Top of Round 1 (TR1)
Damanandros
Damanandros monitors the effect of his magic and scans the area.
Previously a note to "Leo9sign"]
Here's some ecology that I want to pass along, thinking that 18 INT Nerd Damanandros would know...
Judging by the mass of the carcass, the characteristic shaggy hair, and the extreme foul stench, Damanandros soon becomes convinced that the rotting carrion is the body of a Giant Sloth, called
Golden Mikkish Hemigh in
Jutland.
Damanandros read about it in a tome in the
Tower of Lycos in Kourithos, the
Wandering Encyclopedia of Harmon, the legendary work of the famous Auran explorer who toured through Ivorea and Jutland documenting and illustrating flora, fauna, and culture two centuries ago. The Mikks are huge - time and a half to twice the size of the heaviest grizzly bear.
The giant beast emits an extremely foul stench constantly through the secretion of oils on its leathery skin.
One of the favorite foods of the giant sloth is the
White Middle Mites that build bulbous nests high in decaying trees. The Mikks often climb extremely high trees for this delicacy. Most of the time they can take a fall, but the heavy hulks sometimes wind up underneath the trunk of a rotten tree that finally tips when they climb it.
In turn, the
Firthon Bombadier Beetle is a carrion scavenger. No wonder they are here.
These beetles are likely adolescents, still dulled instead of glossy in their coloring, as their exoskeletons have not cemented yet and they will still grow for another year or year and a half.
These mid-growth specimens are likely...
...still servants to their mother, following her for a season and helping her prepare a nest for her next lay.
The mother beetle preferably lays eggs in the partial carcass of a mammal.
It seems logical that ...they would be especially drawn to the repulsive dead bodies of fallen Mikks. The repulsive odor of the sloth would repel other scavengers who might eat the eggs during their vulnerable gestation period. The bombadiers have no smell sensory, but nearly every other animal - even rodents and avians - will avoid sloth carcass because of the harmful smell and the sickening effects of the skin oils on the meat after death.
Damanandros follows this line of reasoning, and he is approaching a frightful conclusion...
because the full grown, reproductive female bombadiers are at least 3 times the size of their offspring. And there chemical projection system is fully developed.
OOC:
Digest this info, but Damanandros cannot make an announcement about it until Top of Round 2 (TR2).
