Darkstalkers

Physique

At 6 meters in length and up to 2 meters in height at the shoulder, Darkstalkers are one of Aphaura's largest terrestrial predators.

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Distribution

Darkstalkers are exclusively found on the island continent of Aphaura, and have never been observed attempting to travel to neighboring islands; their ancestry is likely derived from a long generational line of creatures which have never evolved to island hop and have become marooned on the continent of the Red Sea, where life on Scourge first began.

For most of the year they live exclusively within dense Aphauran jungles, where their light sensitive eyes are comfortable in the dark, low-light environment provided by the interwoven canopies. Their behavior changes greatly during the Dark Season, when those afflicted by the darkness in the absence of the Red Sea Crystal take advantage of the season to venture out into the open. During this time they spread out across the darkened North-Eastern portion of the continent, taking advantage of the darkness to hunt hibernating prey and travel afar.

Territorial Behavior

Darkstalkers live compulsively solitary lives interlaid with content socialization encounters and cooperative mob hunts. They spend the majority of their time alone 

Social Behavior

Darkstalkers navigate social environments that are simultaneously solitary and complexly social. While they spend the majority of their time alone, they maintain intimate relationships with neighbors that reside in overlapping territories built up gradually through years of peaceful encounters; individuals that cross each others' paths will typically sniff, greet and investigate each other before departing to their solitary ways. It isn't unusual for them to spend brief amounts of time with more familiar acquaintances for mutual grooming and rest, lazily socializing together on open stones or Cleurke branches before eventual departure. These interpersonal relationships formed by neighboring Darkstalkers are significant and long-lasting, forming larger overall communities of distanced acquaintances who frequently mob, feed and socialize together.

These long-distance communities are significant to the survival of an individual, providing vital benefits such as cooperative mobbing partners, parasite removal through the form of mutual grooming, options for mates and a safety net for their offspring. Familiar allies are more likely to form mobs together to take down large prey, and while they are happy to share with their allies they are likely to be aggressive towards and drive away anyone unfamiliar that approaches their shared meal. This is also significant for mothers with young, as small offspring benefit from their mothers' positive relations and will be allowed to feed from mobbed corpses if they are by her side; it is an important task for a mother Darkstalker to forge healthy companionship with her peers for the sake of her children, as Darkstalkers may cannibalize the small offspring of unfamiliar strangers.

Despite leaving the care of young solely to the mother, it isn't unusual for Darkstalkers to practice monogamy and they are more likely to prefer the same mate recurrently. This loyalty is nevertheless weak and they are content to turn to other options in their prior partners' absence, though they will only consider individuals that they are closely familiar with. A mother with young must play her cards carefully with her neighbors, as a hungry Darkstalker is not opposed to infanticide but may be reluctant to commit such an act with a familiar neighbor.

Hunting Behavior

Darkstalkers are opportunistic ambush hunters that primarily hunt small prey using solitary methods, but they are also known for occasional mobbing events utilizing cooperation to take down larger animals.

A Darkstalker on the hunt, much like its namesake, will creep quietly along the jungle where they utilize their elevated senses in the low-light environment to take their prey by surprise. They will creep in the direction of unwary small arthropods, dragons and arthrothorians before lunging abruptly in a brief burst of speed and agility, using their sharp and nimble forelimbs to reach forward and clutch the small victim before it manages to escape. With little stamina, Darkstalkers will typically lazily forgo any prey that gets away fast enough; young adults or the desperately hungry may attempt to hunt larger nimble prey such as Apods, but they will soon learn that they are best equipped for smaller targets.

Mobbing

Large, hefty herbivores such as Boar-Gliders and Surelk that travel through a jungle may find themselves the target of an eager number of hungry Darkstalkers. Attracted to the scent of the traveling herd, Darkstalkers interested in pursuit may trail the herd for hours while emitting long shrieks to attract others of their kind. Should its neighboring allies be hungry enough to be of interest, they will heed to the calls and begin to gather in numbers of around 3-6.

The congregated mob will follow and loosely surround the prey while producing a series of clicks and chatters both to communicate with each other and to stir the prey into unease. The relatively lithe bodies of the Darkstalkers can be easily damaged by large opponents that they are otherwise not equipped to hunt, and as such the utilization of psychological strategies to exhaust the prey through panic is essential; in the cluttered environment that Darkstalkers can easily climb through, larger panicked animals may find themselves susceptible to ramming into or stumbling over obstacles. Unable to resort to their usual stampeding solutions, attempting to run will instead result in scattering their numbers, allowing the predators to converge their shared strength upon an individual which has become isolated or is identifiably weak or injured.

Darkstalkers will use their long, mantis-like forearms to slash at their prey from a distance they can easily retreat from, eventually driving it to exhaustion and piling upon it, using their combined weight and bites to take it down. With their small maws usually equipped to hunting smaller prey, Darkstalkers would usually be unable to deal a killing blow even if they tried, and henceforth the majority of their mobbed prey is taken down by exhaustion and eaten alive.

Dark Season

The social and hunting behaviors of Darkstalkers changes abruptly with the annual sinking of the Red Sea Crystal. With the North-Eastern portion of Aphaura bathed in darkness for a little over 100 days, these light-sensitive predators take advantage of the season to migrate beyond their jungles in swarms. While the Dark Season is a time of winter-like retreat for most of Aphara's inhabitants, it has the opposite effect on these predators which thrive in darkness and provides an essential time of the year to socialize, attempt to find more lucrative territories, and take advantage of the more readily-available prey to build upon stores of fat.

Neighboring Darkstalkers tend to come together with elevated excitement and curiosity, gathering in congregations that trek together beyond their jungles' confines into Aphaura's open prairies and rocky hills. They come together with the encounter of other such groups, forming swarms as large as 30 individuals that travel across the continent in masses in search of hibernating prey. They tend to be far more sociable during this time, interacting freely with strangers and having reduced aggression over food or space, though they will still prefer the companionship of their familiar allies and tend to diversify into smaller sub-groups consisting of these congregated communities.

Their prey roster changes greatly during this time as their usual small, fleeting options have dug themselves into safe burrows while many larger animals are resorting to hibernation-like stasis to survive a season of minimal light. Many Darkstalkers are attracted to the shorelines of the Red Sea where they hope to feed on slumbering Kentrals that hibernate on the open rocky cliffs. Smaller groups of hibernating apods and dragons can be completely wiped out if discovered by a Darkstalker swarm during this period, who will readily feed off of them over the course of the season.

The largest prey, such as Boar-Gliders and Surelk, have mostly migrated to the edges of the continent during this time where they can live in light provided by external sources in the clouds beyond Aphaura. Occasionally though it is not too rare for inexperienced yearlings to have failed to migrate in time, finding themselves lost in the darkened area and almost certainly doomed to predation.

At the beginning of the season of Emergence, Darkstalkers will begin to separate from their swarms as they return to the safe darkness of their jungles. Individuals with established territories will typically return to them, while young adults entering their first Emergence will be more explorative, seeking out new lands in which to survive.

Lifecycle

Darkstalkers typically reproduce in the Emergence and Rainy Seasons, with the bulk of offspring being born near the end of Emergence and very rarely ever being born in the Withdrawal or Dark Seasons. The stores of calories resulting from the feeding frenzy partaken during the Dark Season are essential provisions for reproduction during the Emergence, and the largest, healthiest offspring are typically those born during Emergence.

Darkstalkers practice loose monogamy, preferring to revisit their previous mate and only occasionally exploring other options. An interested male will follow a female counterpart for a few hours, pursuing her for far longer than their socialization encounters normally last; a female wiling to entertain him will be patient, but those that are not receptive will tend to feel annoyed and begin to lash out aggressively, at which case the male is swiftly chased off.

Males do not partake in any paternal care of the eggs or young, which is instead left solely to the mother. She will den in a hidden space on the forest floor confined beneath a shield of interwoven roots, where she will gather twigs and leaves to insulate a clutch of 1-3 eggs. The eggs will be left alone for most of the time while the mother only checks in once every several hours, with her visits becoming more frequent over time as the eggs become ready to hatch within 4 weeks.

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Diseases & Ailments

Like all inhabitants of Aphaura, one of the greatest microbic threats to Darkstalkers are the sheer amounts of bacteria which thrive in the hot, high-humidity environment. Corpses in this ecosystem rot quickly, with carrion being quick to become too toxic for most predators to consume. Open wounds have an almost guaranteed chance of becoming infected, though young and healthy individuals are more likely to survive.

Like their Apod cousins, Darkstalkers exhibit an unusual biological defense against infected wounds through the form of self-induced amputation as a natural immune response. Should a wound on one of their long lanky limbs become infected, the immune system may respond by effectively quarantining the area from the rest of the body and eventually discarding it entirely. Darkstalkers which exhibit a missing hand or exoskeletal plate usually incurred such an injury from this process.

When it comes to parasites, the hide of a Darkstalker is in of itself a unique microcosm of microbes. Some mites are detrimental to their health, digging into their skin to feed off their blood much like ticks or fleas; other mites are beneficial, feeding off bacteria on their skin or consuming the harmful parasites. Darkstalkers resort to various strategies to promote populations of the beneficial mites, most often by rubbing against various fungi or floral species to utilize the chemicals they produce. Mutual grooming with their peers is also essential for the removal of large tick-like parasites.

Relationship to Humans

Darkstalkers are curious carnivores eager to mob any large, slow-moving creature that wanders into a communal area, but are simultaneously cautious and older, more experienced adults are quick to retreat from unnerving threats. This creates a threat to human traveling groups and encampments that is significant and worthy of attention, but which can be fended off with minimal casualties using appropriate protocols.

Humans should avoid traversing through areas of jungle heavily populated by Darkstalkers. Should a group find itself being stalked by a single or a few pre-mobbing individuals, usage of bright flares or fire can be effective in repelling them; in the absence of such, gunfire can typically cause them to become frightened and scattered even without striking any. In the rare case that the human group is being hunted by an inexperienced young adult which choose snot to flea, fatal gunfire may have to be used. Aiming towards the limbs or extremities can be useful in fending off a potential predator without causing lethal damage, as Darkstalker's immune systems can respond to embedded bullets with self-inflicted amputation in much the same way they respond to bacterial infections.

Darkstalkers become extremely dangerous during the Dark Season when they gather in confident groups at high numbers. Darkstalkers are not accustomed to dealing with threats or dangerous opponents during the Dark Season and thus become far bolder in their pursuit of prey, demonstrating increased persistence despite gunfire or flashes of bright light. For this reason human encampments must practice increased surveillance and defensiveness during the Dark Season, sporting heavier artillery during travels, never leaving an encampment without using an armored vehicle as primary transit, or by spending the Dark Season away from the North-Eastern portion of Aphauara.