Biology of Living Objects

While there might be some unique differences between living object species, they are still under the family of "Living Objects". This article will mostly discuss a general approach to understanding what Living Objects are.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Core

The Core is the body of a living object which houses the ichor, or soul, of the owner. The core can be composed of any material, including organic or non-organic, gaseous, liquid, or solid matter. Cores come in a variety of sizes and shapes that are common for both objects and relics. Most common core bodies are made of mostly solid and hard materials or weaker materials like cloths, glass, or plants.
Cores can also be a combination of materials, like a glass flask filled with healing potion or an ax composed of an iron blade head and wooden shaft body. Where the soul of a relic or object resides within a core made of multiple materials may depend on the distribution of their ichor within their core body. Most container relics or objects may share parts of their soul between their actual core body and the substance inside of them. Without the substance, they may feel disoriented and confused until filled with another substance. Fabric-based will have their ichor woven in between the threads of their cloak body.
If a relic or object's core is physically damaged, repair materials must match the materials of the core. It doesn’t have to be an exact match (unless the injured are made of very rare materials), but must fulfill the material type. A cloak made of cotton fabric can be repaired with other plant based-fabrics. But wool or steel wool will not match.
This method of self-repair is called Core Upkeep. It's highly important for living objects to keep their cores clean and repaired from any damage. Wear and tear may cause damage to one’s core over time. Usually, these start small but may risk the integrity of the object’s core over time. To manage core upkeep, living objects can consume similar materials that make up their core. It does not have to be exactly similar, but the type of material must be the same. A cotton cloak must consume cotton, but they can also consume other plant-based fibers and fabrics. But they cannot consume any non-plant-based fibers, such as flax or silk.

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The Ichor Structure

The ichor is the soul of a living object. Before the Inversion Event, ichor was known as the "blood of the soul" by the gods. Ichor is described as a substance that provides the arms, legs, facial features, and other extremities for living objects to use for movement and communication. Ichor commonly appears as a black putty-like substance with a texture that feels like slightly damp clay. It has a tacky texture and its surface does not reflect light very well. Ichor is stretchy and a little dense. It can also appear as a liquid or gaseous state in living objects with liquid or gaseous bodies.
All living objects have an internal ichor structure that creates their limbs and facial features. These extremities are the most visible parts of the ichor structure. The rest of the ichor structure is hidden inside the core, invisible even if the relic's or object's core is transparent. If injured, a part of the ichor structure will appear as a webbing around the injured area before retracting itself into its owner's core.
Ichor limbs are highly flexible and are not constrained by bone, skin, or muscle. Ichor limbs are usually attached to a living object’s core, but it is possible, with training and spellwork, for some limbs to exist in a detached form. These disembodied ichor limbs are usually hands or facial features which tend to stay close to a living object’s core. Ichor limbs can also bond with accessories like scarves to form wings or gloves to provide extra protection to ichor hands. Metal wings and extra limbs are also other forms of protective accessories.
In their base form, ichor limbs are referred to as “the dot base”, limbs with heavily simplified hands and feet in form of a dot. Ichor limbs, when exercised and stretched through training, can be shifted beyond the dot base to make articulated hands, tentacles, tails, claws, hooves, spikes, wings, and other forms of extremities. Usually, relics have an advanced capability of shifting their limbs in any which way possible. Objects rarely do this unless they are war-objects and are trained to control their ichor limbs.
Ichor also provides the means by which all living objects can cast magic. Magic flows through the ichor, often expressing itself where the ichor is most concentrated, such as the head or limbs. Ichor absorbs magic from the environment to fill the internal reservoir of an object or relic. All objects and relics have a base reservoir that they start out with from hatching, but with training, they can develop a stronger and deeper well of inner magic to power their abilities.

Genetics and Reproduction

To propagate their species, all living objects reproduce asexually by death. If a relic or object dies, their ichor core initially forms a kernel by drawing back their ichor structure onto itself. The ichor kernel is the ichor's way to protect itself from further damage. If a living object is revived through the Ritual of Convalescence, the ichor structure is repaired and the kernel goes into dormancy until they suffer death again. There is a set limit for revivals, each death causes the ichor kernel to grow harder which puts strain on the object's core, requiring more materials and donated ichor every time the Ritual of Convalescence is attempted. However, if the Ritual of Convalescence fails, the object who died is too old, or they have outlasted their revival limit upon death, there’s a possibility that they cannot be revived again. If they die again, their ichor will be fully absorbed into their kernel. Revival becomes impossible and the deceased object’s core becomes fully inert. A true death.

May you be unburdened from death.

-A common saying that means good will between loved ones

If a living object lives past their revival limit, a condition called Crumbling may occur. Crumbling usually occurs for elderly objects in their late twilight years, but it can occur in younger objects who passed their revival limits. Crumbling is a state where the living object’s core decay over time, with or without normal wear and tear. Crumbling greatly increases wear and tear every year, eventually destroying the object’s core from the inside out. Objects with severe crumbling cannot be revived nor can be healed.
After death, the deceased object, who died a true death, yields Withered Kernels. Withered kernels have weaker shells than kernels yielded by a living object who died prematurely. Upon the death of a living object, the withered kernel is then harvested from the remains of its progenitor. The kernel shell is crushed to reveal the germ, the “embryo” of a future object. The germ is then planted in a material pile. The future curio, or object child, made from this pile must be buried under similar materials of their progenitor, otherwise, the germ will not take root and will wither away. The progenitor's remains can be added to a pile of similar materials to help offset the material cost of this process. Once the germ is planted to its progenitor's core matching material, the germ will root itself into the pile and later make a pericarp which will hatch as a new living object. Usually, one or more germs are formed and can be planted in various materials, creating multiple offspring.
It takes four to five months for curios to hatch from their pericarp and will need someone, a Guardian, to take care of it.

Core Genetics

Living objects do not have DNA, unless they are earth elementals, and do not need to mate to pass on their genes. However, curios will always inherit the same material makeup and core type as their progenitor. So a living knife who dies a true death will yield a kernel in which the resulting offspring is a knife curio. A refitted living object will not result in a curio with a core type that is also refitted. Refitting is an artificial process that does allow a living object's ichor to bond with new materials to create a new core, however, their ichor will always remember what it once was. A war-torch, who was once a living paintbrush, will always result in a paintbrush curio from their kernel.

Growth Rate & Stages

The following is about the life cycle of a living object in the Mundane Realm. While it is assumed that Relics have a similar life cycle, the difference might be in years lived and cultural experiences in Reliquia, home of Relickind.

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From Germ to Curio

Should an object die a final and complete death, either from natural causes, crumbling, or a failed revival, their kernel must be prepared for a new life.
The kernel, withered in this state, is prepared by chipping away its hard coiled shell, revealing a soft puddy-like ball called the Germ with small bits of the progenitor's material inside it. This is the “embryo” of a future living object. The germ is then taken to the nurse-mages in the Convalescence Station to see what the germ needs for materials to grow into a curio, a young object.
Once the necessary materials are gathered, the germ, along with many others yielded from their deceased progenitors, are taken to an abbey in which object children, or curios, are raised by altrices. Inside special rooms called the Hatcheries, the germs are buried within the materials that matched the material makeup of their progenitor. Over a course of a few months, these germs will absorb the materials into a small ball covering their forms, called the Pericarp. This pericarp will grow into an egg-like shell that protects the growing germs. Eventually, the germs will hatch out of their shells into young curios.

On Gender:

As a purely unisex species, all living objects have no sexual dimorphism between members. Culturally, living objects determine their gender according to their time of hatching, either the Day (Males) or the Night (Females). Some objects like to determine their gender by the position of the Sun or Moon in the sky of their hatch time. Living objects can be cis (feeling that their gender identity fits their hatch time), transgender or non-binary (feeling their gender identity does not fit their hatch time or it fits another). Pronouns can be used in various forms, though the most common are she/her, they/them, he/him, multi-pronouns of any type, and neopronouns.

First Stages of Life

Now as young curios, these baby objects are cared for by the altrices working in the abbey. Usually fragile objects, they work to feed, care for, bathe, educate, and play with the growing curios for the next eighteen years of their life. But for now, in these first stages, the young curios are only kept safe behind the abbey’s walls. Should war break out, the abbey is immediately evacuated to protect the curios and their caretakers.
During these early parts of their life, curios need to consume lots of materials to grow and develop their cores. As they do so, they shed old material from their cores over time, which are then recycled back into the material piles. As they grow older, curios will slow down consumption and will only require to eat whenever they feel minor wear and tear on their cores. Core Upkeep is very important hygiene for all living objects to prevent damage from rotting, rusting, or fraying of their cores.

Guardians and Living Progenitors:

If a curio’s progenitor has a partner before death, that living partner becomes the curios’ guardian, or benefactor, to aid their curio’s education and growth. The curio would be given gifts and care by their guardian whenever they visit the curio’s abbey home. In very rare cases, it is possible for an object to be revived and yield a germ (partial revival). Still living progenitors and their offspring are a highly rare phenomenon. The progenitor’s bond with their curio is strong and they work with their curios’ guardian to ensure their growth. However, since the progenitor yielded a germ upon revival, that germ may mar the health of the progenitor’s ichor structure. This may result in injuries, reduced chances of future revivals, or early-onset crumbling.

Adolescent Years

At thirteen years of age, curios exhibit their first magical powers. In the past, both hardy and fragile curios are given anti-magic suppressors to prevent their powers from harming them. Hardy objects would eventually grow up to not needing these suppressors while fragile objects would need them for life. But thanks to advances in magical technology regarding the way ichor stores magic, fragile objects can have their ichor structure strengthened to handle their powers. Not all kingdoms allow fragile objects this opportunity, believing that such technology may jeopardize a fragile object’s durability.
At fifteen years of age, curios will begin to work small jobs to eventually leave their abbey to pursue their future adult lives. A curio’s guardian may help, sometimes allowing them to be their apprentice and learn from their guardian’s occupation. Most, if not all hardy objects are expected to pursue jobs in farming, hunting, mining, trades, sorcery, or fighting for their kingdoms. Fragile objects have a much smaller pool of jobs to explore, such as bookkeeping, producing arts, textiles production, librarians, or other non-lethal jobs for fragile objects. Most fragile objects would serve under hardy objects as inventory keepers, janitors, or record-keeping. Magical pursuits by fragile objects were prohibited by many kingdoms once upon a time, but now are allowed only in a few places and must be done under rigorous training in special schools.

Adulthood

At eighteen years, the curios had now grown into adults, ready to take on the world. Many objects would leave their abbey to fully pursue their careers. Depending on the kingdom, fragile objects can travel just as far and wide as their more hardy counterparts. But some kingdoms restrict travel, requiring fragile objects to stay in their kingdoms or villages for life.
In their mid-twenties, hardy objects can train and be refitted into war-objects, or soldiers, to serve their kingdoms. As war-objects, they can fight in battle, work as mercenaries, pursue higher ranks within their kingdom, or later become sorcerers. Other refitted or unrefitted objects can also pursue duties in office, become teachers, or start a business. There are specialized schools for living objects wanting to learn more about their fields and develop their skills. Very few kingdoms allow fragile objects into offices, and even fewer allow them to fight in an army.
Throughout the next 18-40yrs, adult living objects continue on with their lives. Some would find love and form pair bonds with other objects. Romance is a wide spectrum with a multitude of labels and identities. There are homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, ace, and many more out there. When finding partners, living objects usually look for someone who can be there should one of them die and make sure their kernel is safe. If offspring occurs, it is usually the result of one partner who had died. Most living objects have only one guardian who is alive and another, the progenitor, who passed away.

On the lifespan gap between hardy and fragile objects:

Due to their higher durability, higher revival limits, and stable rates of revivals, hardy objects live longer than fragile objects, up to around 90-100 years (if unfitted) or 100-150 years (if refitted). Fragile objects live shorter lives, originally 40-50 years, due to having fragile cores. However, this life gap is gradually closing thanks to magical technology allowing fragile objects to live longer for another twenty years or so.

Elderly years

In their 50s-150s, elder objects can still work in their careers, but for those who used a good chunk of their revival limits by this point or just wanted a change of pace, they will eventually retire and settle down. Elder objects are cared by their kingdom’s abbeys for many of their needs. Some elder objects may wish to work in an abbey as altrices to help care for the young curios or aid them in building their futures.
Many objects in their late 50s and over (fragile) or late 150s and over (hardy) may begin crumbling as their cores grow old and can no longer take any repairs. During this stage, crumbling starts out light but over the next few decades, may become more severe.
Eventually, elder objects reach their end of life and will spend their final days resting in an abbey to prevent any unneeded injuries. Their ichor structure slowly begins to drawback, making it difficult for an elder object to wake up or move. Soon, the object’s facial features and limbs fade away and they fall into a deep sleep. Then, after a few hours, their cores crumble away into pieces, leaving behind multiple withered kernels. The elderly object had died a true death, making revivals impossible at this stage. The withered kernel cannot be used for revival, only for bringing life to a new object. Their remains are then donated to an abbey’s material pile for growing new curios.

Ecology and Habitats

In both Reliquia and the Mundane Realm, living objects can adapt to live almost everywhere in either realm. As long as there is material to be mined, farmed, harvested, hunted, or other resource gathering means necessary, living objects can live anywhere they want to be.
However, unlike Reliquia where resources generate often and are in great abundance, the Mundane Realm has trouble generating resources for all living objects within its realm. Resources generate over time, using the natural magical lay lines of the Realms and environments to make more of themselves. But in the Mundane Realm, it takes centuries to do so and it is difficult to predict how much is generated. Large kingdoms are formed to harvest and hoard these resources. Wars are often fought to take land from other kingdoms over these resources. For more peaceful methods of resource gathering, recycling is incredibly important for keeping an offset between how much is used and how much needs to be harvested. Allied kingdoms can trade with each other, improving relations and growing both their economies.

Dietary Needs and Habits

All living objects don't have a digestive system to consume food and absorb its nutrients. Instead, their ichor structure will break down materials and distribute them throughout the object's core. There's no need to excrete waste either, all materials are used by the ichor structure. Over time, a living object might shed parts of their core and get rid of old material. This is not seen as a sanitary problem, only an opportunity to recycle the material or donate it to an abbey or a convalescence station for their material storage.
Living objects only eat material when they have mild injuries or if they just need to do core upkeep. They can live for weeks and months without eating, but going long will trigger illnesses like rot, rusting, molding, or fraying.

Additional Information

Facial characteristics

All living objects have two eyes and a mouth. These facial features are not always attached to the living object's core and can float on top of the surface of their core or inside an opening representing their head. The whites of the eyes and teeth are the same ichoridic material as the limbs, just paler and smooth in texture. The teeth are sharp and can cut through any material an object can bite, except kernels.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

In both realms, all living objects live in almost every condition, environment, and range.

Average Intelligence

Living objects are highly intelligent and share similar capabilities as their mortal and god predecessors. They are capable of building large sprawling civilizations, developing magical technology, and strong hierarchies.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Living Objects have the typical eyes to see and mouth to taste. They have no ears, but can still hear sounds thanks to small hidden ichor pits on their cores. To breathe, objects also use these same ichor pits. They don't breathe deeply but gently move their ichor pits every once in a while. All living objects have some sensitivity to magic, with relickind being the most magically attuned due to their divine souls. Objectkind however is not as sensitive. Only with magical training will they be able to feel magic from other objects and their surroundings.

Civilization and Culture

Gender Ideals

History

One of the last lingering concepts left by extinct mortals and gods, gender was way to determine certain characteristics between the wide spectrum of masculine, feminine, androgynous, trans, and non-binary members. Before the Inversion Event, gods viewed gender as a wide spectrum that does not always relate to their body’s sex. Mortals however would restrict gender between males and females based on the body’s sex and on the gender roles that must be met by their cultures. Not all mortal cultures restrict gender and sex between only two extremes. Transgender people and Non-binary people were found in both god and mortal civilizations.
After the Inversion Event, the concept of gender and sex changed drastically. All objects and relics have no or little sexual dimorphism between males and females, their cores are unisex with no genitals. Gender, on the other hand, is determined differently between the relics and the objects.

Current Era

In the Realm of the Gods, relics still retain their memory of when they were gods, so they kept their ways of understanding sex and gender. Using their abilities to peer into the Dream Realm, the gods can see the true god form of themselves and make a determination of their sex and gender on that form. The true form can be a constant, never changing throughout a relic’s life. Sometimes, it can shift over time, going through different forms over the course of a relic’s life. 
In the Mundane Realm, however, objects don’t have a way to see their “true form” in the Dream Realm like the relics. Instead, gender is based on the time of day between Day or Night. The time of day can affect how some objects would sound when they speak, their mannerisms, and certain behaviors. Males are born during the Day, females are born during the Night. Males would have warmer variations of magical powers, while females would have cooler variations of magical powers.
Some objects reject this strict binary to instead recognize the Dawn, Twilight, Evening, and Dusk, feeling that their powers don’t always follow the binary of Day and Night. For example:

• A living sword wielding water as his element, born during the morning (part of the day) would be assigned male (cis). His magic would lean more towards heat, allowing him to cast warmer magic.
• Another living sword wielding similar magic, born during the early evening (part of the day) would be assigned male. The sword finds that her magic is cooler and then considers herself female (either non-binary or trans). Her magic is sometimes warm but leans heavily towards the cold most of the time.

There are non-binary or transgender objects in both Realms. Transitioning would be different in their species since there are little or no sexual dimorphic traits, so instead there would be changes to pronoun usage, voice change, name change, possible refitting, and changes to magic while transitioning or exploring gender expression.

Courtship Ideals

Unlike the beings that came before them, living objects are not instinctively driven to find suitable mates to ensure the health and fitness of their offspring. Instead, they are driven to protect their partner until they die, whereupon true death, the deceased’s curio(s) will have a greater chance to survive to adulthood with the help of the deceased’s living partner. The deceased is called the Progenitor while the living partner is called the Guardian. The guardian’s role is to care for the curio. But thanks to past wars in the Mundane Realm sometimes decimating entire towns or kingdoms, it’s possible that both the guardian and the progenitor would die, leaving behind their kernels with no guardian to look after. Thanks to the possibility of the above circumstances of death, abbeys were originally created to care for curios who are guardianless.
In the current setting of the Mundane Realm, abbeys are used to care for curios, regardless of the state of their progenitor and guardian, and act as safe havens to protect them from harm, until evacuation during wartime. Guardians would visit to check on their curio, give them gifts, or help them on forging their careers once they become of age.
Objects in romantic relationships would form pair bonds between themselves. Most pair bonds would form according to material makeup and perceived durability, i.e. an iron bucket in love with an iron sword or a straw hat in love with a glass bowl. Hardy objects tend to gravitate to other hardy objects and the same happens with fragile objects. Some living objects would experience attraction outside of durability or material makeup. Formists, objects who believe in Durability Supremacy of hardy objects, often see this as heretical.

Romantic Attraction

Living Objects are instinctively asexually reproducing beings. But they have a strong lean to romantic feelings. So in terms of romantic attraction, it can be interpreted as such:

• Biromantic - romantic attraction toward males, females, and any gender. For objects, it would be masculine and feminine expression.
• Aromantic - no romantic attraction to any individuals of any gender. Objects in this group will just have an instinctual need to protect their partner, just without a romantic attraction to them. Overlapping with this would be gray-romantic, where a living object does not often experience form a romantic attraction.
• Heteromantic - romantic attraction toward the opposite gender.
• Homoromantic - romantic attraction toward the same gender.
• Panromantic - romantic attraction toward every/any gender (including omniromantic as well).
• Polyromantic - romantic attraction toward multiple, but not all genders, and interest in romantic relationships with more than one living object.
• Demiromantic - a person who does not experience romantic attraction until forming a strong close bond with someone. Objects in this group would be similar to aromantic objects but might form a romantic attraction over time.

Touch and closeness between living objects is an important thing. Static shock. That’s what most living objects in this setting love, that “energy” or “spark”. A strong pair-bond will often feel this gentle static between their partners when touching their ichor limbs.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Animalcules

Scientific Name

Animalculous Vivusobjectus

Origin/Ancestry

Animalcules

Lifespan

40-50yrs for fragile objects and 100-150yrs for hardy objects; Relics are long living, up to a thousand or more years

Average Height

May vary between individuals and core types. Most unfitted objects are less than 182.9cm, capping at 45.72cm, while refitted objects can be as large as 604.8cm. Monoliths are larger, 2133.6cm is the largest possible height. Relics range between 60.96cm minimum and 3048cm maximum. The largest recorded refitted object is Flammagenitus at a height of 4572cm, the first monolith war-torch refitted by both relics and objects during the Relic Wars.

Average Weight

May vary between individuals and core types. Fragile objects are usually lightweight while hardy objects are more heavy and dense. Spells may be used by some living objects to make themselves heavier or lighter.

Average Length

May vary between individuals and core types.

Average Physique

In terms of the ichor structure, it can be strengthened and thickened with regular exercises and manipulation. Advanced ichor shifting techniques, Ichormancy, along with consuming donated ichor will allow a living object to really make themselves stronger.