Gloamwings
"Where one disappears, the other arrives. And neither leaves without a reason." -Everwealthy saying.
Gloamwings are native to The Battlement Cliffs and sea-facing ridgelines of Everwealth’s western coasts, particularly in uncharted territories of The Grandgleam Forest, where their mournful, silent flight has long been associated with love, loss, and the unseen ties between soul and shadow. At first glance, they appear mundane: large, gliding blue birds with deep bronze spattered feathers and long, drooping tails. But their presence stirs unease. Gloamwings are solitary and only emerge at dawn or dusk, circling ruins, graveyards, or cliffside battlegrounds, always watching. Taming one is difficult but possible, and folklore claims that a bonded Gloamwing can “smell sorrow,” finding those you’ve lost, be it a vanished soldier, a run-away lover, or a child spirited away by otherworldly means. Although not flashy in appearance, their feathers shimmer faintly in gloom, and are valued for love charms, memory-scenting potions, and rare inks used in Dwarfish letters of mourning. But Gloamwings are dwindling, starvation, war, and relentless harvesting have made them a rare sight. The last of them now haunt only the most lonesome cliffs, loyal only to memory and the dark between stars.Basic Information
Anatomy
The Gloamwing has a wide wingspan of up to 5 feet, with elongated primary feathers that taper into crescent-like tips. Its beak is slightly hooked, smooth, and bone-pale. Bronze-touched feathers with cobalt undertones shimmer but only under twilight or starlight, making them nearly invisible at high noon. Gloamwings have oversized, piercing violet colored eyes adapted to dim light, with a reflective membrane that gives them a soft glow in darkness. Their legs are slender and long, rarely used except when roosting. A soft, downy ruff rings their neck, used in courting displays.
Genetics and Reproduction
Gloamwings are monogamous breeders with highly selective pairing rituals based on vocal mimicry and shared flight patterns. A bonded pair will engage in synchronized dusk flights for several nights before choosing a nesting site. Females lay up to two eggs every two years in secluded cliff crevices, woven into nests of dried moss, sea thread, and weathered trinkets, often stolen from the nearby ruins or graveyards. The eggs have a shimmering copper-splotched shell, said to glow slightly when the emotional bond of the pair is strong. Gestation lasts approximately 37 days, after which the hatchlings emerge featherless but with unusually large eyes. Parental care is long-term, both mother and father alternate hunting and guarding until the fledgling takes its first solo flight at around four months of age. Gloamwing genetics display strong magickal retention through bloodline, tamed lineages display a stronger sensitivity to emotional resonance, sometimes bonding to the descendants of the original owner. This has led to some noble families secretly breeding Gloamwings for generational soul-tracking.
Growth Rate & Stages
- Hatchling (0-4 months): Blind and helpless, with faint violet-hued skin and a high-pitched hum used to alert parents. Responds to emotional proximity, often crawling toward the grieving or heartbroken.
- Fledgling (4-12 months): Covered in soft, velvet-dark down. Begins mimicking local sounds, waves, sobs, or even fragments of spoken language. Capable of short, clumsy glides and rudimentary tracking.
- Adolescent (1-4 years): Full feather development with fading iridescence. Begins emotional imprinting, will follow individuals expressing strong grief, heartbreak, or longing across great distances.
- Adult (4-40+ years): Reaches full wingspan and bonding capability. Rarely seen in groups. Capable of returning to a bonded partner's place of death even decades later.
- Elder (40-80 years in captivity): Plumage dulls and tail grows longer. Their tracking becomes erratic but more intense. Considered oracles by some, elders are said to cry at the place where they foresee death to come.
Ecology and Habitats
Found clinging to narrow cliff ridges and sea-slick spires, Gloamwings prefer desolate, wind-battered territory. They rarely approach settled land unless drawn by emotional resonance, ruins where lovers died, old battlegrounds, forgotten cemeteries. It is said wherever they nest, plants grow abnormally fast: overgrown thorns, red mosses, and twilight-blooming vineflowers crowd their roosts, a sign of their quiet magickal footprint on the ecosystem.
Dietary Needs and Habits
They feed primarily on coastal rodents, lichen-fed insects, and carrion. Gloamwings do not hunt often, instead, they watch. When necessary, they swoop with alarming speed, impaling prey with their talons or dropping them from great heights. In captivity, they require food soaked in sentimental objects, ribbons, letters, or fragments of items belonging to the one they’re bonded to, lest they starve themselves from disinterest.
Biological Cycle
Gloamwings breed once every two years, laying two copper-speckled eggs in hidden cliff nests made from bone-thread, kelp, and dried vines. During winter, they molt their tail feathers and enter a sluggish state akin to hibernation, rarely flying unless disturbed. Their migration is minimal, instead choosing solitude over seasonal travel. They can live up to 40 years in the wild and nearly twice that in Dwarfish aviaries, though few survive captivity without bonding.
Behaviour
Gloamwings are quiet, solitary creatures whose behavior is shaped less by survival instinct and more by emotional resonance. Among their own kind, they are aloof but never hostile, gathering only during seasonal winds to trade calls in what scholars call “the Mourning Choir,” a sky-dance of slow spirals and layered trills believed to be a communal mourning or memory-sharing ritual. Outside this, they prefer solitude or the company of bonded pairs. Unlike most birds, Gloamwings do not fear larger predators unless those predators are emotionally volatile, anger, grief, and longing seem to both attract and agitate them. They will circle the afflicted at a distance, sometimes mimicking their cries or gestures in haunting echo. Those who’ve lost loved ones claim a Gloamwing hovered above them for days, never feeding, simply watching, as if waiting for the soul of the deceased to return or for the grief to deepen. To creatures they prey upon (mostly small fish, salt crabs, and dusk-insects), they are surgical and silent. A Gloamwing strike is rarely seen, only felt, a blur of shadow and a single plume left behind. However, when attacked themselves, they emit a deafening keening shriek that causes mild disorientation in beasts and mortals alike. This is believed to be a magickally-enhanced distress cry, and some remote cultures use preserved Gloamwing syrinxes to replicate this sound in ritualized mourning or alarm ceremonies. Tamed Gloamwings display fiercely loyal behavior toward their bonded, often to a fault. They’ve been known to become lethargic or starve themselves if their bonded dies, sometimes flying hundreds of miles to the place of their partner’s last known sorrow. Their psychological resilience is low once a bond breaks, but if a bond is healthy, they are unusually perceptive, capable of distinguishing true from false affection, and even reacting to manipulation or deceit with low warning cries. In short: the Gloamwing is less a pet and more a mirror. It does not simply observe, it reflects. It does not love, but it mourns with such clarity that one might think it once did.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Their sight in gloom rivals most night predators, and they are able to detect the faintest of heat trails or motion against cloudlight. But it is their so-called heart-scent that makes them remarkable, Gloamwings are believed to be able to follow the emotional imprint of longing, grief, or love across miles. Whether this is magickal or biological remains unknown, but their uncanny ability to find lost individuals, especially among emotional bonds, is part of what elevates them in folklore. In Dwarfish culture, gifting a Gloamwing feather is a bond-seal, used in weddings, funerals, and duels fought for love. Some soldiers claim the birds guided them home from hopeless battles, always circling above the hill they were meant to return to.
Scientific Name
Umbraorbis fidelis.
Origin/Ancestry
Thought to have evolved from an older seabird lineage that once nested near the cliffs of pre-Schism Halash, the Gloamwing diverged during the Great Schism, adapting to colder air currents and changing weather patterns.
Conservation Status
Once common across the coastal ridges and misty highlands of western Everwealth, the Gloamwing has become increasingly rare over the last century. While never numerous, their populations have suffered steep decline due to a confluence of tragedy and desperation. Starving communities have hunted them for their plumage and song-bones, which fetch high prices among alchemists, nobles, and bereaved widows alike. Worse still, their sensitive emotional nature makes them easy prey in a dying world, grief is abundant, and the Gloamwing, unable to resist its pull, often circles too close to danger.
Geographic Distribution
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