FrettzoKlaarungraxus
And so the oceans teemed.
All across the numerous waters of Galbar life blossomed below the waves, in its hundreds of thousands of variations. Seemingly endless schools of shimmering fish assaulted the senses as undersea tidal waves of color while huge basking animals surged through the waters, mouths agape. Deep below, in rocks and crags and crevasses, little things scuttled and nipped at one another. Even at the microscopic level life flourished, with organisms so small as to be near impossible to see except in their teeming masses filling the oceans from the surface all the way down to the deepest depths.
And so Klaar was pleased.
His meeting with the Maiden of the Moon had given the Old Growth Below a considerable sense of clarity, his awareness of the world vastly increased. The old forces of growth were not alone and nor were these separate entities definitively hostile. In fact, they could be downright congenial. Klaar had taken this knowledge well. Perhaps there were more of such quality about the face of Galbar, destined to splash into his oceans for choice meetings such as the one he had shared with Gibbou.
So it was that the mighty Klaar continued his passage through the oceans, spreading life in abundance. But even in this new paradise of life, Klaar deigned that something was missing. Life was simple, basic, and in balance; a good thing, to be sure, but lacking in any true depth. His works had been animalistic in nature, each life often wrought by the alien minds of his numerous tentacles rather than the overmind of Klaar himself. Few thoughts had gone into their creation and they were, although bountiful, of little consequence. As the surface blossomed into trees that towered into canopies so thick as to drain all light from above, Klaar felt the joint mind of his numerous nodes chime in for ever greater creations. How could this be an age of creation with such limited growth?
And so Klaar set to work once more, the many minds of his labyrinthine intelligence designing the creatures that would be his crowning achievements. Designs for numerous new creations spawned rapidly in the mindseye of Klaarungraxus and were stored away for eventual creation. To the casual observer, like the small krill that flitted its little limbs several hundred meters away from the Deep God’s mass, Klaar flitted his limbs and shrunk down on himself, eyes losing their luster as he lost himself in thought.
Days, weeks, potentially months passed as Klaar’s numerous subminds set about the business of designing, testing, and experimenting with the life Klaar envisioned being spawned into the world. Uncontent with the limitations his first iteration of creation had wrought, this next wave would raise the tidewaters of life. They would each be monumental, if not in size than in value to the ecosystems they would be thrust into. Each new species would serve as a pillar for the environments Klaar had full intention to make manifest on the face of Galbar.
The first of his works would be simple but vast in scope; an expansion, thought left-below-two-down, of a basic design already extant that could be expanded upon. With a little effort the exoskeletal life of Galbar’s oceans could be grown to macro-scale and made primary movers of their environs; Titanocrustacea, the Titan Crabs. Numerous forms of the family could be made ranging in sizes and shapes already present in crustacean life. From those more simple designs Klaar could, of course, return to the creatures at a later date and further expand upon the concept. Henceforth the seafloor would be dotted by moving islands, the numerous giant crustaceans that graze on the bountiful sea grasses of the Galbarian Oceans.
Sea Serpents would follow, the lithe pseudo-reptilians born from numerous strands of thought melded into one. They would be omnivorous by design, sporting dentition allowing for the consumption of all sea life available to them. Their long, thin bodies were the ideal shape for both rapid movements and survival in the numerous passageways found both in the cavernous depths of the ocean and the tunnel-like growth of corals now densely populating the oceans. At least half-a-dozen separate species of the Sea Serpent family had been devised, differentiated by color, appendages, and other qualities of superficial or behavioral note. All Sea Serpents, regardless of species, would benefit from electrosensory organs imbedded all across the dermis of the organism with varying capacity to release electrical charges to either detect or, in the most serious of cases, stun other organisms.
The Reef-Horses would be the next creation decided upon, a family of brightly colored and highly visually diverse organisms that could populate the great fields of multi-colored seagrasses that now swathed portions of the seabed in a taidai of color. Envisioned to be semi-amphibious, the Reef-Horse family would all share an at-least visually similar body structure with a quadrupedal gait. Their fins, spread across several phillanges, could be tightened to form pseudo-hooves for either grasping onto the seabed or when exiting the waters to explore the shorelines. All forms of sessile life, from seagrasses to molluscs and everything in between, would be prime sources of sustenance for the species and as such they would bare dentition adequate for the varied tasks of stripping fronds or cracking shells. An image played across the many-minds of Klaar, of a future where perhaps they could serve future creations; a passing fancy to consider another time.
The envisioned apex-predators of this new undersea explosion of life were the Deep Drakes; an array of reptilian-like predatory life built around traversing the craggy reefs and deep caverns of the sea, the Deep Drakes would be a marvel of organic creation. Four powerful limbs, able to spread into fins just as the Reef Horses, terminated in powerful clawed appendages capable of digging into even rock to keep purchase in strong tides. Bioluminescent growths could be used to communicate with other Deep Drakes, attract prey, or ward off rivals in the darkness of the depths while their scaly hide and pseudo-lungs allowed for extended periods of time spent above water. Above the waves, extended fins could be used for leaping glides and threat displays. To challenge all forms of life beneath the waves, their jaws could produce bite forces capable of shattering bone like twigs and barbed tails could be used to lash at prey or foe alike.
With all those varied creatures in mind, it seemed odd what Klaar’s overmind focussed on most. At the center of his roiling thoughts was a creature born of his own image, an entity that would be his own visage made manifest. Though he had no interest in creating a species in replication of his own personality and behavior, he had to admit that his primary form was ideal for the world he resided in. Although they would be slightly derivative, what harm could there be in a creation such as he?
As envisioned in the minds-eye of the Old Growth Below, these creatures would be reminiscent of his own enviable form. Each would bare twelve limbs, arranged symmetrically along a vertical axis. The bottom eight would serve as primary means of locomotion, either through swimming or through pulling themselves through an enclosed environment, with the top two pairs serving as manipulators for more delicate interactions with objects. From there Klaar would bless their species with extraordinary strength, tossing aside any notions of skeletal structure in favor of a far more functional model. Muscular sacs would serve as primary points of structure, with the ability to fill up with or expel gasses for buoyancy. Despite their considerable size, the power of their limbs would allow them to move through the water with dreadful speed and the lack of bones would make them as agile as possible given their girthy shape.
Again he lavished upon this idealized mortal form with further gifts. Their senses, particularly their sight and hearing, would be greatly increased. Six eyes would provide for near three hundred and sixty degrees of rotational vision and an array of light spectrums would be made visible, turning the dark depths of the sea into their own, colorful haven. Sounds from miles away underwater, bounced from surface to surface, would be at least somewhat traceable and provide ample heading for predations. Even their senses of smell and touch would be increased as well, though in less radical ways. Their brain, large yet amorphous, would even be strengthened with a spread of neural connections spread across their tentacles just as his own mind was subdivided and decentralized so that each limb would have a deadly mind of its own.
With all their gifts, Klaar realized he had failed in several regards. They were cold-blooded, like all of his creations beneath the waves, and that meant they would be slave to the temperatures of the sea. Sluggishness in cold waters, slowed metabolisms, and the need to fuel their size would be a problem. A level of biological immortality had been implanted into their flesh, leading to a species that should by all rights simply grow past death and be immune to the fickle ministrations of time. With this ever growing size, no matter how slow the rate, the species would require considerable amounts of nutrients to support itself and would necessitate solitude among the species. Though he had made magnificent predators and destroyers, Klaar was made frustratingly aware that these creatures could never create in the ways he did.
As the final thoughts of creation spilled from Klaar’s mind on the life he had dreamt into reality, Klaar felt a resounding sense of pride and an overwhelming wash of disappointment all at once. There was an awareness of how limited these unnamed creatures would be despite the effort and imagination he had poured into them. It seemed, despite his own magnificence, that these would be but pale imitations of the true thing.
”I name thee Vrool, little mirrors mine. May thine being disappoint no longer.”
