Skybexes and Kin

1. The hollerhopper, a skittish goat-like omnivore native to the high cliff walls of the craterlands. This fifteen pound descendant of the scurrying skybex has adapted to scramble over almost vertical surfaces; its unusually splayed hooves each have a concave surface, letting it press its "hands" against hard substrates and secure a hold where few other creature can manage. The walls give them a familiar and safe zone, a “highway” from which opportunistic forays down can be made for particularly desirable or safe grazing on flatter ledges. Most predators cannot follow it back up the walls, to which it rapidly bounds up and away at the slightest fright. These animals are social and intelligent, keeping watch for danger in small herds and communicating with a variety of loud barking or honking calls and even loud whistles. It is more often heard than seen, yelling off alarms in the distant heights of the crater - a common background sound of crater city life. The hollerhopper has adapted well to urbanization of its cliff habitat and occurs in cities, where it may feed on crops or ornamental plants and become a pest. In highly urban areas, it often becomes primarily nocturnal. 

2. The castaway skyrax, a rare skyrax, a lineage that is a sister group to the skybexes but generally even smaller and notable for their hardened nasal crests which are heavily keratinized. The castaway is a descendant of the jackalope only known from a few remnant sky island summits over the steppe south of Sanctuary Crater now heavily eroded. These strange rabbit-like animals have outlived the productivity of their habitat and now have very little green vegetation on which to eat. Marooned on the tops of ancient spire forests, now reduced to rock and sparse tufts of dry grass, they feed on anything they can find and regularly hunt skuzzards that shelter in the crevices, and even pounce and kill mowcusts and other visiting birds, as well as their chicks and eggs, that still shelter in the degrading island's shelter. These thorngrazers endure seasonal food shortages when conditions are worst by retreating deep into the eroded tunnels of the island and hibernating, usually in groups; their metabolic rate is significantly slower than other thorngrazers, and they have reduced capacity of producing their own body heat, so that are most active only during warmer, sunny conditions. When food is especially scarce, the territorial males of these 'killer rabbits' may fight to the death and cannibalize their own kind, reducing competition both for themselves and for their mates and young. 

3. The rusty chimney, a more basal thorngrazer which evolved from the hillhopper, but which sits outside either skyraxes or skybexes as a more primitive species. The rusty chimney is a burrowing thorngrazer, one of very few, which has evolved to live in hot deserts near the equator. Sheltering below ground and feeding on sparse plant life during cool nights, its hooves are large and sharp, no longer suited for high speed running or cliff-top climbing, but more shaped like the claws of an aardvark for digging deep into the earth. It is named for its nasal crests, large and reddish in color but soft and flexible. Much of their length is an extendible fleshy tube which can be collapsed and folded away and stiffen out straight up, evolved for temperature regulation rather than ornamentation or sound amplification. A loosely social species, males may share a burrow complex with two or three females and ther young, but there is little cooperation in foraging or predator avoidance. Elusive and rarely seen, the chimney is aggressive if threatened and will charge animals that come too close to its burrow with its horns, growling and emitting hooting trumpet-like calls. It can sometimes be seen with its crest poking out of its burrows, unseen but for the home's chimney, which catches slight breezes over its vascularized surface and cools the animal as it rests with the rest of its body in the shade of its hole.

4. The fauxnicorn is one of the most specialized skybex relatives. A remarkable rarity, it is a lifelong brood parasite. The adult fauxnicorn is a form of hillhopper which has evolved to mimic the appearance, calls, and habits of a young sonicorn unicorn, a far larger and more fearsome species of the northern tundra. The fauxnicorns are actually big for their group, weighing thirty or more pounds, but resemble newborns of their hosts, which have strong parental instincts and will naturally adopt wayward, lost calves - life on the tundra is so harsh, there can be little competition within a single species for survival, and sonicorns rely so much on their herds for their own safety, even an unrelated infant must be cared for. Fauxnicorns gain extremely nutritious food in the form of regurgitated sonicorn crop milk, begging it from the mouths of parents alongside their own young. They take just a little from any adult, and generally do not reduce survival rates of the sonicorn's own calves. Fauxnicorns may, at times, even benefit their host's offspring, effectively allowing their hosts to pad their broods with expendable "babies" that mean an attacking enemy is less likely to snatch their real offspring rather than a mimic. Fauxnicorns can seal their ears to partially protect themselves from the loud calls of their hosts, but their very small size in comparison can still sometimes result in unintended casualties, and over time many fauxnicorns may lose much of their hearing, which an result in death when they are separated from their herd during winter snowstorms, so that most fauxnicorns are not very long lived. During summer when the snow melts and the tundra turns briefly green the fauxnicorns go their own ways and take advantage of the short abundance of food, and now females will birth their own young, usually two or three at a time. Their own calves are so very small that they could not keep up with the larger sonicorn herds if born at any other time, but they grow very quickly before fall when they rejoin the unicorns, and reprise their role of lost children in need. 

5. The heraldhopper, a domesticated animal kept by craterland whisperwings as a draft animal and sometimes simply a pet. Heraldhoppers are the captive form of the hollerhopper, and have been tamed for around 25,000 years. It is often trained as a pack animal, not meant for heavier loads like skyhorses can be capable of, but rather for smaller things -  deliveries of goods like trinkets, baked goods, or produce, personal effects when moving house, and local mail delivery. Very well suited to the craterlands' walls, they are just as surefooted as their wild relative, but much more docile. Though their size varies, they can also be up three times heavier, and have been selected for larger size in order to carry heavier cargo. The loud calls of the hollerhopper have been selectively altered by whisperwings into a melodious range of calls resembling bugles and even wind instruments, which is considered very pleasing to the whisperwing ear. Considered one of the most tractable animals, heraldhoppers are as intelligent as dogs and equally trainable. They can eventually even learn to travel their daily routes around cliff villages on their own accord, allowing patrons to select products packed in sacs fitted onto the animal's harness and place payment in return. Though seemingly easy to exploit (as someone could steal all the goods and not pay), very often there is a respected social code in the small communities that such systems operate where this does not occur. The same could not be said for less cohesive larger urban centers where heraldhopper theft is a real concern, and the animals must be leashed and kept under watch by their masters. The heraldhopper is a very affectionate animal that seeks out social interactions with whisperwings innately, the process of domestication having altered their social behavior to include this very different species without requiring specific socialization; like very few other animals, the heraldhopper will look to whisperwings to solve a problem and will naturally follow signals and cues, such as pointing; they are usually eager to please and thus very easy to train. Hybridization with wild hollerhoppers occurs with regularity and has for thousands of years; hybrids vary in their tractability and most may tend to gravitate away from urban life and join wild herds, while some remain tame. This introgression of genes has gone both ways, making wild populations much more tolerant of urban sprawl, while keeping domestic ones wary enough of danger to avoid wild predators. On the same subject, heraldhoppers do not naturally trust leucrocotta, and will avoid them unless socialized closely with them early in life - not very common, as heraldhoppers are not as often kept below the cliff walls where leucrocotta are fond. 

6. The jackaluck is a jackalope skyrax native to the salt sea, a vast arid salt pain of northern Serinarcta, that was once the upperglades wetlands. It was once abundant, but now rare as their habitat - isolated islands of grassland in the salt pan - steadily shrinks. These animals have very narrow hooves and stand entirely on their nails, striding daintily over the salt flats in search of patches of edible vegetation. Males of the species are distinct for their large and highly decorative crests, the keratinized tips of which drop off seasonally like antlers. Males evolved these structures to fight rivals over mating rights (jackalopes are the only crested thorngrazers that specifically adapted their crests into weapons) though females have much smaller versions of their own, used to fight enemies of their small calves, which raised in shallow burrows in the warm seasons. The male's larger crests are shed in fall, so that the animals can retreat below ground into burrows to shelter from the cold. Jackaluck horns are often knocked off as males retreat into the shelter of other animal's burrows at the first chill of winter, and can over time form large deposits over many generations (unlike the calcium-based antlers of Earth deer, small animals cannot digest the keratin, so nothing consumes them. 

7. The splendid skybex lives in a world that for now remains more productive than most landscapes beyond the crater walls. Endemic to the ravine forests of southern Serinarcta, they feed on fern-like flora, mosses and other shade-adapted plants growing in the wet, sheltered valleys which were once caves situated beneath ancient sky island ridges. Descendants of scurrying skybex, they are larger and have become among the most decorated thorngrazers still living. In addition to a bright coat of black and yellow fur, males develop a pair of expandable, red and blue balloon-like display structures from their lower sinuses, and use these to amplify booming calls as well as produce a stunning visual display to females. Splendid skybex males form seasonal leks, each one selecting a spire of rock or a suitably high cliff roost that catches morning sunlight for just long enough to illuminate them as they strut and display for a gathering of very choosy potential partners. The mating season is only a couple weeks long, and then the sun has shifted, and the males descend back down the ravines, living a cryptic life in shade and shadow where they seek out isolated patches of food, only leaving the shade at dawn and dusk, and never exposing themselves to the full extent of the sun's strength at midday. Avoiding enemies like the scarlatt, splendid skybex can bound up vertical cliff faces with ease, dashing away from attackers by switching back and forth across the walls of a narrow crack in the rock so as to ascend upwards, leaving their enemy far below them.

8. The bayonet jackalope, the biggest jackalope skyrax, is one that has abandoned the elevated regions altogether and now forms large herds of hundreds of thousands on the flatlands. Much bigger than any other, it can weigh 50 pounds. Both sexes have evolved sharp forward-facing keratin crests and use them not just to fight, but to dig up roots from the soil. Unlike jackalucks' these horns are not shed seasonally, though rarely they may break off, and if they do so they will regenerate from the bud that remains, suggesting this is how the jackaluck's shedding crests first evolved. Very fast runners, bayonet jackalopes are trailed by predators at almost all times and have high mortality rate. In winter, the slightly larger and slightly slower males become sacrificial by often turning to fight their enemies as swifter females and young carry on and escape: not all such fighters win. By mating in autumn, this means that come spring a new generation will be born, replacing those lost. Growth is rapid and newborn males are fully mature in six months time; most males thus live less than a year, while females live three to five, though some males will last several seasons. Populations persist through rapid reproduction - females often bear three in a litter - to replace extremely high annual losses. 

9. The tidebex, one of the most behaviorally derived skybexes, is closest related to the splendid skybex despite a very different appearance and habitat. While the former retreated into the ravine forest as climate change destroyed their alpine habitats, the tidebex found a lifeline along the seashore. Opportunistic omnivory lets its survive on whatever the ocean brings up, be it seaweed, clams, or dead fish. Bedding down by night in burrows beneath rocks, it patrols the beaches by night for whatever food it can find, living more alike a foxtrotter than a unicorn relative. With fewer places to hide, it relies more on fierceness to survive, and challenges predators by biting and forcefully kicking at its foe. It often tries to make a quick escape after initially turning and attacking an enemy by kicking sand in its predator's eyes and dashing away to the safety of rock piles or coastal cliffs. 

The tidebex has acquired a mutualistic relationship with the littoral leucrocotta; it is permitted to infiltrate villages after dark, for it is an effective predator of molodont pests that ruin food stores and chew up nets and fabrics. Among the most actively predatory thorngrazers, despite its small size, the tidebex has a terrier-like tenacity and will pursue and even dig out small prey animals, catching them in its jaws and shaking them to death before eating. In return for its services, the tidebex may get a safe place to sleep by day and a shelter to raise its offspring, born singly or in pairs. When handled from a young age, the tidebex becomes tame and may be considered a pet; this relationship has been ongoing for around 10,000 years. Some tidebex (normally a pale, sandy color) now exhibit color mutations mirroring other domestic animals, but they remain largely wild animals, able to fend for themselves even without sophont intervention. Whisperwings, wanting to keep them too, transported tidebex to foreign environments like the craterlands shortly after peace unions and trade opportunities were made with the coastal tribes, where they are now invasive. Outside their natural habitat, the tidebex reproduces quickly and is aggressive, able to kill and overpower other skybex, even the young of the larger heraldhopper, and occasionally even killing young whisperwings. Efforts are underway to exterminate introduced populations, but it is likely already too late - the animals are well-established. Sneaky and nocturnal, able to travel anywhere from crater floor to the heights of the cliff cities, they are hard to find and kill. The idea of invasive species is a new one to the whisperwings, but this introduction of a would-be "pet" just over a century ago, that now proves dangerous and destructive to the delicate balance of their habitat, has resulted in a much more cautious approach to importing foreign species.