortened tails are closer to the utilitarian optimum, and therefore should live longer. There's a lot of supposition in all this, however. If the main utilitarian disadvantage of a long tail turned out to be the economic cost of growing it in the first place, rather than increased dangers of dying after it has grown, males who are handed an extra-long tail on a plate, as a free gift from Andersson, would not be expected to die particularly young as a result. »

— The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, Richard Dawkins

[saucylobster]

These peacocks have been long overdue for a touch up and after a long delay here they are, good as new. Chichrome are early birds encountered in the first forest of Bretlan and there would be a salesman who sells the basic element boosting items (mystic water, charcoal etc) and probably some random NPC wandering round suggesting you try them out on Chichrome. Technihen are reserved and quiet whilst all the males are just different kinds of dick-head. Chichrome are shy little bird pokemon that despite their rather colourful feathers are adept at hiding in the dappled shade of the forest. Popular pokemon in stately gardens these pokemon quickly made their way into the more heavily wooded areas of Bretlan were feral populations quickly established. Although the adults nest in trees the wings of Chichrome aren't particularly strong and they tend to rest in bushes and shrubbery. Technihen don't possess the elemental affinities of their male counterparts but display a much cooler, calm temperament and duller, more effectively camouflaged feathers. As a result of these gender differences Technihen tend to live longer and appear more intelligent. The feathers of their tail are considered very beautiful and the iridescent colour on each feather is often likened to a jewel, an association that makes them valuable trinkets and accessories. Peacold are narcissistic to the extreme, constantly preening and fawning over their own appearance. All of this is in the pursuit of a Technihen although they do little else in their free time and tend to enjoy doting on themselves. More prone to sabotage than the other two varieties of male, they employ their frigid air to slow down and slip up competing males. Gently does it though, as a Technihen would look down on such underhanded tactics. Peacrash typically try to woo Technihen by entertaining them, perhaps engaging in silly antics or elaborate songs. They can be so wrapped up in their fun and games they miss the signals a receptive Technihen is giving. A common feature of their courtship display is a low rumbling sound akin to thunder which the other males are unable to replicate, something that has been known to make them jealous and something Peacrash takes full advantage of. Peacrisp are easily the flashiest males vying for a Technihens affections. They attempt to woo a female with sheer charisma and charm their ego fuels their fire and if they become too arrogant their blazing tail may burn out of control as it matches their feelings of self-worth. Peacrisp are all or nothing mates and if they go too far they might burn the courting grounds to cinders, and after a stunt like that no Technihen in her right mind would mate with such an idiot. — Ability Info — — Attack Info —

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Jabiru mycteria

By Andreas Trepte, CC BY-SA 4.0

Etymology: Tupí for Very Big Bird

First Described By: Hellmayr, 1906

Classification: Dinosauromorpha, Dinosauriformes, Dracohors, Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoromorpha, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostaylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Neognathae, Neoaves, Aequorlitornithes, Ardeae, Aequornithes, Ciconiiformes

Status: Extant, Least Concern

Time and Place: From 126,000 years ago until the present, from the Tarantian of the Pleistocene to the Holocene 

Jabiru are primarily known from the Amazon basin, though during the Ice Age they were much more widespread (shown in light blue) 

Physical Description: Jabiru are extremely large storks, primarily white in color all over their bodies and wings. They have very long, skinny black legs, like other storks, and black heads. Their heads are ridiculously long, with beaks that make up three-forths of the entire head – these beaks are long, triangular, and pointed. Underneath the black neck, they have red throat sacks which stand out from the rest of the body. Males differ from females in having longer beaks and more vibrant red color on their throat sacks; the juveniles, meanwhile, are more grey than the adults. Babies of this species are especially fat and fluffy, and covered in white feathers. In terms of size, Jabiru are the tallest flying birds in Latin America, reaching the same height as the flightless rhea – up to 1.53 meters tall. So, you know, about the same height as a shorter person. They grow between 1.2 and 1.4 meters long in general, from head to tail; they have some of the largest wingspans of any South American bird, reaching between 2.3 and 2.6 meters long – only the Andean Condor has a larger wingspan on that continent. The beaks can range between 25 and 35 centimeters. In short, though Jabiru can honestly look really gangly and ridiculous, they are also absolutely, terrifyingly, huge. 

By Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0

Diet: Jabiru feed on fish, frogs, snakes, insects, baby crocodilians, and turtles – though the bulk is fish, they really can’t be classified as anything other than a carnivore. 

By Lukja, CC BY-SA 3.0

Behavior: Jabiru will wade in the shallows of the water, splashing their bills into it to disturb prey. They will look for prey mainly by feeling around with their beaks, but they also see the food and reach out to grab it. THey then carry the food to the shore and dismantle it there, where it can’t as easily slip out (especially in the case of fish). They’ll also use sounds – baby caimans, especially, are found by listening for their distress calls. They tend to feed in large groups of up to fifty birds during the dry season, congregating where food can be found; in the west season, they are more solitary. They do associate with other storks and ibises as well during feeding. They are very silent away from the nest, stalking in the quiet; they will make very loud bill claps when alarmed, and make soft coughs and bill claps during copulation and nest displays. Their pouches are inflated during mating displace, and also as a threat to other members of species when they feel their spaces is being invaded. 

By Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0

Despite being ridiculously huge and a little silly looking on the ground, Jabiru are amazingly graceful fliers, soaring above the ground with the agility of the Andean Condor – which it rivals in size. They don’t migrate much, but congregate in small groups with other storks and ibises and moving in relation to rainfall. They will fly to seek out new places of food. Breeding varies from location to location, usually at the end of the dry season and the start of the wet season. They usually nest alone, but they will form groups of up to six nests – though some populations breed in mixed colonies with other storks. They make nests in tall palm trees, so if you needed to imagine a person-sized bird nesting in a tree, here you go. They sometimes nest in tall mangroves or other types of trees in pine savanna. The nests are made of sticks and mud and are used year to year. Three to four eggs are laid per season, and the young hatch white and fluffy and dependent on the parents. Both parents will incubate the eggs. The babies leave the nest after about a hundred days, though the young stick with the parents for another three months. As such, most mated pairs alternate breeding years. The pairs mate for life as well. Jabiru can live on average for thirty-six years. 

By Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ecosystem: Jabiru live in large freshwater marshes, pine-savanna, ranches near ponds and lagoons, near large rivers and lakes, in estuaries, and rice fields. The young are specially preyed upon by raccoons, other storks, and humans; but healthy adults have no known predators. 

By Andreas Trepte, CC BY-SA 4.0

Other: Though the Jabiru stork already has a very large range today, fossil evidence indicates that during the last glacial maximum its range was even larger, extending up into North America. It is thus possible that climate change following the end of the last Ice Age lead to a decline in Jabiru populations and a decrease in Jabiru range. That being said, Jabiru today are doing perfectly fine in terms of conservation and population – they are considered threatened with extinction, and therea re considered to be tens of thousands of birds worldwide. Still, Central American populations of Jabiru are on the decline possibly as a continuation of the elimination of this bird from North America in general; in the Amazon, the chicks are considered a source of food by native populations.

~ By Meig Dickson

Sources under the Cut 

Allen, G. M. 1932. A Pleistocene bat from Florida. Journal of Mammalogy 13(3):256-259

Campbell, K. E. 1979. The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru. Royal Ontario Museum Life Sciences Contribution 118:1-203

Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2017. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2017

Elliott, A., Garcia, E.F.J., Kirwan, G.M. & Boesman, P. (2019). Jabiru (Jabiru mycteria). In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

Hancock, Kushan. 1992. Storks, Ibises, and Spoonbills of the World. Princeton University Press.

Sellards, E. H. 1916. Human remains and associated fossils from the Pleistocene of Florida. Florida Geological Survey Annual Report 8:120-160

Shufeldt, R. W. 1917. Fossil birds found at Vero, Florida. Florida State Geological Survey Annual Report 9:35-42

Simpson, G. G. 1929. Pleistocene mammalian fauna of the Seminole Field, Pinellas County, Florida. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 56(8):561-599

Walsh, S. A.; Sánchez, R. 2008. The first Cenozoic fossil bird from Venezuela. Paläontologische Zeitschrift. 82 (2): 105–112.

[bedlamgames]

No Haven 0.912

Main highlight for this one is definitely dilemmas where slavers will have a variety of requests for you to manage. 

Also includes some new assignments, new commissions, assignment generation improvements, crafting additions, and more. 

Download links can be found on the No Haven page. Update notes can be found under the break.

If you don’t have RAGS and you need a copy to run it there’s one on the help page here or the one pinned on the patreon you can find a link to in the attached read me which is more up to date. If RAGS has never worked on your system despite the help page suggestions then it might be worth trying with one of the alternate players. There’s also improvements on there to the RAGS player that can also help with performance.

v0.912:

-New commissions: ---Recapture. Also used for Sea Elf Female slaves.

-Miscellaneous additions: ---Added some race/corruption specific fondles as an alternative to the minimal text. If set to minimum only these won't be shown. Specifically ones for Lago'Mae/Lago'Mae Ears Corruption, Ori'Nek, Lamia, Quintari/Centaurs/Quintari Tail Corruption, Kitsune, Neko/Neko Ears Corruption, Long Sinuous Tail Corruption, Prehensile Tail Corruption, and Marlsune. Includes variations based on obedience, whether the slaver is dominant or slutty, and some have more than one variation. ---Replaced the Arrogance Subjugated commission with an updated version generously provided by the artist. ---Added some extra description to the Sinuous Tail corruption to make clearer that it's the traditionally demonic spaded tail look. ---Added a new heart-tipped tail corruption as I was in the area anyway, and noticed that it was an obvious omission that needed feeling. Comes in two different variations. ---Added some extra highlighted messages to slave mantras when they become fully embedded, improved, reduced, or are lost entirely for better visibility. ---Upgraded the prioritization of back tentacles if multiple tentacle options are available. ---Changed how forced encounters for repeated attempts work on the initial roller. Before it was possible for them to completely lose interest after getting max gold. Now they will be more likely to keep initiating, and be more likely than before if there's a chance to earn more gold. ---Added a new Glossary to explain what effects Forced Encounters available under Glossary, Help, and Options.

-Bug fixes: ---Fix for an issue where the summonee and sibling second-in-command races, along with the siblings in the Birds of the Feather scenario could be overwritten incorrectly. Also changed the mention to needing Corrupter. ---Fix for an issue in dilemmas involving a respect check with more than one slaver involved where the instigating slaver's name would be replaced by one of the others.   ---Fix for Valendil Starlover's lore page applying to all sea elf males when you're playing him. ---Fix for Untamed Lusts not counting down for you.   ---Fix for Demi-Angel/Fallen/Succubus with elven heritage not going the elven pussy description or elven flexibility racial. ---Fix for Savage Orc and Human Northerner racials where racials were incorrectly displayed. ---Fix for opportunities requesting male amazons or wanting amazons not to be human. ---Fix for the stats increasing for assignment types on fails and disasters. ---Fix for the Catastrophics on Price of Freedom for the slaves also affecting the two slavers. ---Fix for the various findable uniques not being counted as having unaltered assets. ---Fix for the missing extra values for slaves found from Meddling Fools and Spectacle of the Sacred. ---Fix for the new mechanic to trigger puppet leader when mental manipulation isn't involved. ---Fix for Cutprice Roses > Armour > Maid generating a bunch of broken and unusable battlemaid outfits. ---Fix for Stats only showing your slaves sometimes. The trait slots were also using the wrong variable and so were displaying one person's trait slots for everyone. ---Fix for which regions assignments have been completed not increasing which had broken the region based aspects. ---Fix for an issue where it was possible that not enough assignments would be generated. ---Fix for the unknown CT Error that could occur during Finish Day. It's possible there's others but I've definitely squished the one I could reliably reproduce. ---Fix for a far too high a bonus to Forced Encounters from Sissy/Bimbo. ---Some text fixes.

v0.911:

---A Rare City of Aversol assignment in the City of Aversol with two pieces of patron provided commissioned art. Comes with the opportunity to learn one of ten potential traits, specially upgraded versions of all those traits, and a new penalty effect in Enflamed Lusts. While currently used on this assignment I'm sure it will also be a fun option to inflict in other places in future. ---Hidden Special assignment follow up to that one needing multiple critical successes with specific traits to find a very powerful reward with two new unique slave(r)s with four new aspects and a special encampment upgrade.

-Crafting changes: ---Added two more qualities. Formerly it was Poorly Made, Average, Designer/Masterwork, Spectacular, Epic, and now it's Poorly Made, Average, Impressive, Designer, Spectacular, Epic, Ultimate. ---Changed up the odds due to this of the likelihood of these being generated. ---Respect checks for seduction are now affected by each quality rather than just for designer and above. Armour works too if it's got a 20+ slutty rating. ---Reduced the assignment bonus from Average with Impressive now contributing what Average used to. ---Increased the assignment bonus for Epic attire.

-Miscellaneous additions: ---It is now possible to gain the puppet leader status from forced encounters without the forcer needing a way to be able to change you mentally though it will need them to be taking the max amount of gold for it to be able to happen. The method used should be familiar to those that have played the Rough Landing games and I hope you enjoy the little callback.   ---Lamia futanari will now always be double cocked. Added some extra description for lamia/lizardman cocks. ---Replaced the last part of Golem descriptions with a new set of nine options as the old ones like spectacles, face prints, and forehead gems really weren't appropriate. Also updated the wisp last part replacement so there's now four different ones rather than just the one. ---The Male Nethemir Cult Vessel has picked up Back Tentacles as a starting corruption. The aspect Aura of Dark prophecy now also replaces Scavenging for Corruption as a favoured assignment type and Follower for Leader along with Faith: Frozen Queen for Magic: Corruptions as favoured traits ---Legion, Golems, and Wrights can no longer be Were. Centaurs and Harpies now can be. ---Updated the you golem physical attributes generator to match the updated one used for other golems. Other golems with Monster will now have a set height rather than being variable.

Bug fixes: ---Fix for Private Passage not listing the needed gold. ---Fix for Truly Divine increasing potential slavers instead of slaves. ---Fix for Sissies having the wrong chastity options. ---Fix for a slaver's reputation being changed correctly by an enslave attempt prior to the bit where it should be changing. ---Fix for Oozes, Wrights, Wisps, Driders, and Golems being able to be enslaved by the talk to option. Some will be enslavable in future but you'll need to discover a way to do it. ---Fix for 150g dilemmas only costing 50g. ---Fix for a big issue with dilemmas where it would forget what it was doing halfway through on several options. ---Fix for the Ensnared Rose fulfilled opportunities being broken.

v0.91:

-Dilemmas: ---Now slavers won't just want to talk to you in the morning about random bits of in-setting lore and will instead have a variety of requests. ---Should happen more often than lore unlocks and should adjust how often they happen based on how many slavers you have in the encampment. ---Wisps don't really have normal desires, and will just do what they like. Legion are also not really into asking permission for anything. Zharr, thugs, bimbos, obedient slavers, and other completely loyal ones are all far too content with their lot to ask for stuff. Mercenaries are just here to get paid and will also not bother you. ---There are twenty three different dilemmas to start off with at various levels of rarities in how often they'll happen. Several of which have variation in outcomes, options, and reasoning. ---Slavers on negative reputations and on certain levels of morale will be far more likely to either ask to leave if disliked or insisting you do something about being lusted after. ---Lots more usage for the respect checking system with some using the initial check only, while others skip straight to needing to force the issue like making use of. ---Can gain new traits, rarer assignments, new slavers, cheap(ish) biomancy, and region buffs among others. ---Due to this I reworked how Trait Transmission worked where a slaver can learn a trait of another slaver. Currently this only affects one of the new dilemmas and one of the Coastal Caves outcomes, but there will be other uses including one in the near future. Previously it was in strict order of checking for and applying Depraved > Slutty > Unscrupulous > Friendly > Sneaky > Seductive > Aggressive > Brutal in turn. Now it's more randomized (though still with a greater chance of picking up Depraved) and now can also potentially learn Connected, Cooperative, Creative, Dancer, Folklorist, Follower, Herbalist, Heroic, Honourable, Perceptive, Persuasive, Singer, Tactful, Tracker, Trainer, Trapper, any of the Faiths including Spiritual, and most of the Crafter traits. ---Can get your second-in-command to deal with it if they're around. Due to this Persuasive (Per), Seductive (Sed), Hypnotic (Hyp), Dominator (Dtr), Malevolence (Mal) are now listed as positive traits and Bimbo (Bim), Sex Addict (Sex) are mixed. Also added a note that them having a decent reputation helps, as it does. ---If you do this second-in-commands on lower morale have a chance to dislike the role more making them easier to remove if you want to do that. They also have a chance to lose some reputation if they handle it really badly.

-New assignments: ---A Forest Goblins vs. Wood Elves themed Uncommon Slaving assignment in the Ever Forest for a new solid source of supplies. Critical success has two versions, one for getting a slave, and one for if you have no slave capacity/are not taking slaves. ---An Adventurers themed assignment Rare Marauding assignment in the Dreadsea Coast. The Critical Success has patron provided commissioned art. Findable from the second month and will apply a penalty to Dreadsea Coast assignments along with a lesser penalty to Great Plains assignments while it is active giving the choice of sending five slavers to deal with it at a high risk or waiting for the assignment to expire. Critical success has three versions, one first time getting a specific semi-unique slave, one for after that with more variation in who you get, and one for if you have no slave capacity/are not taking slaves.

-New commissions: ---Halt Draenei Caravan with two versions for intro and the success. Also used for Draenei female slavers and female slaves. Also used for now for Draenei Farm, but I'm getting something new for that.   ---Forest goblin female slaves. Will also be used for an upcoming assignment in the Deep Mountains. ---Bred to be Broken. Also used for Quintari female slavers and Centaur slaves. ---Gone for a Soldier. Also used for Orc female slavers. ---Lago'Mae in Maid Outfits for both Submissive and non-Submissive options. Will be used for Basic/Advanced Maid Training in a future update.

-New patron provided commissions: ---Human Fancy. Part of a larger commission to be used for an upcoming assignment. Also used as an alternative to tentacle sex as appropriate with the existing beast on goblin one. ---Shadow Outcast. The larger commission just mentioned. Also has an alt for Shadow Outcast futanari. ---Planning out assignments/Winning the Golem Scenario. Has many variations being used, including zoomed versions, for having a Golem Second-in-Command, female Akir slaves, Noble slaves, and blowjob sex scenes. Like the encampment scene you won't see it every time you do planning out assignments though there will be a greater chance if you are playing a Golem.

-Crafting additions: ---New race styles in Asanei, Ori'Nek, Unrefined, and Neko (which has a few extra cute variations). ---Will now correctly account for if the smith/seamstress is Slutty or Reserved. ---More than doubled the number of different messages. Small chance they will now show up on not specifically Slutty/Girly items. ---Several new decoration additions including asymmetric and tassels. ---To better reflect the style of the setting the oversized shoulder pads have been replaced with sensibly sized shoulder pads.

-Assignment generation: ---Extended the recent system where there'd be a reduction in rare assignments in the first month and a slight increase after the first six months. Now it is possible to increase the chance of getting a rare assignment based on it being a solid lead, a quality lead, or best lead for an increasingly large bonus. ---Most assignments will work as they did before with the following exceptions. ---The assignment you can get in the Tavern is a solid lead. ---The assignments from brought scouting upgrades will be either normal, solid, or quality based on the level purchased. ---The assignments from Inquisitor will be quality leads. ---The bonus assignments from the Scouting aspects on Critical Success will be best leads, and on a Success will be quality leads. ---A Critical Success on Scouting assignments along with Grove Creepers will be solid leads. ---The assignments from Decadence like No Other on a Critical Success will be best leads for the City of Aversol ones, and quality for the others. On a Success all assignments generated will be solid so this should hopefully make this assignment a lot more worthwhile than it was before. ---An edge case not likely ever to come up, but it amused me so why not, so on a Failure of Sudden Betrayal if you did try to get rid of a slaver with the A Friend in Every Tavern aspect the assignments generated will be best leads.

-Miscellaneous additions: ---Stats now shows how many free trait slots you, a slaver, or a slave can have. This is how many extra traits can be learned from most sources including corruptions (usually, as there are exceptions that ignore this limit such as training). The number of slots can be increased by levelling up. ---Used zoomed in versions of the Nymph commission for generic sex for elves or those that have been dominated performing oral on lady or futanari slavers. ---Reworded the Decadence like No Other intro a bit along with adding a note in the Special text. ---A few bits of text additions and formatting improvements to respect checking. ---Changed the colour of wood elf speech from maroon like other elves to match the one used also by Centaurs, Horned Ones, and Fae. ---Adjusted Critical Success/Success odd additions a bit if the chance of a Failure/Disaster falls well below negative at time of applying. They'll still improve the chances and add to Crushing it, but by a slightly lower amount in the same way that the odds additions/subtractions are based on the numbers present so the more the assignment requires the less a Success trait is worth. This shouldn't be noticeable unless you're really, really overloading an assignment, and even then it shouldn't be too harsh in terms of effect. ---Added a bunch of new succubus first name variations. ---With the cheerleader precedent Known Shark of the Cards will no longer be earned by having Magic: Illusion and such slavers now have more text on the Critical Success to reflect that.  

Bug fixes: ---Big backend overhaul for how assignments generate specific other assignments along with how the expiry is applied that should fix some obscure issues. ---Fix for a critical bug where cancelling while assigning a slave to a slaver would break the game. ---Multiple fixes for forced encounters including who was doing it wasn't being tracked correctly so the amount being taken wasn't being increased so you could never get to the puppet leader event and that a bunch of text was being skipped over during the possessed variants. Also changed the forced encounter checks while I was there so rather than skipping days 1-10 to each month to having a penalty to the roll on days 1-10 of the first month. ---Fix for the assignment buff from the Critical Success from Complete Profane Ritual only lasting 3 days due to a cap on the variable used instead of 8 as was originally intended. ---Fix for an issue where some of the newest assignments may not have been clearing on a quick restart. ---Fix for golem butts being too small on average. ---Fix for heritage not being cleared on rerolling your start so could pick up incorrect racials if you swapped out of a demi-angel or succubus. ---Fix for some of the newer Diplomacy assignments not working with the Diplomacy rank up assignment generation correctly. ---Fix for Lady of Light being treated when started as a slaver recruiting assignment rather than a slave capturing one. ---Fix for unintended wing growth if you corrupted a winged character before examining them. ---Fix for an issue where a slave would be rated as the wrong value during sexytime. ---Fix for switch showing up twice after trait removal which happens most obviously for you at game start. ---Fix for some repeated text on forced encounters. ---Fix for trying to increase the height of a minimum height character being treated as a reduction attempt. ---Fix for Marauding Spectacle of the Sacred Clumsy/Magic: Corruption being swapped in the description but not in the actual checks. ---Fix for not being able to change a sissy's chastity options if they were already wearing a cage when they made the transition. ---Fix for not being able to get the Succubus Summonee second-in-command given the change to corrupter. ---Fix for the broken night goblin's traits from Coiled Tentacles which were well broken by a recent change in how specific slave rewards are generated. ---Fix for repicking during training showing the slave being trained. ---Some text fixes.

[maskedmuses-archived]

Snake of Golden Wings

This is a story of how a mother molded a man. 

Please be advised of the following tags: tw death, tw mental abuse, tw abuse, tw child abuse. Readmore for content and length.

Within Rusephine’s domain, good fortune had always been categorized by the colors white and gold. When the queen had produced a pearly egg, the kingdom had rejoiced, thinking her to have consummated a relationship with a new found king after three hundred years of rule. Whispers of a visitor from the Reptile Kingdom joining Rusephine had come to fruition when Gyasa, prince of the Snakes, had been discovered leaving behind the woman and egg he had helped borne into this world to return to his jungle.

There was no celebration when there was no King to accompany their Matriarch. No merriment when the egg shifted towards a gold, then twisted to a green sheen across its shell. Only fear erupted, when the crown prince emerged from the cracks in his birth casing. Golden hair dribbling down his face, and green eyes pupiless stared up at his mother, who glowered at the hatching of her only child.

Ensuring he imprinted upon her, Rusephine made eye contact merely once in the birthing room to bestow the hatchling a name: Osiris, the ancient human god of death. Then, with a purposed step, turned away from her newborn son, never to meet his gaze again for the next few years.

As a young child, he only aimed to impress his mother, to get her to look upon him with a smile without any success. Whether he made small drawings, or behaved well, nothing but a scowl was given before his mother would retire into her locked room, incapable of penetration by any aside whom Rusephine allowed.

His tiny wings began to flourish, the golden color predicted by his egg’s hue giving them a glittering color as he tried to flap and use them, honing his skills for flight. His body grew lanky, his tail stretching to accommodate his form, but the reptilian aspects taking form. Points along his canines, the skin that sloshed off of him in baths, his pointed ears coated with soft scaling.

Of course, there were those eyes that even the servants within the palace would not look directly upon.

Once Osiris managed to hover for more than a few seconds, he requested an audience with his mother. A proud child of five, able to hover longer than any else who had wings double his age, displayed the ability before his mother in the royal throne room. As she stared upon her creation, Rusephine’s face was cemented into a frown before she extended her hand, her feathers shooting out and surrounding his wings.

“No monster like you should be flying without permission.” Her voice echoed in the hall, striking his chest hard. Pain began to surge through his wings, his mother’s feathers crackling with a hellish static. A cry resounded in his head, only to realize it was his own screech as the power from the General took to his wings. Suspending them in time, they no longer grew, stumped, and the pain was blinding as he fell to his knees.

Nothing hurt more than the pain of being considered a monster.

Months began to pass and with the inability to fly, Osiris had become trapped within the palace. Creeping about and exploring new ways to make his home more interesting, Osiris stumbled upon guests that had been invited to their home. They were humanoid, one of them very pregnant. They had come to check up on his mother. A meeting of the Generals, as it would be later told to him by his room’s guard.

Crawling out of the vent in his room and to peer upon the meeting, eight adults surrounded a table, the boy finding it fascinating. All different people with so many names, Osiris had only ever seen bird-like Enterrans before. One was a large Taurian of sorts, one aquatic, one that seemed like a lion, one armored and bug like, a blond like him, who had fearsome green eyes. Then, there were the two humanoids.

The brunette, who began to speak, sounded kind. “Rusephine, Osiris seems to be growing very well. You should send him to Shindou sometime.” A gentle pat to her swollen stomach. “Koyakumo will need someone to look after her.”

“He is not some caretaker for your spawn, human.” Rusephine spoke flatly, riling the male humanoid before letting out a sigh. “I will consider visiting your little village when he is older. He needs to be taught his duties first.”

A huff came from the blond man, who crossed his arms and frowned at the Bird Queen. “He ought to learn it from his father. After all, my cousin may have his own quirks, but you did allow him into your chambers without any consult.”

A fist slammed down on the table, eclipsing the small gasp from the rafters, feathers bristled, but the woman was smiling. “Ryuma, you know I dislike mention of him at these meetings. Shall we move on from talking of our progeny, when you have none after your failure to make the human your bride?”

The silence that fell upon them was ignored as Osiris began to shift quietly away. He had a father. A father! He wanted to know more and plotted to greet the guests as soon as they left.

Crawling back to his room and bursting out of the room he had been sequestered in, the boy rushed down the hall, encountering the group as they began to exit. The female human had spotted him, and tugged on the male’s arm at her side, beckoning him to look. The violet haired man turned, the small child coming only to his knee.

“May I…May I visit you?” He blurted out. “You and your egg?” He pointed towards the brunette’s stomach causing laughter to ring from the woman as she nodded.

Smiling down upon the boy, she leaned down, gently patting his head. “Come any time you like, Osiris.”

A gasp emitted from his tiny frame. “You…know my name?” The two nodded, before Ryuma began to encroach.

“I’m sure Rusephine calls him something quite different.” As the woman’s hand began to move away from his golden locks, the man’s fingers extended down, giving him a small tap along the head. “I’m sure the boy hasn’t heard his name in years.”

“Ryuma!”

“Don’t scold me, huma—Yakumo.” A glance towards the male beside the woman made Ryuma reconsider his words. “Just because Mushra has bested me before does not make me wrong.” A turn and wave to them before he walked beyond the large doors, leaving behind the couple that had stopped. Both of them offered a smile to him before waving and giving pursuit to the other general.

Osiris stood in awe for a moment. A smile, a kindness. His name. It was all so new, his clawed fingers coming to touch the top of his head where he had been patted and given affection. Yet, it still felt empty; he only yearned it from his mother.

Sneaking out into the world had become common place for him when his mother’s attention was distracted by the Generals—people she had come to learn and understand their roles in the world as he grew—and met with the people in the city. Most were afraid of his appearance, but appreciated the help he could muster to them, from carrying groceries, to helping people with household chores.

Finally, cultivating enough bravery from those he helped, Osiris mustered enough strength to approach his mother once more. To ask to fly to this place that had been established: A city called Shindou.

“Alone? Little monster, are you mad?” Rusephine scoffed before looking away. “Guards—“

“Mother, if I am to be a good heir, don’t I need to see the world?” That was what he had deemed his role as a prince was, to become the successor to her throne. To make her proud. With how suddenly the Queen was upon him, her fingers digging into his face to the point he feared he might bleed and the rage swirling in her eyes, Osiris realized in an instant he had been far too mistaken.

“You are not my heir. I will rule for all time, do you understand?” A hastened nod that made her grip tighten painfully was made from his frame. “Good. Now, we can put this to rest—“

“If I see this place, I can become of better use to you!” Osiris sputtered out, his mother releasing his face and staring upon her son as he began to explain. “I…I can fly there and we can use this.” Plucking one of his small feathers, he knelt down and offered the golden gift to her. “My power can communicate with you. I can tell you if they are plotting anything. So that way, no one can challenge your authority!”

Silence fell between them, only the sound of the guard’s armor shifting nervously as Rusephine inspected the feather. Finally, her hand came down, placing firm upon his crown. “What a good little thing you are, thinking of your mother.” Slipping her hand away, Osiris was able to peer up, seeing his mother, wings expanded, and a smile stretched across her features. Truly, she was angelic and the boy felt weak before her.

“Let’s restore those wings of yours, my little monster.”

Shindou was a wondrous place to Osiris. All sorts of people were bustling around and finding the two who led the city—Mushra and Yakumo—hadn’t been easy. Practically lost, it was a small voice that had found the boy. “Hello!” Sounding akin to a chirp, confusion filling the prince as he glanced about, only for the voice to beckon once more. “Down!” It offered out.

The boy dipped his head, finding a violet haired child bowing to him before lifting up and smiling broadly. “Birdy!” She giggled out, he furrowing his brows in confusion until the girl pointed at his wings. “Mama said to find birdy!”

Once he arrived at the home of the Generals, Osiris had learned that was not what Yakumo had told the child, Koyakumo. Instead, she had told her to find someone with wings, but the three year old barely knew what that meant, so her father had clarified it was like a bird.

Osiris already felt tired and he had just arrived. Feeling as if this might have been a mistake, he turned, but his shirt was tugged on by the child, beckoning him to look back at her. When he did, he expected her to cower, just as all other children did. But instead she stared in awe at him, her mouth forming a circle in surprise. “Birdy has pretty eyes!” She cheered out, boy’s cheeks turning a bright red with a sputter.

It was a first, and the woman, Yakumo, swooped in to garner her child. “Forgive her, she speaks her mind ever since she learned to talk. Reminds me of someone I know.” A playful gaze was thrown to Mushra who chuckled. “Make yourself at home, Osiris.”

Home. That was what Shindou became for the boy.

Especially when it was where his father could meet him without the hounding from his mother.

Osiris had not held up his end of the bargain, instead giving his mother some information, but not all of it. Some that had been withheld was that of meeting with Gyasa within Shindou’s walls. It had been his mother that banished the prince from seeing his egg, and truthfully, the man seemed grateful. As Osiris grew towards a man, the more and more he realized the Snake Enterran would never have offered more than simply conflict within his life.

But the rebellion felt nice. The doors began to open to Osiris and upon his sixteenth year, he was openly helping the city, quelling their fears of him and instead his connections began to rise, not only of the other nobles, but of the common people. However, no matter what, any say of his succession was squashed, his mother always on the tip of his silver tongue.

She only left his mouth when his chambers were filled, those wishing to taste royalty, and deprived as he was, Osiris welcomed them, even without any enjoyment of his own. They smiled at him and relished his presence.

Even if they avoided his eyes.

The playboy was settled in his life, at least, until a visit when he was seventeen, and Gyasa had brought with him an attendant that wanted to meet his lord’s son. Older than him, the man was a reptile Enterran, a long green tail and scaling around his eyes and shoulders. His golden eyes were enticing, and despite being within the center of Rusephine’s domain, Osiris welcomed his father and his guest, Dipil, into the palace for the former to have conference with his mother.

The latter? Within days has Osiris wooed and welcoming him into lover’s embraces, all other expelled from his chambers in favor of his lover.

For the first time in years, things had seemed to be going well for the man, he was in love. He finally felt like the walls of the palace were a safety, not a prison. He could relish his company and fall asleep in his arms. A blissful dream.

But nothing more than that.

On the eve that Gyasa was to depart, a small glimmer of steel reflected the moonlight that filtered into the prince’s chambers. Dipil awoke the naïve man with blade to his throat, threatening to end his existence. He was a danger to those in the reptile kingdom. A posed false king among those in the actual ranks who worshiped his father. “Who could ever really love a monster like you?” A hissed out insult that snapped the last thread of hope in his heart.

“I do.”

The woman’s voice radiated, the reptile hissing as he was lifted up from atop his former lover’s frame, instantly his limps being split by razor sharp feathers. Blood rained from above, splattering the prince with crimson, which cleared only when tears rushed down his cheeks, leaving pale streaks in their wake. His mother stood at the door, holding the feather he had given her years before. “I never trusted this man. Finish this, Osiris.”

A command from his Queen, his mother, Osiris could not refuse. His body moved on its own, green stare unable to break away from Dipil. A trembling hand reached for his longer feathers, intending to turn them to steel, as the barely living man whispered from above. “…I’m sorry. I love you.”

Before Osiris could strike, the man disintegrated into a card, which felt helplessly through the air and landed upon the floor. The prince crumpled to the ground, weakened, and Rusephine rushed in, wrapping her arms and wings around him, pulling his feeble frame close to her chest.

“It’s alright now.” Tears were renewed along his face, confusion lighting his features as his mother hugged him. “This is why you should listen. Why you should never leave. People will want to kill you, no matter how much good you do in this world. Do you understand why?”

Shaking his head, Osiris couldn’t comprehend. He had done everything, given everything, done everything to know what love was. Rusephine smiled, leaning close to his ear with a small whisper.

“Because you’re a monster that only I can love.” Her smile turned wicked as the light began to dim from Osiris’ eyes. “Do as I say, stay here with me, and we can rule this world, together. Have whatever toys you want, but in the end?” Pulling her face back and placing her hand on his bloodstained cheek, the boy unable to divert his gaze from the woman’s. “I shall give you whatever you wish, as long as you obey me. None else shall suffer this fate.” Her wing brushed against the fallen card, scratching into it. “As long as you be a good little monster and offer me all of your power whenever I call upon it.” Her smile turned tender, a gentle stroke of her thumb against his cheek. “Do you understand, Osiris?”

“Yes…Mother.”

[majingojira]

If I stocked Jurassic Park/Jurassic World

I love the Jurassic Park series, and I love dinosaurs.  But I sometimes look at the species included and find myself asking ... “Why?”   Why 3 Spinosaurids?  Why 2 Ankylosaurids?  Why some species we know almost nothing about? 

So, I’m going to do what the title says, but I’m going to set down some ground rules.

We only ever see a few animals in any of the films, but at most the park has 43 species (not counting hybrids).  Mostly dinosaurs, but a few other prehistoric animals (Mosasaurs, Pterosaurs, and at least one Elasmosaur). 

So, for this, I’m going to give myself some limits:  35 Dinosaurs, 5 Non-Dinosaur Prehistoric Animals. 

Cover as much diversity as I can while still using interesting animals.

They will be listed by as:

Name: - Self Explanatory Description:  - Brief description of the animal and what it can do. Chaos Effect: - What Unexpected Elements could cause havoc.  This is a Jurassic Park post after all. Some speculation, some known stuff, we’re having fun here.

Feel free to think of your own takes on these prehistoric animals, or what you’d put in. 

Read, Set, GO!

1. Name: Stegosaurus Description: One of the most well known armored dinosaurs, it has a longer neck and raised tail unlike the more popular descriptions.  Chaos Effect:  While quite dumb, they are extremely flexible with both its tail (able to reach by its head easily), and its plates (which can flush red).  Which means, when this animal gets annoyed, things get stabbed.  And they can get annoyed quite easily.  

2. Name: Borealpelta Description: A small-ish (cow sized) Nodosaur Ankylosaur, known for having its full coloration known already.  Big shoulder spikes.  Chaos Effect: They dig ruts for themselves to sleep in at night.  This means only their armor bits show up.  They usually use the same one when they can, but it still damages enclosures. 

3. Name: Ankylosaurus Description: A heavily armored ankylosaur with a heavy tail club and thick armor scutes all over its body. Chaos Effect: It’s a damn goat. It will eat and swallow damn near anything.  It will crop things off with its beak, rasp them with an armored/toothy tongue, and then digest them with a powerful gut.  Males also have nose-balloons that inflate to impress mates.

4. Name: Kulinadromeus Description:A small herbivorous dinosaur covered in feathers.  1.5m long. Chaos Effect: Consummate preeners, attempts to put them in a petting zoo scenario ended when they began ‘preening the children.  With their beaks.

5. Name: Edmontosaurus Description:A large duck-billed dinosaur, though it’s actual beak is more parrot like. Chaos Effect: We knew that they had a comb like a rooster, but the one known is for the females.  The one for males is far larger and more elaborate (like comparing a chicken to a rooster).  It is also prone to picking up parasites.  Oxpecker birds have been imported and seem to be doing a good job countering the ticks and mites.  

6. Name: Parasaurolophus Description: A crested hadrosaur with a huge crest sticking out the back of its head. Chaos Effect: We knew they sang, but not so loud or so deeply! Constant maintenance is needed on the paddock as they can rattle apart their paddock locks if they are not checked regularly.  It also gets the attention of certain predators regularly.  Insulation has so far proved ineffective.

7. Name: Pachycephalosaurus Description: The best known dome-headed dinosaur. They ram into each other in dominance contests, but only as adults.  Juveniles have more elaborate horns that change into domes over time. They are still prone to ramming, but not each other. Chaos Effect: Electronics embedded in them, from tracking devices to health monitors, are shorted when repeated bashing occurs.  Enclosures must be reinforced, because they will ram things they do not like.  Also, they are omnivorous.  

8. Name: Psittacosaurus Description: A beaked ornithology with line of quills along the tail.  Chaos Effect: They rattle their tail feathers together like a rattlesnake (but more like grass blowing in the wind) to communicate. 

9. Name: Leptoceratops Description: A small horned dinosaur with no horn, about the size of a potbellied pig. Chaos Effect: It has the personality of a wild boar. Biting instead of goring, but no less aggressive.

10. Name: Triceratops Description: The classic 3-horned dinosaur. Chaos Effect: The back of the animal is covered in quill feathers resembling the quills of a porcupine. They are more prominent when younger, and ‘spread out’ as they age.  They are, however, short, only a few inches long, with no flexibility. 

11. Name: Styracosaurus Description: A smaller horned dinosaur with horns all along its frill. Chaos Effect:  Actually more about display and calling than actual combat.  If you can stand up to its intimidation (which includes the frill flushing bright red, bellowing, and mock charges), they’ll back off.

12. Name: Omeisaurus Description: A mamenchisaurid sauropod, though on the smaller side 66ft long and 10 tons. Mostly (stiff) neck.  It also has a tail club.  Chaos Effect: They are not very social animals, and will use their club to bat away other herd-mates if they get too close.

13. Name: Nigersaurus Description: A short-necked, grazing sauropod, with a wide mouth full of cropping teeth.   30ft long, maybe 2 tons. Chaos Effect: It took several changes to adapt this animal to grass, as the native plants it ate were hard to recreate.  However, having done so has made them horrifyingly potent grass eaters.  Even poisonous plants are mowed down without issue. 

14. Name:  Amargasaurus Description: Another short-necked sauropod, 30ft long,  3tons. Chaos Effect:  Another short-necked sauropod, but more varied feeding than Nigersaurus. When threatened, they roll their heads under their chests, sticking out their spikes, and charge.  They do this with minimal provocation. They also lash their tails around wickedly. 

15. Name: Apatosaurus Description: The classic Sauropod. 75ft long, 20ft tall at the top of the back, and they can weigh up to 30+ tons.  Chaos Effect:  The bottom of their neck is lined with spines they use for defense and in contests with each  other.  They also have a line of raised spines along their backs, which become quite wicked at the tip of their tail.  Lashes with their tail, done to other herd members in dominance points, or against what annoys them, can be very dangerous.  But not as dangerous as when they rear up and try to smash things with their feet or neck.

16. Name: Camarasaurus Description: The most basal deep-sculled sauropod.  50ft long, 40 tons. A high browser. Chaos Effect:  Its large naval cavity makes it a prime carrier for H1N1 Avian Flu.  They don’t seem to get sick, just carry the virus.

17. Name: Saltasaurus Description: A Titanosaur Sauropod with a heavily armored back. 42ft long, 7 tons. Chaos Effect: They love water.  Like, a lot. They drink a lot and prefer to spend the hottest parts of the day in it. 

18. Name: Dilophosaurus Description: A crested therapod. Chaos Effect: I’m going to go with the Jurassic Park poison spitter stuff here, because it’s just so much fun.  But with this added bonus.  The ones we saw in Jurassic Park were not adults.  An adult is 20ft long and can easily look a man in the eye, or loom over them. They lose the frill as adults.

19. Name: Carnotaurus Description: A short-faced, long legged, armored predator.  up to 30ft long, and easily 10ft tall. Chaos Effect: They are Cheetahs.  Extremely long legged runners at high speed, and at long distance.  They can also swallow a man whole by stretching their jaws out.

20. Name: Spinosaurus Description: A dinosaur trying to be a crocodile. 60ft long, with powerful arms, and stubby legs. Chaos Effect:  On land, it sort of waddles about like a giant penguin or pelican. It prefers shallow water, floating on the surface and dipping its head down to snap up small prey, or  waiting on shore to snap up larger fish.  For the biggest meat eating dinosaur ever, it’s actually rather goofy looking. 

21. Name: Allosaurus Description: A large therapod, the “Lion of the Jurassic”. 30ft long. Chaos Effect: They form loose association ‘packs’ most of the year.  They don’t really have tactics or coordinate actively, but they do work together effectively in a mob mentality sort of way.   

22.  Name: Giganotosaurus Description: Taller and longer than T. Rex, with a lighter skull built for slashing.  Chaos Effect:  It can shift between two skin-tones like a chameleon. It usually uses this for displays, but can use it for hunting when it wants to.  Despite being “Bigger” than T. Rex, it is far less robust, and more willing to back away when threatened.

23.  Name: Compsognathus Description: chicken sized therapod dinosaur.  Chaos Effect: They have a venomous bite. It’s about as potent as Gila Monster venom. Which is to say it hurts a LOT, but is usually not fatal to healthy adults.  Children and the elderly, however ...

24. Name: Tyrannosaurus Description: The Tyrant Lizard King. Chaos Effect: Eagle-Eyed, sharp-nosed, and with powerful jaws.  They hunt in family units when they can. Younger animals are more swift and graceful than older ones. 

25. Name: Struthiomimus Description: An ostridge-mimic dinosaur. Chaos Effect: Covered in feathers, has massive eyespots underneath its wings to scare attackers.  It also has the personality of a goose.

26. Name: Deinocheirus Description: A duck-billed, humped back animal, 36ft long and 12ft tall. Chaos Effect: If threatened, it will vomit on an attacker. The bile is foul smelling and slightly caustic.

27. Name: Shuvuia Description: A small dinosaur, 2ft long, with birdlike build, long tail, and short arms that terminate in 3 claws, the central of these dwards the others and is very robust (the others are almost completely gone).  Chaos Effect: An eater of termites and ants, it has a long sticky tongue to grab them up.  Utterly adorable.

28. Name: Therizinosaurus Description: A beaked head on top of a long neck, with a rotund, turkey-like body, and short tail.  Powerful hind legs to stride on, and long arms with massive claws all covered in feathers. Chaos Effect: Being 12ft tall at the shoulder and having scythe-like claws almost 3ft in length is enough!

29. Name: Anzu Description: An oviraptorid dinosaur some 6ft tall. Chaos Effect: It has a super-advanced voicebox that allows it to mimic the cries of damn near everything it hears. Including human voices. 

30. Name: Dakotaraptor Description: It’s the real life version of JP’s Velociraptor.  But feathery, of course. Chaos Effect: As smart as crows, but more carnivorous.

31. Name: Dromaeosaurus Description:  A medium-sized (6ft long,) Chaos Effect: It prey-rides. It latches on to prey and starts biting them.

32.  Name: Stenonychosaurus/Troodon Description: A omnivorous therapod dinosaur with a sickle claw on its feet. Chaos Effect: Escape artist and tool user. 

33. Name: Yi Description: A tiny dragon. Bat-winged, feathered, the size of a crow. Chaos Effect: Has a caustic orange spit that leaves chemical burns on those that are annoyed by it.  So, basically, it breathes not!Fire. Like a proper dragon.

34. Name: Microraptor Description: A four-winged primitive bird. Chaos Effect: Not needed, it’s a four-winged bird!

35.  Name: Phorusrhacos Description: A 8ft tall Terror Bird.  THick beak, powerful legs, and ostrich-fast. Chaos Effect: Hey, it’s a dinosaur!  It was either him or Gigantoraptor, but this was more fun.  They can clap their beaks to make a booming sound to coordinate attacks/call for help/assistance. One peck is enough to split open a hardhat, and the skull underneath.

36. Name: Quetzalcoatlus Description: A gigantic, stork-like pterosaur. Like Giraffe huge. With an 8ft-long bill. Chaos Effect: It is actually quite speedy on land at a gallop.  Still big enough to swallow a smaller-than-average person whole. Tall people get slammed until they break apart, then eaten piece by piece. 

37. Name: Pteranodon Description: The classic flying reptile is actually quite different from what’s expected. Chaos Effect: Extreme sexual dimorphism. Males have crests and are almost twice as big as females.  Acts like an Albatross. 

38. Name: Plesiosaurus Description: Classic sea reptile. Chaos Effect: Seems to spread any cephalopod toxins it consumes to its flesh.

39. Name: Mosasaurus Description: 40ft of marine monitor lizard. Chaos Effect: Has a second set of jaws inside its mouth to help it grasp prey. 

40. Name: Icthyosaurus Description: The “Dolphin” lizard. Chaos Effect: A nocturnal hunter of fish and squid.