I love these critters..would love to saddle one up....mind you not with the sissy english saddle like they use in Sweden...but the good ol western saddle like a real cowboy rides...*L* Go to Comment
A good quality submission. It has good scientific explanations and fits well in your setting. It may be a bit on the dry end for me, but still a good piece that adds to your marvelous world. Always looking forward to more Locastus stuff. Go to Comment
I don't care so much about the physics of it. This is just so out there and so awesome that now I want to see more worlds break away from the norm and have truly strange creatures.
Somehow I imagined this as some sort of floating, oversized man-o´war, with very little in the intelligence and perception department. I sort of envisaged the buoyant tisue to be something extruded from the central core, like a shell, hard and insensate.
The whole thing is, of course, completely without any base in real-world physics, chemistry and biology. I´m sure somewhere, a physicist is tearing his hair out over the inconsistencies in lift and buoyancy, a chemist is weeping softly over the line: "Chemically altering helium" and a biologist is clawing her face in despair over my flagrant nonchalance of animal size v/s nutrient mass intake rules. Oh, well, with magic everyting is possible (and its always fun to annoy people).
Thank you for your comments - Your criticism is what makes me a better writer.
Thanks, Forganthus. A late thought on these critters is that they could be the larval stage of something a bit more... interesting. Perhaps they are the spawn of the Great Air Kraken, a ferocious beast that lives in the upper atmosphere and snacks on airships... Go to Comment
Hmm. I was thinking about smaller versions, actually. Little ones that float around forests, eating an apple, and then retreating to the atmosphere to slowly digest it. Or ones with long, nearly invisible tentacles that eat birds. Or maybe birds that nest only on adult blimp dragons, and clean it of parasites? Do blimp dragons get fleas?
I've seen a lot of flying jellyfish before, but armored is new. Do they land during heavy storms? Could you escape a band of orcs by riding a young one up, up, and away (after cutting its tethers)? Lastly, there must be some sort of food you can make out of these things. I just googled "horse recipes" and got ~50m hits. I'm thinking: dragon jerky. Like tough tofu, it needs seasoning, but when one of these things dies, it'd be a shame to waste it. Go to Comment
It is neat that it seems the true strenght in this one is the legacy he left behind. His motivation spawned the ability to develop any range of "villians" based on their involvement with the entire Reckoning and they can have any number of twisted reasons all loosely associate with Apts.
Loved all the interwined links that took you deeper into the entire scenerio, added an extra level that was just awesome. I couldn't read them all and the question that might have been answered was the powers of the city wanted immortality and Apt's ability to offer that was glazed over "after a fashion." Was looking for that to be explained a little and was hoping for some lasting after affects.
I would call your experiment a success, I found myself enjoying reading about this manipulative necromancer and his cult of personality. Kudos to you sir. Go to Comment
Lifeforms (Fauna) (Mountains)