unclefard

[unclefard]

top ten people actively trying to make the world shittier:

THE ENTIRE WEST IS BEING PUT UP FOR SALE AND I AM BEGGING YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS

Trump’s budget bill has many, many things in it, but buried amongst it is the MILLIONS OF ACRES OF PUBLIC LAND FOR SALE.

This is the entirety of the Arizona state forests, the entire Cascades mountain range. Swathes of pristine desert around the national parks in Utah. On the doorstep of Jackson Hole.

THIS BILL IS BIG, BUT IT CAN BE AMENDED AND ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT PASS AS IS please.

If you have ever enjoyed the wilderness, we stand to lose it all forever.

CALLING your senators - NOT JUST IN THE WEST. ALL SENATORS, is CRUCIAL.

Outdoor alliance has a great resource for reaching out.

I don’t have a huge following but please, everywhere I have ever loved, the forests I grew up playing in, the land I got married on, is all at risk and I am begging.

[unclefard]

CHILEAN HELMETED TOAD/CHILEAN WIDE MOUTHED TOAD (CALYPTOCEPHALELLA GAYI) CARESHEET

Note that this is based off my experiences with a singular specimen which I got roughly a year ago. This is not meant to be professional, just an anecdote of what I have found to work as there is little info on these guys.

these are ancient ass frogs. the genus apparently dates back to the cretaceous. they are wrinkled, primordial, and green. They are also the second largest frog on the planet, potentially able to grow up to around 2 pounds. As far as I know, they are farmed for food in their native lands (Chile) and the sudden influx of juveniles popping up in various online exotic animal stores probably originated from these frog farms. I would assume if they were just catching them in the wild you would see mature adults being sold alongside the juvis, for much higher prices, as is the case with bullfrogs, cane toads, and giant malaysian toads. If true this is a good thing as it means captive breeding is feasible. I assume there's at least a couple people out there who have accumulated little herds of these imports and are planning to try and breed them.

As for the care, they are basically a cooler water budgets frog. They are pretty much aquatic, but poor swimmers. Mine is almost always in the water, though it is always resting on the bottom or on the stems of the tank's vegetation. When it was younger it would occasionally rest on land, under a section of cork bark. A land area with a hide should be provided, but the tank should mostly be water.

The ideal setup would be a large tub/aquarium with a sand/gravel substrate, sloping so as to create a gradient. Most of the water should be shallow, but with a deeper area if the frog really needs to cool off. Unless your frog tank area gets extremely cold you do not need any kind of heating. There should be a plant light of sorts (I use Barina T5) and live aquatic plants.

I find live plants are very important for frogs, especially ones that need significant water features. With amphibians i have found that the closer to their natural habitat, the better, as opposed to the laboratory style setups that wirk for snakes. I have only ever had health issues with animals that were kept in plastic plant/paper towel style setups. Anyways, plants provide cover and help keep the water clean. I use duckweed, water lettuce, pothos, elodea+hornwort, water hyacinth, and some random ass plant I got from a nursery.

In nature I would assume calyptocephalella spend their time in the shallows, concealed in thick aquatic vegetation, waiting for food. This is what mine does and it is perfect. Having a nice, densely planted tank reduces the cleaning you need to do and helps prevent stress in the frog. You can use floating cork flats/rounds for additional shelter, mine enjoys these as well. I would avoid any pointed/sharp edged rocks or driftwood as these can cut the soft frog.

Here is my current setup. It is a bare-bottom plastic tub, with ample vegetation and cork bark. The filter is rated for 30 gallon aquariums. The land area is a reptile water dish filled with dirt, sat on top of one of those plastic rectangular snake hides. The water is around eight inches deep. I don't use a lid (probably should) as the frog is not exactly a jumper, more so a sitter.

From what little I found these frogs do not like moving/running water. You should use a canister filter (the one with the intake+outake tubes), preferably rated for a higher capacity than that of your frog's tank. Aquarium filters are rated for fish tanks. Most fish make tiny stringy poops. These frogs however are superior organisms and make large muddy shits, like turtles. Water quality is very important as amphibians are very sensitive to dirty/polluted water. The tank is cleaned every week or two. I leave a bit of the old water to ensure beneficial microfauna sticks around. pH is kept around 7.0. I have a small aquarium fan on the left side of the tank to keep the water cool, but I doubt it accomplishes much. Both the intake and outake tubes are submerged beneath the surface to prevent water movement.

The water is probably fine without any heating/cooling unless surrounding temperatures reach one extreme or another. My tank's water stays high sixties to low seventies, Fahrenheit. The surface temperatures are usually low to mid seventies. These frogs seem to prefer a cooler climate and temperatures should not go above the upper seventies. If it does (happened once or twice) it is not the end of the world, but should be avoided. Having the option to retreat to deeper water could be a lifesaver for your frog here. Mine was originally kept in very shallow water only a couple of inches deep: , though with the frog's greater mass and the warmer weather I have since changed it.

Feeding is simple. After a few days of getting used to captivity my frog started eagerly taking various live and dead foods from tongs. The bulk of the diet should be insects, but I give frozen thawed mice and silversides as treats. Rodents are fatty and probably extremely rare in their natural diet, so they should only be fed sparingly. I feed mine every other day or so. These are greedy fat frogs and thus fun and easy to feed.

One final thing is that mine croaks very frequently, despite seeming to be a juvenile. It is currently about the size of my palm and hasa grown maybe a few centimeters in length since i got it. Perhaps it is a small male going through frog puberty, perhaps the croaking is more territorial in nature. It is not particularly musical, being a repeated squeaky/rubbery grunt of sorts.

TLDR

-keep at room temp (low to mid seventies)

-pH 6.5 to 7.0

-planted aquatic tank with shallow areas to rest, surface cover, and small land area. Filtered but no water movement

-good eaters, diet should be insects with occasional frozen thawed fish or rodent

-build it a shrine. offerings must be blood, and painful.

[unclefard]

[unclefard]

100 MOTIVATED NEPHILIM VS PRIME T.REX

no one is going to save you

[unclefard]

I love this frog

Burmese Squat Frog (Glyphoglossus guttulatus), family Microhylidae, Viet Nam

photographs by Diệp Tùng

[unclefard]

[unclefard]

A groggy pair of the currently undescribed/named giant Kenyan abelisaurids wake up on a hot afternoon to find a more shaded spot to nap. To be honest I think it's a bit odd how this thing was found several years ago and still has not been properly described, considering it is not only a giant theropod but the largest? of its respective group. You would think they would jump all over describing the next "bigger than t. rex". Then again, I do not know how the process works, and I assume properly describing a species involves a lot of collaboration/review with different paleontologists and other bureaucratic-esque things that take forever.

An odd thing about abelisaurids is how they are found in basically every cretaceous/south american fossil bed. if there's a new dinosaur from one of these beds it is either a weirdly small sauropod, a bird thing, or an abelisaurid.

i based the reconstruction off of Rajasaurus, albeit with added bulk, as its skull is relatively similar to the Titanovenator reconstruction. The little twin snout horns are speculative and meant to be more like the bigger scales on an iguana's face than proper horns. To be honest I hope they give this thing a cool African name or name it after some kind of monster or god as Titanovenator is just a little eh. With big meat-eating dinosaurs the names can get a little too edgy sometimes (cough cough Tyrannotitan). The perfect name in my opinion is Carcharodontosaurus, as it sounds formidable without any basis in pop culture or being obviously and overly edgy.

[unclefard]

[unclefard]

[unclefard]

nephilim clip

[unclefard]

apparently t.rex and triceratops make up an extremely large proportion of the fossils found in hell creek:

rather than nearly a fourth of the ecosystem being comprised of an apex predator, it's more likely that fossilization favored rexes and trikes. many of the hell creek dinosaurs probably lived in more forested/upland habitats, rarely visited the swamps/floodplains/etc, and thus rarely fossilized. apparently it was quite wet and swampy so i assume there was less of a need for animals to congregate at watering holes, especially the smaller ones. also smaller animals just have a harder time fossilizing as their bones are more delicate.

i could imagine trikes just liking water, like most big heavy bodied herbivores today. hippos, rhinos, elephants, bovids, and giant tortoises all love to wallow in pools and mud. they probably spent a lot of time lounging around in swamps.

as for the high representation of t.rex, they probably liked to wait for prey around watering holes as many predators do. maybe they liked to swim and wallow. many bears like water, as do tigers and jaguars. they were huge and heavy bodied as adults so maybe older rexes spent a lot of time soaking to cool off. maybe dying rexes did what i do when i feel like shit: mope in the shower/bath.

[unclefard]

shut the fuck up about australia

"australia australia! nope land! too many dangerous animals!"

let's see... they got:

-a bunch of snakes and spiders

-dingoes

-kangaroos

-like 2 crocodiles

-venomous ocean shit:

africa and south asia have all that + big angry herbivores + actual large land predators +political/economic instability, terrorists, war, and shitty societal structures. i would take living in australia over pretty much anywhere else in the world. i definitely wouldn't want to go swimming there, but i wouldn't want to go swimming in the american southeast or basically anywhere else warm enough for crocodilians and lots of venomous shit.

aside from the ocean shit i would be most afraid of going hiking somewhere in the central deserts and getting lost. yeah, they have very venomous snakes, but the snakes that are most dangerous are not the ones that have the deadliest venom but the ones that are extremely common, well camouflaged, and readily bite: Big Four (Indian snakes) - Wikipedia. the humble saw-scaled viper, to which more fatalities are attributed than any other snake, is far deadlier to man's existence than the taipan: List of fatal snake bites in Australia - Wikipedia. not to mention Australia is a developed country with good hospitals and shit.

now, australia does get pretty funky:

memes about it are fun and all, and yeah, there's some scary shit there (i would never touch the ocean), but the problem with memes is because people tend to have a social media induced goldfish attention span and don't want to actually read anything, so they build their opinions, beliefs, etc off of memes. thinking australia is the scariest place on earth is harmless and mostly a joke, but when you build your worldview off of little comedic blurbs of information your worldview is usually bad. there's a reason a lot of far-right bullshit thrives off of innocuous little memes and social media clowns. i'm not saying i'm perfect or enlightened or anything because my worldview is that of an angry, self-centered hermit, and i too have the social media induced goldfish attention span. however, it's important to think and read a little more if you want to/are going to form an opinion/belief on something. it's too easy to see a few little bits of information, take them to heart, and subconsciously decide you are well-informed on the topic and your emotionally induced beliefs are absolute.

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recently they made "direwolves" and i made fun of it. they don't even seem to fit the pop-culture perception of direwolves, which are basically just wargs, let alone the real animal which would have looked more like south america's modern wild dog species:

these colossal direwolves just look like regular ass wolves. i went to northwest trek sometimes when i lived in western wa and they had wolves that looked just like them: A Tale of Two Wolves - Northwest Trek. it's been said already, a lot, that it's a shitty lie, a shallow grab for pr, so on and so forth.

my problem with these wolves is that there is no real reason to make genetically engineered apex predators besides selling them to rich people as pets. yeah it's cool, yeah eventually there might be gene animal zoos, but these aren't the real dire wolves. they weren't raised by direwolves. they can't fulfill the niche direwolves did. polar bears and brown bears are closely related enough that they can interbreed, but a polar bear is highly specialized for a very particular way of life. if you wiped out polar bears and engineered a slightly larger, white brown bear to replace them, it wouldn't work because the brown bear, however white and large, still has the brown bear software.

there's no reason to introduce these direwolves where actual normal wolves live either, as normal wolves, despite being perhaps the most charismatic apex predators, already have enough to worry about (habitat destruction, ranchers wanting them dead, etc). are we slowly inching towards some kind of designer ecosystems where rich techbro fucks release shitty pop culture ideals of extinct predators, because our modern and already heavily imperiled ecosystems aren't good enough?

now i think there is a lot of value in this kind of work. we have a number of large, charismatic animals that are on extinction's door, already opening it up and starting to walk in. a company like colossal could focus their efforts on stuff like: Yangtze giant softshell turtle - Wikipedia (please do this evil corporation please these are the best animals ever to exist (besides triceratops)) and Sumatran rhinoceros - Wikipedia. not to mention a number of animals who we know for sure were wiped out by humans, like the thylacine and the steller's sea cow. i wouldn't be opposed to creating solid proxies of very recently extinct animals like the thylacine and releasing them in viable habitat, as these kinds of animals should still be here.

i've heard that shit like the direwolves and mammoth is mostly to get funding, public attention, etc, so they can work on stuff like the red wolves and thylacine. if true i can respect that. i'll take selling designer wolves to protect actual modern animals in danger of extinction. however, some of the comments by the evil company people suggest a very shitty view on extinction and bringing back those animals, the surface level bullshit fucking jurassic park was criticizing. the whole "these aren't the real dinosaurs, they're the ones people expect". the ceo apparently went on the joe rogan show or podcast or whatever variant of phlegm it is, so there's that too. at least horner's chickenasaur had/has some sort of scientific benefit.

i could see in the future them making a "deinosuchus" (enlarged alligator) or "titanoboa" (enlarged anaconda). perhaps a tiger with enlarged canines. oversized bison and elk with slightly larger horns and antlers. stating the obvious but you can't bring back extinct animals. when they're dead, they're dead, and gone. deinosuchus may have been essentially a giant alligator, but scaling up a modern alligator won't make a deinosuchus. you can make it forty feet long. you can alter its proportions to match the skeleton. it can look exactly like how we imagine deinosuchus looked. but it won't be a deinosuchus.

there's no reason to "bring back" the vast majority of extinct animals aside from entertainment, as you're not really bringing back the animal, you're making an imitation, and putting it in a world in which it has no place other than as an oligarch's pet.

I will say however that I think/believe that a considerable amount of the Pleistocene megafauna should still be here. The whole "it was climate change" argument genuinely pisses me off. People are really good at killing animals. They should shut up about it, but they are. You have two and a half continents full of large, slow-reproducing animals who are dependent on large, stable habitats and are naive to hominid predators, already made vulnerable by the advance/retreat of the ice sheets (which would have caused widespread climate change). there's a reason that all the modern ecosystems with a lot of large mammal diversity roughly coincide with the distribution of homo erectus:

the megafauna of africa+south asia were adapted to humanity. they knew/know how to behave around people. it's a known fact that mammals heavily alter their behavior in areas of high human presence, becoming more secretive, nocturnal, etc. if a highly seasonal, arid habitat with extreme droughts can support this:

then the lush, temperate forests and plains of north america can support this:

of course big animals are vulnerable to major changes in climate/habitat. i think that, if humans were magically not part of the equation at the end of the pleistocene, there still would have been a significant decrease in large animal diversity around the world. but north america would have had more than just deer. everyone says mammoths, which i think is fair. i think without humans we would have still had mammoths way up in northern canada and russia. it's very telling that the last mammoths lived on an isolated little island. that island wasn't prime mammoth habitat. it just had no humans.

large animals are vulnerable to change, but they are still very adaptable, and often better at surviving in and exploiting different habitats than smaller ones. black bears, for instance, can be found in the pacific northwest's temperate rainforests, florida's swamps, the desert scrubland of arizona, and the rocky mountains. ungulates from africa and asia thrive in texas and arizona. there is a feral breeding population of rhea, a south american flightless bird, in germany. mastodons were temperate forest browsers. there were temperate forests then, and there are temperate forests now. by all accounts the mastodon should still be here. the foliage of the ice age is mostly the same foliage as now. there are plenty of relict plants adapted to be distributed by giant herbivores left in north america.

i think that, without humans, the american megafauna would be much more diverse. some would have gone missing, but i think for the most part the ecosystems would be pretty similar. i think good candidates are actually the mastodons+cuvieronis. their diets suggest a preference for the habitats that still cover north america. sloths are another good one. i think they suffered similarly to giant tortoises (these used to be found on the mainland continents) and glyptodonts: their defensive measures, so effective against all other animals, made them helpless to humans. especially seeing as many of the ground sloths were reasonably sized and probably lived in the same kind of tropical forest and savanna south america has today. also, just like mammoths, their last examples were island dwarfs.

mastodons/sloths/etc did die out earlier than mammoths, which i attribute to their living in temperate habitats and thus being more accessible (vulnerable) to humans. easier to find, easier to ambush. mammoths would be living in wide open, freezing tundra. they'd see you coming, at least. mastodons would be lumbering through the mild hardwood forests, with plenty of nearby shrubbery to conceal hunters. i can see the changing climate hurting the more temperate-specialized of the ice age giants, but not outright wiping them out. especially in south america's tropical savannas, which, like africa and south asia, would probably be relatively insulated from the effects of the melting ice.

i don't think people systematically worked to extirpate the megafauna. maybe the large predators, especially if they had no fear of people. it's commonly thought that hunter-gatherer societies have no impact on their environment and live in complete harmony with nature, but they often heavily alter/impact their environment. apparently native americans practiced routine burning to clear forests and make it more suitable for travel and wild game. south american people extensively modifed theirs as well.

that aside, you don't have to completely wipe out mammoths and sloths, rather extensive hunting just needs to fragment and cripple their breeding populations. killing a mature bull elephant has disproportionate effects on the local population. killing a mammoth matriarch could easily cripple a herd. or, if heavily hunted, a herd could not have enough members left to effectively defend each other. with such wide ranges hunting pressure could make it extremely hard, impossible even, for large, slow-reproducers to mate. if you still have mastodons, but it's a couple scattered, tiny groups seperated by hundreds of miles, you probably wont get more mastodons.

yeah, i think mastodons should still lumber north america. giant sloths should still lurk in south america. a few mammoths should join the reindeer in canada. we should experience a greater diversity of large ungulates, and the predators that hunted them. they should still be here, but they shouldn't come back.

there is a massive struggle to preserve what we have, everywhere. the americas are struggling to preserve what wild spaces and megafauna they have left, and there's a major push against it. if you cant be trusted with wolves and bison you shouldn't get dire wolves and mastodons. the places they could live are so heavily fragmented, interfered with, and already imperiled that they could not reliably support populations of these creatures. dire wolves aren't tundra animals, and they're hunters of animals that mostly no longer exist. mastodons could technically, i think, still inhabit most of north america, but there's not a whole lot of extensive, lowland forest/scrubland left for them. they'd alter whatever national parks they'd be released in, perhaps detrimentally for the modern animals already struggling to exist.

now, i am not entirely opposed to the mammoths, mostly because if we could hypothetically get a modern "mammoth" there's still a considerable amount of mostly undisturbed tundra for them to inhabit, and they would have a beneficial effect on preserving permafrost. yes, they'd just be fat, hairy asian elephants. my issue isn't the non-authenticity but rather that there's a lot of issues ethics wise as well as adapting these mammoths to being mammoths. fat hairy asian elephants would still eat and act like asian elephants, tropical forest browsers, not tundra grass enthusiasts. this is where i take issue. more than likely it would be a long time and a lot of suffering test mammoths before we got an actual viable mammoth proxy that could live and act like a mammoth. even then, it would mostly just be for spectacle. the permafrost effect thing could be done with the northern herbivores we have today. it's one thing to make bulkier wolves or a bigger crocodile. creating a mammoth would likely involve a lot of suffering on the part of the prototypes.

the world of the pleistocene should in large part still be here. but it's not. the world has changed massively since. what we think of as pristine, untouched nature is often a recent development, either heavily managed and altered by the original human tenants, or barren, emptied ecosystems filling in the gaps as best they can. it's been said a lot but the focus should be on protecting what we have.

no half-decent wildlife program, department, or conservation group is going to want to reintroduce pop culture Pleistocene proxies into their parks and reserves. no good zoo will likely be able to afford them. it's not an apocalyptic jurassic world "folly of man" scenario. it's just more stupid useless clickbait. maybe in the future, as genetic engineering gets better, and we can do more than designer wolves, it'll be a problem. people will decide that their artificial animals are more deserving of the world than the originals, and we'll get butchered designer ecosystems of artificially bloated populations of furry oc megafauna.

i think that is a good ways off, however. so far we've got normal ass wolves and hairy mice. both could be produced with a couple decades of selective breeding.

on the other hand:

technology has developed incredibly fast.

you can track the development of the generative ai with those stupid fucking ai cat videos

"meow meow meow meow" going from still images to brief, animated clips. the fucking cats run and cook food. it's still shit but the shit is getting bigger, riper.

i've always had a subconscious assumption that the world would remain mostly the same over the course of my life, leaving me free to focus on my little sphere of life. when i was little i imagined the future as centuries later. i didn't think of ai or gene-modified animals. i remember seeing a documentary with horner's chickenasaur and even then i thought it was bullshit. i always assumed the environment, political structure, and technology of the world would sit and fester in comfortable stagnancy. unfortunately things constantly change, frequently aping the past but change nonetheless. i assume the world will be much different in a few decades. for a single person, facing it all by themselves, in its grand bloat of distortion, lies, and selfish indulgence, this is not a pleasant prospect.

endangered species pose a threat to the limitless wealth extraction that the world's greedy, understimulated, underfulfilled fucks have not yet figured out wont make them feel better. but it's okay! we'll make new ones, better ones! you remember the cool ice wolves from your medieval drama thing! They're real now! We don't need those raggy ass normal wolves around anyways! africa a little boring? how 'bout some trexes! you can pay to shoot mammoths in siberia and sabercats in texas! i wont lie that in a way it is cool. but, regardless, fuck this shit.

[unclefard]

omg colossal biosciences brought back the triceraflops omg look real triceraflops

[unclefard]

For context this is from a Deviantart specevo project of mine which i wont link because it's cringe. if you want to see edgy teenage cringe you can reverse image search. the big bird guy is the Nephilim, the smaller bulky guy is the Atrox Sapient, and the guy in the middle is waltuh. The world setting is an "ice-age" planet called Paradise, much wetter than earth, with a single continent situated near the poles and expansive, often shallow seas.

Redid the Nephilim. I’ve been planning this for a while for a number of reasons. I wanted to make them more distinct from the other two sapients on Paradise anatomically as well as behaviorally, as opposed to just having the same body shape (the body model is literally the same one as the original Ogre and Atrox Sapient) and a different head. The redesign is done to A) make them easier to animate, as the old clunky model had a lot of difficulties, B) make them more scientifically plausible in regard to what is known about biped/hominid size constraints and anatomy, and C) make them more closely resemble other probers as opposed to butt monkey but with dolphin skull for head. I do imagine their ancestors resembling the older model however.

               This writing is basically just a generalized description of the Nephilim and a correction of the themes in the older writing (depicting them as these hyperintelligent perfect organisms, the whole “doomed constant starvation” (still present especially as the ice ages got worse but not their whole thing), and the whole being super incomprehensible/above everything else). I imagine them, basically, as big intelligent carnivores and all that entails, with the vibes of elephants and whales. They’re smarter on average than Atrox Sapients, and a little less barbaric, but they’re also more self-centered and isolationist than Atrox Sapients, and quite violent themselves. They’re not as religious as many other sapients, but they’re also not somehow magically above spirituality and religion despite being a primitive hunter-gatherer culture.

               I think a big problem with them is, as a rule, I should write what I know, and in creating them I tried to write things I did not really know, which ended up giving the wrong vibe. I wanted to make them this mystical ass incomprehensible eldritch race. To a degree that’s still the intent, but at the end of the day they are still mortal animals with mortal animal needs, understandable motivations/ideals, and flaws of their own. Funny enough in the actual books? I have been working on, and was making at the time of a lot of the older Nephilim content, the Nephilim are just kinda dicks half the time and socially awkward+somewhat more intelligent than the Atrox Sapients, but not at all mystical, the other half.

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               Nephilim are probers, which are a group of mostly quadrupedal animals who are generally omnivorous and have long, thin snouts/mouthparts to aid in foraging. They are divided into two major groups: the more basal soft-snouted probers, who have elongated mouths terminated in a small radulae, and are usually generalist omnivores who forage for algae as well as fungi and small animals they root up from the muck, and the more derived, specialized hard-snouted probers, who have the namesake hard, bony probe as a sheath covering their mouthparts. Nephilim are hard-snouted probers, their mouths being a prehensile proboscis sheathed in the elongated probe. Their snouts, which lie directly above the mouth, are also elongated and tubular, serving as resonating chambers to amplify their calls and lending them a jawed appearance.

               Nephilim are descended from large ground-sloth-esque animals who lived in small troops like gorillas and were specialized for foraging on the sessile pseudofungi, breaking through the tough skin with their probes and liquefying and siphoning up the meat within. They were initially mostly quadrupedal, locomoting like ground sloths, and had a compact, stocky build, with much shorter, thicker, and more powerful heads, limbs, and necks. As the changing climate broke up their native forests, fragmenting them throughout an increasingly open landscape, the Nephilim’s ancestors evolved similarly to hominids, becoming more upright, more suited to long-distance travel, more intelligent, and better at throwing things.

               The modern Nephilim species existed well before the present ice ages, mostly to the south which was a low-lying region mostly made up of marshy plains and pseudofungi forests. It was extremely flat, at sea level, and prone to flooding and extreme weather. They had developed their own form of agriculture as well as complex tools and architecture. The cooling climate and displacement of their ancestral stomping grounds forced them northwards, to what is now known as the last continent, where due to the harsher, more seasonal climate they were forced into a more nomadic existence, becoming scattered bands of hunters trailing the migratory megafaunal herbivores.

               Eventually, their home planet Paradise would be colonized, owing to interests in its untouched stores of valuable minerals, oil, and natural gas. These colonizers (future humans) would find the Nephilim as under a thousand in number, existing as isolated, often heavily inbred populations along the southern coast of the last continent. Discovering them to be extremely intelligent, and easier to work with than the much more populous Atrox Sapients, the colonizers would integrate them into modern society, providing them with a number of powerful technologies, aiding them in the construction of various cities, and other means of uplifting them. The intent was to outsource the extraction of Paradise’s great wealth to its desperate inhabitants, making them dependent on the much more advanced visitors and thus eventual future subjects and allies.

               The Nephilim, however, after nearly being wiped out by a combination of climate and Atrox Sapients, and somehow still maintaining a common sentiment that they were the best things ever to exist, were not very keen on this. They, witnessing the power of the gods from above, slowly and quietly built up their own. Although given limited resources, they worked towards constructing many of the modern technologies themselves, and, given tools to acquire what was the blood and muscle of those technologies, were easily able to do so. An valuable resource was found in the Atrox Sapients, who, although excluded by the colonizers, were rapidly growing in numbers due to the altered climate and enormous amounts of waste. The Nephilim, taking a page from their enemy’s book, exploited the Atrox Sapients, using them in various mining, farming, and manufacturing operations, using the tools the gods from above lent them to become gods themselves. Many Nephilim were compliant/doing so under the idea/assumption that the Atrox Sapients were also being liberated/ would be uplifted themselves, and made efforts to integrate them into the society they were forming. Others were simply indulging their old hatred and superiority complex and just wanted slaves. Many Nephilim societies hate/hated Atrox Sapients, owing to a superiority complex on the Nephilim side, as well as a history of competition/warfare between the two species. A commonly held belief was that Atrox Sapients heavily contributed to almost wiping them out.

               Eventually, Paradise would fall completely under their control, and the decadent elder race would be gradually driven further and further away. Some Nephilim would return to their ancestral ways, roaming the empty wet world, tending herds of mastodon and rhino. Others would live on in the world they built for themselves, enjoying the many luxuries of the modern world. Others yet, a rich and privileged few, would create for themselves enormous, artificial bodies, becoming real, physical gods, and take to the stars to float around, terraform planets, or just make a general nuisance of themselves. The Atrox Sapients ended up being left to their own devices and, building up from the decaying remnants of the Nephilim’s rise to “godhood” and the invaders that preceded them, built modernized worlds of their own.

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               Nephilim are sapient, hypercarnivorous apex predators. They range in size from 600 to 2,000 pounds, with most getting around a thousand and individuals exceeding 1,500 pounds being considered very large. They are bipedal, with huge, columnar legs terminating in short, pad-like feet with large claws. Their arms are enormous and immensely strong, with a “sheath” of thick rubbery tissue armoring the forearms and strong, dexterous five-fingered hands.

               The hand claws are long and hooked, designed for grappling with and ripping open large animals (ancestrally pseudofungi). The thumb and forefinger are more dexterous than the others and have proportionately smaller and shorter claws, which are often filed down to aid in various delicate tasks. The middle two fingers are thick and short, with huge claws, and the fifth is a vestigial nub. The palms and undersides of the fingers are covered with small, rough nodules, creating a sandpaper-like texture and aiding in gripping. Nephilim hands are less dexterous than those of humans and Atrox Sapients, being more suited to rough physical activities like digging, hauling heavy objects, and grappling opponents and prey. They are however still capable of many fine tasks and can use their prehensile proboscises to help overcome the difficulties of their bulky, clawed hands.

               Their heads are proportionately large and long, with long, elegantly curved necks. This is mostly a product of their beauty standards (like that theory of hominid faces becoming “softer” and gentler looking over time because we find that attractive) as opposed to functionality, though, similar to how our upright stance helped us better scan the landscape for danger, the long necks did and do play a role in searching for threats and food. The head and neck are very lightweight, with the head being mostly unsuitable to the ancestral task of boring into tough pseudofungi and the neck being relatively thin and weak, with much of the apparent mass being loose and saggy skin. The brain is massive and protected by a bony crest to the front and thick, rubbery skin all around. Many Nephilim possess “tusks” which are in fact hornlike outgrowths of tissue and mostly serve a display purpose. In their sturdier ancestors these were shorter, tougher, found mostly in adult males, and, owing to the overall greater resilience and functionality of the ancestors’ skulls, had a role in intraspecies combat. In the present, both sexes grow tusks, attain similar sizes, and look quite similar. Nephilim overall are quite androgynous, again owing to the beauty standards as well as necessity. In a small group threatened by large predators and dependent heavily on hunting to survive, which for Nephilim means in large part being big and strong, it is beneficial for everyone to be big and strong, not just the one or two adult males.

               Much of a Nephilim’s anatomy is geared towards or exaggerated for display/beauty standards, namely the head and neck. The hump and the back, as well as dewlaps, also exist as a result of this tendency. This aside, they are very well suited to their profession of being enormous bipeds. Despite weighing potentially fourteen times as much as the average human being, they are able to stand up fully erect, have a large and powerful upper body, and are surprisingly athletic for their size. A major reason behind this is their bones, which are more like those of birds/dinosaurs than mammals and thus better geared to supporting large sizes. Their lower body, especially the legs, is also much heavier and sturdier than the upper body, and they have a rudimentary tail to help balance out their weight. The upper body despite its size is very lightly built, as previously mentioned with the head and neck. In addition, Nephilim do not walk completely upright like humans do, rather favoring a theropod-esque forward-slouching position that better balances their weight (though they can and do stand fully erect).

               That being said, Nephilim cannot jump, are poor climbers, and at larger sizes their run is more so an elephantine fast walk. They do not live as long as humans, with exceptionally old individuals getting to be around forty, and often suffer from problems related to their size as they age. Injuries to the back and legs are, when they do occur, much more debilitating than those in humans, and in their primitive migratory societies often a death sentence. They are, however, very quick walkers, and despite their enormous frame can walk at a brisk pace for days on end. They are also rather agile, moving frighteningly quick with excellent reaction times, are very capable throwers, and immensely strong (though proportionately weaker than Atrox Sapients). They swim very well and spend much of their lives in water, increasingly so with age. This may seem odd, but humans and sloths are built similarly and both are excellent swimmers. There was even a species of marine sloth: Thalassocnus - Wikipedia.

               Although being so huge protects them from most predators, most extremes of climate, and makes them better slayers of the megafaunal herbivores common on Paradise, it also makes them very vulnerable. Needing huge amounts of food in an increasingly unproductive environment means they can only exist in small, scattered populations, unlike Atrox Sapients who can form very large tribes and weather the bad times of year by hibernating, an ability Nephilim do not have. They reproduce much slower and more infrequently, usually lead shorter lives, and efforts requiring large groups (warfare, big construction projects) are more difficult.

               Nephilim are born proportionately much smaller than human babies, their claws barely present, and their rostrums are extremely short. They grow rapidly, and are able to walk proficiently by their second year. Juvenile/adolescent Nephilim are much more athletic than the adults, being able to run, climb, and jump (somewhat like T. rex adolescents being much leaner than the adults).

               Nephilim are similar in intelligence to human beings, often said to be even smarter (usually by the Nephilim themselves). As a very crude overgeneralization, Nephilim brains work a little slower than human and Atrox Sapient brains, but are much better geared towards memorization, and more creative/inventive. They are quite large, mostly to accommodate the Nephilim’s much wider range of senses.

               Nephilim, despite not having visible eyes, can see in color to the same degree we can, by way of patches of photoreceptors on their face. Their vision is however much blurrier than ours, contributing in part to the more abstract nature of their art. They, like most Paradise animals, can echolocate, and their hearing is incredible. They possess fleshy, pads like the disks of an owl’s face, serving to direct soundwaves to their ears. Their sense of smell is quite good as well. By way of their massive rostrums, Nephilim make very low, deep calls that carry for a very long time, allowing them to communicate over considerable distances like whales.

               Nephilim, having a butterfly-like proboscis as opposed to teeth, jaws, or even the rasping mouthparts of Atrox Sapients, may seem poorly adapted to be carnivores. The truth is, they are. However, human mouths and teeth seem poorly adapted to meat, and we ourselves are predators. The Nephilim compensate for their dentary shortcomings by way of their strength, intelligence, and, most importantly, extremely powerful digestive juices. The pseudofungi-boring prober species, in addition to developing their probes into powerful chisels to hammer through the thick skin, also developed extremely powerful digestive juices, which they could quickly expel into the inner meat to dissolve it, often neutralizing any toxins as well. Nephilim have inherited this trait, and thus despite having tiny mouths and no teeth can turn their meaty dinners into smooth liquids that are easily ingested. Their mouths are small and thin but propelled by very powerful muscles that give them surprising suction power.

               A very common thing to find in Nephilim camps, lairs, and middens is their pottery, as well as skin sacks and drinking bags. Despite Paradise lacking wood, and thus any reliable way of cooking meat for a primitive society, and the Nephilim being unable to consume tough dried jerky, they still stored large amounts of food, placing hunks of meat and fat in cisterns, jars, etc, and vomiting on them to turn them into palatable broth. Of course there is the issue of the eventual decay. This is overcome in a few ways: salting the meat+digestive juices killing most bacteria/fungi/etc+Nephilim are basically humanoid vultures in the sense that they can consume surprisingly putrid meals. A rancid sack of melted pink flesh is, to them, a well-aged and relishable lunch.

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               In the past with butt monkey land stuff I was aiming for less of a realism aspect and more so a fantasy eldritch creature world. I still want the scary eldritch creature world, but I want it to be plausible, realistic, which I feel makes it even scarier than an edgy, skull-island-esque death world it was originally intended to be. That is why the older Nephilim writing tends to portray them as this doomed “master race” of enormously intelligent, powerful wandering artists. While it could work in the vein of mythology or propaganda or both, it lacked nuance and made them feel a little less real in my opinion. It is however still kind of there: they’re huge, strong, and smart, and they almost went extinct.

               The next parts are going to be iffy because these things are people and people have a massive amount of variation in basically everything besides anatomy. My tendency when writing about sapients is to write about them like any other, generalizing and describing them like a passage in a field guide would about some bird or squirrel. I like it at times but this is meant to elaborate more. The following parts are basically just a general sum of their culture/behavior, mostly the more primitive:

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               Nephilim in general tend to champion two things: art and physical strength. Being so massive they have less need for clothes and shelter than we do, and their bodies are more animalistic than ours. They can survive easily on their own, with only a small pack of supplies. Their size and strength mean they can acquire food, if competent enough, without even needing a weapon. So forth from their beginning they were able to dedicate much more time and mental energy to artmaking, which has persisted into modern day. Not all Nephilim like art, or making it, but it is very common in virtually every Nephilim culture. Artistic accomplishment is and was seen, commonly, in a similar light as many human societies see things like having a good job or getting married: a metric of individual accomplishment and worth. Despite being their greatest source of pride, and mostly having innocent/noble intentions, it very often became a means of societal control and discrimination.

               Historically it was also a means of communication, crafting unique markers to cement a group’s territory or presence. A very common form was the pillars, usually made of clay or carven stone, with which Nephilim would mark their territory, inscribed with the names of tribe members, recordings of births and deaths, and imagery of prevalent local fauna as well as feats of strength. These pillars took many years to make, collaborated on by multiple individuals, and were maintained even after fully being covered for potentially centuries after their making. Even in present day these, at least those remaining, are very treasured artifacts. Similarly in function to the pillars, Nephilim would carve, scrawl, and paint on cliffsides, boulders, and cave walls. They would make odd altars of piled rock and bones, or shape favored landscapes in enjoyable ways. What architecture they did make was usually ornamental, often being gardens, temples, or simply enjoyable assemblages of carven stone and molded clay.

               In the present, Nephilim would maintain their ancestral tradition of drawing on the walls, covering their many structures in organic and hieroglyphic designs very similar to those of the past, though often mass produced and more automated in creation. It was and is very common for a Nephilim, in its individual dwelling, to cover the walls, ceiling, and floor in some form of drawings and paintings. In addition to this, they would often make various abstract environmental and physical aberrations, manipulating weather into bizarre, localized patterns, creating bizarre terrain, and seemingly magic manipulations of heat, light, and energies. In addition, there would be the very famous “living art”, half-machine at times, always animal at least in part, intended to be living paintings, musicians, artificial gods at times, things to live forever so that the Nephilim would live forever, brazenly treading the grey mires, looming amidst the monolith cities, drifting endlessly in space as eternal testimonies to their creators’ existence.

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               The other great championed Nephilim trait is their physical strength. They relied on it to assert themselves, find food, fend off predators, wrangle livestock. They take enormous pride in their physical power, and the shape and abilities of their bodies. Nephilim very rarely clothe themselves, and when they do it is usually ornamental: robes, crowns, loose-fitting cloaks, and jewelry. They do have functional clothing, mostly cloaks, pants, and footwraps reserved for very bad weather, but do not favor it and prefer to lumber around in the nude.

               Physical fitness and accomplishment is seen in most Nephilim cultures as a great virtue, on par with artistic excellence and accomplishment, and a source of pride. Nephilim who excel in strength, athleticism, and/or hunting and combat prowess are highly revered. It is often seen as a moral failing to let one’s physical condition degrade, unless it is due to sickness or old age.

               For all their apparent gentle, wise superiority I rambled about in older writing, Nephilim are still hyperaggressive apex predators, descended from territorial omnivores. They love violence, are prone to recreational and ritualistic combat, and often have a disturbing passion for hunting and killing. Their tempers are often short, and many carry a disregard for anything besides other Nephilim. Martial arts is to them as great a pastime as art (the kind that doesn’t involve smacking each other in the face (they can’t ball their fists up to punch because of the huge claws)), and they treasure scars, recovered injuries, and won battles. In many early Nephilim societies, it was a right of passage to hunt a huge and dangerous animal, and this often persists into the present.

               Art aside, much of their inventions have been some kind of trap, weapon, or armor. The ancient Nephilim carried a long, bone spear, or perhaps a club, and a sling. It may have doused its pointier weapons in toxins, or crafted sacs of irritating powder to disorient enemies and victims. It was an excellent thrower of rocks, with and without the sling and practiced from childhood. It may have carried out many raids on enemies of its own species as well as the Atrox Sapients and Ogres in its lifetime. A few treasured skulls and skins of slain enemies and prey may have adorned a cave or grotto of its liking. It would have greatly enjoyed stalking the cool, desolate plains, feeling the dull squelch of its padded feet on the muck, rattling its sonar over the landscape, scanning for something on the horizon to stalk.

               It is worth noting that some Nephilim cultures view their violent tendencies as a curse, a thing distinct from their true selves, and something to be banished/overcome. Thus the opposite of many cultures (admiring violence) is present here, admiring the calmest, least aggressive individuals. It is also worth noting that they are not a whole lot more aggressive/violent than we are, though both sexes tend to be equally aggressive/violent which combined with being huge carnivores in an often-desperate hunter-gather society make it seem more extreme.

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               Nephilim are as a rule not very religious, and in general do not revere the world around them to the same degree as humans and Atrox Sapients. This is in large part a modern invention but has roots in their primal ancestry. A common belief among Nephilim is that they are the “favored” among all living things. They do not revere the great animals and natural forces as the Atrox Sapients do, at least not to the same degree and frequency. They believe themselves to be the originators of their race and all they hold dear. A common religion involves the following creation story: another world exists, a proper paradise (to them). It is in most tellings an endless shallow sea, warm, lush, with a gentle silt bottom. There are immense carved pillars everywhere, neatly ordered and stretching infinitely into the mists above. Its residents exist in unending, ecstatic hedonism of which they never tire. This world very weakly overlaps with the real world, which was initially an empty void, with the planets, stars, etc being formed from spillage from the paradise. The Nephilim are said to be children of this paradise, or, in some variants, formed from the spillage, and belong in the paradise, being “too good” for the real world. The greater their accomplishment, their mastery over their more animalistic side, the good they do for their people, the more likely they can return to their proper place upon death. Living in the real world is often considered a test, or a soiling of their mind and soul, a challenge to be overcome.

               Of course, there are many Nephilim religions that are kinder and less arrogant, and many Nephilim cultures do not favor any religion at all. They dislike worship, or reverence for anything, rarely wanting to see anything as greater and more important than the Nephilim people and their creations, and if they do it is usually not an individual or animal but clearly defined as an abstract, incommunicable force. A greater emphasis is often placed on individual or societal accomplishment than the appeasement of a deity.

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               Nephilim are very active, despite their size. They are often “busybodies”, get bored easily, and demand frequent stimulation. The usual exception is after a big hunt or feast (the two are often intertwined) where the bloated, gorged Nephilim would usually find somewhere to soak and spend the next day or two lounging around, digesting. Like any predator, they also enjoy sleep, taking frequent naps. Much of their rest is in water, avoided only during the colder months, and many of their sports and games take place in it as well. In primitive times they would often busy themselves with patrolling territory, hunting, or making art. Group recreation was usually some sort of hunt, sport, often roughhousing, or having sex. Conversations and social tool/clothe/artmaking was usual limited to just a few individuals. Nephilim enjoy music, and use it as a means of storytelling, bonding, and cultural memory. Most of it is however somewhat private, done alone as an individual wanders, serving as a means of communicating over long-distances as whales do.

               Despite being social, Nephilim occupy very small groups, usually a wolf pack-esque unit of a mated pair and their children, or a small gathering of friends. Although their modern society is fairly similar in organization to modern human society, in the past a Nephilim society was often comprised of multiple families/bands/tribes, usually under a dozen individuals each, occupying their own territories and coming together at certain special occasions throughout the year, usually for holidays, to celebrate births, mourn deaths, or perform religious ceremonies. These were often used as an opportunity for trade, socialization, and occasional moving between groups.

               Nephilim then and now enjoy lots of alone time. They often get stressed out and irritated in large crowds, or if subject to constant interaction, and historically would often patrol or hunt territory alone, spending days at a time with only themselves for company. Very old and very young individuals, however, constantly stay/stayed with others.

               They also tend to be obsessive. Individual Nephilim often have very narrow interests and focuses. In general, Nephilim dislike casual conversations and prefer occasional long conversations with more “substance”. Outside of their particular interests, the rest of the world is often seen as something to be used, background noise, or a hindrance.

               Despite this, there is a common sentiment in almost every Nephilim culture of contributing to the greater good. Strength is a source of pride, but also a way to defend kindred and provide food. Art is a personal accomplishment and expression, but also a way to bring joy to others, communicate, and record important information. An individual Nephilim may spend much of its time alone, but most of its activities will also be done with the greater good/benefit of the community in mind.

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               Although the extreme seasonality of Paradise’s sole climate prevented agriculture, at least how it is commonly envisioned, in primitive Nephilim societies, they did practice it. Most often, it involved tending large numbers of mastodons, rhinos, and/or other large herbivores, who existed in a semi-domesticated state. The tribe would hunt down and kill any predators nearby, drive off competing herbivores, constantly following their charges as they went up and down the continent in accordance with the seasons. Up until the present most Nephilim occupied this kind of lifestyle, supplementing their diet with wild game.

               Even before the present there was a degree of selective breeding present in their herds, and they frequently modified their environment to make it more suitable both for their stock as well as favored wild game, clearing pseudofungi scrub and forest to encourage the spread of algae plains and marshes, carving out ponds and ditches for certain worms/wyrms, and diverting rivers and draining lakes to enrich potential grazing areas. Often they would make pens and corrals of piled earth, as well as artificial wetlands. It was not uncommon to see massive herds of fat, dim-witted mastodons, attended at all times by a rotating roster of titan herdsmen.

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               It is worth saying that many of the unfortunate tendencies mentioned (favoring violence, treating art/physical prowess as a measure of individual worth, the viewing of themselves as greater than all other living things) are growing rarer, less abused, and less favorable in Nephilim societies. They are overall less brutal, more tolerant, and more humble than their ancestors.

note: the Atrox Sapient model is a bit dated, mostly in regards to the posture+position of the legs.

[unclefard]

Tyrannosaurus (Sue), waltuh, and Spinosaurus.

[unclefard]

Imagine going back to the Nemegt swamps some seventy million years ago. You’re excited to see your favorite dinosaur, the magnificent, shaggy Deinocheirus. For some reason you picked a large duck as your favorite, as opposed to something cool like Triceratops. Anyways, you hear a light cracking, likely of twigs and dead leaves. The shrubbery behind you shakes. The muddy water, knee deep, that you’ve been wading through ripples. An enormous, billed snout emerges from the trees, speckled green with bits of the owner’s salad lunch. Two small eyes stare blankly and stupidly in opposite directions. The whole head comes into view. It snorts, twisting sideways to get a better look at you. The youngling swamp trees tremble as the entirety of the enormous body lumbers into view with loud, lazy splashes.

You gasp and take a step backwards. You’re not fazed by its size and power, you know Deinocheirus loves you as you love it. Rather, you’re shocked, for your shaggy avian idol is completely in the nude!

It’s greyish, with mud caked to its hands and feet. Heavily wrinkled, especially around the stomach and neck. Scattered, short feathers, more like hairs, pepper the mottled body. Bits of dead skin slough from its flanks. It stinks of rotting leaves and dung. You scream. This isn’t what you expected. Prehistoric Planet lied to you. Deinocheirus looks like a balding middle-aged man!

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For four million years, all the dinosaur people were so smug telling poor innocent children that their epic murder lizards were actually just giant, ugly birds. They were all soooo happy to put feathers on our beloved evil emaciated reptiles. But now the tables have turned. Not so happy are you now, bird people? Science may have feathered the lizards, but it also plucked the birds!

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There is an interesting thing about the idea of Deinocheirus only having light feathering, scattered and dense only in a few places like elephant hair. It came from a lineage in which feathers were likely omnipresent. With many large dinosaurs that were naked and scaly, their relatives and ancestors were also naked and scaly, even down to smaller sizes, as seen in ceratopsians. Feathers were less dominant in dinosaurs than hair in mammals. Many lineages of giant dinosaurs had reptilian skin as the norm. Deinocheirus however is a weird outlier, a member of a lineage of dino ostriches that grew massive and bulky. It’s kinda like if a line of ratites just decided to become the ecological equivalent of elephants. It was nude, though it probably did not have the impressive scalation seen in the hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, etc. Rather, being a weird outlier in a family of lushly feathered creatures, it was likely just naked and wrinkly, like an elephant, or some shaved bear or something.

As for it being naked, it weighed six tons, was more than likely warm-blooded, and lived in a tropical swamp. I heard somewhere dinosaurs’ air sacs would have helped keep them cool (better oxygen circulation=enhanced cooling efficiency), but I feel like it would have only helped so much when you’re built like an obese goose scaled up to the size of an elephant. As for the pygostyle, Beipiaosaurus had one too as well as integument traces, and as far as we know it was just kind of hairy. Personally, I think a giant fan of well-developed flight feathers on the tail just looks kind of dumb too.

Deinocheirus probably had loose, scattered feathers like elephants and rhinos have hair, or it may have had a light but even coat of feathers, like cows. Hard to see in this render because I was having trouble with the hair sims, but I did give it longer, droopy feathers on the tail and slightly longer ones on the back/shoulders.

However, the ultra-shaggy reconstructions are probably just as far from the real animal as the emaciated, lipless movie monster is from the real Tyrannosaurus. It looks better with thick feathers than it does as shaved duck, yes, but movie monster Velociraptors look cooler than the real ones too.

[unclefard]

edgy oc named princess