The Squird

Burple Squird

One of the most sophisticated creatures on Nycos, the Squird life cycle has four stages.

First Flora

It begins as a flowering ground cover similar to Edelweiss, a white flowering puffball that covers the hillsides and early spring. The plant grows like ground cover, quickly expanding its area year over year, dominating other life forms in its path. Once the flowers have been germinated, the plant converts the tiny flowers into tiny Dandy-lion like seedlings. manifesting visually as puffballs that drift on the wind.

First Fauna

When the puff balls reach atmospheric moisture, they enter the second stage being, changing color to a bright lavender airborne jellyfish, motile but unintelligent. They drift along in large schools and mate by contact with others of their kind, in a kind of ecstatic dance in the clouds. They continue in this form until the cloud they inhabit comes into contact with freezing conditions. The germinated jellies then falls out of the sky, as shriveled husks, rich in magic and pregnant with possibilities,

Secondary Flora

In doing so they become the third stage, the husk bearing fertilized biomass that germinates into a second plant stage. This time, they are Broad and leafy Vines, which produce in time a fruit that freakishly resembles oversize and obscenely erect kiwi fruit. Oh, and the fruit "purrs" when contented.

Secondary Fauna

As they attain adulthood the furry egg hatches the final stage Squird. It is a bird approximately the size of a dodo, with the beak a parrot, scrawny neck, and mesmerizing eyes. Its eyes are the size of a silver dollar, radial in appearance, kaleidoscopes of color that shift and change all the time. Though it does resemble a bird, the Squird cannot fly, even for short distances. It simply is not coordinated enough to do so. On the ground, it waddles on webbed and clawed feet, which seem more suited to an oversized goose. Should it fall from any height, it flaps and spasms, as if trying to coordinate its movement. It glides with the ease and grace of a pumpkin. The head flops around at the end of the neck and isn't actually the carrier of the brain of the creature, only an appendage that gathers food for itwhen, by happy coincidence, the head actually comes into contact with edible morsels. Literally, of anything it can hork down its graceless and flaccid neck.

To make matters worse, it has a feathery protuberance on top of the head like a combination between an anemone and a coxcomb that twists and writhes constantly and alerts to any sound.

In the males, there is also has a fleshy chest ruff that it can puff out when it is frightened. If it has one 'gift It is extremely prolific at producing guano, and it is from this guano that the first stage ultimately develops again. It is for this one similarity that the Squird and the Phenx are sometimes thought to be related, though there is absolutely no evidence otherwise to support this theory.

Practical use of Squird

The Squird has several commercial uses and thus is hunted in each of the four forms.

The edelweiss-like flowers are harvested when available, and are stuffed into pillows, said to have a protective property that wards against nightmares and promotes lucid dreaming. As a material component, certain spellcasters swear it breaks down the border between Nycos and Asomatum. the plane of the Dreamlands.

The puffballs can be used in creating airships, but must be gathered in a moisture-free environment, and kept dry. In such a way, Dirigibles and other lighter than aircraft can be built, as the flight mechanism of the puffballs seems virtually eternal, only failing if they get wet, or if they escape their containment.

The flying Jellyfish form, one of the few remaining species that actually developed flight independent of the Rune Magic that made sealife fly, has arguably the most marketable value as a hallucinogen and stimulant with alcohol-like addictiveness. Various forms of Burple, the paste made from the Jellies, include a Burple spread directly, as a basis for a kind of wine, dried into concentrated strips like dried fruit, powdered and sniffed like tobacco snuff, or, in an extreme case, rubbed into the pores of the skin or placed under the tongue for an instantaneous and extreme effect.