Phase 2:Wan'rila Kin'toni Clan

History

Psychology

Biology

The Wan'rila are adapted for the volcanic ash, obsidian terrain and toxic gasses of the Ward'ent Volcanic Stones Plains. They are elongated, lean and with an high surface-area-to-mass ratio. Along with the heavily vascularized ectomorphic shape, this allows them to shed as much heat as possible, as the plains are scorching hot. This also means they are prone to blunt force damage and crushing, lacking the dense muscular padding that absorbing impacts needs. The skin is ask grey, and with heavy callous and deep fissures.

These hides have dark melanin, along with heat-reflective keratin scales. The hair, both body and scalp is gone, replaced with overlapping keratin scales for stopping the ash buildup and to protect the hair from airborne embers. Lacking the insulation layer of hair means that if the temperature drops, they freeze. The eyes have obsidian-black sclerae with hazard-orange irises. These eyes have a heat filtering lenses and pair of nictitating membranes for sweeping away any abrasive particulate matter.

The ears are just flat, recessed slits. These ears have a system of muscular, valved skin flaps. These flaps seal when there is an ash storm, forcing them to use internal bone conduction for hearing. The lack of outer ears, comes with the downside of having severely impaired directional hearing, and an lessened sense of high-frequency sound localization. The nose contains an intricate, moisture-recycling labyrinth made of vascularized mucous membranes. This can cool the incoming air before it reaches the lungs or internal tissues.

The nostrils are wide and slit like, and the teeth contain a form of dense, dark iron-phosphate enamel to avoid the heat from cracking the teeth. These teeth are prone to shattering if they are hit hard or if the kin'toni bites down too hard on hard materials like armor. The claws are spade like, blunt and adapted for digging in order to dig out shelters in the compacted volcanic ash and tuff. These claws, being blunt, are poor for slashing, for grasping prey or for climbing. The feet have wide, splayed and hoof like soles.

These soles, made from a thick, semi flexible pad of corn tissue, are adapted to protect them from superheated stones. These rigid soles also mean they lack tactile feedback, meaning they are clumsy and loud on loose soil/sand/rocks and on forest floors. Inside, they have a secondary sulfur-binding protein. This allows them to isolate any inhaled or absorbed toxic gasses from the region's volcanoes, to stop them from contaminating the primary hemoglobin cycle. In the limbs is a counter current heat exchange system.

This is an network of interwoven arterial and venous loops that is adapted to cool blood that returns from the limbs before it can reach the organs. In cold air, it is an downside, as due to running close to environmental temperatures, in cold environments, they become sluggish or even fall into torpor. The cells have a latge amount of chaperonin proteins for folding and stabilizing the cellular structures, making the cells unable to denature in hot temperatures, but prone to denaturing in cold environments.

Culture

Government

Military

Religion

Miscellany