Twitter Echo Bazaar Creatures Hoorj! Hosted
Twitter
Echo Bazaar
Creatures
Hoorj!
Hosted
Creatures: Murgatranthes
Pedre-ontos is plural, ontos is singular. Pedre-ontos are low- to mid-ranking demons of thunder. Though low in status, they have the forms of higher demons.
Pedre-ontos are very definitely demons of thunder, not lightning. No-one except thunder or lightning demons cares about the difference, though. Each ontos has a secondary elemental power too.
Pedre-ontos are humanoid, but they wouldn't use that word. They are around 2 to 2.5m tall, and have tails, membraneous wings, horns and hoofs. Yes, they can fly. Their tails aren't very flexible but are strong enough to be used for decking people. Their horns spiral with age as they grow longer.
They have genders, but they don't map to anything near ours, so their pronouns are largely arbitrary. They also have virtually no sexual polymorphism. To better fit in with other species who have just two or three genders, most pedre-ontos arbitrarily pick a male or female pronoun to be known as to non-pedre. (Some don't, preferring only neutrois pronouns.)
Of course, their behaviour varies as much as in any other people, but some traits are relatively common. Pedre-ontos tend to be very loyal, as they have so few allies they'll tenaciously hold onto any they acquire. They tend to be disdainful of any demons ranked lower than them, as they don't often get to do that. Pedre-ontos are relatively gentle, as demons go: they'll enjoy messing with any summoner not adequately prepared, but they're unlikely to do anything cruel or twisted.
Watchpoints:
Pedre-ontos are not an evolved species like the higher demons. They are a created species: the prototype run of a project that was never finished after it proved to be such an expensive failure. Their purpose was to be a strong fighting unit capable of surviving for long periods of time in the human and fae worlds. (Many demons find that their magic deteriorates during long exposure to the human world, or becomes unstable in the world of fae.) They do have nicely stable magic, but everything else about them was a great disappointment.
Ontos skin is scaly and quite delightfully textured. It also smells like old leather that's been steeped in honey and mustard. Pedre-ontos have big, leathery scales on their shoulders, spines, knees and elbows; smaller leathery scales on their noses and eyebrows; and scaly plating on their necks and the fronts of their legs. The small scales are glassy-smooth and raised slightly, like a mosaic. The skin is smooth and scaleless on the ventrum, face, volar surfaces and wing membranes.
Feathers are found on the head like our hair, as well as on the chest, main wing joint, and forearms. The head-feathers can ruffle like a bird's, usually when the ontos is pissed off. Their feather oils smell like a mix of chalk and hot dust, like when you turn on a very grubby table lamp.
They can be skinnier, musclier, fatter, more athletic etc. than shown above. It's quite rare to see a skinny ontos as they eat a lot to keep their body temperatures up. Even muscly or athletic pedre-ontos still tend to have some roundness to the belly, as they store a quantity of brown fat there (brown fat's the heat-producing type of fat, as opposed to the white sort that just sits there).
Being scaly means they can't really get tattooed, so they just paint patterns on their skin and horns sometimes.
Pedre-ontos hatch from eggs, and continue to grow until they are about a century old. They go through puberty in their 60s, and are legal adults aged 72. (Demons count in base 8. 72 in base 10 is equivalent to 110 in base 8: eight eights plus eight.)
As they age, their horns grow longer and spiral outwards, similar to ram horns.
Pedre-ontos are a paedomorphic species, like the axolotl. In normal circumstances they never grew into the foul-tempered, battle-hungry form they were supposed to have been in the first place.
Elder pedre-ontos are treated with reverence, as growing to this stage only happens to individuals whose magical strength is exceptionally well-developed. Omega pedre-ontos are pretty much everything the normal pedre-ontos wish they were (apart from the temperament like a honey badger with a slapped arse) - particularly with regard to the fact that their horns are actually good for something.
Uh oh, don't let the furries see this bit.
Pedre-ontos have five sexes and can breed with any sex other than their own. This was set up by their creator to increase the possible numbers of breeding pairs (an individual in a five-sex system can potentially breed with 4/5ths of the population rather than just half).
Reproducing works in a scissors-paper-stone fashion - each sex is the egg layer when breeding with two of the other sexes, and the non-layer when breeding with the other two. (They are not hermaphrodites - each sex still produces only one type of gamete.)
Pedre pronouns correspond to the names of the sexes: enig, thed, thaal, seml and br. These sound unwieldy in most languages other than Pedre, and the pedre-ontos have found that as most people (human or demon) are from binary-sex species, they have an easier time going along with everyone else rather than trying to make everyone else understand.
Pedre-ontos are one of the few creatures that are less dangerous as adults. An adult ontos can be reasoned with, but an unhatched ontos egg case can't. Laid eggs exude a frothy gelatinous mass that hardens as it oozes forth, absorbing any organic or magical matter it comes into contact with, and using it to sustain the developing ontos inside the ever-growing main chamber. If you tripped over here and couldn't get up quickly enough, you'd get coated and absorbed. The egg's own parents and immediate family have some immunity to this, but if they were to stay still for several days there it would eventually happen to them too.
If you find an ontos egg and can't give it a wide berth, best thing to do is throw at it all the food you're carrying, or better yet a recently-charged phylactery or two, then leg it.
The web stops being a threat after the egg hatches. The ontos hatchling will eat some of it, but a lot of it will have become old and crusty. (Very old webbing makes quite good handholds for nosy humans exploring old hatcheries.)
This is also how pedre-ontos dispose of their dead. Corpses are left to be absorbed by the next generation. It's normal for them; they can't understand why humans burn or bury their dead. (Most demons eat their dead in one way or another. Why waste all that flesh and magical energy?)
Pedre-ontos are a created rather than an evolved species (which is partly why they are disliked and sometimes despised by most of the higher demons). Their creator envisaged them being grown and harvested in fields with military precision, but it didn't really work out. If eggs are left close together the stronger one will usually kill and absorb the weaker.
2010-12 Who made this? | Blog | Sitemap