Sandbox / Biology Rewrites

Kalor Kin'toni Clan

The Kalor are adapted to the Yryna Old Coniferous Forest. They are bulk, endomorphic, and compact of build, with shortened limbs as to minimize surface-area-to-mass ratio. This build significantly reduces their overall agility and flexibility, leading them to be poor at climbing. Their skin is white in color, thick, and covered in a dense layer of specialized sebaceous glands. This allows them to make an a thick, tallow-like wax to seal out freezing moisture.This skin struggles with direct oxygen absorption, making them rely on their lungs more.

This happens due to the heavy, waxy lipid barrier severely clogging the cutaneous pores. Their hair is an thick, double coat of coarse, hollow, white hair strands. These are for trapping the stagnant air pockets for maximum structural insulation, to deal with cold winds and sub zero temperatures. The coat is highly flammable, and acts like tinder, leading them being weak to fire and burns. Their eyes are dark brown in color, with an permanent, thick nictitating membrane. The permanent, thick nictitating membrane works as an polarized lens.

This allows them to not get slow blindness from night UV glare. The downside of this is an clouding of fine, close-range depth perception. The ears are small, and flat against the skull. These ears have thick, dense, oily fur as stop the ear canal from freezing. They have long, highly vascularized nasal passages to act as a form of heat exchange to warm the air they breathe. The teeth are shout, wedge shaped and with deep iron-mineralized roots. These teeth are adapted to crack through frozen flesh and bone.

The downside of this is a lack of sharper edges to sear though soft flesh flesh such as rival kin'toni. The claws are thick, straight and shade like, being broad and unable to retract. The claws act as climbing crampons on hard ice. The claws are pool at gripping or grasping, leading them to be bad at fine mortar tasks. Their feet are huge, and very padded, having stiff, splayed toes to act as snowshoes for spreading weight over deep snowdrifts. Inside, their livers and bloodstreams make a large amount of specialized thermal-hysteresis proteins.

These proteins aggressively lower the freezing point of cellular water. These allow them to not freeze in the cold forest. This high viscosity, protein dense blood leads to an circulatory system having to work under great constant hydraulic pressure. This means they are more likely to have heart attacks and strokes. Around their internal organs, is an dry cellular fat lattice, that also contains air. This acts as an thermal buffer protecting the vital organs. Their modified lymphatic filters are hyper-developed in order to hoard iron.

The iron is deposited into the bones to make them denser and more frost resistant. The vascular contraction-points are heavily muscularized. These are able to stop blood flow to the limbs if needed to preserve core fluid pressure., lowing the risk of death from blood loss or frostbite. The downside, is that if a limb is cut off for too long, it is likely to develop necrosis, needing it to be removed. They have altered mitochondria for generating explosive bursts of cellular kinetic energy in order to help with muscular binding in the cold.

Umvera Kin'toni Clan

The Umvera Kin'toni Clan are adapted to the Elmatai Sullen Grove. They are hyperflexable and lean of build, with an ectomorphic frame and elongated clavicles to make it easy to slip through dense, tangled undergrowth. Their lower dense skeletal mass leads to them being strongly hindered by bone fractures from high-impact crushing damage or heavy blunt force as the bones are easy to break. Their skin is dark green and brown using phlobaphene pigments. This allows them to blend well with the wet tree bark and moss but also leads them to blister and burn significantly faster in sunlight.

Their hair is sparse, coarse and bristly, with an layer of hydrophobic sebum to stop waterlogging and fungal growth in the humid grove. The eyes are grossly oversized with an highly developed tapetum lucidum to allow them to capture even the faintest light under the trees. The eyes, having extremely sensitive retinas are vulnerable to bright light. Such light inc fire, can bring on blinding photoflash optical shock. The ears have large, high mobile pinnae to allow them to pinpoint the the sounds of prey in the thick leaf litter.

These ears are sensitive to high-frequency noises or concussive sonic blasts, leading to severe disorientation and temporary loss of hearing. Their noses are deeply convoluted and adapted for filtering and concentrating the iron smell of blood, even in the heavy, damp forest musk. The teeth are long, with deep grooves having micro-serrations for sawing though the tough hides of forest life. These thin, micro-serrated enamel edges are brittle and are easy to break by biting down on bone or armor.

The claws are short, heavily curved, and semi-retractable with thick fibrous ligaments. These claws are good for gripping wet tree bark and moss, but are poor at digging. They have splayed toes with soft, calloused pads on their broad and prehensile feet. Along with their claws, their lack of a rigid, supportive arch makes s long-distance sprinting on flat, open ground tiring and mechanically inefficient. Inside, their lungs have been repurposed into high-surface-area vascular sacks to become highly efficient at dealing with the stagnant forest air.

The joints are hypermobile, with collagen fibers in ligaments laced with elastic proteins. These allow the joints to partially dislocate and bend while not tearing to allow for movement in tight places. The joints being so lax, leads to a lack of ability to lift or push heavy structural loads. The liver is adapted into an hyper-dense cluster of "cell clots" for dealing quickly with forest toxins, local plant poisons, and mold spores. This system is adapted to local toxins and does not work for those outside.

The body also has an endocrine system that shuts down thermogenesis in order to match the exact ambient temperature. Being able to match the ambient temperature of the cold and damp forest allows them to be invisible to the thermal senses owned by some animals and kin'toni. This also makes them sluggish and prone to muscular lethargy in places colder or hotter then the grove.