Creature Creation Challenge #25

[Malkuthe Highwind]

Welcome to the 25th Creature Creation Challenge!

This challenge explores one facet of worldbuilding: the creation of fantastical flora and fauna, as the title more or less indicates. Now, whether or not you're a worldbuilder, at one point or another, you're bound to create all manner of beasties, big and small, for your world. This challenge aims to tickle your creativity into bringing to life some of these creatures, and to that end, it brings two 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; and second, every week, there will be a different difficulty level set for the challenge. Can't have you budding and veteran worldbuilders alike growing complacent, after all. ;)​

[FIELDBOX=Crash Course in Difficulties, #7bd181]

#7bd181 Difficulty 1:

- This one's easy. Just create a creature that fits a certain theme.

Difficulty 2:

- This one's a bit more difficult. There's a theme to follow but you also have to use a specific body part.

Difficulty 3:

- Here's where things get challenging. You will still have to make your creature match a theme. You're still going to have to use a certain body part. However, now it has to fit a certain ecological niche. Predator or prey, to give you two examples.

Difficulty 4:

- Ooh boy. This one's tough. Your creature has to match a theme, has to have a specific body part, and has to fit a certain ecological niche, but that's not all! This time, you have to base that creature on a specific animal that lives or has lived on earth.

Difficulty 5:

- This is the ultimate challenge for someone wanting to create a species without having to consider sentience/culture. You not only have a theme, specific body part, ecological niche, and real-life animal basis to worry about, but now you have to make sure that that creature also survives in a specific environment as well. Say a volcanic spring, for example, or maybe even the icy-cold, soul-sucking darkness of space.

[/FIELDBOX][FIELDBOX=This Week's Difficulty, #7bd181]

- This is the ultimate challenge for someone wanting to create a species without having to consider sentience/culture. You not only have a theme, specific body part, ecological niche, and real-life animal basis to worry about, but now you have to make sure that that creature also survives in a specific environment as well. Say a volcanic spring, for example, or maybe even the icy-cold, soul-sucking darkness of space.​

[/FIELDBOX][FIELDBOX=Criteria, #7bd181][WARNING=#7bd181]Theme: Fauna
Body Part: Hooves
Ecological Niche/Role: Predator
Animal Basis: Caribou
Environment: High Alpine
[/WARNING][/FIELDBOX][FIELDBOX=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:[/FIELDBOX]

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[BTN=#7bd181|bcenter]The Bestiary[/BTN]​

 

[Nightrunner]

Hey, I'm new around these parts. Here's something of an attempt to meet this challenge since no one else has.

Avarites

Appearance: Males stand about five feet tall on a set of four legs that support a muscular frame, about eight feet long, while the females stand four feet tall and six feet long. All along their body, sans their faces, they have thick and shaggy copper colored fur. Every strand of their fur is as pointed as a pin, only significantly more elastic. Below their comparatively bright fur, they have a darkly colored hide that is tough and sturdy. Their legs are rather slender, though their weight is managed by the strength of their bones, which could be struck by an axe to no effect. On the bottom of it's legs are hooves that are about six inches in diameter on average. Their underbellies, however, are quite soft and comparatively vulnerable, covered only by a thick coat of dangling fur. Their faces are quite similar to that of a horse, with a long snout. Their most obviously definitive feature would be their dropping jaws, that can be dislocated and spread around objects three feet wide. Their horns are quite random and can range from being solid to branching out in convoluted patterns. Then, there's the fact that their irises have a pale tangerine glow.
Role: Predator
Habitat: They live in high elevations with low temperatures, typically in woodsy areas as opposed to open plains. They rest in nests that they personally gather by taking the belongings of others or the fallen limbs of trees.
Life-span: 100 to 130 Years
Sentient: Yes
Sapient: They are quite intelligent, though they cannot speak human languages.
Means of Sustenance: They kill anything that they can with brute force as predators, and they gather whatever food they find as scavengers.
Favourite Food Source: They enjoy the taste of cooked flesh, usually taken from humans or other sentients.
Mating & Reproduction: Males lure females by stealing all of their valuables and taking it to their own nests where, if impressed by the male's collection, they proceed to mate. This usually occurs in the Winter, in which males are more mobile due to their strength and ability to traverse the snow and females follow their trail. The male and female Avarites then stay as a couple for about two years or until the child has been born, at which point the male forces the female out of his nest, keeps her things, and claims the offspring as his own, until the point in which the offspring is more of a rival than an asset, usually taking about twenty years. At that point, the father and the son duel to the death.
Organization: Due to their greedy nature, they claim as much territory as they can possibly defend. This behavior results in variably sized territories that depend on the strength of the beast in question. Within the same gender, Avarites do battle over territory or any resources, though the territories overlap between males and females.