Sandbox / Biology Rewrites

Kelet Kin'toni Clan

The Kelet Kin'toni Clan are adapted to the subarctic, rocky, tree covered Wyrra Taiga Hills. They are lean, highly muscled, and long limbed of build. The torso is longer then normal. They are adapted for high-speed endurance running across uneven terrain. This elongated, high-leverage body makes them prone to getting stuck in dense bush or other small spaces. The skin is charcoal-gray in color to blend in with the trees, and it is heavily reinforced using an matrix of cross-linked collagen fibers to lower the risk of tearing.

The hyper-dense, leathery hide lacks flexibility, making it even harder for them to fit into small spaces. The hair is steel grey and coarse in texture, and is an a long, shaggy mane going down their spines. It is adapted to shed freezing rain and heavy snowfall from their bodies. Their eyes are t emerald-green, and have an massive, horizontally elongated pupil in each eye. This gives them a wide view of the forest floor while running but also severely limits their vertical field of vision.

This leaves them vulnerable to foes dropping from the high canopy. Their ears are long, pointed and very mobile with specialized internal muscular rings to lock that ears in diffident positions to track prey. The nose has a specialized dual-valved vestibule for trapping and recycling exhaled moisture in order to keep the olfactory lining wet in the cold, dry air. The teeth are very long, slender and backward curved for sinking into and holding the thick furred taiga prey. These teeth are very brittle and prone to snapping if they hit bone.

Their claws are short, thick and wedge shaped. These non-retractable claws act as track spikes for gripping wet clay clay and slippery needles. The claws are blunt, and cannot be used as a weapon. The feet are digitigrade and with flexible, independent outer toes for stabilizing themselves on the gravel slopes. These toe joints are hyperflexable but lack rigid structural support, making their toes easy to dislocate on flat hard ground. Inside, the blood vessels have microscopic bypass valves that contain an thick, glucose-heavy protein fluid.

By moving this fluid to their limbs, it stops their muscles from freezing. Thest chests contain air filled multi chambered shock absorber sacs for cushioning their internal organs. These protect from violent impacts such as falling. The hepatic cell clots have adapted to rapidly extract dietary iron from prey blood as an adaption to deal with cold, sluggish prey blood. The extreme iron concentration is also a metabolic burden that leads to rapid, toxic organ failure, and this can only be stopped by flushing their system with fresh blood.

The rib cage is interlocked and overlapping like roof riles as to protect the thoracic cavity from impacts. Due to its interlocking structure, they have limited flexibility, and cannot bend or arch the upper body deeply. They are able to survive sudden, unexpected temperature drops such as during blizzards using an temporary reduction in cellular energy expenditure. The blood vessels have high-pressure, muscular contraction-points that can clamp shut to stop bleeding of fluids, but it also traps waste in the rest of the body. This leads to painful swelling and bruising.

Kelnysi Kin'toni Clan

The Kelnysi are adapted to the high-altitude, sub-zero, windy Isbelbur Autumnal Mountains Ridge. They are very lean, long-limbed and lightweight of build, with wing like shoulder blades, covered in a membrane of skin that stretches to the buttocks. Being lightweight and fragile, they are easy to break with bone shattering trauma from bunt force and falls. They are mottled with deep amber and burnt orange, to hide along the fallen leaves and with fine, hydrophobic scales to stop the forest from sticking.

Their hair is fiery copper-red color, and is a mane of long fur covering the head, neck and upper back to keep the brain and carotid arteries warm in the freezing alpine winds. This hair is very flammable, and acts as tinder making them easy to set alight. The eyes are amber gold in color, and have an massive, spherical lens to allow them to see even the slightest shifts in high-altitude movement across long distances. These eyes are sensitive to sudden light, due to an lack of protective tinting, leading to short term blindness.

Their ears are long, asymmetrical and very mobile, adapted for allowing them to calculate the exact elevation and distance of a sound echoing off the canyon walls. Insider the nose is an advanced internal humidity-reclaiming valve to allow them to reclaim water from their exhaled breaths to keep their olfactory membranes wet, even in the bone dry mountain air. They have long, slender, needle sharp teeth for piercing the thick wool-like coats of mountain prey to reach veins. These fangs are brittle and prone to snapping on bone and armor.

Their claws are long, deeply hooked and needle sharp to act as permanent climbing anchors in sheer limestone crevices. These claws make flat ground running clumsy, given that they interfere with movement. Their feet are prehensile and wide, their toes long and splayed with soft, spongy undersides in order to muffle them walking on leaves. Lacking thick, protective callouses means on sharp terrain they are prone to wounds on their feet. Around the chest are a series of interconnected, air-filled internal chambers.

These are adapted to act as shock absorbent pads to save the internal organs from damage from violent high-altitude tumbles. Their lower cerebellum has been permanently expanded using their totipotent stem cells. This grants them an hyper-accurate, three-dimensional spatial awareness allowing them to calculates wind drift and slope angles with very little thinking. This also compresses the adjacent occipital lobes, leading to an dulled ability to see stationary objects that lack high-contrast movement.

Inside the carotid arteries is an system of expanded clusters of pressure-sensing baroreceptors. These are adapted to adjust cranial blood pressure while the kin'toni is leaping and dropping across deep mountain ravines. The shoulder blades are muscled and the upper thoracic vertebrate are fused in order to anchor the gliding-wings from the violet cross winds. These wings are movable by the kin'toni in order to fit though smaller spaces and act like another pair of arms. The skin itself is thin and easy to tear, and so has to be carefully treated.