Phase 2:Kel'ony Kin'toni Clan

History

Psychology

Biology

The Kel'ony are adapted to the steep, jagged crags, sub-zero winds, permafrost terrain of the Ilshlia Boreal Highland. They are very dense, broad shouldered and stocky of build having an low center of gravity as to resist the mountain gales. With their high bone and muscle density, they are not built to be agile, being slow and clumsy in tight, cramped environments like caves or thick brush. The skin is frosted slate blue, to blend with the glaciers, it is thick and lined with cross-hatched epidermal folders in order to keep in a layer of insulating air.

The skin is rigid and heavily folded, leading to be inelastic and prone to tearing such as along the flanks during quick physical movements. Their hair is snow-white, and is dense, long and woolly. It grows as an double-coat over the scalp, neck, and shoulders and is adapted to shield against frost and hold in body moisture. Their eyes are dark green in color, with an oversized pupil. It also has an dense layer of dark-tinted ocular proteins in order to filter the blinding glare of moonlit snow.

These filters lower the amount of light they harvest, leading them to lack night sight in places without snow. The ears are small, flat and with thick white fur to stop heat loss and frostbite to the inner ear. The nose has an expansive, dual-chambered warming labyrinth containing a large amount of hyper-vascularized tissue. This warms the sub zero air before it reaches the core. Their teeth are short, thick and with an heavy outer layer of iron-bound enamel for crushing though frozen flesh and ice.

These teeth being blunt and crushing lack slicing capability. Their claws are long, heavy, non retractable claws, broad and spade like in shape to act as ice axes for scaling the sheer frozen cliffs. These claws are long enough to make fine manipulation hard, and makes using small objects hard. Their feet are wide, with tough leathery soles containing stiff micro bristles to have traction on sheer ice sheets. Inside, their thickened blood vessels have been adapted to have hyper-developed muscular constriction valves.

These lock down the limbs in extreme cold to preserve core fluid pressure. The body's hepatic cell clots have adapted to release an vascular system with a dense glycoprotein that can stop cellular freezing. Around the lungs and other torso organs is an dense, spongy matrix of fat cells. This helps to keep the internal organs warm, but in hot environments, leads to overheating. The skeleton is adapted to have massive quantities of dietary iron to make the bones stronger in order to high-altitude falls.

The downside of this is being very heavy, and lacking any buoyancy, leading them struggle with water and fragile ice. Their bodies are able to go into deep torpor, allowing them to do dormant without food or water. This also means they are easy to kill being torpid and unresponsive. The changes in the digestive tract have oversized lymphatic filters in order to isolate and compress hemoglobin to turn it into an dense, oxygen-rich sludge. This iron-heavy sludge tends to clot, leading to blockages, unless flushed out by fresh feeding.

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