Fibrelings
Species - Bestial - the Other A Fiberling is an aggregate structure composed entirely of hair, animated by a cloud of ultraterrestrial energy emanating from the Gap, with a maximum mass of about two tonnes. No other Galbaric material is present in its body. Each hair can very rapidly bend, curl, or crinkle into a variety of shapes independently of the others, and can stiffen to become a less flexible bristle. Each strand of a fiberling remains animated for as long as it is in contact or fused with others in its body. The hairs themselves can be a variety of colours depending on their source and age, and different fiberlings have different concentrations of each colour, but most are dark, matte brown or black in overall colour, and only a minority have any gloss.
Due to the amorphous nature of their bodies, fiberlings can arrange their lattice of strands into an enormous variety of shapes. Rapid shifting of alignment and adaptive curling of each hair allows a fiberling to 'flow' at an astonishing speed over any solid surface they can find purchase on, even, when flattened, vertical or upside-down faces. Other terrain may induce a fiberling to try other modes of transport, such as rolling themselves over sand, and they often travel with the wind, widening themselves into an airy hollow shape like a tumbleweed. The strength of a fibreling is proportional to its currently manifested mass, and is generally lower than that of a strongly-muscled animal; However, a large one can still exert a significant amount of force to a target area, and most sizable adults can overwhelm a human via brute strength.
The only prominently supernatural feature of a fiberling's body other than its animation is that it can compress via fusion of hairs, storing mass as energy in the Gap. This allows even a fiberling the size of a rhinoceros to fit into a space the size of a single hair. The inherent instability of storing standard-model mass in the Gap means that compression comes at the cost of mobility. The more mass a fiberling is hiding, the more static it must keep its position. A fiberling at maximum size and maximum compression can be forced into its full size even by a loud noise. Decompression at such levels of instability will result in a chain reaction often violent enough to tear the fiberling apart and kill it, or at least lose most of its mass. Fortunately, fiberlings are instinctively aware of their limits, and will always try to compromise between concealment and stability. A one-tonne fiberling can rest indefinitely in just under a litre of space, expanding only at will, or upon a heavy impact to its direct vicinity, and even then slowly enough not to lose more than a few kilograms. Between compression on the one extreme and leaving unusually large amounts of hollow space in its lattice of strands on the other, fiberlings occupy a size range anywhere between a mouse and a mining truck, and can expand from former to latter in seconds. Compression, of course, takes longer than decompression.
Life Cycle: Fiberlings have no living cells that might age, and their energy source does not wane with time or exertion. However, they do wear out. Both high and low temperature extremes will increase the speed at which fiberling strands break or shed, and though one may change its behaviour to compensate for this, warming itself by friction or travelling by night, the average fiberling will still lose several kilograms of mass each year. To compensate for this, they are programmed to seek out and make use of whatever flexible and durable organic matter they can find- Anything from chitin to cellulose to animal collagen, and, of course, keratin. Integration of new hair takes a few days, and re-absorption of separated hairs takes a similar but more variable amount of time depending on the quality of hair lost.
These hair monsters reproduce by binary fission. If an environment is unusually devoid of fiberlings, even taking into account their constant wanderings, one may deliberately seek out enough strands to increase in size while its extradimensional body begins a more complex mitotic replication process. When, and only when, this process is complete will a fiberling be able to divide without just losing half of its mass to inanimacy. Attempts to manually split or force division in fiberlings will not succeed. Although they do inherit some mental traits of their parent, fiberlings have a very high rate of mutation, and thus vary enormously in temperament.
When two fiberlings share a range, they will regularly interact by flowing through one another, their physical bodies exchanging hairs without any lapse in integration. This process has little use in Galbar's plane of existence, although it can lead to new combinations of fibre type and colour. It is a much closer interaction in the Gap, in which the exchange results in the sharing of memories, though each fiberling's personality remains unchanged.
Description: The first creation of Jvan to make full use of her contribution to the Universal Blueprint, fiberlings are not, by nature, functional. Psychologically, they are rather cat-like, and follow their natural instincts of curiousity, survival, and, most of all, sadistic playfulness.
Although their need for material sustenance is rather minimal, fiberlings are predators by choice. They delight in observing an organism unseen until they can predict where it will be, then compressing themselves and waiting. Fiberlings will kill a target in a variety of ways, varying by individual, prey species, and mood, but the most common and efficient method is an extremely sudden sequence of expansion, entanglement, and bodily invasion through any available orifices. Once a fiberling has expanded into an animal, it is free to asphyxiate its victim, rupture it, or gently play with it and see how long it takes to die of stress and bleeding, crucified within an enormous mass of hair.
Of course, fiberlings are very intelligent and have plenty of room for variation in personality. Cognitively, they stand at least on par with dolphins, ravens and chimpanzees, although they exceed them in some aspects and are lacking in others. They do not have any form of language other than sharing memories repeatedly, do not form a social hierarchy and do not often display tool-making behaviour. Their perception of the world is largely self-centred and it is difficult, but not impossible, to teach a fiberling to feel affection for any but its own kind. However, they do possess the ability to plan their actions, coordinate with others, learn and experiment.
The average fiberling is largely nocturnal and very fond of stealth, although many enjoy daylight, even to the point of sunbathing. Some are far more patient than others, and no aspect of their personality is free from variation. One fiberling may prefer to abandon concealment and exploit their limitless supply of energy to simply tease and chase its prey until it dies of exhaustion. Another might not kill at all, only mutilate and cripple. Fiberlings are long-distance wanderers that follow no pattern of movement, but some may settle in areas they particularly like for extended periods of time, and some will seek out their own kind while others shy away.
Fiberlings are in no way limited to animals in their playful curiousity, and will gladly uproot trees and tear up grasses for fun, or even drag around available materials like rocks and moss to form small structures and nests- Although why exactly they do this is unknown, seeing as they can't make use of them. Like cats, fiberlings are not fond of swimming, but sometimes attempt it in order to escape danger or corner prey, and there are, of course, the occasional anomalies who enjoy water.
Fiberlings might not be sentient, but they share one common field in which any specimen will far outstrip even a learned human in their instinctive knowledge of population dynamics. Fiberlings unconsciously record and model the populations and predator-prey balance of any ecosystem they find themselves in, and despite their whimsical behaviour, they will never upset an established habitat beyond what it can handle at any given moment. Although they do enjoy harvesting the finest-quality hairs from their surroundings, the species is always conscious of over-exploitation and may even protect their prey if a particularly bad stroke of luck causes its population to collapse, although they will not stand in the way of more gradual decline and evolution. Fiberlings never show preference towards their prey other than their need to take hair to survive, and even then, do not predate prize species any more than they do others. Fiberlings are therefore never a strong evolutionary pressure. Indeed, the only points at which the presence of fiberlings actually bears a noticeable effect on other species as a whole is when an ecosystem has been upset suddenly and beyond its ability to survive with its biodiversity intact, such as by a natural disaster or an introduced species that out-competes all others by orders of magnitude.
Needless to say, fiberlings love humans, and find them endlessly entertaining in their diversity of behaviour and construction.
Interactions: Under threat, most fiberlings are defensive but skittish when they realise that they can be overpowered. Although they are tough, due to the strength of their constituent materials and their lack of internal organs to damage, it is entirely possible to kill a fiberling simply by destroying or dispersing its strands. Sudden impacts can separate chunks of mass from a fiberling, as can slashes from a sufficiently sharp object. Magical forces can be used to separate strands from one another until too little remains for the extradimensional body of the creature to reconnect with the physical plane. Fire is an effective way of destroying fiberlings constructed of volatile materials.
Fiberlings protect themselves depending on the situation. Their immense mobility allows them to outrun or outlast most danger. Like a beetle on its back, a fiberling knows that it is more vulnerable the smaller and less dense it is, and it is standard behaviour for a cornered specimen to expand to full mass but wrap itself into an intricately woven, airtight, enormously dense sphere that can resist most onslaughts, even crusting over rather than incinerating when burned. This does leave the fiberling unable to move until it sees a chance to unravel and try its luck running or attacking.
The Horrorsome Engineer sometimes embeds a Jvanic Eye within a fiberling, giving her full awareness of its actions while simultaneously boosting its perception, and, when necessary, overwriting its will with her own. The destruction of the eye does not necessarily kill the fiberling, or vice versa, but upon its loss the fiberling will be unusually docile, unmotivated, and susceptible to training- At least for a while.
Wild fiberlings can also be trained or conditioned to act a certain way, although their natural instincts are hard to curb and it is tricky to teach them to accept a master without killing it or running from it. That said, they are not incapable of affection, at least of a rather weak self-centred variety, again reflecting their feline nature. Magical restraints are recommended.
Fiberlings interact with White Giants rather like cats interact with dogs, although a pack of several fiberlings working in tandem can break open even these behemoths, and may be motivated to do so rather than watch themselves be driven to extinction in any particular area.
