Post/Author/DateTime

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the_one_true_shea 10-23-06, 06:15 PM

I've been trying to decide which thread to put this in for a while, either the underdark or underwater but I think this race is probably better suited to the underdark. For a while I've had the idea for a race that would live in the deepest darkest areas of the underdark, in tunnels that would have been flooded, either by natural groundwater levels or by changes in springs or underground rivers and streams. The water would only be a little more than stagnant with a little flow through thte tunnels but most of the life coming from a very isolated ecosystem. They would be approximately human sized but more similar to an eel. Their bodies would be long and narrow, a cross section would show them to be roughly triangular. They would have a three liped mouth at the tip of a head shaped a little like the cap of a mushroom. From each "shoulder" they would have a sowr of wing-like fin shaped like a long thin curved leaf. the species would be capable of movinge very fast if they needed to by bringing out these "wings" and then bringing them rapidly back to their body, expelling the water to power them forward. Lower down their body would be lless rigid fins that were fairly similar, working mainly as an aide to guiding their swiming. They would be something like an unrealised evolutionary feature rather than being essential to them. The long bodies split into three tentacle-like sections near the end, with spiney fins along the edge. When thensed these fins would slow the creatures or they could be used as a defensive weapon if necessary. The creatures are a plcid race, more hunted than hunter, they feed of plankton in the water, ctching it in a thin filmy filter stretched between the "lips". At times when food was scare, the creatures could munch off chunks of plants or algae and hold them in their mouths until they were broken down to be digested. When threatened the creatures could expel a phospherescent ink from under the "wings" blinding other species in the very dark water but this would be one of their only forms of defence. The creatures would live in caves burrowed out in tunnels rather than the very large caverns prefered by creatures like the shalendae. They would live individually bus swarm together to eat and when travelling for greater protection. They would be able to survive outside water only in the same way a fish can - for a very short time, probably only long enough to wriggle from one system of watery tunnels, through a short dry passage and into another watery system if they had to. I realise the race may not appear immediatly useful in that it would not even interact with other underwater races very often or with characters but I think meeting them would make for a cool quest type thing and they're more of a flavour thing for the underdark. Any thoughts? I could easily image bleeding this concept into the general merfolk discussions that have cropped up more recently. I dunno about the tri-fold face thing, and the tentacle legs... but a degenerate underdark merfolk would certainly be in order.