PREADATOR/PREY

The teraconian has one predator who comes from the sky: The White death or The Mortum Bird. This animal is very high up on the food chain. With the mortum bird tied on the food chain with the teraconian, they basically just ram into each other and whoever wins, wins. This bird it so scary for the fact of the glaciostoxin that if it gets into your blood stream, it will basically freeze your body. Although due to the absurdly solid shell, the mortum bird isn't able to pierce through and freeze it. But that doesn't stop it from picking them up and flying away. In return the teraconians will come and borough up into the cliffs and attempt to raid its babies. 

                         Teraconian

                                                Introduction

The Teraconian or scientific name: Multum Nix Potentia (means lots of snow potential) is an underground dwelling beast which travels around in massive tunnels looking for anything to set their flame organs on. They look a bit like a giant isopod but more curved, and even a wee bit bigger at 15 cm. Literally anything that gets in its way will be cooked alive. The teraconian can curl up into a ball a bit like a nine banded armadillo. This allows it to flip back over onto its feet.

Their hoards can reach several thousands of teraconians. They scuttle around tunneling further into the ground by using their nine banded type flexi shell, snapping open and shut and melting the snow while doing so with their flame. Metal just happens to be on this planet making a lot of new opportunities possible.

                                Diet/Digestion

Thermite is a key element to the teraconian, since it has a special organ that allows it to withstand the heat and shoot the fire out it can burn prey alive. The way it can use thermite is that the working teraconians will tunnel down and find bits of metal, take it back to the main nest and scuttle through to the oxidizing chamber/room where they will drop the metal down into the shallow water/really humid room to oxidize. This may take less than a day or up to a few weeks depending on the material. Then when finished oxidizing, (teraconians can tell when it’s at this stage due to a red type of rust) the metal just needs to be heated up to about 400 degrees and then it will ignite and become really hot. This will let a flame ignite in the fire organ.

They can go out and make a meal out of almost anything because they can just latch onto something and then just burn it with their organ to harvest the energy and use the materials to help aid their organ as fuel. Animals with blubber are especially vulnerable to the teraconians because blubber can burn really well and acts as a great fuel to burn. Teraconians are actually omnivores which means that they can eat meat and also plants. They can use this to their advantage, as if there is no prey they can eat  up plants and trees to give them nutrients and to also keep the flame going.

                                                           Layer Building

This flame doesn’t need to be kept on all the time since they have a layer of “mineral wool” which they get from rock (slag) underground that they dig up from the ice. Then the teraconians will smother the slag and start to melt it up using their fire organs that they have evolved to have to survive. Next, once it is molt they will drop it down the “slag” chamber where there will be hundreds of teraconians waiting where they are snapping open and shut really fast making a massive spinning disc with teraconians on the outside of the ring so the molten rock won't escape. This will aerate it while cooling it down allowing it to turn into “mineral wool” as such. This won’t work on earth but on Planet-X here it works perfectly fine. This will act as an insulation and protective layer for the teraconian.

The shells are made by tunneling down and finding bits of metal, then they are dumped into a massive furnace room that is made out of mineral wool, and then the teraconians will recruit new members to make a massive furnace temperature room, melting all of the metal into liquid. With this liquid metal the guard teraconians will separate it into segments and bring them into a new room. Awaiting them will be another batch of guard teraconians,  who will help to carefully place the liquid into mineral wool molds that have been individually made just for this. It will take a couple of days for this to fully harden. The hardened metal comes in segments that come together to make a flexible shell a bit like a nine banded armadillo. To assemble the full shell requires yet more guards. The way they will do this is to just ram into the pieces to make them click together and form the top half of the shell. The same process is done with the lower half or the shell with the same bending method and made out of the same metal.

                                              Installing Layers

As expected, putting this layer on is quite difficult, and that’s why they have adapted to learn how to harvest sticky sap from Planet X’s trees. They do this by making fine slices on the trees with their sharp serrated edges on their shell, slicing certain shapes off. This will allow sap to drip out. Once this sap is harvested it can be deposited down the “sap chamber" which is made from bits of metal that have been stuck together with dried sap. The chamber is just a really long rectangular prism facing downwards and made out of metal. It has little rectangular slits on both sides to allow the mineral wool to be able to slip in between the slots. The chamber has many many of these slots so when the sap drips down and covers the first layer with sticky sap the guard teraconians will just grab the sheet with their mandibles and pull them away out of the chamber and into all of the different little tunnels on each of the sides that connect to all of the other tunnels allowing for the sap to keep on running on and flow onto the next layer of insulation. 

Once this layer of material is successfully glued with sap, it will be taken to the “fitting” room where the teraconians will get their insulation and then shell fitted. The teraconians that need to have insulation and a shell are completely defenseless. These are usually baby ones but sometimes adult ones need to replace the shell because of combat. Under this double layer of protection is a very soft and warm layer of flesh. So a shell is vital for survival. The guard teraconians will work as a team and with two on each side and will slowly stretch the sheet out very gently to make it slightly stretchy, to be able to stretch when curling up into a ball and still feel comfortable. The teraconian will curl up into a ball, and slowly roll onto the sheet once on its feet it shall have to wait about 1-2 days for the sap to fully solidify and stick. The next process is to install the shell.

When the two halves of the shell are made, the sap comes out again. This time it will be melted down into boiling sap where bubbles are forming. This is a sign that the sap is really hot and when cooling, the sap will be as sticky as superglue. Using the same method as melting metal but in a different room. This is where the sap is boiled. Then when the sap is bubbling, the teraconian guards will smudge their mandibles in the sap and slowly but not too slowly as the sap might stick on them, will run their pincers along the fine edge of the shell, and do this on both sides, bottom and top. After the glue has been applied, the teraconian with the insulation installed prior, will crawl into the bottom half of the shell and then stay really still while the guard teraconians will carefully place the top half of the shell on top of the bottom shell, multiple guards will come and use their mandibles to clamp the shell into place. They  will stay in this deadlock position for up to 20 hours!

                            Nest Layout/Reproduction

The queen teraconian about 20 times as big as normal teraconians and needs massive chambers specifically for it. The main queen nest is so big that it needs to be guarded by guard teraconians. Using their massive pincers they effectively form a horizontal door but with mandibles snapping super fast like a sharp massive razor. Anything that falls down will be more or less shredded instantly. However the guards have sense sensors that can sense special waves and their own queens unique signals. This allows them to swing down to form a line on the side of the wall to let the queen past and then swing back into position. They get fed by other teraconians, who will occasionally drop down metal or meat to eat. Reproducing comes in eggs. A queen teraconian can lay up to 10 eggs a day! Although these eggs are tough they still need to be kept warm. This is done by either the queen laying on top of them, or using a few teraconians to lay on top and occasionally lighting a flame on them.

                                  Lifespan

The life of a teraconian is usually about 20 years But the queen can live around 100 years due to the fact that the flame doesn’t need to be on all the time to protect itself. The problem with using your flame all the time, is that a bit like smoking, over time your lungs will go black. This can happen with the teraconian, but it happens in its organs. With this information in hand it means that their life expectancy dramatically decreases from more or less forever to 20 years.

           Thought

Another interesting point is that only the queen thinks. This means that all the others are controlled by the extremely intelligent queen who has an IQ of approximately 250. Her thoughts and the others sensual readings are communicated through low frequency radio waves. This system has been developed to make the normal teraconians lighter and use more complex thought that they could normally.

                                Conclusion

In conclusion, this creature is a top notch predator that can eat almost anything. It thrives the planet all round from top to bottom and wrecks anything in its way including things like wood and plants using thermite to burn prey fully alive. Using their flexi metal shell, they are practically unbreakable from the outside, but soft on the inside. Gluing things together is what they do best. At a reproduction rate of about ten per day, the teraconians thrive on the planet and come in massive hordes. In total the teraconian is easily an apex predator along with an omnivore. This animal has found some great ways to survive, and has adapted brilliantly according to the environment and natural surroundings.