Flatbacked Floon

Basic Information

Anatomy

The eponymous Flatbacked Floon looks like a rubbery jellyfish of enormous proportion with anumbrella that flares outwards into a round, flat shape, like the top quarter of a circle that faces up. Underneath this, the animal's appendages include three dozen spindly little tentacles and nine thick muscular ones, the latter of which are around a pace wide and strong enough to uproot trees. Although their bodies are made primarily of gastrodermis there are a few muscles that are used specifically for expanding and contracting their great membraneous bodies for the purpose of flight. They also have angled valves that let them travel horizontally, hence they are prized by Gieloskans.

Genetics and Reproduction

Like all Floons, these creatures possess fourty-nine genders, the last of which possesses no pairing. Otherwise they launch their fluids at each other like cannon-fire until both of them are impregnated - in this state they shall remain for two months, before they belch forth hundreds of eggs contained within a placental sac attached to a few balloons - naturally, these eggs are swiftly collected by Gieloskans. Following a month of incubation the Floon will hatch into a neonate.

Growth Rate & Stages

Neonates are around the size of your hand and grow to the size of a chair, into what the Gieloskans call a "Stool-Floon", because it can be used as such, and small things can be placed atop them. During this stage their top membrane is remarkably smooth and has a radius of thirty centimeters. Muscled tentacles, of which at this stage there are three, grow after they have many noodly ones covered in many venomous spurs that spell paralyzation for anything that attempts to prey on them. Afterwards that membrane begins to shatter like a sundried riverbed, the exoumbrella breaks apart, and the Flatbacked Floon will continue to grow to a very large size - around three meters in radius. Then the last six large tentacles grow and continue to lengthen until they are eight meters long. Finally, the Floon has grown to the stage where it is capable of consuming solid vegetable matter instead of the powdered provender of airborne algae, and bearing hefty burdens atop their backs.

Additional Information

Domestication

Even for Floons, these ones are profoundly docile and will obediently float wherever they are tugged. The alkaline venom within their tentacles do not penetrate the thin gossamer skin of the Gieloskans.

Uses, Products & Exploitation

The Flatbacked Floons are often used as beasts of burden because of their shape and composure. Since Gieloskans - and even their flying means of transport - are not good bearers of burdens, they often employ several animals when they journey across clouds to transport their food and supplies. On long journeys they board windships, and trailing behind said windship would be a caravan of Flatbacked Floons, with many things stacked and bound and trussed atop their backs, each Floon tied together by a single tentacle, following the ship like a chain of balloons, adding no weight onboard. For this reason, and their prioritizing of the lightness of their ships, their vessels have no cargo holds.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Floon

Average Weight

15-20kg

Average Length

6-8m