285 million years PE, Serina's south pole - already a land of jungles since the hothouse began - is now a continent-spanning tropical swamp of tall, old trees crossed with rivers, marshes, and lakes, which have expanded widely thanks to the work of the land-shaping rivercarver that floods woodlands to produce its nesting territories. Though the summer brings several months of continuous sunlight in which plant life thrives, winter is almost three solid months where the sun does not rise, yet temperatures remain warm due to the extreme greenhouse gas concentration still lingering in the atmosphere. Myriad strange and mysterious animals have adapted to this damp and humid shadow world during winter at the bottom of the world in the late Ultimocene, where only the reflected light of serina's hosting planet and the auroras illuminate the starry sky in the half-year night. This isn't a condition unique to the south polar region - it is mirrored in Serina's northern reaches too, which have their own characteristic habitats distinct from their southern counterparts, yet allied by alternating cycles of light and dark that each last months, not hours. 

Without cold weather to follow the setting sun, in the winter Serina's polar regions become alien worlds with no counterpart on modern day Earth. They are beautiful places, in their own way, where animals sing and even shine to be noticed in the perpetual gloom, and where life can still be found everywhere in incredible diversity, even when the sun is gone for months on end. Yet these are deadly places just the same, where the night itself can seem to strike from above and take lives away into the shadows, and where prosperity is sought by all, but guaranteed to none. 

above: a spook - a huge moonbeast - in melanistic winter pelage ambushes a scamp, a lemur-like tree-dwelling foxtrotter, in the depths of the longdark winter.

The longdark swamp in winter is a place like no other. It is often so dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face, for even though Serina's planet and the auroras above shed some light upon the sky, more often than not these are dulled if not hidden entirely by a thick, persistent cloud cover. The air is thick and stagnant, with a shroud of fog hanging low to the ground and drizzling rain off and on every few hours nearly continuously. Bugs are everywhere, biting and buzzing and scuttling and scrambling on the tall, creaking trunks of forest trees and through the thick leaf litter, from the tiniest gnats to monstrous things larger than rats and pigeons, insect goliaths that seem more suited to a far past time. Unseen creatures of every size and shape scurry and scuttle everywhere out of sight, predators and prey, everything big and small experiencing unseen lives and unseen deaths. Creeping and crawling things shriek and chirp and cry in the dark, disembodied voices that sometimes lend the impression of far fiercer forms than they truly hold - or other times which match their makers completely. Eerie lights flash and flicker in the dead brown foliage, and flutter through the air like ghostly apparitions, only to disappear into the darkness if you come too close. If ghosts and bogeymen were real, this is surely where they would lurk.  While this forest is lit by the sun at all hours through the summer, and is then very productive with plant growth that feeds a bounty of herbivores, come winter the plants die back and the large browsers move on, leaving the longdark swamp a world that seems to be dominated by fierce predators menacing what prey that remains. The carnivores' names vary as much as their shapes: the sneaky swampstalker, the ill-tempered rutlump, and the dreaded bog shoggoth. And of course, there is the elusive spook.

If you were to spend some time in the longdark swamp in the dead of winter, and if by some great luck you were not seized by its many aforementioned predators - a big if - you would probably eventually encounter one of the few animals that probably wouldn't try to kill you. About as big as a badger, another, gentler being ambles along the ground, staying to the uplands whenever possible as it does not like to swim. It is quite noisy as it moves, breaking branches and shuffling along low to the ground, and may give the impression of being an animal far bigger than it really is. When it comes into view - assuming you have some sort of night-vision goggles at least, or there is no view - it is unlikely to notice you unless you move suddenly, for it is nearly blind and finds its food by scent. Its focus is likely to be upon any of the countless rotten, fallen trees that lay scattered across the ground here. It sniffs each one, and rises onto its hind legs to test the strength with a push of its large, hook-clawed forearms. When it finds one that seems right, the digdag, Dorscutus fossorialis (digging shield-back), pries it open with its claws and, if its intuition was correct, finds one or more large grubs hiding within, which it snatches in its pointed beak with great speed. Very likely, the digdag has an entourage; it is followed by smaller flyers which pick through the opened logs for additional smaller insect prey they could not otherwise reach.

The digdag is named for its fossorial nature - it finds its food by digging as well as makes dens beneath the ground in higher areas above the water table - and for the sharp, dagger-like scales upon its back and face which are defensive in function. If threatened the digdag's first response is to run, barreling low to the ground at surprising speed into thickets, where it will be difficult to follow. Yet if pressed further, it will drop to the ground, protecting its underbelly with its sharp scales and a skin which is underlain with many sharp bony nodules, rendering it very difficult to penetrate. Digging into the earth with its claws, it becomes a virtually inedible ball of spikes and is left alone by most predators. Females of this species are some of the best parents of any burdle living or extinct, and are one of only a few clades which care for their offspring for a long time after hatching. In the case of this species, the mother will attend her young for as long as two years, protecting it from predators and helping it to find food for itself. Perhaps because they are so well-defended from their enemies, these burdles are a rare K-strategist, and have just one chick at a time, which they raise for several years.

The unseelie, a common Serinaustran tribbat evolved from the nightbiter, is just such a species. Most of the time, the unseelie is skittish and jumpy; it hunts small prey, mostly insects, along the forest floor. It is very terrestrial and most often is seen alone, scurrying through leaf litter and up logs and fallen tree trunks, examining every crevice for potential prey - it flies only when frightened, and often follows close behind larger animals like the digdag, which can flip over logs and reveal food it couldn't reach on its own. It is joined in this pursuit by bogglebirds, nocturnal descendants of chatterravens which though known for their incredible intelligence and creative tool-use, will not pass up an easy meal worked for by someone else. But of the two, it is the unseelie that is far more threatening. The unseelie is a nightbiter, after all, and it hasn't forgotten what it is. And that is, ultimately, an opportunist. The jaws and teeth of this little animal are still quite a bit larger than necessary to eat nothing but grubs. The swamp is a dangerous place, where predators fight prey, and rivals battle for all manner of reasons. The land itself can kill too - a saturated water table means that the sediment of the soil can become suspended in an upwelling of groundwater, forming quicksand that can trap heavy animals. Like its earlier relative the tribulus, the unseelie takes advantage of anything which injures or incapacitates larger animals like this to broaden its diet. Drawn to the sounds of any kind of struggle, normally inconspicuous little unseelies gather in groups and gain confidence to take fast bites of flesh from the wounds of the injured or the helpless. Creatures bloodied in combat but still strong will be able to fend the foes off, for these nightbiters are not nearly as strong or persistent as some others. But for any animal that becomes too weak to fight back - be it trapped in mud and unable to turn around, mortally wounded, or simply too young to defend themself and discovered in a hiding place while their parent is away - the unseelie, in growing hordes, gathers to eat them alive. 

Whenever anything dies in the jungle, the unseelie picks up the trail and is also among the first scavengers, sometimes gathering in such number that a carcass is covered in their scurrying bodies and entirely obscured. As soon as anything stronger finds the windfall, they lift into the sky like a black cloud and give way, but it takes just a few minutes to skin the body; if nothing else shows up, a 500 pound animal can be skeletonized in the course of a night. And night is the only time that these creatures come out of hiding; long before the longdark swamp becomes the land of the midnight sun in the summer, when it still only peeks above the horizon, they are quick to migrate north, to latitudes where the night never fully goes away. The unseelie is a shadow creature through and though, always lurking out of sight... but never out of mind. 

~~~

Just as it isn't only the bigger beasts in the swamp that can pose a danger, it isn't just the most monstrous creatures that you need to watch out for. One of the most feared predators of this habitat is, when not actively hunting, a surprisingly pleasant and almost amicable sort of animal. Sure, the spectacled swampstalker has a sharp pseudo-toothed beak, but this large skuorc has bright and inquisitive eyes and an attractive pattern of white eyeglass-like markings in the short, velvety feathers around its eyes that gives it an almost studious and very curious appearance, and most often when seen it is mild-tempered. It spends most of its time resting in plain sight, hauled onto sandbars, where they gather in small groups and socialize. These animals are the closest living relatives of whiskerwhales, a sister lineage diverging from the same 275 MPE ancestor, the spinysnout skwimmer. And though they have remained amphibious, with legs that let them still walk easily over land, they have much in common, including far less antisocial behavior than most skuorcs. They even have well-developed parental care that involves several months of guarding of newborns by the female, which digs out a special nursery pool in the wetland for her young to grow and hunt under her watchful eye. When bothered on land, the swampstalker will usually give way to other animals - even smaller ones - simply swimming away to a less busy place to sleep. It is tolerant of unobtrusive animals while resting in this way, and creatures that would seem to be easy prey will not be bothered, instead resting among the predators for protection from other enemies. 

But all of this is, of course, only the swampstalker's behavior when it lets itself be seen, usually in the summer: then it is likely to be already satiated, comfortable, and not interested in a hunt. Swampstalkers have slower metabolisms than most birds, typically for skuorcs, so they only need to eat infrequently, and are quite benign in between meals, as it takes a lot of time to digest and they can survive for a long time on a single feeding. If you can see one, then you aren't in danger. These animals are only dangerous when their prey has no clue they are around. But when their bellies empty, and the swamp begins to darken in the fall, they dip below the swamp waters when eyes turn away. Slinking below the murky water with silent grace, these predators then use their whiskers to sense water vibrations and quietly sneak up on prey as it comes to take a drink or cross the water. They can hold their breath for 40 minutes, patiently waiting for something to come close. When it does, they strike with great accuracy. The hungry swampstalker doesn't give its prey any notice that it was there, erupting from the water with a burst of great speed and grasping the animal's head in its jaws. A lucky strike will let it instantly drag the unfortunate animal below water to drown with little fuss, and the kill will be so neat and quiet that other prey nearby will likely not see the perpetrator, and so will remain oblivious to the danger it poses when it later comes out of the water to rest. Feeding is much more frequent in the winter, for the dark provides the necessary cover for perfect ambushes, and then they may kill an animal every day. In contrast, most adult animals feed only once or twice a month in the height of summer; it's harder to sneak up on prey, and they are often already so corpulent from a winter of feasting, hauling out onto the shore to sleep like so many stuffed sausages lying in the mud, that they can survive for many weeks on their reserves. Then they are, again, a pleasant neighbor, lying on their bellies fat and happy, with a permanent smile arced across their faces. But don't get too comfortable with these neighbors, for their sunlit smiles disguise a sinister shadowed life - and whatever you do, don't go swimming after dark. 

~~~

There are more benign carnivores in this wet world of darkness and danger too, however. Merely eating meat does not a monster make - such animals can also include some of the smartest and most compassionate of creatures. The swampstilt is a large foxtrotter species which is widely-ranging across Serinaustra in the middle hothouse. It is a morphologically primitive canithere, despite its very long limbs and jaws, and is far less behaviorally and physically distinct than many other contemporary species such as the scamp, which have changed more drastically in size and niche. Nonetheless, the swampstilt is a specialized animal itself, adapted to a wait-and-strike method of hunting which involves wading in shallow water for hours at a time and then striking suddenly at passing prey, mainly fish. Its toes are very long and half-webbed, to spread its weight over muddy sediment and sand. It is further helped not to sink by being surprisingly lightweight; though it is extremely tall at almost six feet at the head, it is so gangly, even more so beneath its oily fur coat, that it weighs only about 140 pounds. Yet despite its gaunt and ptentially sinister appearance, this predator is harmless to humans and to most larger land-living animals: it is a fish-eater, by trade, and is notably docile and retiring.

Like ancestral foxtrotters, swampstilts are monogamous breeders and form lasting, affectionate pair bonds, though this species spends weeks or even months apart during the non-breeding season, meeting up again at a mutually recognized common ground periodically to nuzzle and play and re-affirm their social bonds. Due to their very long legs and large size, swampstilts do not generally make burrows to rear their young but simply give birth in a secluded thicket near the beginning of the polar summer, or spring in more northerly regions of the continent. Their pups are born larger at birth than their ancestors and with better motor control; though they are helpless and need more than two years of parental guidance before independence, they can grip their parents' fur and ride on their backs or even hang from their bellies within a few hours of being born. A reflex is present in the pups from birth until about five months of age to close their fingers tightly by default and only relax their grip voluntarily, which ensures they do not fall off their parents. Reaching around to their backs with a neck unusually flexible for tribbetheres, the adults regurgitate a soft, semi-digested slurry of fish or other meat for the newborn young until their teeth grow in and they can begin feeding on portions of whole prey.  

The swampstilt demonstrates that not all of the swamp is deadly - at least to most. Some hunters here care for one another, demonstrating enduring social bonds. But still others can do this, too, while still being incredibly deadly. The apex predator of the long dark swamp is not a single solitary monster that strikes from the dark by surprise, but a cunning force of many which work together in tightly-knit groups, allied by a common goal and close, altruistic social relationships. The squabgoblin is a highly social pack-hunting scrounger species. These obligately-carnivorous animals are intelligent and crafty, among the most intelligent of living animals, and so are able to coordinate their behaviors to a high degree with a vocal language of clicks and whistles. They habitually craft simplistic tools - weapons used to disable prey animals, mostly variations of spears - and learn these crafts from older members of their clans. Thanks to their mastery of weaponry and teamwork, squabgoblins have a kill success rate of about 80%, and can even kill animals some 50 times their own size… because this fearsome killer, feared by all of this region, weighs only about 13 pounds. 

The squabgoblin is a tiny but tenacious hunter, using its short stature, which could be a handicap, to its advantage to run at high speed through dense jungle and under obstacles that would slow down larger hunters. They live in very large groups, sometimes growing to more than a hundred animals in productive territories, and this lets them utilize a variety of methods to kill prey. They are extremely socially complex, living in fission-fusion societies in which large clans regularly break up and form smaller, individual hunting parties, coming together and breaking up throughout the day, with the whole group coming together in one hunt only occasionally when it is necessary to take down specific types of prey in specific environments. Different hunting strategies include relays, in which some clan members are positioned at strategic points along a game trail so that as the first pursuers tire they trade off with a fresh set and can run their quarry to exhaustion. They use familiar terrain to their advantage to funnel prey into natural choke points and drop-offs where others lie in wait to finish them off. Their hunting behavior is plastic and very flexible; when the landscape isn’t conducive to trap prey, they will form wide circles that close in around herds from a far distance, trapping them in a small killing field with nowhere to run. When prey is killed, the group which is currently present feeds in a strict order of dominance based on a social hierarchy formed through complex alliances and coalitions within the clan, rather than on individual strength. Males are bigger than females by an average of 25%, but may not necessarily be at the top of the hierarchy because females tend to have larger alliances with which to defend themselves and raise their ranks than the males do. This is because males tend to leave the clans in which they are born at sexual maturity and so lose any alliances they have early in life, while females are more likely to remain in their natal groups much longer or for their entire lives. Exceptions to the norm exist in all complex species, and subordinate females may leave if courted by a high-ranking outsider male, who will guarantee her a good position in a new group, while young males with high ranks may prioritize maintaining a higher social standing over the opportunity to breed, but lose that position in a new clan.

Higher social ranks can be obtained through many means, not only aggressive but also affiliative; while vicious coalitions can maintain dominance of the clan for a period, they are likely to lose respect from lower-ranking members of the group and so can be killed in violent mutinees if they are ganged up on by the rest. Leaders who gain their positions by building bridges, rather than burning them, can be highly popular with the rest of the group and so can rely on them and trust they will be loyal. While aggressive coalitions maintain their dominance with over-the-top expressions of violence to keep their group in line, kinder leaders share resources more equitably, and will even groom lower-ranking individuals' feathers as a gesture of good faith, while more aggressive leaders will demand preening and not return the favor. Unlike some other social predators like many sawjaws, juveniles and chicks feed after the dominant individuals, unless they are the children of higher-ranking females, as young all share a rank with their mothers until they are weaned, then take the one just below her whether it be high or low. In this way, some individuals are automatically born into high social standing without having to work for it. Those born into prosperity can be either especially gentle, for they have never had to fight their way to the top, or especially rude, for they have never been declined anything they want to have. In either case, if these individuals are ever ousted from their high ranks by a shift in the social group, they often struggle to adapt, having learned no skills needed to work for anything earlier in their lives.

Females which inherit high ranks this way usually keep them, while males only do so if they don’t disperse from the group, meaning they must make the choice between more access to food and a chance to mate, since females will not breed with males born into their own clans, even if they are not actually related due to strong inbreeding avoidance behavior. Newly-joined clan members start from the bottom and must beg for scraps from everyone else, but can sometimes rise quickly through the ranks if they can make friends with a more dominant alliance early-on. Low-ranking clan members are likely to form hunting parties excluding more dominant ones when possible so as to secure themselves more food, though they will take part in larger communal hunts in which they may get little chance to feed themselves in order to gain respect from higher-ranking packmates and further their chances of being treated better in the future. It is also common for the least dominant members of the group to take childcare roles as this excludes them from needing to hunt, and they are paid for their services with portions of food when the adults return to feed their chicks left at the communal den site. Taking good care of their superiors’ young is one of the best ways to gain favor with the dominant animals and potentially bring a low-ranking one into a more dominant alliance.

Deep in the long-dark winter near Serina's south pole, a pack of spear-welding squabgoblins demonstrate their ferocity as it emerges from the tall grass and successfully drives off a far larger bonebruiser, Oblidens horridus (horrid crushing tooth), and usurps its kill.

Brutes, fearsome carnivorous burdles, were hothouse Serinaustra's first dominant predators, but their dominion was short-lived. By now, only a few remain among a once successful lineage, and the bonebruiser is the fiercest.  Five hundred pounds and with a jaw that can crush bone with ease, the bonebruiser now faces rivals it can't overcome. Intelligent, cooperative predators a tiny fraction of its size work as one to overwhelm large foes; they can also manipulate their environment to their favor, building their own weapons where none evolved, and so adapting faster than their rivals. The bonebruiser has armored scutes, but has lost thick protection along its underside to reduce its weight and increase is maneuverability at its size: it is now a vulnerability when confronted with this new enemy that can exploit any weakness and approach too numerous to fight one on one. 

~~~

Squabgoblins are effective hunters not only through their complex and well-developed behavior, but also their physical traits. In addition to their small size which is well-adapted to maneuver in thick vegetation, squabgoblins are adapted endurance runners, with very large lungs for their body size to get sufficient oxygen. They change both their behavior and their appearance with the dramatically shifting seasons, using relays and ambushes much more often in the summer while they can run longer without overheating in the longdark night. Like many animals of these extreme polar regions, their feathers molt and turn black in the winter to hide them better in the shadows, turning brown in the summer to match a lighter landscape - and to avoid absorbing as much solar radiation, reducing overheating.

Squabgoblins breed year round, though with a peak in the late winter and early spring. There is no pair bond between mates, and all females in a clan can breed, usually with a small number of unrelated males. Lower-ranking females may be suppressed by dominant ones if food is not abundant enough to raise so many chicks, and infanticide - nearly always by other females - is not rare in these circumstances. A single egg is laid and incubated by the mother alone in a  private chamber of a large communal den. The chick is moved to a communal creche with the other chicks at a week of age, when it is slightly stronger and less liable to be trampled. Adults rarely sleep in the den in winter, for it is cooler to roost in an open aggregation outside, but retire below ground during summer to sleep as there is otherwise no darkness in which to rest. Tools are stored in the den system, with spears and other trinkets being used by their owners for as long as they are in working condition. Except when resting, it is rare for any adult to be seen not holding a weapon, for without them their ability to partake in hunts or defend themselves is significantly reduced. Some high ranking animals in the group never learn to create their own tools effectively, as they can rely on taking them from other members.

Though all squabgoblin chicks hatch with grey feathers, if hatched in winter they will molt to a fully black plumage within three weeks, registering day length changes with the pineal glands on their heads in the way of nearly all birds to determine the season. Because the adult of this species is so small, chicks reach adult size and weight rapidly, in just three months. They are not fully mature for two years, however, and spend years learning socially from their elders and peers. Sexual maturity is attained at two years for females and three for males. Despite their small size, squabgoblins can live a relatively long time due to the protections provided by their social lifestyle, and may live 20 years, though 10 is more common, with the highest mortality coming from conflicts with other members of their species. These birds are very territorial, and clans are aggressive if they cross territorial boundaries, even engaging in war with rival groups that they have a history of disagreement with. More often, though, clans respect mutual boundaries. The exchange of young dispersing males between different clans cements some level of social bond between them, and clans which become mixed in this way can occasionally merge, or partially merge, if resource availability favors larger numbers and cooperation instead of conflict to most efficiently use them. As clans get too big they can also break up, with some alliances moving to a new territory. In this case, the individuals left behind will rise to the most dominant positions, though this can result in significant infighting as the group reassembles itself without its former leaders.

~~~

Most animals fear the squabgoblin, with good reason. But there is one which does not. Instead, it has forged a union with them to the benefit of both - and in doing so, a bridge of culture has now formed between them. Bogglebirds are a globally-distributed family of distinctive hothouse chatterravens that have evolved large eyes to facilitate nocturnal lifestyles in wooded habitats, especially toward the poles. Though these birds vary considerably in size and specific behavior, a majority of them are omnivorous and generalists, social to varying degrees, and highly intelligent. They often, but not always, have long legs and frequently hunt on the forest floor by pursuing small prey on foot. The beak is usually sturdy, long, and hooked at its end, useful to kill small animals as well as to feed on fruit and seed. Some bogglebirds have sound-amplifying discs of facial feathers in addition to their keen eyesight, though this is restricted to only one group. A few small species are highly arboreal and have short limbs and long toes that let them cling to vertical tree trunks - or, sometimes, to the bodies of large animals, which they may pick parasites from in the manner of oxpeckers. Most species will oppurtunistically follow behind larger foragers like the digdag, just as the unseelie will do. But these birds are smart and capable of much more complex relationships with other animals than to merely trail behind...

These birds are natural knot-makers - perhaps a practiced extension of instinctive nesting behavior - and sometimes create seemingly decorative adornments - bracelets and necklaces of woven fibers, sometimes incorporating small, lightweight pendants of shiny natural materials that they wear on their bodies. The quality of this "jewelry" may serve as a social signal that increases their standing among other bogglebirds, and it make them more attractive to the opposite sex, functioning in place of any natural marks of bright color, but the behavior is not necessary to find a partner, nor is the creation or application of these ornaments necessarily restricted to this time. It may also be adopted by the scrounger, or even given to them in trade for other materials or labor by the bogglebird, in a remarkable example of primitive commerce.

~~~

Not all animals of the swamp are as smart or ingenious as the bogglebird and the squabgoblin, and they do not need to be, because some animals are much, much bigger, and so defend themselves and find food more through strength than any level of wit.

The longdark swamp is inhabited by many wondrous and strange animals which have made their home here, because for all its dangers, it is also a land of riches. Though it is easily forgotten during the dark season, in summer the swamp is a verdant matrix of green forests and flooded lowlands. On the margins in the summertime grow immense tall grasses, some of them high enough to hide a two-story high building... or the next closest thing, the 6,000 pound, 23 foot long, 18 foot tall bogbeast, one of the largest tentacle-birds which has ever existed, and which yet shares a not-too-distant ancestry with the tiny squabgoblin; both have descended from the shorescrounger. This scrounger has been able to grow to larger sizes than most biped birds through the development of a longer balancing tail, albeit not a very flexible one as it has been formed from the elongated segments of the few tail vertebrae their common ancestor still had. Nonetheless that of the bogbeast is more mobile than in some trunkos, whose "tails" are virtually immobile, for it is jointed at the base where it meets the synsacrum and capable of about 45 degrees flexion to either side.

The bogbeast is a huge bird and highly impressive. Despite its size, it has retained its plumage for defense against vicious biting insects; its semi-aquatic nature in turn makes it difficult for lice and mites to colonize its coat as they do more terrestrial animals like thorngrazers, which lost their own fur to reduce parasite loads. With flexible neck and four facial tentacles, bogbeasts can additionally reach around to almost all parts of their bodies to comb their feathers and groom themselves, another advantage they have over thorngrazers in keeping their pelage clean. 

A true omnivore, the bogbeast is able to subsist on almost any sort of food, and so is the biggest creature that can remain in the swamp when the leaves fall in the twilight of autumn and most other browsers depart. Though it favors water plants and these make up most of its summer diet, it also eats meat and can kill animals as large as trunkos and giraffowl to get it in the winter when plants are scarce; in this way it is similar in niche to a very large bear. Despite its size and strength, it is surprisingly shy, being cryptic and often difficult to see, for it is solitary, moves most often through the densest swamps, and spends most of its time wading and swimming so that it leaves few traces of its presence. Even its shaggy feathers blend into the backdrop, for they are usually tinged with algae that grows there in the perpetual moisture of the swamp. There is one sure way to know if a bogbeast is around, however, and that is by its distinctive strong odor; adults are territorial, and mark the boundaries of their home ranges with strong-smelling droppings at specific marker points, where their leavings can pile up taller than a person.

Bogbeasts are surprisingly fast and agile for short distances so that they can overtake their victims by surprise. But it isn't quite a perfect predator  - the tentacles of its face have only small keratinous nails on their distal tips but are relatively small and not well-adapted to kill prey, being more suited to pull up grasses and vegetation, which means the boogbeast has to improvise: it kicks its prey to death, rather than bite it. Their size allows them to take kills from most other predators in their habitats and also leaves them with no predators of their own in adulthood. Chicks however, which are raised entirely by the male after the female lays two large eggs in a mound of vegetation above the high water line, are vulnerable if they stray too far from their parent.

~~~

The largest of all the longdark swamp's animals are typically found there only seasonally, migrating north in the fall to avoid starving as the trees and plants go dormant without sun to sustain them. But for one browser, survival depends on beating the competitors to get the new green leaves of spring as soon as they appear, before anyone else can. To do this, it hibernates, and so can wake from its slumber at the first light of spring and eat its fill without sharing with anything else.

Dawnwalkers, Aurorambula longidormens (long-sleeping dawn-walker) are very large plant-eating burdles - indeed, the biggest terrestrial one alive and second in size ever only the lumberbeest of the early Ultimocene - that are non-migratory. They are upright bipeds and eat little else but the foliage of trees, growing up to twenty feet high and weighing several tons. This is smaller than the bogbeast, but unlike it, they eat nothing but plants - and need lots of them to survive - and are relatively inefficient at digesting on top of it. Yet have a lifestyle that allows them to thrive even in a region where more specialized browsers exist, without needing to leave the swamp in the winter. They simply dig a den into the ground in an elevated area and go to sleep through the dark, shutting down most of their already-slow metabolism to a crawl and using very little energy. Dawnwalkers wake up just as the sun returns and vegetation begins to grow, and gorge themselves continuously for weeks on new buds and shoots -  before other herbivores return. This gives them a head start, and it is during this brief window of time that they gain much of their annual nutritional requirement, though they continue to feed through the summer. Come autumn, they enter a prolonged state of hibernation for the better part of each year until the next spring.

Dawnwalkers are long-lived and take up to seven  years to reach sexual maturity, and mortality is high in immature animals as they are often dug out and eaten during hibernation. For adults which do survive their first seasons however, they have fewer predators, particularly as they close off their huge dens with boulders or thick layers of soil when they sleep. Grown adults can furthermore rapidly increase their numbers - adult females may lay over one hundred eggs at a time, which they guard in their burrow until they  hatch and disperse. Juveniles are arboreal and much faster than the adults. To avoid predators, they immediately leave the ground and climb high into forest  trees to feed for their first summer, but still must return to the ground to hibernate. They only begin to adopt the purely terrestrial habits of the adult around four years of age, when they are too large to easily climb. At that time they can no longer run, and must rely on safety in numbers and upon their large, sharp forelimb claws to defend themselves from the region's several large carnivores. Though dim-witted and slow, their size and aggressive nature are reasonable deterrents to predators when they are active. Their enemies are far more likely to take them when they begin tunneling out their hibernation chambers in the fall, before the carnivores have moved north following other prey, as they are more vulnerable when so distracted. 

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Huge giraffowl are the southern continent's equivalent to Serinarcta's giant skuorcs, and these species cannot hibernate away the winter. They must make long, seasonal migrations to and from the polar regions to follow the food throughout the year. As such, they leave when the last leaves of autumn fall, and typically return only once the sun has risen again in the sky enough for the vegetation to return. Many of these giants have complex relationships with the plants and trees of the swamp, and one, the crown-crested skybreaker, has a very important role to play in ensuring the forest remains healthy, for it is its sole defense against a recent invasive species.

The dominant trees of Serinaustra are the dancing trees, colonially clovers with narrow trunks and weak, soft wood. Dancing trees form thick stands, usually through vegetative spreading of new trunks off the roots of old ones, and these trunks all rely on each other for support, with whole forests frequently swaying together in the wind, but not falling as their branches interlock and hold them upright.These trees have had it good here for millions of years, for there were few other plants with which to compete, but now they are facing an enemy in the form of invasive rockroot descendants. These plants, the last of the ant trees, evolved to grow in the northern hemisphere on high boulders above the reach of destructive thorngrazers. Yet quite recently, they have now spread on the wind oversea and reached the southern continent. Here, they take root not only on stones, but upon the tall branches of the native trees. Though slow-growing, they cheat and hitch a ride on top of the faster-growing trees to get a spot in the sun, and once there, they get much more nutrition from falling tree leaves and other forest detritus than they do on the northern plains, and so their growth can be more vigorous. Within only a few million years of their colonization, some of these introduced plants have become killers. They take root high in the canopy and begin life as a harmless epiphyte. Yet as they grow stronger, they now become aggressive. Their endemic ant colonies begin to strip their host tree of leaves in an effort to starve it, while the rockroot begins sending down extremely long roots until it makes contact with the ground. Once secured, it can pull up nutrition directly from the soil and its growth speeds up even further. As they reach maturity, constrictor trees (Suffocaradix sp - strangling root) slowly kill their hosts, starving them of light and eventually of air as they chokes their trunks with constricting roots and buries them as they fuse and become a new trunk. The new tree is much longer lived than that which it replaced, and over time, the delicate dancing forest can be all but replaced by a long-lasting community of sturdier trees.  This has major effects on the ecology of the forest, for dancing trees bear edible seed-filled fruit and support abundant wildlife; constrictor trees produce seedlings that are dispersed by ants, and are much less productive to animal life. 

Yet even though they don't bear fruit, constrictor trees are still eaten by browsers such as the crowncrested skybreaker (Coronacristax gigas - giant crowned-crest), the tallest giraffowl. These huge birds now stand up to 40 feet tall, and as adults are completely terrestrial and mostly - but not entirely - herbivorous. And they are now the saviors of the dancing forests. They preferentially like to eat young constrictor trees, seeking them out among the dancing trees' high branches where little else could reach them. They prefer them even with many other leaves available to eat, because their trunks contain the additional protein of their symbiotic ant colonies. This is the only meat the adult skybreaker will  generally eat, but it seeks it out whenever it can get it, eating entire saplings and all of the ant larvae hidden within, stopping them before they can grow their roots down to earth and kill their host trees. So limited by the appetites of this browser, the constrictor trees numbers are kept in check.

 Male crowncrested skybreakers get their name from their complex beak crests that radiate outward like the points of a star and brilliant, iridescent black plumage overlaid with a white reticulated pattern. Females are dull and grey, with only small crests, for the male's decoration exists solely to impress them - and does not pose a danger, for these birds are too large to be threatened by predators as adults. Females live in herds among themselves, with a loose dominance hierarchy, while males compete amongst each other for the right to breed with the herds. Females give birth to up to a hundred pupal offspring at a time, which have not grown in proportion to the size of the adult but instead remain extremely small, only about 7 inches in length. They deposit these developing young into their abdominal pouch, inherited from their tiny winged ancestor. The pouch opening now faces backward to facilitate the transfer, and here the young incubate safe from predators and inclement weather. About six weeks later, the pouch begins to stir and the young will emerge. They look nothing like the adult, weighing just a few ounces and having fully developed wings - long and pointed ones, well-built to carry the tiny chicks long distances. Resembling swifts at this age, the newborns are superprecocial and leave their mothers instantly, never to return to the pouch. They spend their first few weeks flying far from home, staying along bodies of water where catch small flying insects. Only once the chicks have dispersed a good distance do they begin to settle down, foraging along the shores of wetlands and beginning to swim along the surface to feed on arthropods and water plants. Their growth is rapid, and by six months they may be as large as geese. Their wing digits do not grow along with their bodies, soon becoming dwarfed and useless, and they are soon flightless. They transition over the next decade through several life stages, growing fast and becoming gradually less aquatic and more terrestrial as they grow into tall browsers. They are fully grown within ten years, at which point their stunted wing finger has long since dried up useless and fallen off.

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Up in the canopy of these southern forests are many varied foxtrotter descendants, too. Known as scamps, they have become the Serinaustran equivalent to primates. They descend from the brushtrotters which became more arboreal, but their closest relative outside this group is in fact the swampstilt, which became semi-aquatic. The scamps now fill a variety of niches here, and range in forms from primate-like to more primitive. All of them have long fingers to grasp and climb trees, most are omnivorous, and most are social. Many species exist, but surely one of the most spectacular is the flutterfox (Vulpteryx inoptinatus - unexpected fox-feather), a species that has evolved the bristle-like hairs on its fingers, that give traction to help other scamps climb trees, into a sort of net with which to capture large flying insects. Jumping from branch to branch and cupping its hands around its prey, the flutterfox has evolved skin patagia along its arms to help slow its descent when it falls. More than this, however, the bristles along its fingers form a feather-like structure that provides lift. By reaching forward and up with its hands as it does when catching prey to slow its descent when crossing distances between trees, the flutterfox has quite accidentally stumbled upon the predecessor behaviors that lead to powered flight. By fluttering their hands in this way, these foxtrotters can extend the distances indefinitely, allowing them to maintain height and avoid descending to the ground. It will take only a few more mutations, to adjust the shape and structure of the fingers and their bristles, to let these strange animals gain lift to fly upward. Flight is difficult to evolve, yet once the pieces are in place that favor it, it can appear and be perfected rapidly. As they hop and flap through Serinaustra's canopy between the nibbling beaks of the awe-inspiring skybreakers, these unassuming little foxtrotters may be at the cusp of an incredible thing.