Creature Creation Challenge #23

[Malkuthe Highwind]

Creature Creation Challenge
This challenge explores one facet of worldbuilding: creature creation, as the title says. Whether or not you're a worldbuilder, at one point or another, you're bound to create different kinds of flora and fauna for your world. This challenge brings two new things to the table: first, all the submissions for this challenge will be put into a "bestiary" of sorts in the Worldbuilder's Guild which will be a resource for yourself and anyone who needs creatures for their worlds; second, every week, there will be a different difficulty for the challenge. ​

Difficulty Levels, #7bd181

Difficulty 1

- build a creature around a specific theme

Difficulty 2

- build a creature with a specific body part around a specific theme

Difficulty 3

- build a creature to fit a specific role in an ecosystem with a specific body part around a specific theme

Difficulty 4

- build a creature based upon an animal on earth to fit a specific role in an ecosystem with a specific body part around a specific theme

Difficulty 5

- build a creature that will survive in a specific environment based upon an animal on earth and fit a specific role in an ecosystem with a specific body part around a specific theme.

This Week's Difficulty, #7bd181

Build a creature around a specific theme​

Criteria, #7bd181

Theme: Sunlight

Creature Template, #7bd181

Feel free to use this following template for your creatures. You can add on to it or remove things from it as you wish or not use it at all.

Name:
Appearance:
Role: Predator/prey/producer
Habitat:
Life-span:
Sentient: Yes/No
Sapient: Yes/No
Means of Sustenance:
Favourite Food Source:
Major Competition:
Mating Rituals: Courtship rituals, mating grounds, mating season, et cetera
Reproduction: you can include period of gestation
Organization: does this creature travel in packs or herds, or is it a solitary creature that only meets with members of its species for the mating season?
Other:

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The Bestiary​

 

[ThousandSwords]

Difficulty 5. Challenge accepted.

Name: Scientific classification of Luxucarius Cenarii, otherwise known as Starswimmers.

Appearance:

The average Starswimmer is a similar creature to what many might call a Jellyfish, although with distinct differences that show due to their rather unique and extreme environmental conditions. Most commonly, to the naked eye away from the sun where it makes its home, the Starswimmer appears as a slightly yellowish-white blob, with tendrils extruding from a point underneath the blob in a radial pattern away from the central mouth.

Role:

The role of the Starswimmer in its habitat is unique in the fact that it has no natural predators, and similarly, it has no natural prey. The only distinct reason that the Starswimmers are so limited in numbers is due to the rarity of its foodstuffs. It may be considered a helpful organism to the sun itself that it inhabits.

Habitat:

Lives near a sun. Rarely goes away from that, requiring extremely high levels of heat and radiation to sustain its natural processes.

Life-span:

Unknown. Due to the fact that it continually recycles itself back into a polyp-like state and then back into "adulthood", one can hypothesize that Starswimmers are effectively immortal unless they starve to death.

Sentient: No
Sapient: No

Means of Sustenance:

Starswimmers take in a variety of in-bound interstellar rocks and other various materials, and grind them to their atomic components, sometimes further than that, using that as their sustenance. When this process is finished, they emit a cloud of pure hydrogen that is absorbed into the star's mass, allowing it to perpetuate for longer.

Favourite Food Source:

Comets. Comets are far easier to digest, being of an icy composition.

Major Competition:

None.

Mating Rituals:

None to speak of.

Reproduction:

Reproduction is accomplished through asexual means, by budding off a smaller Starswimmer from a larger one.

Organization:

None.

Other:

 

[Ruko]

Name: Hiberna Solaris, or the common Grass beast.
Appearance:

Role: The common grass beast is both a predator and a producer, peculiarly enough.
Habitat: Grass beasts make their home in the wastelands and similar areas, where plants do not grow from the ground very often. Can be found in deserts too, wandering between oasises.
Life-span:
Sentient: No.
Sapient: no.
Means of Sustenance: The Grass beast consumes smaller reptiles and all manner of mammals. It will scavenge larger creatures.
Favourite Food Source: The grass beast enjoys snacking on rabbits, rats and other rodents most of all.
Major Competition: It's main source of competition is other grass beasts, but it also faces difficulty when eagles and hawks steal it's prey.
Mating Rituals: when looking for a mate, a male grass beast will create an impressive array of different coloured light across it's skin. As this occurs due to "glow in the dark" parts of it's skin, it generally takes place during the night time. Grass beasts will pair for life.
Reproduction: Grass beasts reproduce using a plant-like seed method, making it much more convenient and able to take place while eating. Each pair of Grass beasts will produce 4-6 "shrubberies" of 3-5 "saplings" during it's life time.
Organization: Grass beasts will travel in packs, bringing the ecosystem with it.
Other: The most extraordinary thing about the Grass beast, is that it does not need to hunt very often. It can go where it pleases, and because it is a wasteland environment, herbivores have no choice but to follow the grass beast pack, as the only plant material that grows is that the grass beast produces on it's skin. It was traditionally linked with the theory of sunlight as, just like the paladins and templars represent the sun while keeping order, so do the grass beasts - reducing the number of pests when they get out of hand and keeping the ecosystem alive as they do so.