The Scrounger Sophonts

300 million years post-establishment, there are two independent lineages of tentacled birds that have become self-aware and intelligent species, the sylvansparks and the slaughtersprinters. Though both belong to the primal scroungers clade, the two evolved sapience separately from each other and at different times. The sprinters, which evolved from squabgoblins, became people sometime around 290 MPE at the very end of the hothouse, while the sylvansparks - descended from the blood-breasted squaboon - only became so intelligent around 295 MPE. Their non-sapient ancestors had competitive interactions going back over ten million years, which continued once the two became sophonts. And though the squabgoblin initially dominated Serinaustra's inland ecosystems as an extremely coordinated pack-hunting predator, it would ultimately the sylvanspark lineage that began to gain an edge over time. Their greater dietary adaptability as omnivores, combined with a more innovative nature, would lead to their becoming the dominant sophont in their ancestral southern homeland as the climate shifted as the final stretch went on. 

Not entirely to be outdone, however, one branch of the slaughtersprinters would extend their reach to more distant lands, making an escape before those which remained on Serinaustra began to grow rare. Some sylvansparks, too, would eventually migrate north, but for all these wandering scrounger peoples, the formidable leucrocottas of Serinarcta would pose a barrier to their progress. Even today, most scrounger-inhabited regions are those where leucrocottas - an entire species of deadly apex predators - have never historically made their homes. But today those walls that have long stood between a diverse set of inhabitants are beginning to come down, as cultures mix together in unprecedented ways... and as ancient animosities fade away in a modern world, we are now on the cusp of something very much bigger than ever before...

The Sylvansparks

The sylvansparks today are the most diverse of the sapient scroungers, with several fossil and two living species, one of which is quite specialized from its ancestor, and the other of which is highly varied. Descended from the blood-breasted squaboon of ten million years ago, the first sylvansparks evolved only around five million years ago. The two modern species are the upland sylvanspark - which is further divided into the steppe sylvanspark and the slumberspark - and the seaspark.

Sylvansparks in general have many shared traits, despite their physical differences, and development and reproduction is particular consistent across living species. Sylvansparks have a slow reproductive rate that goes in hand with a long lifespan; they bear only one egg in a clutch, and naturally do not breed every year, because their young are dependent for a long time. Most females indeed have only one egg every three to five years. A sylvanspark's egg is always enormous in comparison to the mother, up to 20% her body weight in both living species. Carrying the egg is a delicate process for any female, and while it is being produced inside her she must avoid strenuous activity and is reliant on the support of her family group. The egg is so large in sylvanspark species that females are prone to issues laying it and can sometimes die in the process, or become septic if it breaks inside them. The egg's large size has evolved to allow the chick to be born with a relatively large brain that is up to half the adult's size, allowing a rapid development from completely helpless baby to a very competent child; they have the larger brain to body ratio in adulthood than other sapient scroungers, and generally have better problem solving ability.

Sylvanspark chicks can walk at birth (and the seaspark species can also swim, but not dive.) They are, however, clumsy and born with few survival instincts and nearly everything must be learned; they are social sponges that absorb information rapidly and learn how to behave from their peers and elders. They require a lot of care and supervision, but learn fast and few are lost to predators. They begin speaking their first words before the age of one, speak in full sentences by two, and are equivalent to 9 year old humans by age 3. They will reach complete adulthood and reproductive maturity at around 8 years of age, though adult size is attained a little after three years, with a comparatively long adolescence being characteristic of this species; naturally, these "teenagers", like those of humans, are already quite intelligent and can assist their clans in most adult tasks with some guidance, but are not fully emotionally developed. Unlike humans, these teenagers are not usually able to reproduce - this comes last in their development. Some male steppe sylvansparks may not be re-productively mature until their tenth year, two years after mental adulthood, as a result of their ancestrally harem-based reproductive behavior where only the older, stronger males succeeded in breeding. Slumbersparks, though smaller, broadly mature on the same timespan as their larger cousins but males usually reach full maturity by 8.

Lifespan for all sylvansparks maxes out around 70 years of age with medical care, a modern situation with no previous precedent. In more natural conditions, a lifespan of 50-60 years would be considered very good for both living species that, like humans, have higher infant than adult mortality. Not all young survive, but most individuals that reach adulthood live long lives, giving them many opportunities to rear children, even if not all succeed. 

Above: three living varieties of the upland sylvanspark. 

Below: The extinct ancestral subspecies. Though it no longer exists unchanged, it survives through its descendants. 

The Steppe Sylvanspark

The "four-sexed" sophont.

The steppe sylvanspark, or redcoat, is the more numerous subspecies still found on Serinarcta, notable for its striking sexual dimorphism with both sexes being brightly colored, as well as its large size and featherless face showing large, fleshy "brow-horns" (a stiff collagen structure, used to exaggerate eye movements and facial expressions.) But most uniquely of all, the redcoat is known for having four "sexes", two variations of both male and female. Protectors are larger than and physically distinct from than their nurturer counterparts in both the male and female, and the two distinct varieties evolved for different purposes - defense of the family group, and upbringing of its offspring. The protector male is generally the largest type of upland sylvanspark, up to 50% larger than the nurturer male, reaching the height of a slaughtersprinter and surpassing it in weight. He is characterized as well by extremely intense coloration and very long display plumes on head and neck, which form a mane, and by long saddle feathers growing from the back and haunches that cascade back over the comparatively short tail feathers. The eyebrow "horns" of the protector are up to three times as large as those of the nurturer male, arcing around to frame the top edge of his face, which is similarly colored to other males, though generally shows more red along the bridge of the snout.

Protectors differ behaviorally as well as visually from their counterparts, for they are naturally more aggressive than nurturers, and the male protector moreso than the female.  Their social role is to keep their clans safe, not to brood eggs and teach the young, so they are expected to be willing fighters, and their higher aggression is due partly to increased testosterone levels in both sexes, which also produce semi-masculine coloring in the protector female. A massive inverted section of one chromosome is responsible for this morph's existence; the inversion has made this chromosome unable to recombine with its normal counterpart, and over the last four million years this has resulted in the inverted chromosome evolving differently and diverging from what it once was. The result today is a population, the steppe sylvanspark, in which some individuals carry two normal chromosomes, which become nurturers, and others a non-matched set with one mutant one: this latter case develop as protectors.

Genetically, the population should be roughly 50/50 of each form, as protectors usually mate with nurturers and successful breeding within one morph is uncommon, as the two have evolved to compliment each other in skills and weaknesses. But in practice, in typical populations, there are fewer protectors than nurturers by a ratio of around 1 to 3. The female nurturer-morph sylvanspark can unconsciously manipulate the sex of her offspring during meiosis shortly after mating, which occurs through elevated production of the hormone progesterone. In stable conditions she will generally produce up to three female eggs for every male (though in certain less ideal conditions, her body will cease production of so much hormone, and she will produce more males, some of which will grow up to defend her group and compete more effectively with rivals for limited resources.) But that still does not explain why there would be more nurturers, as an embryo of either sex has the same odds - half - to be either a nurturer or a protector. The disparity comes from another factor: the female protector embryo is non-viable around 66% of the time, and only around one-third of their eggs will come to term and hatch. This makes the female protector the least common sylvanspark morph, and biases the population heavily toward nurturer males, nurturer females, and protector males. The cooperative social structure that steppe sylvansparks live under also influences pairings in ways that can further reduce the total number of protector morphs, in particular by allowing some nurturer-nurturer pairs to reproduce together under the protection of other protector morphs, which is discussed below.

The mutant chromosome that results in the protector morph is still strongly favored by natural and social selection because the male which inherits this condition is much more effective at guarding his mates from rivals and defending his young from predation, and the nurturer female can compensate by producing more total females to cover the non-viability of most protector females that cease development before they hatch. In the most common pre-modern social structure, one or a small number of related protector males would defend a harem of primarily nurturer females, at least two to each protector male, in a polygamous mating system. Within each group, smaller nurturer males would be permitted to remain within their natal clans whereas other protectors would often be made to disperse at young adulthood.

Male nurturers exist in a firmly established third gender space within their groups, intermediate between the protector male which tolerates them due to their life-long youthful appearance, and the nurturer female. They would mate occasionally with female nurturers when the larger males were not paying attention (a coupling that can only produce nurturers, further tipping the balance in their favor), but would usually be the only males to mate with less common protector females, which would in turn exist in a gender role much closer to that of the protector male than the nurturer female. A protector female would not usually have the hormone levels to trigger an instinctive maternal behavior toward their own eggs, which would be hatched by the nurturer male if hatched at all; though she could choose to take on the role, it was usually more important that she assist in defending the group with the other males and not expected of her. Young hatched from the eggs of the less common protector females are not subject to high progesterone levels before their egg is laid, and are thus more likely to be male.

The female protector morph sylvanspark's existence is largely a side-effect of the desirability of the protector male. Despite this biological truth, it was historically typical for her to be well-integrated into clan structure and not subject to specific prejudice, though she was usually socialized as a variation of the protector male rather than as a female, whether or nor she would choose this on her own. She was not expected to reproduce (though certainly still could), and relations with male protectors would be stigmatized while those with nurturers of either sex would not, which was also true of protector males. Her male-adjacent social role would provide her a greater degree of freedom than the average nurturer female, if only because she would be given a more equal standing to the protector male. Usually longer-lived than them (because higher testosterone tends to reduce life expectancy in birds, and protector males are flooded with it), female protectors often became group leaders in their later adulthood, being highly respected elders. It is only comparatively recently that a widespread cultural shift has occurred among these sylvansparks which places a stigma on the female protector, as well as on the nurturer male. 

~~~

Female nurturers are small, just half as large as protector males, and the only morph which is never seen with red feathering, with golden and orange hues being common and considered most attractive. Pale, sometimes almost white feathers are often, but not always, present on the face and underside, though these are also seen in around a third of protector females to varying degree. These females are also the only morph with long trailing tail feathers (different from the saddle feathers of protector males), a rare signal of fitness in the female sex which suggests high fertility, as the long plumes can only reach their longest extent when the individual is very well fed and in peak health. Her face is always a bright, light shade of purple with blue, if present at all, limited to the very tips of the tentacles and red always absent.

Male nurturers are around two-thirds the weight of protector males and lack saddle plumage, though they have longer neck feathers than female nurturers and can sport crests and small manes. Their eyebrow "horns" are much smaller, thinner, and arc upward rather than down and back. Facial color can be as intensely blue as the protector but always has less red, especially on the snout region. Both male and female nurturer's tend to have shorter tentacles than protectors, a result of less testosterone changing their facial structure less from its shape in childhood, though this is not a rule, only a trend.

Female protectors are second only to their male counterpart in size, with many being only a few inches shorter though around 20% lighter. While they usually lack manes and only around one in ten has small saddle feathers, they can develop head crests. The tail feathers are short, with no trace of the nurturer female's long plumage, and the absence of this trait along with their dark brown to reddish coloring makes them unattractive to a majority of protector males. Around 50% of female protectors have some degree of male-like face marking, usually represented by red brows or a steel blue blushing at the tip of the tentacles. Others have mostly grey faces suffused with varying amounts of purple, never as bright as the nurturer female's face. Both male and female protectors tend to be more robust, with thicker legs and and larger, sharper claws than nurturers, traits that improve their defensive capabilities but also make them less fast.

Though the norm is for nurturers to mate with protectors, two nurturers can also produce completely normal, viable young in circumstances where they are living in large clans well-defended by others, but they can only have nurturer offspring. Two protectors only very rarely mate through a combination of little mutual attraction and strong social stigma, and when they do most of their young will not survive to hatching as the mutant chromosome responsible for the protector morph is mostly lethal when the chromosome is doubled up from two parents that carry it. Around 5% of young from this pairing may survive, over 99% of them being males that grow abnormally large and which may grow faster than their bodies can usually handle, which often results in leg deformations as well as unusual facial proportions. They have shortened life expectancy and are not normally fertile. Such individuals, known as double-factor protectors, are so rare that most sylvansparks will ever see one in their lifetimes. Though one is not pictured here, they tend to be very dark red, almost melanistic in appearance, and tend to have very long head, neck, and saddle feathers.

Double-factor protectors are identifiable from birth, unlike other morphs, as they begin to develop secondary sex characteristics even before hatching. In the more typically seen morphs of steppe sylvanspark, the earliest characteristics differentiating different morphs usually begin to appear around six months of age, when all morphs except for nurturer females may begin to acquire a few red feathers, but because this does not identify them as any of the three red-feathered morphs, they cannot yet be assigned an adult gender. Until the first colored feathers appear, there are no outward signifiers of morph or gender in sylvanspark chicks at all, and so all are raised as a neutral "non-gender" usually reserved for immatures. But that all changes once the first identifiers of morph appear in adolescence; then, like it or not, most steppe sylvansparks are thrust into a world of social politics more complex than that of any other final stretch people, where everyone's role in life is from then on determined by their sex, their morph, or both. Only a small number of cultures historically have deviated from this, and even those that did or do still assign other, and usually equally restrictive, social roles to every teenage sylvanspark that they are expected to follow. These rules, based in their pre-modern ancestors' social structures, remained in place when even sylvansparks founded a powerful empire now fallen, and they persist in a modified state as sylvansparks today have clung to survival in a darker age where most of the past's knowledge is lost. They are something that the redcoats collectively find very hard to shake. It's a way to organize themselves that works for many, but though abandoning freedom of expression for conformity might help to keep society structured, it's a system that will always leave some that do not fit into the boxes they are expected to.

~~~

By eighteen to twenty four months of age the morphs are usually clearly apparent in all individuals, though protectors will continue growing for up to another year after nurturers have reach their adult size, but not their full adult maturity, around this age; complete adulthood occurs around age three and a half. Eighteen months is also the age where the feathering on the cheeks and brows is molted away and the face begins its change from its neutral gray-purple color to the different hues of the varied adults, when protector males grow their first saddle feathers, and when the brows of all males start to enlarge into their adult shapes. Protectors are usually now assigned masculine identity as nurturers fall into the only truly feminine gender construct, with nurturers falling somewhere in the middle in a category of their own that is socially similar to the nurturer female, though recognized as distinct and not egg-bearing. Most often, the identities assigned to individuals are considered unchangeable and individuals that don't conform to expected social roles for their gender face stigmatization ranging from relatively mild (as is sometimes the case for nurturer males that identify more with protector forms, especially if they are larger than average) to severe (for protector males that identify with traits expected of any type of feminine social role, especially child rearing.) The latter is almost universally disallowed and is associated with perversion, with the belief that protector males have no capacity for truly maternal bonding being common (and false, but it's not likely going to work to argue the point, rather it will only turn suspicion toward you from others insistent that you have impure intentions.)

Though female protectors are socialized the same as protector males from young adulthood onward, they are by necessity given more lenience because it is an unavoidable fact that they can lay eggs, an inherently motherly act. Though most protector females have little interest in raising their own young, those that do are not likely to be treated poorly for doing so, at least for their own eggs, and protector females which choose to fulfill a feminine social role may be allowed to do so only so far as child-care is concerned; it usually still remains inappropriate for her to have any relationship with a protector male, but may be less so if he also alters his appearance to appear more neutral like a nurturer male. On that note, it is sometimes possible for certain morphs to adjust their appearance to pass as another morph, though this is usually only possible if they disperse away from their natal clan into another that does not know them. This is most common with protector males that identify with nurturing social roles, either for their own sake, or to seek relationship with a protector female or other protector male. Though their size may be larger than expected, if they systematically remove all of their long, sexy display feathers at all times, and even more so if they can trim their brows, they may be viewed more neutrally, perhaps enough to pass as a nurturer male, or at least as a female protector. Yet some social roles are very difficult to transition to, with nurturer females having very little means to adjust their appearance enough to ever be taken seriously in a protector role simply due to their size, color, and lack of decoration. Instead, individuals that are very unhappy in the roles assigned to them may choose to leave their clans entirely as the better alternative. When several like individuals meet, they can create unconventionally organized groups with other social outcasts where they can create their own social expectations that may defy the common rules. Though the individuals living in this way may be happier than the alternative, these groups still face social stigma from other groups and may be denied trade and social cooperation, which may lead them to becoming bandits or otherwise exploiting others at the fringes of their societies to make ends meet.

But today, redcoats are facing a new world order. Ancient social rules have already begun to crack and shift, and though these changes so far have not all necessarily been good ones, hope is on the horizon for a future with greater equality as these scrounger people find their worlds growing much larger than before, and including new people for whom their long-held social expectations simply do not work; a sylvanspark with no sex characteristics of any kind cannot fit their quaternary (like binary, but for four!) world view, and even less so can a whisperwing, or a leucrocotta! Even the humble slaughtersprinter, which the redcoats have known of for time immemorial, defies their rules of order when it is known as an equal rather than an enemy. And if their rules truly and absolutely can be agreed to not work for some, then it is now a much smaller jump to demonstrate that they are not insurmountable rules that must be followed by all redcoats, either.

The Slumberspark

The hibernating sophont.

The slumberspark (or sleeper) is the smaller of two extant sylvanspark subspecies, and is known for its ability to seasonally hibernate. It is the less widespread subspecies, being historically restricted to the austral swamp in far-south Serinaustra, a damp forest environment that has been steadily shrinking away as the climate becomes more and more dry in the final stretch progresses. The two subspecies' ancestors had diverged as distinct forms by 750,000 years ago, and already by this time had begun to differentiate into a larger grassland-dweller and a smaller forest lineage, but there is evidence of occasional, ongoing interbreeding ongoing until around 450,000 years ago. After this, gene flow between the two became virtually nonexistent until the near-modern day, likely due to the spread of glaciers and expansion of an arid central steppe isolating the two away from one another's preferred habitats (temperate forest and coastal grassland, respectively, with neither subspecies being tolerant of drought.) After this time, the two populations diverged more significantly, with steppe sylvansparks becoming much bigger and more dimorphic (including evolving their mutant "protector" chromosome), and slumbersparks doing the opposite.

Despite this long period of isolation, both sylvanspark clades remain cross-fertile, with the first near-modern intermixing occuring during the mid Skyfire-Empire, roughly 3,500 years ago, when "redcoats" underwent rapid and drastic range expansion across formerly uninhabited parts of the continent. First generation hybrids are often very large in comparison to the slumberspark as a result of hybrid vigor, likely because the slumberspark has comparatively low genetic diversity. It was more common for the redcoat to kill the slumberspark where they met during this era than to mingle in any other way, however, and the slumberspark's population dwindled to less than 1% its previous numbers during the empire's roughly 1,000 year reign. Slumberspark decline was sometimes directly attributed to persecution by redcoats, but also hastened by the felling of the majority of their remnant habitat for a short-lived timber industry that sustained the rapid growth of settlements at the time. The survival of the slumberspark at all is almost certainly due to the collapse of the Sky Fire empire a little over 2,000 years ago; surviving redcoats lost almost everything their precursors had built, reverting to a primitive lifestyle as roaming bands of hunter-gatherers restricted once again to warmer regions, allowing the last and most isolated slumbersparks to eke by a little longer despite the rapidly worsening climate.

Sleepers differ from steppe sylvansparks behaviorally, being generally less aggressive and more pro-social, with territorial aggression reduced and conflict primarily ritualized. Males have become more like females (whereas the females of redcoats have become more like males) to the point the two sexes cannot be outwardly distinguished even by themselves, and the subspecies as a result entirely lacks a concept of gender. Any individual is typically able to form pairs or small, close-bonded mate-groups with any other regardless of biological sex; the common practice of taking more than one mate may be related to this, making it more likely that males and females will couple by chance and produce offspring, which all members of a group will rear. Both males and females may mate in a conventionally male or female position (being on top or on the bottom, or simply face to face), and their actual role as the egg-bearing or sperm-bearing parent may only become apparent to themselves after successful reproduction, when the female is of course the only one to lay an egg. Even then, this may be viewed through a cultural lens as being more-so being "chosen" for a role most suited to them at a given time, and many slumbersparks that did not lay eggs may still expect to eventually be chosen in a future breeding season. And occasionally, this actually occurs - females may go through the spring breeding season and experience the expected increased libido, for it strengthens social bonds, but most do not actually come into estrus every single year, meaning they will not lay an egg afterward. This is the result of the very high energy requirements needed to produce their very large eggs, making it something most can only do around twice a decade, and sometimes even less. So while an actual biological male will never lay an egg, a female may take years to "be chosen" and do so, leading to the widespread belief that any individual may eventually do so at some point in their lives, even if it is a flawed one. This contrasts very strongly with the redcoat, which wears its sex and its social role "on its sleeve" with its differentiated morphs, and which successfully breeds more often. In the redcoat, an egg can be laid potentially every single year, but this is only in extreme cases where the mother is separated from her offspring before it is one year old; while tending an infant, she will not lay again for 3 more years naturally. The increased ease of egg-laying in the redcoat is due to better nutritional availability in the warmer regions in which it lives. Slumbersparks can only breed once a year, and are usually only sexually active in the spring, having little interest at other times and a seasonal rise and fall of sex hormones. Redcoats usually also lay eggs in the spring, but have similar hormone levels regardless of season and so can breed at any time if food is abundant enough. In recent times, hybrids' breeding behavior tends to take after the redcoat parent, especially in later generations, and becomes non-seasonal (though this may be related at least partly to the effects of electric lighting indoors making even winter days longer and more spring-like). It is believed that the seasonal breeding cycle of the sleeper is a derived condition, not present in their shared ancestors which lived in less extreme places.

The slumberspark has some additionally unique physiology that may also be a derived condition from the shared ancestral sylvanspark. Slumbersparks are notably more tolerant of hypoxia, surely due to their ancestry as a burrow-dwelling people, and their red blood cells carry much more oxygen. They also have slightly different dietary requirements - and thus niches - from the redcoat, being more efficient at converting food to energy and also better adapted to survive on a mostly plant-based diet, while being sensitive to very high protein levels from a primarily meat-based diet that a steppe sylvanspark can survive on indefinitely, but which can cause organ damage in a slumberspark in excess over time. Nonetheless, they both share a high requirement for dietary fat, which slumbersparks more often get from nuts and seeds, while steppe sylvansparks mostly get it from meat. Though the redcoat tends to become an apex predator in environments it lives in due to its larger size and ability to bring down prey in packs, the slumberspark hunts large animals for food very infrequently. Despite appearing more vulnerable due to small size, however, the slumberspark does not have many extant predators and tends to be long-lived, slightly more-so than the redcoat on average due to a slower metabolic rate overall; their cooperative, communal and burrow-dwelling lifestyle and isolated habitat today provide significant protection from threats. They are capable of coordinated defensive attacks against larger animals that can harm them with a range of simple tools, even though in remnant populations metallurgy may no longer be utilized, and a majority of animals that would have formerly preyed upon them have been gradually wiped out by them over the course of their natural and cultural evolution much as has occurred with their sister subspecies. Like many small, social animals, they are known for mobbing enemies with large numbers to overwhelm them. However, extant predators which do remain include certain small and flexible carnivore species like skuwyrms that may be able to invade their subterranean dens during winter when they are dormant. This may be why a rare non-hibernating variant of the subspecies still exists - albeit in very low percentage of the population - to defend against such intrusions (more on this below.) Though slumbersparks can create their own burrows from scratch, they usually seek out a natural cavity in the earth to build off-from which may be the creation of another animal. They use these dens and expand them for very long periods of time, and many may be veritably ancient and in use for dozens or even hundreds of generations. Historically burrows may have become quite expansive in size, with many separately purposed rooms and up to 100 different exits, potentially supporting several thousand individuals which collectively could gather and store vast amounts of food and resources and defend their shared home from all enemies. Today, most are much smaller and clans rarely number more than a few dozen, and these once wide-reaching social network of different clans looking out for each other hve broken down as those which remained after the empire became increasingly isolated from each other until only a few were left.

Physically, sleepers are generally smaller, duller in color, and lacking secondary sex characteristics like bright feathers or long plumage compared to redcoats. Today they do not seem to ever exhibit featherless, scaled legs like the redcoat and instead have insulating plumage down at least to their ankles, with most having plumage all the way to the claws on their toes. Before the loss of much of their genetic diversity during the empire, however, there would have been markedly more variation. More recent crosses with the steppe sylvanspark, such as occurred with the ancestors of the Tsku-Kir population in eastern Serinarcta several hundred years ago, indicate the genes controlling feather extent are numerous and that hybrids show a continuum of intermediate expression rather than inheriting fully-feathered or fully-scaled legs (or featherless faces.) Even with most individuals being genetically alike, the slumberspark still demonstrates a wide range of individual variation in plumage shade and pattern. Though all of them are primarily tan or brown, they range markedly in how this pigment is distributed. Sleepers can have anything from mostly black feathers to almost white ones, with most having distinctive, individual patterns even to the human eye, as well as a broader range of eye colors to the redcoat. In addition to the most common red to orange and second-most common yellow or amber eyes (the only range of colors redcoats show), slumbersparks can also show blue, hazel, and rarely pale violet colored eyes. These latter colors likely are able to persist because slumbersparks live so far south that they are not subject to the harmful solar radiation that can cause damage to unpigmented eyes at less extreme latitudes. The hybrid-descended Tsku-Kir today are the most likely of any sylvanspark to show these leucistic eye colours, perhaps due to placing stronger value on them as an attractive trait when seeking a mate combined with reduced natural selection due to the amenities of a more modern-day lifestyle.

The most unique attribute of the slumberspark subspecies is, of course, its aforementioned ability to enter a true hibernation state to endure the most frigid winter months on a lesser amount of food, something very unusual among scrounger species. Even steppe sylvansparks, though otherwise very genetically close, are not capable of this, and must remain active and hunt throughout winter. This limits these larger sylvans to less extreme climates except during periods where they have high enough technological ability to compensate, as occurred in the past on Serinaustra, and today among the Tsku-Kir. Slumberspark ancestors evolved this ability sometime after their lineage first diverged from the redcoat lineage, but before the two completely stopped interbreeding; it does not seem to be inherited consistently in hybrid descendants of the two. It may have first appeared during a bottleneck event in which most slumberspark ancestors died during a sudden shift toward longer winters around 500,000 years ago, leaving only a localized population of a few dozen pairs survived who could wait out the worst weather in their dens the longest, spending most of that time asleep and relying on burning fat stores, some of which may have been able to survive a level of hypothermia normally fatal. As those winters became the norm, these individuals which were better adapted also became the successful members of their subspecies, and hibernating would have gradually gone from being an extreme last resort to survival in which many would die and only the strongest would endure, to being an expected, sustainable seasonal activity that may have even been looked forward to. Sleepers today experience an increase in appetite and naturally gain weight in preparation for winter, beginning in late summer, and can go unconscious for as long as 9 weeks at a time without waking to eat or drink. Their body temperatures plummet from around 104 degrees Fahrenheit when active, to just 40 degrees at the lowest point of their torpor, but like many hibernating mammals they occasionally return to almost normal temperatures for short periods every few weeks throughout their dormancy. This is likely related to needing to actually sleep to maintain brain health as a sapient species, which cannot occur during true hibernation. This means that slumbersparks actually do dream during their torpor, and their religious beliefs often feature this "Long-Sleep" state heavily as a sacred time when their spiritual connections are at their strongest. They tend to not recall any interruptions in their dream experiences throughout winter, effectively being only aware of their existence during the relatively brief periods in which their bodies are warm.

On a more practical level, however, the need to occasionally exit the true hibernation state can cause problems to slumbersparks, especially those that have not managed to store enough energy as body fat to fuel these periodic warm-ups, or if winter becomes too long that it becomes physically impossible to do so for lengths of time longer than their 9 week limit. This has become a problem in the modern day for Serinaustra's last slumbersparks as winter becomes increasingly long and hibernation can no longer last throughout it without them either having to wake early and face food scarcity, or face severe consequences when they cannot warm themselves enough to dream; prolonged sleep deprivation lasting for months on end during torpor is fatal, and there eventually comes a time where such individuals will never "wake up". They simply waste away in an unconscious torpor state, even if conditions become warmer, caught in the limbo between life and death until their last energy reserves burn out. No one can help them, then. This has been the fate of many of the youngest sleepers in recent winters, who cannot endure the length of winter so far south any longer, and the trigger for the mass exodus of these people to a new homeland.

Despite naturally needing to hibernate for part of each winter, the slumberspark is a facultative hibernator, not an obligate one. Only under stressful conditions - typically reduced food intake combined with short day length and cold weather - do they naturally den up and gradually drift off into the Long-Sleep. If well-fed, they may not truly hibernate, only entering a semi-dormant state for a few days at a time. They can even be prevented from entering this state despite seasonal changes if they have to remain active every day, and can be provided with enough daily calories, though they may still experience fatigue as a result of mismatched cues telling their body to do different things. A very small number of modern slumbersparks, and the vast majority of hybridized ones, cannot enter hibernation at all, and the gene which cues the process to start it may be turned off in these individuals who must feed regularly throughout the winter and remain warm and awake except for short and more typical daily periods of sleep. These individuals may be considered "evolutionary throwbacks", and are more physiologically similar to redcoats, but it is not certain if the lack of hibernating ability they show is a primitive trait or one that has evolved secondarily. Historically they may be viewed as important protectors of their clans during their long-sleep by deterring den-invading small predators, but also had high mortality themselves because they could not save energy. Most intergrade populations, like the Tsku-Kir (see below) are similarly unable to hibernate, though experiments have found ways to turn these genes back on and enable the process, which has medical benefits in certain instances. Some also now believe this latent ability makes these hybridized sylvansparks one of the most naturally-suited of any people to survive prolonged space travel...

The "Intergrade" Sylvanspark

A highly variable hybrid taxon that combines traits of the steppe- and slumberspark subspecies in unpredictable ways.

Intergrade sylvansparks are descended from both redcoats and slumbersparks. They have occurred for several thousand years, even being known in the time of the fallen Skyfire Empire, but are today very rare in Serinaustra where the range of the two subspecies was historically disconnected. There is only one place today where intergrades are common, but in that place they are the only sylvansparks, and represent an extraordinarily unique culture. They were the first sylvansparks to join the major Serinarctan empires, and are strongly associated with the eastern leucrocottas, who call themselves the Kir. But they did not make this journey on their own volition. 

The Tsku-Kir are a diaspora population of sylvansparks primarily found within the Fortune River Valley's Kir nation. Their name means "Adopted People" in the primary language of the state. The Tsku-Kir descend from both the steppe sylvanspark and the slumberspark, but with greater contribution from the former (a ratio of around 70/30 inherited genome in most modern individuals.) The Tsku-Kir's ancestors were taken north by Kir in the now-disgraced Curatorial era, around 440 years ago, as a diverse population which they - as self-proclaimed curators of the world - intended to preserve in captivity among many other species in a vast collection. The captive-husbandry of endangered species is not, itself, why the era is now looked upon poorly by modern Kir. It was because their collections back then would include all of the "lesser sophonts" among them - most other species now known to be of equal intellect would qualify. Most of these did not persist for long in captivity, including those of isolated and "savage" leucrocotta such as those of the Vilelands and the slaughtersprinter scrounger. But the sylvanspark did. Their survival is probably because of very adaptable diet requirements, and better tolerance to larger and more crowded groups that goes hand in hand with a better ability to alleviate social tensions within them without dangerous physical conflict than most sophonts. Though their housing conditions and standard of living was not abysmal in state-sponsored "preservation parks" of the era (for the Kir had already a history of keeping exotic species extending thousands of years, and even had concept of environmental enrichment), the scrounger peoples were still trafficked there and kept prisoner with very limited space compared to the lands they came from, often forced into close cohabitation with genetically distant groups they did not even share language with. And while the sylvanspark was immediately recognized as highly intelligent, it took many years for them to be granted autonomy and to be viewed as more than an endangered zoo species.

The dominant opinion for many decades was that the sylvansparks, sapient or not, had been saved from imminent natural extinction by their captivity, and that it was the morally correct action to keep them there for their own safety. By the time the Kir public no longer supported this and the transported sylvansparks at last gained their full rights, around 360 years ago, they were almost as alien to the cultures they had come from as the Kir were. They mostly refused offers to be sent "home" and simply stayed where they now lived and had grown up, adopting the Kir's culture for themselves. Little history from before their captivity is retained in memory, and the Tksu-Kir have no commonalities of culture or language left with sylvansparks still living on Serinaustra today and most would be reluctant even to acknowledge themselves as being of the same species. Even centuries ago, they would have had no way to know which tribes their ancestors were taken from, and even if they did, most which may have existed at the time of their capture are now extinct. The Tksu-Kir are truly a transplanted people, cut-off forever from their roots and made to grow into something new, at the expense of all that they once were. For this reason Kir leucrocotta may still feel obliged to care for the Tksu-Kir, for they can never return what their own ancestors took from them. This has at times resulted in internal strife within the Kir peoples, as the modern Tksu-Kir may be perceived to receive disproportionate support from the state compared to its least-well-off leucrocotta citizens. At the same time, Tksu-Kir remain a minority in politics and less frequently hold high ranking positions than leucrocottas, though they are more equally represented in most other career paths.

Above: an intergrade sylvanspark of the Tsku-Kir ethnic group wears garments associated with the Kir people. Their feathers are intermediate in length and color between the redcoat and slumberspark, but their face is unfeathered like the former. This individual has painted their face with makeup, emulating the natural patterns of a leucrocotta. 

Today, the Tsku-Kir are legally and socially considered a subset of the Kir themselves, and view themselves as such, though their very different anatomy gives them some leeway in how exactly they present themselves and leads to some aspects of culture which may differ from other Kir. They usually dress similarly, and it is common (but not universal) that they wear makeup on featherless parts of the face that resembles the innate markings of leucrocotta faces, though leucrocotta wearing blue and red colors in the reverse also occurs in more limited contexts. Though Tsku-Kir come from a diverse genetic background, they retain the steppe sylvanspark's distinct morphs of "nurturer" and "protector" though these two forms are not as drastically differentiated and their traits are not tied to any individual's social roles. Protector Tsku-Kir are frequently considered the ideal of physical appearance, for their longer feathers resemble leucrocotta manes, and individuals of either sex who are lacking them innately may wear artificial crests. Through the blending of their two ancestor subspecies, Tsku-Kir mostly occur in a similar range of orange-to-red color as the eastern Leucrocotta, and outliers who differ may experience discrimination.

Despite issues with biases toward certain traits, in some ways Kir society is very inclusive, more than most mixed-species cultures around the world. Because Tsku-Kir differ significantly in shape, size, and inherent physical ability from eastern leucrocotta, the result has been the integration of a wide range of user-friendly amenities across the Kir nation suited to the widely differing bodies of their inhabitants. Though this has always been the case to an extent wherever leucrocottas and whisperwings cohabitate, such as in the craterlands, for the most part each species has constructed its own living spaces and rarely shares them with the other. But here, both Tsku-Kir and Kir variants of chairs, bathrooms, door handles, cups, handheld technology, and even vehicles are readily available. Tsku-Kir find their greatest accommodations in the larger urban centers, however, and in rural regions typical leucrocotta ergonomics may take priority. Most Tsku-Kir live in a few of the Kir nation's largest cities, and they are still very rare in other places.

They are still mostly unknown to the Craterlands leucrocotta, but the whisperwings know they exist. That worries them, because they have already set a precedent - the leucrocottas could replace them with their own hand-faced birds. The Kir prove that leucrocotta don't have to need whisperwings around at all to make their own civilizations - they could be relegated to an afterthought, as the Kir do not need their own neighbors, the Zenith, nearly as much as the Valley leucrocottas have been led to believe they need their own whisperwing allies. The control they now hold over their empire is becoming unsteady as the world around them continues to change.

Additional variation:

Color Abnormalities

All species occasionally show mutations which affect their appearance, with those influencing color among those seen most frequently. In the wild, species that show an abnormal coloration have reduces chances of survival, mainly because predators can more easily spot them. In sapient species which are dominant in their ecosystems, mutations are less immediately fatal. Social selection instead becomes the main limiting factor in their survival, as they may be shunned by others of their kind. But in sylvansparks - especially the steppe sylvanspark - it is not always so straightforward. 

Xanthism (a shift of all red pigment to yellow), albinism (total lack of melanin pigment), and melanism (an excess of melanin pigment) are the three most common color mutations seen in sylvansparks. Of the three, only albinism is often universally regarded as unattractive, and the resulting pale eyes and skin are also highly susceptible to sun damage, making this still the rarest of the three. Albinos may survive childhood, but rarely have long lives, and do not often succeed in acquiring a mate.

Xanthistic males are considered immasculine and unattractive by most social standards, for their plumage is transformed into a color strongly associated with femininity. But females with this trait are often considered especially beautiful, and it occurs at a low but consistent rate in the population for this reason. 

Melanism, the most common color abnormality of all, is the only one to provide a survival advantage over the natural coloration on an individual level, as it is associated with stronger immune response. It is considered unattractive in the female, but the social structure of the redcoat tends to still allow such females to reproduce whereas similarly disadvantaged males would not. Melanistic males are often still viewed as attractive, if slightly less than others, and may be larger than normal colored individuals, making them regarded as better protectors when the coat color occurs synchronously with the protector morph variant. 

Piebald patterning, common to other sophonts, is extremely rare in the redcoat sylvanspark, but occurs at slightly higher rates in the slumberspark, showing a random overlay of white patches over the base color of the feathers and turning exposed skin partially pink. The genes for the piebald form of leucism may no longer exist in the modern redcoat population following its population crash after the Skyfire Empire. Today, it is mostly the Tsku-Kir who may show it, probably inheriting it from their slumberspark ancestors and showing it more often due to a reduction in natural selection against such traits due to their modernized lifestyles. 

~~~

The Seaspark

The swimming sophont.

The seaspark (or finfoot) is the only native Serinarctan sylvanspark, and one of the biggest living members of the genus, with only some protector morph redcoats being larger. They are the only scrounger people who are primarily marine, and the most aquatic of any contemporary sophont, though the coastal lineage of whisperwings are also strongly associated with water. Seasparks have historically been semi-pelagic, feeding mainly on fish and marine invertebrates captured in open water, but tied to coastal communities where they must brood their eggs and raise their young. Adult seasparks can spend months at sea, and are able to sleep near the surface in frequent short instances averaging only a few minutes long, many times throughout both day and night, which lets them rest without needing to haul out on land or float vulnerable for hours at a time. Chicks do not have the endurance to spend nearly so long away from land and initially require longer blocks of sleep, several hours at a time, consistent with the other sylvanspark species, which means they cannot stray far from land until more than 3 years of age. Taking up to 6 years to reach full adulthood (and being highly dependent for at least 3 of those years) parenthood is a long job, but one made somewhat easier through cooperation with many others in what may be the largest social groups of any scrounger people. Thousands of seasparks nest and live together when rearing young, with different groups alternating watching creches of children and departing on journeys lasting several days to collect food potentially hundreds of miles away from shore.

They tend to have a strong sense of unity, for each family could not succeed in raising their young alone without the aid of others, and this is a core foundation of the society they have built together. It places the highest value on teamwork, cooperation, and community, and seems to reflect a belief that the good of the many is not more important than the good of the individual, but leads to the highest welfare for everyone. Individuals that break this code and neglect social responsibility, by not sharing with their neighbors or refusing to tend other's young, are shunned and left without social support, which is typically debilitating; they can reform and pull their weight, or they may be exiled to be independent alone on the fringes of society. Few ultimately choose the latter. However, the expectations put upon a seaspark living within this structure can be quite high and at times overwhelming, and the system like most is not without its flaws. Generally democratic and equal on principal, there always exist some with more power that may over-exert their influence and take more than they need, breeding resentment. Seasparks, though they may broadly be considered peaceable, can be prone to develop opposing factions and to stage even violent rebellions against leaders whenever they perceive their living conditions are unfair (whether this could mean not getting enough support, or having to share more than they have to give) and this can lead to back and forth pendulum swings between highly socialized systems of government in which very large clans of multiple unrelated groups are encouraged, and somewhat more independent social systems based on smaller extended families that are expected to support their own to a greater degree. The precise and most efficient balance of sharing and cooperation with your fellows versus individual freedom and agency, it seems, is hard to get exactly right. Especially in times with uncertain environmental conditions and the possibility of food scarcity.

Today conditions along West Ridge are changing, and increasing ocean warming in the area is requiring the seaspark to adapt. Pelagic fisheries are declining, and seasonal prey movements have become unpredictable. This could have brought an extinction event to the finfoots, but has instead been only a challenge to overcome, for despite their unique way of life, they are still sylvansparks, among the most ingenious and innovative of any of Serina's people. The world is changing, but they have found ways to adapt and face it head-on. Seasparks are not obligate carnivores, even if fish is the bulk of a natural diet, for they have not yet been isolated from their ancestral way of life long enough to lose the ability to digest and make use of plant foods, and this is one thing they have in their favor. In times of marine prey scarcity, when competing predators may face starvation, they can readily turn to seaweeds, grains gathered from coastal grasses, and the eggs of birds like villaingulls to fill out the gaps in their diet. And seasparks, who have access to hundreds of thousands of years of uninterrupted cultural progression without collapse like the redcoats experienced, also have and make full use of agriculture to help control their own food supplies when wild prey is less available.

An ancient farming method still used by the seaspark today involves raising both seaweeds and sessile animals - bivalves like mussels and filter-feeding snails - on ropes suspended into the water from rocky cliffs in large farms, and periodically harvesting food off the ropes as it grows. This allows consistent meals to be gathered without having to travel away from the nesting site during periods of dangerous weather or when predators are in the area. The last few centuries of increasingly long periods of warm water and windless conditions reducing nutrient availability for their "crops" have made this less reliable too, however, and have required many more recent and widespread changes to their ways of finding food. Noticing that terrestrial environments are not effected by the mysterious decline in the sea's productivity, seasparks have recently become less pelagic and far more associated with freshwater rivers and lakes within West Ridge where food is much more abundant. Now they make extensive use of dams and artificial streams to catch and confine fish that would naturally migrate to and from the sea to breed, and they raise others in permanently isolated ponds like paddocks, keeping them from escaping and defending them from other predators with sheer numbers and weapons that even rival sapients like far more powerful leucrocottas cannot create on their own. And even as more stagnant, rapidly warming seas support fewer native fish, new opportunities sometimes present themselves: invasive algae from the south now begins to grow unchecked with little to eat it, which attracts different species like herbivorous pteese which strain plant foods from the water. Once rare visitors to the region, they begin to nest there. And as such strange and foreign species settle and form new colonies, the seasparks take advantage of this new food source too. Rather than hunt their new prey to its eventual extinction for a short-term gain, they are forward-thinking; they quietly take only a few adults and mainly harvest a percentage of their pupal "eggs" instead without harming the adults, ensuring a renewable source of protein. They also deter other predators to protect the rest, making them feel safe so they continue to return and breed there every year. They become a constant presence around the nesting colonies, and these animals lose any fear they once had. Taking only what they need, and never more, the seasparks have begun to manage the combtooth ptoose as a semi-domesticated animal that, here more placid than elsewhere and no longer migratory, is already becoming reliant on their protection for its own survival.

A common religious belief shared by one of the local cultures tells that this movement away from the ocean and toward the bounty of the land is not only good, but inevitable, with stories going back thousands of years predicting periodic "shifts" in which their people must alternate from land to water and back again to survive the changing phases of the world. Though seasparks do not have a written history (something possibly difficult when you are always wet), they do have a rich and far-back oral history which goes back tens of thousands of years. It is quite possible, even likely, that their beliefs about these "shifts" are to some degree based on recollection of previous small-scale climate change events which have affected their way of life going back many generations, even if those effects are now accelerating. Some believe the mythology may go back even further, possibly to the time that seasparks and upland sylvansparks still coexisted, and that it is from that long-lost sister lineage that they still retain a concept of people much like themselves (who indeed are but another version of themselves), which live only on the shore. If similar, though smaller scale warming events in the waters around West Ridge have occurred occasionally for thousands or tens of thousands of years, then this would have given seasparks plenty of opportunity to find ways to survive them, and may explain how readily they have adopted what appear to be entirely new ways of life in freshwater in the span of only a few generations. Likely, their kind have already been through several of these shifts. What may be different this time is that this may be the last warming event, one from which the local seas will never recover, forcing a more permanent change to the seasparks' way of life.

Though very different in appearance and in lifestyle from any other species, the seaspark's most dramatic identifying characteristic - its large lobed feet - is controlled by only a small number of gene mutations, and they still have much in common with other sylvansparks. They are partially interfertile with the upland sylvanspark (the collective clade to which both redcoats and slumbersparks belong), with about 50% of hybrid offspring also being able to reproduce. They are generally the males, in a pattern consistent with most birds which still use the ZW sex determination system, which includes all tentacled birds and sparrowgulls, but not metamorph birds, and only some burdles. Today hybridization is prevented purely by lack of proximity to other sylvansparks, which have begun to inhabit the northern continent within just the last few hundred years, and not in this location. Previously the finfoot's ancestor and its closely related, extinct sister species would have lived further south and surely did meet at least the steppe sylvanspark, and until 700,000 years ago the two occasionally interbred. This can be evidenced today through DNA analysis of the steppe sylvanspark, which has identified several genes which likely originated in the seaspark lineage, at a rate of roughly 0.05% of their genome, while there is negligible redcoat DNA in that of the seaspark. This is consistent with a pattern of gene introgression that only went one way, which can be explained by first generation hybrids inheriting only a very slightly modified toe structure which is not very effective to swim with, but does not excessively inhibit walking or running. Hybrids could only ever survive living among their redcoat parent species, and so would be much more likely to go on to breed with them as adults and further dilute the seaspark's genetic influence over time. However, to inherit fully lobed digits and a much greater swimming ability only requires two copies of a single recessive gene, and such individuals are significantly hindered in running ability, so that any multigenerational hybrids in later generations that inherited this condition would have reduced odds of survival within steppe sylvanspark clans (though even such homozygous recessive hybrids would not have lobed toes as large as their seaspark ancestors, as in that species a number of secondary gene mutations also appeared over time to further perfect and refine the structure of the foot as a paddle, which do not consistently inherit in any hybrid descendants, thus making them less fit than both parent species.) This means that though interbreeding could and sometimes did happen, there were strong selective pressures acting on both populations to limit it and keep the two lineages isolated enough over time to evolve down their different paths and diverge. Yet though hybridization was never extremely common, it is possible that the relatively bright purple skin tone common to the face of female redcoats was introduced into this subspecies from ancient seaspark hybridization, as it is not seen in slumbersparks or in the earlier and ancestral sylvanspark species.

And with a world once wide, separated, and mysterious becoming increasingly known and connected, the seasparks will soon find themselves face to face with other sylvansparks for the first time in modern history. How they will interpret the rediscovery of their long-last land-living forebears, and what will come of their renewed interaction, remains to be seen. All across Serina, once solitary groups of people are learning of others across the horizons and interacting more than ever before. This isn't to say the seaspark did not already know some of the other peoples sharing their world. They already speak to the local whisperwings, who are as prone to talk and trade with larger races as any others in the world, but they also rally against the fierce leucrocottas that they know only as a predator, not a savior, in one of the most directly confrontational inter-sophont dynamics to be found. How would they react to meeting leucrocottas that long ago abandoned their hunting instincts? And what might come of different sylvansparks reuniting in a modern world, where ancient natural borders that served keep them apart have fallen? Change can be a good thing. But with so many inter-connected parts and players, it can also be messy. How the seaspark, just one of so many pieces in the puzzle, may one day fit into the big new world forming all around it is still unclear. But that they will have a place is certain, for even in the face of many new challenges, they have proven themselves one of the most adaptable and enduring sophont species of their era. They will face whatever comes next boldly, and continue onward into the future to come.

Other Extinct Sylvansparks

Not all players in the game of life can win, and not all evolutionary roads led to the modern day. Though some sylvansparks went extinct, this does not mean they were inherently lesser than those that survived - only that they proved less adaptable to changing circumstances.

Arcticspark

A solitary sophont.

The arcticspark was the largest of all the sylvansparks, capable of weighing over 100 lbs and standing up to 5 feet high, though most were slightly smaller. This species' ancestor diverged from the ancestor of all modern species very early (no later than 295.5 million years P.E.) and though it coexisted with anatomically modern sylvansparks of both extant subspecies for hundreds of thousands of years, interbreeding did not occur and was seemingly no longer possible by this time. The arcticspark was a sapient species, like its relatives, but differed from modern sylvansparks in its level of sociality, living in much smaller groups only during the warmer seasons, and often spending much of the year alone (except for mothers and a single offspring, who would likely have been dependent for even longer than in smaller species, perhaps upwards of ten years.) This solitary habit likely was in response to seasonal food scarcity, with finding enough to sustain one individual being easier than to maintain an entire family unit. Its gigantic size (relative to its kin) was a recent shift, and for at least 2.5 million years its ancestors would have been smaller and more similar to the ancestral sylvansparks and their other modern descendants.

What, exactly, kept them apart from those relatives long enough to change so drastically is uncertain, but significant cultural differences based in different physiology may have made interactions rare and difficult, preventing interbreeding even though the different species at that time would have still interacted and lived in overlapping ranges. An inability to communicate with each other may have become a problem well before the arcticspark had evolved, and its solitary lifestyle may have gone hand-in-hand with a loss of vocal flexibility retained by other sylvansparks to speak complex verbal languages. While modern sylvans and their recent ancestors primarily communicate verbally with body language being a secondary and more instinctive supplement, it is possible that the less gregarious arcticspark had only very limited ability to articulate words of any kind, communicate mostly or entirely through gestures. Though its brows were feathered, unlike earlier modern sylvansparks, it had evolved long feather plumes over each one that would have served to accentuate its facial expressions, which may have been more important than those of other sylvans due to a lack of vocalizations to accompany them. As it grew larger its voice would also have become too low to speak in tones shared with the other species, even if it were to try. This may have contributed to a mutual lack of understanding toward both species from the other, leading modern sylvansparks to view the arcticspark as an animalistic brute (like a bear). This would have gone both ways, as to the arcticspark the pack-like social cohesion of its smaller relatives must also have brought to mind savage wild animals (like wolves) more than fellow sapients. There is less evidence that the arcticspark regularly used tools more complex than unaltered stones and simple wood clubs, and even spears seemed less useful to it than bludgeoning weapons that better utilized its physical strength rather than its lacking fine dexterity. It may have thus viewed modern sylvansparks that could use a wider range of weapons, including metal ones, as a monstrous, unnatural sort of entity.

[EXTINCT]

Arcticsparks like other sylvans were omnivorous, feeding on a wide range of foods that changed throughout the seasons. Summer diets would have incorporated berries and green herbs in abundance, and these low-calorie but highly abundant plant foods must have been important to help store vitamins in their body fat to survive long winter seasons when no such plants would have been available for consumption. Autumn would have brought a brief boom of nuts and seeds, at least in good mast years, and the arcticspark likely stored these foods for later whenever possible. Winter would have been the most difficult time to survive, and this species would have had to wander widely in pursuit of large herbivore prey, and to have successfully killed one such large animal at least every few weeks to acquire enough calories to maintain their health in the frigid conditions. The large body size of this sylvanspark would have helped them store fat to endure lean periods and to have reduced how quickly they lost body heat, traits which must have been necessary for them as they did not burrow or enter a torpor state like the slumberspark. The arcticspark in winter must have been a desperate creature, sharing what little food it could cache away with no other of its kind, and whatever small social tendencies it could enjoy in the richer summer months were forgotten in the grip of winter when it was every individual for itself. Conflicts over food and suitable den sites like caves where these people would have hunkered down to avoid the worst of the winter storms, were frequent and often fatal, and with few other animals in their environment big enough to prey upon them, the arcticspark was likely its own worst enemy in any far-southern place where other sylvansparks were not commonly present.

For several million years, the arcticspark seemingly inhabited the polar regions of Serinaustra with only minimal conflict with other scrounger sapients that could not tolerate the extreme cold that the austral swamp experienced in winter. Other sylvansparks would have only been summer visitors. A little under a million years ago this would change; a polar ice cap was expanding, surrounded by a harsh tundra, and the taiga-like environment of the boreal swamp which the arcticspark inhabited shrunk in size. At the same time, one population of modern sylvansparks was pushed south by competition with both a rival faction of their own species and the slaughtersprinter, moving off the grasslands and into the forest. They were smaller than the arcticspark, but had great advantage in large numbers, and competed with it for food and winter denning sites (caves large enough to house one territorial arcticspark could accommodate dozens of smaller cooperating sylvans.) It was likely these ancestors of the slumberspark invading the arcticspark's habitat which ultimately led to its extinction, first by taking its winter shelters, and as they increased in number, killing their large rival as it became a threat to them by invading their winter hibernaculms to prey upon them in their winter sleep. It is unlikely that the solitary arcticspark would have initially understood the danger of revenge that would come back to bite it after attacking some of a large, coordinated group. For to the arcticspark, survival was something you ensured entirely on your own. So when a huge group of furious enemies who have not forgotten that you killed their friends and family comes to find you later on when you are vulnerable, the realization that you made a grave error comes much too late to save you. It is likely that for the time the arcticspark and slumberspark lived together, their interactions were more like humans and grizzly bears than anything approaching two groups of people with the ability to come together and interact as equals.

As the austral swamp grew smaller and the climate even colder, the social slumberspark ultimately came out the winner against the fiercer arcticspark, driving them away into inhospitable open habitats where they could not survive the winter, and killing any which dared come near to their communities until no more were left. Today, the arcticspark has been extinct for slightly under half a million years, since right around the time the earliest anatomically modern slumbersparks evolved their hibernating ability, and with it became extremely defensive of their vital hibernation sites from all rivals. Few traces remain of what was once the strongest and most formidable of any of the sylvanspark people. Yet in the old stories still remembered by the sleepers, tales of ancient wild giants that towered above them still linger, from a far-off era even before their redcoat cousins returned from the north to meet them. They call them bouldermen, with "men" in this case being best translated as "people", though in this case they are only referred to as being a monstrous wild-man figure that resembles people with none of the "humanity." As big and as sturdy as immovable stones in the forest, old tales tell of how they came down with the crash of thunder in autumn storms, and how they could tear down caves with their tentacles alone and destroy everything they touched, and could only be defeated by the combined power of many. Though no such proof of a boulderman has ever been found by a modern slumberspark, this does not necessarily mean that some do not continue to believe in them, among other grandiose and exaggerated mythical beings that may once have arisen from some real and tangible creature in their ancestor's environment, now long gone except in the stories they once inspired.

Surfspark

A stepping stone on the path to a modern descendant. 

The surfspark was the first distinct member of the seaspark's evolutionary lineage - the species from which it ultimately evolved, but also which continued to coexist alongside it for over 2 million years largely unchanged. As such, it is not absolutely and utterly extinct, so much as the population which remains of it has become changed. 

Surfsparks had appeared by 2.5 million years ago, well before the modern upland sylvanspark existed. They lived until just about 700,000 years ago, after the upland sylvanspark had diverged into its two lineages that today are represented by the larger redcoat and smaller sylvanspark. Throughout their long history, the surfspark had occasional interbreeding with all of their other relatives but was isolated in many ways by its differentiated lifestyle, which reduced how often the different groups came into contact. Most of their food came from the water, and included a wide range of both plants and animals. Tool use was universal, and the use of fire and metallurgy in at least some populations over their long history is confirmed from several fossil sites from which bronze spearheads, bowls, and utensils have been unearthed. Even so, stone tools using flint remain most common in coastal areas where it was much easier to find. As in the upland sylvanspark, it is most likely that this technology was independently discovered multiple times over millions of years, and may have been shared between different species either intentionally or by accident when it was.

Surfsparks were strongly coastal associated, though also migrated upriver into lakes and could also forge a living in freshwater wetlands, colonizing areas as far inland as the polar circle during the earlier parts of their existences when the climate was less frigid but experiencing range contraction back toward the ocean during glacial periods. An intermediate grade between the upland sylvanspark and the modern seaspark that arose from an early population of them, surfsparks had lobed feet and were capable swimmers and divers, but were not yet able to spend weeks on end at sea and needed to return to land to rest every few days. Their plumage was beginning to resemble the modern seaspark's, and had become shorter and denser, however males retained a prominent head-crest more like the ancestral sylvanspark, which has since been lost in the more streamlined modern species. They were still small, like the first sylvansparks, and their nostrils were set lower on the snout, making it somewhat less convenient to surface for air quickly without exposing most of the head, and their feet were not as large as the modern species which meant they were slower in the water, but were not quite as awkward when running on land. This let them also utilize inland resources more effectively, but competition from terrestrial sylvansparks and slaughtersprinters would have remained strong pressures to remain near water, which would provide them an escape route from conflict, as well as ambush points to target enemies as they were forced into natural choke-points at river crossings. Though disadvantaged on dry land, the surfspark would likely have maintained a near-monopoly over coastal environments and prevented the extension of other scroungers from colonizing even most outlying islands. In the time long before myth and legend spread from the north kept sylvansparks wary of sea-crossing, the surfspark may have posed a very real reason for the land-lubbers to avoid the ocean.

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Though there is evidence surfsparks used boats to extend their influence over the seas and it is likely they reached Serinarcta multiple times, long-lasting settlements did not seem to develop: it is possible that leucrocotta were too formidable an adversary for them, as they seemingly were for the thicketsprinters, and that these predators impeded northern colonization attempts for this species which was still reliant on spending much of its time on dry land. It would not be until 800,000 years ago that one of their descendant lineages would successfully establish itself in the north, becoming the modern seaspark, which was not as reliant on land bases for its survival. Still, the fact that where they now survive there is a region where most leucrocottas are either solitary or uncommonly small may not be a coincidence, as it gives the seaspark - which is also uncommonly large for its lineage - more of an equal footing in conflict. The divergence of the seaspark lineage into two species - the more primitive surfspark and its modern descendant - seems to have happened due to distance as the population became divided east and west of the Stairway Peninsula in central Serinaustra. Modern seasparks appeared on the western side, from which they eventually crossed the ocean to colonize Serinarcta's west coast. But once they evolved, they also migrated east, coming into contact again with their less-derived precursors. Though the two could interbreed, cultural and behavioral barriers made conflict more likely, and modern seasparks may have contributed to the extinction of their ancestral species by driving them out of open water and forcing them ashore.

Pinned between the first of the huge and aggressive steppe sylvansparks, the greater slaughtersprinter, and their new rival from the water, the surfspark may have been left with nowhere to hunt or to nest. Other factors may also be to blame; the surfspark's extinction is timed closely with a 100,000 year period of time with periods of markedly more unstable ocean warming and the collapse of near-shore fisheries along north Serinaustran coasts, which would never recover to their former abundance. Modern seasparks also disappeared from Serinaustran waters shortly after surfsparks did. And eventually, around 600,000 years ago a new assemblage of fish established along Serinaustra's shores, descended from populations that had already been the dominant groups along equatorial Serinarctan waters for over a million years. Scavenging bottom feeders that were tolerant of heat and anoxia and could breathe atmospheric air, they were very different from the open-water fish of the previously colder and oxygenated coastal ocean. They were strange, but edible, as the littoral leucrocotta and such abundant predators as the finguins of further north could attest. But by then the seaspark was no longer found anywhere nearby. The open oceans along the equator were now almost lifeless, preventing their return to the south where they originated except in very rare, isolated events following temporary sea currents. Though seasparks seem to have been known, if not understood even by redcoats of the recent Skyfire Empire, such rare travelers were insufficient to establish a new southerly population. Today, only the upland sylvanspark still calls the southern continent home, and even its survival here in the face of climactic change is now tenuous.

~~~

The Squabgoblins

These scrounger people were the first to gain sapience, but today are less widespread than their sylvanspark relatives and have faced a long history of competition from them. They are carnivores, and though capable of tool use, are generally less inclined to invent new technology or adopt it wildly. Cultural changes in this genus are often slow to take hold. Once shaping the ecology an entire continent's ecosystems, this lineage of scroungers is somewhat less influential today, restricted to small ranges away from most of their competitors. 

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Above: 290 million years post-establishment (some 10 million years ago), a lineage of squabgoblin ancestral to both modern species migrated out from the longdark swamp. It was called the ascendant squabgoblin, the very first to become truly sapient. 

~~~

The ascendant squabgoblin's personhood differed in one big way from any sophont species before it. It gained its consciousness very late in life, near adulthood, and its young were still more like pets than children until the time they too got their spark of self-awareness. For slaughtersprinters were specialized to be nearly independent as babies, able to run and even hunt small prey almost immediately. But this came at the expense of their ability to immediately absorb information and learn rapidly, like the sylvanspark could do. Only when they were physically much larger than at birth could their brains finally spare the room to make that leap of complexity and allow the multitude of synapse connections that would lead to sapience.

Sapient squabgoblins laid large eggs, but at only around 8% the adult's body size, they were much smaller than those of sylvansparks. They could thus afford a larger clutch, virtually always two eggs which would hatch about one week apart and thus produce chicks of a staggered age, a common situation where one chick is thus stronger and another may be sacrificial if food can only support one. These chicks were born very differently proportioned than sylvansparks; their brains were smaller, only 1/4 their adult size, but they were more precocial and came "pre-loaded' with many survival instincts including instinctive freezing habits when frightened. 

These scroungers matured faster than sylvansparks and did not live as long; they could breed every single year and often did. Full adulthood and reproductive maturity was reached at 5 years of age, however adult size was fully attained by 3, similarly to the sylvanspark. Sapient squabgoblins differ from sylvansparks however in developing their intellectual abilities initially much more slowly, a result of their smaller braincases that must grow slowly throughout life until eventually nearing the sylvanspark's in size. Though born with more coordination and better survival instinct, they initially lag markedly behind the sylvanspark's rapid progression of milestones, and up until their second birthdays even in modern species ae not widely considered to be fully sentient by adults, but instead more like a dog with the potential to grow into a person. They are not always named until then, and could be considered relatively disposable; it is expected that many will die, and only around one in three to four chicks usually reaches two years of age. Many are eaten by other predators, especially flying ones.

The result of all this is a growth pattern where physical changes rapidly outpace mental ones, and a tendency to view offspring as replaceable until nearly grown, because they only became people long after being born. The sapient squabgoblins are r-selected sapients, able to bear many young with the expectation only a few would grow up, a rarity among other people of their time which were and are K-selected and rear few young for a long duration. 

~~~

This new sapient (as adults) scrounger genus diverged along two major lines within one million years of the hothouse's end, both slightly bigger than their ancestors. One remained tied to the dense forests, now a little fewer and further between. With a range centered on the damp jungles nearer to the coast, they dashed fast and agile, but shorter legs let them dart through trees and beneath snags as they hunted in tangled undergrowth and used the hazardous vegetation to their advantage to corner and catch their animal prey. We will see more on this lineage soon. But the other adapted to a thinner forest as dense jungle had now opened up into a savannah; on longer legs, they dashed between the thickets and chase down their prey. And so this lineage became the slaughtersprinters. 

Greater Slaughtersprinter

The running sophont.

The greater slaughtersprinter (or everrunner) is a hypercarnivorous scrounger sophont specialized in every way toward running, with extremely lengthened legs, blunt claws, and enormous lungs to keep up with a huge need for oxygen while on the move, even in the thinning atmosphere. Able to reach a top speed of 55 miles per hour in short bursts, they excel even more at long-distance pursuit over many miles; with a modest five mile per hour pace, they may cover over 30 miles a day, running their quarry to exhaustion with an endurance few animals in their environment can match. They have evolved to maximize every stat that benefits their speed or endurance, which comes at some expense to almost everything else from their strength to the complexity of their societies. Though they are innate tool users (hunting mainly with spears and similar weapons in up-close combat), they have less dexterity in their tentacles than the sylvanspark and are particularly poor at fine motor activities such as are involved in creating tools, rather than only using them. Most of what they use are simple spears, carved somewhat crudely from naturally straight branches of woody shrubs or, more infrequently, the leg bones of other prey animals. The motor patterns behind creating and using simple "stick tools" like these are innate, sometimes beginning crudely at just a few weeks of age, and slaughtersprinters do not have to be taught to do so, though they markedly improve with a skilled tutor to observe. In this they differ from the sylvanspark, which has very few instinctive behaviors and must learn from others, or from trial and error, to make and use a wider range of tools, being initially disadvantaged but ultimately excelling better at creating entirely new tools or strategies to use them. The two species have very different development from infancy to adulthood which are closely tied to these differences, with sylvansparks having altricial babies which are initially helpless but quickly learn to walk and talk and build, while slaughtersprinters hatch from their eggs in a superprecocial state where they can run quickly, catch food, and escape predators almost instantly. A baby sylvanspark half a year old is already beginning to speak and show theory of mind, while a slaughtersprinter chick is more like a pet to its clan for almost two years - fully able of running and hunting and eventually following instruction, but completely unable to speak or communicate complex thoughts - and shows a notably delayed and gradual development of self-awareness and ultimately sapience. Sylvansparks hatch with large brain cases that don't have to grow very much into adulthood, and so brain development occurs rapidly early on. Slaughtersprinters' braincases begin small, packed with instinctive behaviors that benefit their survival, but only growing large enough for their brains to fit enough neurons to develop sapience and greater comprehension of language and abstract thought when they are much older.

Only after two years of age are everrunner brains big enough to begin to more rapidly acquire "culture", and they experience a mental growth spurt, typically becoming fluent speakers by 2.5 years of age whereas before 2 they rarely speak more than babble, though can understand simple words and commands. A 3 year old everrunner is roughly equivalent to a 6-7 year old human child, a 4 year old to a 12 year old human, and a 5 year old to an 18 year old human. At some point just past 4 years of age an everrunner's development typically outpaces a sylvanspark's as it reaches adulthood just one year later, while the sylvanspark will take at least four more years, though after age four this development is much slower and more gradual than before this age; the progression from age 4-8 in sylvansparks is broadly akin to 14-18 years of (human) age. Though sylvansparks and everrunners are broadly equivalent in intelligence as adults, the sylvanspark's much longer adolescence likely makes it predisposed toward an easier skill of acquiring language, complex tool use, and skills that require much practice to perfect, coming at the cost of being extremely helpless babies that everrunners can initially run circles around. Sylvansparks are generally more innovative than everrunners and have a greater adaptability to sudden environmental changes. Unlike sylvansparks, everrunners can breed from as young as four, though rarely successfully. Most will have their first surviving offspring by midway through their fifth year.

Lifespan in this species maxes out quite low around 40 years of age, often significantly less in the "wild" (reaching just 20 might be somewhat uncommon and noteworthy) and there is no data on how it might be improved with medical care to go by. Sage is only 36 years old at the time of bleeding Heart, and is already quite geriatric; their lives are hard, for they run constantly and wear out fast. But unlike humans, and unlike sylvansparks too, even very old everrunners typically remain completely sharp of wit. Their deaths usually come as a result of becoming physically infirm and unable to keep up with a group or hunt, and it is possible that with care they could live somewhat longer, at the expense of their mobility. It might be difficult for such a fast, nomadic species to adjust to a sedentary lifestyle, however - even in old age.

Slaughtersprinters, though they seem broadly equivalent in general intelligence once adult, are much less innovative than sylvansparks, and their small, static brains in infancy when most young sophonts are picking up countless new skills are likely related to this. Though they gain sapience with age, they miss out on the rapid development characteristic of other sophont's young childhoods. Though adolescents and adults can learn new skills, it is difficult for them, and when compared to the neurotypical sylvanspark of the same age they may be perceived to have a learning disorder, though this comparison is heavily flawed for the two are each adapted well to different niches and cannot be directly compared. But it is true that slaughtersprinters have a much higher tendency to stick to familiar traditions and less inherent motivation to seek new solutions, and sylvansparks naturally come up and experiment with new ideas spontaneously and with high frequency, from as early as a few months of age. Novel problem solving does not come natural to sprinters in the same way, but rather is something that is only learned with difficulty and usually in times of dire need, and so their cultures are more static over long periods of time. Indeed, most slaughtersprinters today live virtually identically to their ancestors millions of years before them, living their lives in small family groups with very little connectivity to others outside these units, and leaving very little impact on the world in which they live.

In some ways, this is to their benefit; these people tend to live within the means of the natural environment to support them, and for the most part disturb it very little. They are strongly nomadic, rarely staying in one place for any length of time, and they hunt wild game rather than raise livestock, hunting already sparsely distributed animals over wide areas. With no towns or cities, and with small and isolated social groups, they leave their environment pristine. But the world they call home, the verdant grasslands of northern Serinaustra, are not theirs alone, and this has never been more true than in the last few thousand years. Sylvansparks - particularly redcoats, with their greater inclination to change, build, and adapt and their larger and more cohesive social groups, have by now changed the world around them very much, leaving the slaughtersprinters struggling to keep up and adapt in time. For millions of years the ancestors of these two scrounger peoples have had a turbulent history interwoven with conflict and trade, war and tolerance. So far the slaughtersprinter has endured it all, largely because they are more tolerant of cold, dry climates where agriculture is difficult and where there is less surface water to drink. They can travel widely to find scarce food sources, get much of their hydration from the blood of their prey, and so eke out lives on the edge of the sylvanspark's civilizations. Sylvansparks almost cannot survive without fire, which they use for warmth to survive harsh climates, to cook food to improve its digestibility, and (in earlier eras) for metallurgy. But slaughtersprinters rarely use fire at all and have greater natural tolerance for cold weather, including specialized blood vessels in their legs that prevent heat loss by cooling blood before it goes down the leg, and their physiology is adapted to a diet of entirely raw meat products which they digest with high efficiency. The collapse of the redcoat's skyfire empire, which ultimately included a significant slaughtersprinter minority population, was utterly catastrophic to the sylvansparks. Nearly resulting their extinction, it took them over 2,000 years to recover any numbers from the end of the empire. For the slaughtersprinters, the loss of so much technological advancement in the world was a reprieve; millennia of reduced sylvanspark competition resulted in a population increase across the continent. This is no longer true, however, for in today's changing world where habitable lands become narrower, the sylvansparks have returned, and now there are fewer and fewer refuges they are not desperate enough to make their homes. Where the two now meet, the sylvanspark is always at great advantage, and the sprinter is running out of places to run. Its ancient enemy now can follow it anywhere and brings with it complex tools, fire, domesticated animals, and incomprehensible cohesion - not just of a few individuals, but communities of thousands that unite as one, an impossible concept for the average slaughtersprinter.

The relationship between sprinter and sylvan has always been one cut red with blood, but never before has it been such a one-sided slaughter. Most sprinter races survived the fallen empire by moving into the least desirable wilderness regions while sylvans concentrated themselves into cities, but in the modern era many of these races have now been destroyed by the red wave they cannot outrun any longer, a storm washing over their land because there is simply no other land left to take. The ice caps are expanding, and where they're not arrived grass is drying into desert. The world has never been smaller, and as living space and resources become every harder to come by, species that once might have been able to find ways to coexist now come into conflict more and more. Everyone is now struggling to survive what is already here and what is next to come, and in such times, it is an unfortunate truth that people will do whatever they must do to ensure their own families endure. And in times like these, some species, through simple differences in their behavior, will fair better than others. Sylvansparks are adaptable because they are malleable; they can change everything about themselves, and so they can survive even when the old world is gone. The slaughtersprinter, created from and for the old world, now struggles to leave behind all it has ever known.

Today the future of the everrunner, now an endangered species, is far from certain.

~~~

Thicketsprinter

The explorer sophont.

9 million years in the past, when the slaughtersprinter's ancestors first left the forests, they left behind a sister lineage behind. While their habitat choice for now remained unchanged from their precursors, some of these jungle squabgoblins were doing very remarkable new things as well. The thicketsprinter was a sapient species too, and for now remained the only people of the forests of Serinaustra. But in a competitive environment and a changing climate, it would not be alone for long; the squaboons which would become sylvansparks would eventually follow, for intelligence breeds intelligence as rival species influence one another to survive new threats - or to utilize tricks learned from another. And it would soon have competitors that were its intellectual equal from even more distant lineages in the wider world beyond the sea, as well. Its forest refuge away from all others could not last it forever, for the climate would eventually change, reducing it, and so the thicketsprinter would have to find its own way to adapt in turn.

The thicketsprinter, though still one of the most intelligent scroungers of its time, lived in smaller groups than earlier squabgoblins, a trade-off between acquiring a greater caloric need to support a sophont brain, so that food doesn't go quite as far among a group as it did before. But this, in turn, meant that it was now outnumbered by less enlightened scrounger species which hadn't yet crossed the threshold, and which might never quite do so, for this was a race with many different paths, and not all would run the same. To defend itself from rivals, the thicketsprinter became more reclusive, avoiding conflicts that its ancestors and its living relatives will respond to with war-like aggression. It learned to to climb trees to a fair degree, something others could hardly do at all; this required a more opposable first toe, now sporting a sharp, hook-like claw, to provide grip as the animal straddled a tree trunk and pulled itself up one step at a time. Now it often roosted above ground, where it was safer. It later created permanent structures high above the ground, weaving together canes and reeds into shelters, and stitching plant fibers into comfortable mattress-like nests. Hiding their villages with foliage, they often escaped notice from competitors down below so long as they remained quiet - and so they also spoke in a gestural language with limited vocal components, in contrast to the garbled, noisy voices of their earthbound cousins. But the best way of all to avoid nosy neighbors, and to keep out of the line of fire from hostile relatives, was to go where they simply don't go at all. From weaving mats and structures in the trees, the thicketsprinter learned to make rafts, too - perhaps by observing natural ones, formed after storms from trees and vines washed out to sea, often with small animals carried unwittingly aboard. Most rafts would only go a short distance; the luckiest would reach near-shore islands, free of rivals. 

Over four million years, the thicketsprinter's range contracted to a band of forests closest to the sea as an ocean of grassland began to split the vast jungles in two, cutting them off from the southern woodlands, and bringing again closer contact with their slaughtersprinter rivals. Their rafting skills became better while their defensive abilities grew weaker - they were pushed out of their continental range, to the fringes. And yet here they thrived, for they spread around to places no other squabgoblins could, riding waves, learning to navigate by watching the stars. They learned more with each generation, and taught their young, becoming greater than any one could be alone, becoming a culture. They followed migrating birds, species that only lived on land, for they could only be going to somewhere else with land even if they seemed to be going into the great blue unknown.

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And in doing so, the thicketsprinters eventually reached the edge of Serinarcta, a mysterious land of untold wonders.

But their time here would be short lived, because this was a land that was already transformed from the jungles and forests they knew, even more changed than Serinaustra - and a refuge from other scrounger people would not necesarilly be safe from other people, perhaps even more dangerous than they could know. For there were other runners in this race than just the scroungers. And new intelligent enemies would greet them almost as soon as they ventured beyond the most distant of the Trilliontree islands. When the forest receded and the fierce leucrocotta appeared, the thicketsprinters retreated. But now caught between strange landscapes and foreign enemies, and an old homeland vanished and colonized by once-outsmarted cousins, the thicketsprinter ultimately found itself with fewer and fewer refuges to call home.

The very first people to cross the seaway and settle on the other side, their explorative venture would prove ill-timed and, for the most part, short-lived. Before the rise of empires doomed to fall and long before any scrounger person stepped foot again on Serinarcta, the thicketsprinter would be gone from most of the world. Its many enemies on both sides of the sea, now equally intelligent but better adapted to changed landscapes, inherited a world left a little bit lonelier - but would all soon forget it had ever existed at all. 

Seasparks seem to have evolved to exploit an emptied niche as a sea-going sophont almost immediately following the thicketsprinter's disappearance along Serinaustra. Some evidence that includes remains of thicketsprinters butchered and seemingly consumed in the remnants of sylvanspark settlements in eastern Serinaustra 3 million years ago indicates that a period of gruesome conflict, in which increasingly aggressive sylvansparks seeking to colonize these territories may be at least partly responsible for that species' local extinction along Serinaustra's coasts. 

Yet in a single place so far-flung and so isolated that no competitors would reach it for millions of years, the thicketsprinter would survive... 

Solitaire Sprinter

The castaway sophont.

The solitaire sprinter (or scrubrunner) is a tiny species of scrounger people about as small as the slumberspark and sharing several adaptations with that unrelated species, for both live in dense forests (albeit very different ones.) It is the smallest living slaughtersprinter and dramatically differs from the larger and better-known everrunner not just in size but appearance, behavior, and habitat, though they do share several fundamental traits, such as a delayed sapience which occurs around two years of age and subsequently very precocial, though dim-witted young until that age. Though their ancestors were more widespread and were even found on Serinarcta, today the solitaire has the smallest range of any scrounger people and is restricted to a single island group. Their home is the Meridian Islands, set northeast off the coast of Serinarcta's vilelands region by about 750 miles, 900 miles from the mainland of Serinarcta, and about 1,000 miles from the tip of the Cape of Calamity in Serinaustra. While greater slaughtersprinters became specialized as a cursorial species and dependent on cold, wide open grasslands in areas with regular rainfall, solitaires live in hot, arid scrubland to near-desert conditions, and run not on plains but through thickets and tangles of thorny vegetation. They make their home within abundant cactaiga vegetation that grows as a stunted and difficult to traverse spiny forest here. This community of drought-tolerant, woody plant-life, interrupted by deep ravines and tall limestone karst formations which are the remnants of Meridia's once expansive submerged snail reefs, is now the dominant ecosystem on these islands. These "desert forests" and natural rock formations provide cover for the solitaire from inhospitable daytime heat and radiation, allowing them to emerge at dusk to hunt when conditions are more suitable. The deeply eroded rocks also form channels and deep, shadedpits where rare rainfall collects and is protected from evaporation, providing a lifeline of fresh drinking water to this scrounger which despite its dry habitat cannot go more than a couple of days without a drink, much like its mainland relatives.

The solitaire's short legs and small stature (just 24-28 inches high, and weighing as little as 18 lbs) allows them much like the slumberspark to scurry with ease through the matrix of branches and spines which no larger creature could so easily navigate, letting them pursue their own prey and escape potential predators. There are many advantages to being small on an island, for it means an individual needs less calories to survive, and this is all the more important on a desert island like this where productivity is low due to limited water (despite highly fertile soil, due to its ancient origins as a reef.) The ancestors of the solitaire were already quite small, though, for they had adapted to be natural rafters and cross the seas on their own small "islands" - boats - which also made them predisposed to survive well in the small and isolated environments they arrived on. The thicketsprinters from which they descend also acquired a mobile grasping first toe and a sharp talon which made them better at climbing and manipulating objects. Solitaires retain this trait, and their small body size also allows them to pull their own weight with their facial tentacles, making them by far the most skilled climbers of any scrounger people. This enables them to easily move through the uneven karst terrain of their islands both to descend into caves to find water and ascend cliffs and spires upward to get out of danger or access difficult to find sources of food, which in this species is entirely meat-based and predominately smaller, fast-moving animals which may be chased and caught as a group in the open or captured individually from small hiding places in the rocks. Though solitaires are more creative tool users than greater slaughtersprinters due to their better dexterity and better access to materials like wood and thorns which can be used to easily create them, they also show adaptations to better capture prey with their own bodies; their left and right tentacles are noticeably longer than the rest and highly elastic (somewhat like those of the slinking crink, which was a very distant relative). They are used to rapidly reach into crevices and grab small animals, pull them out of their dens, and bring them in reach of their sharp "thumb claws" which they use to pin down and kill their quarry. Where their own appendages don't offer enough length, they use long finely carved spears to do the job and fish out much of their food from between the rocks in this manner. Like everrunners, scrubrunners cannot efficiently digest almost all plant foods (though unlike them will sometimes eat small pieces of fruit for water and sugar) and around 99% of the diet is meat by necessity.

Solitaire sprinters, living in a much hotter environment than others, are the only slaughtersprinters which have lost all feathering on their faces for thermoregulation purposes. What plumage remains is short and very soft, having less need for the coarse water-repellent guard feathers seen in all other scrounger people, though this also means they quickly get waterlogged in rare rain or when swimming, which can cause them to cool quickly if it occurs at night and means they must sleep in sheltered places like caves during stormy seasons. They have acquired a sylvanspark-like appearance as a result of their bare faces, and look very little like their actual closest relatives; the male has also developed brighter skin colour on the snout than most other sprinters show, making use of the newly-exposed canvas to show his physical fitness. Scrubrunners also have featherless throats with vascular skin through which they dissipate body heat, and which in males are darker and expand when filled with air, producing a loud, booming voice which is considered attractive to most females in a general way. The adult male's voice sounds like that of a much larger animal, even deeper than the voice of the everrunner; this voice drop occurs only at puberty, with all juveniles having high pitched, more feminine voices. It may have also evolved for a secondary use: intimidating would-be predators by making the owner of the voice seem much larger than it really is. This may not be necessary in the modern solitaire though, for its survival long after all the other thicketsprinters may be due as much to its learned aggression as its isolated home.

Their ancestors were notably less territorial than other sprinters (and sylvansparks and leucrocottas when they evolved), and had adapted to avoid conflicts whenever possible by fleeing, often into trees, and onto boats. This only worked well early on, when their rivals were mostly below the threshold of sapience, and this passive nature gradually failed the thicketsprinter. Over time they became the targets of much more persistent and intelligent enemies like near-modern sylvansparks and the first sophont leucrocotta, which both ate the same things they relied on to survive and hunted them to extinction directly on both mainlands over several million years. Solitaire sprinters avoided both those enemies entirely for a long time by colonizing an inhospitable island far from where either of them lived, but in a modern and increasingly connected world, they were eventually discovered again by the Kir who were among the first to make tentative landfall on their island in recent centuries. Perhaps hardened by their three million year long isolation here, which made them more resilient and tenacious creatures than their free-spirited and wandering forebears, these island dwellers did not welcome such intruders kindly; initial attempts to explore the island were described as bloodbaths, with entire crews being killed and their ships stripped clean of all useful materials by "swarms" of seemingly united "savages." For hundreds of years, the Meridians were thus left virtually untouched. Their location was not ideal for any purpose, with the land extremely difficult to build on due to the terrain, freshwater very rare, solar radiation deadly except in the northern part of the island, and no quality coastal fisheries, so there was not much to gain by pushing the issue and forcing a settlement on the island with its extremely hostile natives. To this day, the islands are designated as protected by a Kir-Zenith treaty, but this is not recognized by the whisperwings of Sanctuary Crater, who have instilled several coastal settlements on small outlying islands to the north. This comes at the detriment of the native and endemic dusky whisperwing (whose ancestors may have been introduced to the island by hitching a ride on thicketsprinter boats), who have had to contend with introduced diseases.

Yet the arrival of foreign whisperwing settlers has now enabled some communication and understanding between the continental civilizations and the scrubrunner people for the first time, as these scroungers had already long coexisted and been communicated with by the island's native whisperwing people, some of whom now have met settler whisperwings and serve as a bridge to introduce foreign culture and knowledge to the island. Much has been learned only recently about these mysterious and perhaps misunderstood islanders, who seem in fact to be among the most peaceful of any scrounger sophont groups amongst themselves, and which have found ways to cohabitate their many different cultures and tribes with much less friction than would be expected. They do this by uniting their different clans with important marriages that ally them, and make friends from those who would otherwise be competitors. In doing so transfer culture and skills and history throughout their wide population, keeping them cohesive and grounded by similar ideals despite their diversity, which makes them very good at coming together to defend their shared way of life against any outside threat. Unlike other scrounger people, the solitaires usually live in very structured clans in which only these chosen, most esteemed married pairs usually reproduce, with others expected to contribute to caring for their children, for the survival of the chosen pair's line means the survival of all of their shared culture, and these "royal pairs" will pass on the fittest genes of the entire population. Or at least this is the idea in principle, though without actual knowledge of genetics, it's often a guessing game in which the most beautiful examples of each sex a group can find are paired together by an aging, previously chosen "alpha couple." And though this system does reduce inter-clan conflicts significantly by bringing different people together, it is not a perfect system, as it is very restrictive to all but the few arbitrarily chosen rulers of each clan, who ultimately set the rules and maintain their power (sometimes well past the time they should have been replaced by younger successors) which is often quite authoritarian. Still, for its benefits and its flaws, it is an interesting example of a native system of scrounger government which has survived into the modern day long after those of the southern scrounger groups had fallen. Only the seaspark, similarly isolated and left uncontacted by other civilizations, is comparatively old and rich in its own surviving history today.

Though the Kir and the Zenith still maintain a no-contact policy with the Meridian people as they long did with the Serinaustran people, as more knowledge of the world beyond the island spreads between the allied solitaire clans, some of them express interest in the outside world for the first time. Barriers keeping the world's many factions apart are growing increasingly fragile in the modern, increasingly inter-connected world. It may take only a single dam to break to unleash a torrent, as many isolated cultures will no longer be isolated in the future in an extremely multicultural world of numerous sapient species that must find ways to coexist when each may be as alike as they are different. For the major civilizations of the whisperwing and the leucrocotta who are used to things going their way, the way they have for hundreds or thousands of years, this will require a lot of adjustment, and it may not all be peaceful.

Other Extinct Squabgoblins

Only one species of sapient squabgoblin is definitively extinct, insofar as having left not a single descendant. But it was perhaps the most fearsome of any, and few may mourn its loss...

Savager

The sophont that only once was.

Most extinct species seen here have been gone for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. But there is one relative of the scrounger sophonts that those living today just barely missed knowing - a species which lived in the same world they know live, in virtually identical modern conditions, among their ancestors only a few dozen generations away. The savager was the biggest of all the squabgoblins, and an early line to branch off the ancestor of the greater slaughtersprinter 4.8 million years ago. It was completely isolated genetically from them for that entire time, for one very good reason: the savager's ancestors long ago lost their sapience, reverting into fierce wild animals to survive the ice age.

To lose sapience is rare - it is much more often a species simply goes extinct. But among slaughtersprinters, who are not born sophonts, but become them over time, the spark of self-awareness ignites once in every lifetime and in every individual. The line between person and beast which in other sophonts was crossed just once or a handful of times long ago is the finish line in a race that all slaughtersprinters are expected to complete as they grow up. But nature is imperfect, and development does not always go exactly as it should. Very rarely, a slaughtersprinter is born that does not grow into itself; it remains infantile, which for this species means instinctive, animalistic, and predatory. A sprinter that never gets its spark is not disabled in the normal sense of the word - there is no comparison to examples in other sapients, who remain people no matter their conditions, for they begin as people. Feral slaughtersprinters are what happens when an animal that can (and usually does) become a person fails to do so. And instead becomes something else, something truly dangerous: a monster masquerading as a family member. This is a nightmare scenario to us, but one that the sprinter people can find very real. Hunting behaviors are largely instinctive, often learned and perfected before personhood develops, and an individual like this can do them very effectively even without being sapient. What it cannot do is reason, or be reasoned with. It never learns to empathize with others, and as it grows and matures, it becomes defiant of authority, just as even a "tame" tiger cub eventually grows into a deadly adult carnivore. It becomes a completely different creature, a feral, primitive predator that is simply incapable of living among civilized fellows. Such an individual is incapable of living forever among its people, for the urges of a powerful adult predator without a concept of morality to guide it or an understanding of why rules must exist means it mean that it often becomes a real danger to others, a deadly wild animal among people. If it is not destroyed, it will likely eventually kill its own, for it cannot understand why to do so is wrong. But it is difficult, for most sprinter people, to do what is necessary for the safety of their families - to kill their own. They may believe they can control it. They are wrong. A feral sprinter is intelligent like a chimpanzee or a wolf is intelligent, and even though it may not want to harm them, it will one day want to challenge them for dominance. So one day it attacks. It kills. And then driven away by those grieving and enraged ones who were its family, yet who it will never truly relate to, it flees into the world, lost and on its own.

Feral sprinters were caught outside both the civilized and wild world. With nowhere that they really belonged, and driven to associate with what they perceived as their own kind and yet which they could never truly be, most were eventually killed by sapient sprinters. Sprinter people perceived these feral kin as horrors nestled down deep in their uncanny valley - the worst sides of themselves, what they so long ago once were and have risen above. But these exceedingly rare flukes were still genetically slaughtersprinters. They could hunt and survive and even reproduce. The ancestors of the savager must have originated from cast-out ferals from clans of people that found one another, forming wild packs, and passing down their quirks to new generations. At least, we must hope that no people were born from these packs, destined to be as out of place as the feral sprinters were in those which birthed them. And we cannot be sure why it seems only once did a lineage of feral sprinters survive and evolve, eventually, into something entirely new - perhaps there were once simply more sprinter people, a larger pool of genes from which a mutant sprinter animal could be born. Or, perhaps the more time that passed since, the more this dangerous fluke of genetics has been strongly selected against, so that today it is largely unheard of. But at some point, millions of years ago, several feral sprinters were born, cast out, and found one another. They learned to avoid the people they once were, and so with each other they survived. Though they may have been capable of simple tool use at first, they were unable to perfect skills normally gained in later adulthood, and eventually evolved away from using tools at all in favor of stronger jaws and sharper beaks. They became much larger than any group of sprinter people, eventually reaching six feet tall and a weight of 250 lbs - up to four times as big as their intelligent counterparts. Yet they remained fast and deadly, stalking the steppe and competing with the sprinter people for prey, neither any longer seeing the kinship they once shared, and neither ever mingling except in bloody battle.

[EXTINCT]

Savagers shared the steppe with slaughtersprinters for two million years (and smaller feral ancestors had already lived here for over 2 million years before them) and they were the steppe's largest predator. They never traveled in large groups, for their size meant just two or three could take down anything that they pursued. And though always rare and thinly distributed, they remained just competitive enough against their smarter rivals, for their smaller brains were more energy-efficient, and so they needed to eat less to survive. Though sprinters undoubtedly killed them whenever they had the chance to do so - and often targeted their highly vulnerable young - the savager's ultimate downfall came from another scrounger sophont entirely: redcoats of the skyfire empire, impressed by the animal's fierce nature, captured them by their thousands from horseback with ropes and nets, caged them, and set them upon each other and other wild beasts from across the land in shows of gory spectacle. Hunted to extinction for blood sport, the savager had disappeared from the steppe by the middle of the empire's reign. Today they are forgotten, their memory lost even in the cultures of the surviving clans which were so often fractured and re-built in the time since the empire's fall. Whether it is a tragedy or a blessing that this species disappeared before anyone now alive could know it is hard to day. Though born and cast away as a monster among men so long ago, the savager by the time of its extinction was not worse than any other wild creature living by nature's ancient laws. It was simply an animal, one that like all others, was doing its best to survive. And only when faced with such unnatural threats as an unsustainably expanding civilization did they ultimately fall victim among dozens of other animal species once endemic to Serinaustra. Their end came at the folly of "smarter" creatures than themselves, who would go on afterward to nearly destroy themselves in turn. Maybe, by then, the savagers weren't the ones who were animals at all.

Get to Know Some Individual Scrounger People!

Below can be seen several scrounger people who live contemporary to one another in this precise period of time in the civilization of Sanctuary Crater (what we will say is the year 300,040,000, though this would not be the year in their own calendars which would not be nearly so old!) This is the period of time in which the Bleeding Heart story arc is set, and some of these individuals play a role in that story, while others simply live in the same setting. Several of these characters were sponsored by Serina's wonderful patrons, and if so, their entry will say so.