Strandbeast

The Strandbeasts are a genus of Colossal Aberrations of bestial intelligence which can be found in small numbers throughout the Lordless Lands, Great Fen, and The Bleak in western Wisteria. While no two have entirely the same bodyplan, they fall crudely into three general types: Plainstrider, Mireloom, and Bleakling, respective to the locations in which they are found. Strandbeasts are peculiar creatures, alien to the primary ecology of Ahren, in that they chiefly feed on arcane, primal, and occult energies, the flow of which throughout the world they have been shown to follow. Strandbeasts' extreme size and age lead to the eldest examples of their genus creating microbiomes of attendant plant and animal life that follow them on their rangings. The very eldest Strandbeasts, known as "Dreaming" strandbeasts, have even been known to create small pocket dimensions around themselves, leaving ecological chaos in the wake of their passing.

In areas where Strandbeasts congregate or frequent they are known largely walking disasters and are largely seen as somewhere between a nuisance and a storm. Too large to be killed outright by all but the most experienced adventurers, their peculiar feeding habits, constant roving, and extreme size make them a hazard for anything underfoot, which they seem to be largely ignorant of. In addition, their attraction to (and dependency on) sources of magical energy makes them a problem for the establishment of permanent ritual sites for spellcasters in Arcane, Occult, or Primal spellcasting families and they need to periodically be drawn or driven away from such areas.

Strandbeasts are extremely rare in number - possibly fewer than a hundred exist in total in the entirety of Wisteria, and the areas they rove in are fairly vast. Accordingly, their coming is not a constant threat but a thrice-or-few occurance generation over generation. Many travelers into the Lordless Lands will never see one, except perhaps by hiring experienced guides and seeking them out on purpose. As a result of this and the difficulty in killing them, they have a semi-legendary status in areas outside their range, and misconceptions about their origins and nature are common. They are a popular subject of childrens' stories in the Hearthlands in particular.

Their rarity and hardiness combine to make them less economically significant than Arcwhales, even though it is broadly assumed that many of their constituent tissues are potent arcane reagents in their own right. However, since such materials aren't widely used in the magics of the Confederacy of Sages or the Orcish Nation, this is less of a disadvantage to the people of the Lordless Lands than might otherwise be assumed.

Appearance

Strandbeasts are impressively vast creatures, reaching lengths upward of 60 feet and usually a height between a quarter and a third of that, though Dreaming strandbeasts have been reported at up to three times that size (owing to the nature of Dreaming strandbeasts, these observations should be taken with a grain of salt). No two Strandbeasts are exactly a like, and sometimes their body-plans vary wildly. However, it is possible to make rather broad generalizations about their physique - they are generally headless, eyeless, and largely consist of apparently-open space.

The body of a Strandbeast is constructed of a network or framework of spurs of straight, bony material, made of a crystalline material entirely different from terrestrial bone. These spurs follow natural curves and can be somewhat webbed together with the same material where they meet, forming a structure that makes up the general outline of the creature. Many of these spurs are joined together with thin, translucent membranes, which are responsible for both catching the wind and absorbing, through an unknown process, mystical energies that are the primary source of "food" for the strandbeast. In well-fed Strandbeasts, there are often visible vortexes of swirling energy within the creature's framework that serve as a reserve or stomach of these energies. Very often, senior members of the genus will be covered in some form of plant life and attended by swarms of insects or small birds that have adapted to feed upon it.

These tissues - the membrane and the bone - are difficult to obtain and harder still to work with, in part because the necessary expertise doesn't really exist in any particular culture. It is thought that with the right combination of technique and magic the bone-material can be worked like a metal, and this half-legendary product is known as Ivorium for its color. The membrane is harder to work with as it tends to decay rapidly after the death of the strandbeast and resists all mundane curing processes. Some Orcish Shamanism and Secrets of Nature practitioners posit that if the membrane could be preserved as a leather, Strandlace could be used for protection from and amplification of magical energies.

There is significant variation between the three different types of Strandbeast, all of which seems to be in the name of adapting to its primary environment. Plainstrider Straandbeasts tend to have bilaterally symmetrical bodies with as many as a dozen legs on either side, which they stride "sideways" with in an undulating motion, and a dorsal ridge of membraned spines not unlike a fin that waves in time with their motion. Their elder examples are covered in thick growths of a sort of algae resembling mats of damp grasses, which feeds off of sunlight the primal energy the host is harvesting. Various species of songbird tend to flock to and with such creatures to feed off of the "seeds" formed by these algae. A passing Dreaming Plainswalder Strandbeast has an explosive effect on plant growth, leaving thick tall fields of wild grasses, shrubs, and flowers up to a mile wide in its wake - since the pocket-dimension thus created is circular, this sudden and rapid growth of plant life over the course of a few hours as it advances serves as early warning of its approach.

In contrast, there is the Mireloom Strandbeast, which have tubular bodies more or less on a plane with their "feet" on either side. These feet consist of especially thick growths of the membrane and are undulated by dozens of legs that connect them to the body as sort of pontoons, the full length of the beast. Feeding membranes web among the tubular body as well as forming a propeller-like construct "behind" the creature, which spins gently in the wind. Living in the Great Fen's deepest and wildest flooded areas, and even near the shore of them, they filter-feed on both wind and water to draw out the critical arcane energies found in this region. Because they are largely transulcent, in addition to an underbelly full of mundane algae, they tend to fill up along their tubular bodies with thick and ropy growths of arcane alagaes. They also tend to have schools of fish adapted to living in their shadow, with the smallest examples feeding off of their algae and the larger fish eating the smaller fish. A Dreaming Mireloom Strandbeast brings its swamp with it as it travels and could theoretically wander anywhere it chose. Fortunately they are extremely rare as the delicate stranbeasts tend to get stranded and starve in the bogs of the Great Fen before ever reaching such extreme age.

Bleakling Strandbeasts are arguably among the hardiest types of Strandbeast, owing to the simplicity of their bodyplan and the sheer abundance of occult energies for them to feed on in the bleak. They have flat bodies, just thick enough to contain their pool of stored energies, and advance on hundreds of peg, unarticulated legs by undulating the full body using energy derived from sail-like fins on their back - they move along their length rather than sideways like the plainstriders. Covered in fungi, they attract (and possibly even create) other kinds of lesser aberration to them. Dreaming Bleakling Strandbeasts are arguably the most dangerous of all kinds of Dreamers as their wake actually expands the bleak. Fortunately, the geography of the Bleak largely prevents them from leaving it as they are just as easily stranded as any other kind of Strandbeast, and rare besides.

Ecology

As mentioned, Strandbeasts feed on magical energy according to their type, and in all cases pick the most abundant type of energy in their region - Primal in the Lordless Lands, Arcane in the Great Fen, and Occult in the Bleak. This energy is their only form of sustenance - while they are pushed along physically by the wind, it in no way helps with their metabolism, and their bodies seem to be expanded and repaired by converting the energies they have absorbed directly into solid matter. They have no mechanical metabolism and therefore have no need for air or water, and seem impervious to extremes of temperature.

Strandbeasts are rare, slow growing, and reproduce extremely slowly by the timescales of mortals. They possess two forms of reproduction - fission and framing. Under the fission regeme, a Strandbeast whose body becomes fragmented can be said to have reproduced, so long as two or more segments of its previous body retain enough energy to function and are structurally stable enough to continue moving; thereafter, any surviving segments can be said to be their own unique strandbeasts. Under the framing regeme, an Elder or Dreaming Strandbeast of any type may begin to construct a smaller (usually large sized) version of itself within the central cavity of its main body, which eventually breaks away and falls free of the "parent".

Strandbeasts have no natural predators, and even sentient beings rarely bother to hunt them as only the smallest examples are conquerable by even a reasonable group, and none of the cultures in their ecological range are organized enough to have large enough professional hunting groups to track them. At most, Strandbeasts are driven or drawn away from settlements and other important sites using ritual magic as they respond to even threats of force defensively. The most common cause of death for Strandbeasts is becoming stranded or broken by natural features of the terrain - a plainswalker getting mired in the Great Fen and unable to move (and thereby feed), or the pontoons of a Mireloom flooding. The next most common cause of death for these creatures are freak accidents, as some natural phenomenal (such as direct lightning strikes) can be sufficient to break up their bodies and render them immobile, leading to them "starving" to death.

Strandbeasts should not be considered fully sapient and do not learn or possess language - in fact, they rarely interact with one another. Their intelligence is more in line with large herd ruminants like oxen, buffalo, and other cattle species.

Origins

Nobody is clear on the origins of the strandbeasts, and even the gods cannot speak to this with any real authority. Many, including the men of Baghar, ascribe the creatures to Anghara, though this is inconclusive as they are not purely geometric or purely energetic and do in fact have physical substance. Since the Strandbeasts serve little to no actual purpose and seem to follow no actual plan some have suggested an origin in Pandemonium, with some Ars Magica practictioners who have become aware of the creatures suggesting the oldest examples are the product of a Planar Conjunction between Ahren, Axioma, and Pandemonium.

Abilities

In addition to physical strength and the ability of the eldest "Dreaming" strandbeasts to create pocket dimensions, many of them are talented-ish spellcasters, however instinctual. They can technically cast any and all appropriate spells from the school that corresponds with the type of magic they consume, but more likely simply exhale the stored energy as in a dragon's breath weapon.

In Relation To Others

With the traditional lands of Bastonia protected by the cliffs that make up the Bastion Line, most Bastonians believe that the strandbeasts are a myth, and even those living in the Frontier Counties discount accounts of them as a petty attempt at mythological warfare by the Orcish Nation. However, the Orcish Nation and Confederacy of Sages have both lived in the region long and exclusive enough to have a rich legendarium full of encounters with Strandbeasts and both cultures have rituals used to shift the flow of energy around the plains and keep themselves and the Strandbeasts well-seperated.

The men of the city of Baghar train in drills for dealing with Strandbeasts as they often inadverantly draw them (especially the Bleakling variety) to the city. However, the city's strong defenses are largely insurmountable to the mostly-harmless strandbeasts and the Angharite Janissaries have drills suitable for drawing them away, back into the bleak.

Because of natural formations preventing them from ranging so far, the Strandbeasts are unheard of except in legend in the Atarlie Empire, Hearthlands, and even the Shimmering Shore. The Carcolie and Clans of Magnus go one further and consider them to be entirely fictional.