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.
Keris Kin'toni Clan
The Keris are adapted to the sun-scorched, arid grasslands of the Waress Dry Field, They are very tall, thin and lean of build, with very long lower legs to make their walking stride and their heat dissipation as efficient as possible. This thin build is fagile, lacking dense muscle shielding and easy to snap by blunt force. Their skin is dusty pale clay-yellow in color to camouflage in the dead grasses. This skin is highly leathery with creases and micro grooves for trapping evening moisture.
This lack of deep pigment leads to almost zero natural defense against UV radiation and leading to a painful, quick death if caught in sunlight. They have dry straw blond hair that is changed into short, needle like and coarse bristles. These lay flat on the scalp and deflect dust and wind-blown grit.
Weakness: The long, thin skeletal structure lacks dense muscle shielding, making their limbs highly fragile and easily snapped by heavy blunt force.
Skin: The skin is a dusty, pale clay-yellow color for camouflage against dead grasses, highly leathery and creased with deep micro-grooves that trap evening moisture.
Weakness: The pale, clay-like pigmentation provides almost zero natural defense against UV radiation, causing them to blister and burn instantly if caught in the daytime sun.
Hair: The hair is a dry, straw-blonde color, modified into short, coarse, needle-like bristles that lay flat against the scalp to deflect dust and wind-blown grit.
Weakness: This coarse, sparse hair offers completely inadequate insulation against the biting, sub-zero wind chills of late-night field storms.
Eyes: The eyes are a pale, glassy amber color with a narrow, horizontal slit pupil that maximizes side-to-side tracking across the flat, open horizon.
Weakness: This horizontal orientation severely limits their vertical field of view, rendering them highly vulnerable to threats attacking from elevated trees or ridges.
Ears: The external ears are oversized, thin, and heavily veined, functioning like biological cooling radiators to shed internal heat into the evening breeze.
Weakness: The large, thin tissue is exceptionally delicate and prone to severe tearing or frostbite when nighttime temperatures plummet.
Nose: The nasal cavity features a series of dry, scaly turbinate baffles that extract and reclaim moisture from their own breath, preventing dehydration in the arid wind.
Weakness: This dry, scaly lining deadens their olfactory sensitivity, making them highly inefficient at tracking subtle airborne scent trails over long distances.
Teeth: The canine teeth are short, flat, and broad, acting like industrial wire-cutters to slice through the tough, fibrous, or leathery hides of arid plains game.
Weakness: They completely lack deep-puncturing fangs, preventing them from easily locking onto or anchoring themselves to a large, struggling target.
Claws: They possess short, straight, and heavily blunted claws that are fused to the fingertips, functioning as rigid digging spikes to scrape into hard, baked clay.
Weakness: The blunt, straight design lacks any slicing edge or grasping capability, rendering their hands entirely useless for fine motor tasks or climbing.
Feet: The feet are exceptionally long and digitigrade, featuring broad, calloused toes that distribute weight across loose, sandy topsoil to prevent sinking during high-speed sprints.
Weakness: The lack of a supportive, cushioned arch makes running on hard, rocky ground highly exhausting and mechanically damaging to their ankles.
Internal Adaptations Arterial Cooling Shunts: The thickened blood vessels feature specialized muscular bypass loops that redirect warm core fluid out to their large ears and long limbs for rapid cooling.
Weakness: This constant peripheral shunting drastically drops their core blood pressure, leaving them highly prone to sudden muscular cramping and fainting spells.
Repurposed Lungs (Dehydration Buffers): The atrophied lungs are completely hollowed out and lined with a dry, cellular wax lattice, acting as an internal moisture-trapping chamber to prevent respiratory fluid loss.
Weakness: This structural shift leaves them with zero internal oxygen reserves, making them entirely dependent on continuous, uninterrupted cutaneous (skin-based) respiration.
Hepatic Iron-Desiccator Nodes: The hepatic cell clots are modified to squeeze every molecule of moisture out of consumed blood, storing it as a thick, high-viscosity plasma.
Weakness: The sluggish, syrupy nature of this iron-heavy blood forces the circulatory system to work under extreme hydraulic pressure, slowing down their overall reflex speed.
Skeletal Elastic Tendon Latches: The major tendons in their long legs are laced with spring-like elastic proteins that physically lock when crouched, storing kinetic energy for sudden, explosive forward leaps.
Weakness: If a latch is forced to unlock prematurely by a sudden sideways strike, the tendon snaps violently, causing immediate, disabling muscle detachment.
Exothermic Torpor Control: Their altered mitochondria can intentionally trigger a state of daytime cryogenic-like torpor, shutting down all non-essential cellular functions when hiding in deep, sun-baked burrows.
Weakness: While in this daytime torpor state, their reaction times are entirely non-existent, leaving them completely defenseless if their hiding spot is uncovered.