The Antlear People: Keystone Species of the Forest Refugia

In the extreme southeast of Serinarcta 265 million years PE lies the South Serinarctan forest refugia - one of the last broad-leaf sunflower forests that is still extant. The climate here along the equator was tropical rainforest just a few million years ago, but today the environment mirrors those formerly restricted to alpine regions; there are few to no seasonal temperature differences but instead there are now severe day to night swings, encompassing a year’s worth of weather in a single day. The region warms up comfortably by midday, but is frequently down below freezing by midnight once the sun is down past the horizon. The change of climate brought on by advancing glaciation in more polar regions has caused a catastrophic extinction event here, which is ongoing, as entire clades of tropical plants and animals succumb to newly inhospitably cold nights. Many species that now occur here have origins from more northern regions and have spread south in front of advancing glaciers, though they too have struggled to rapidly to a very different annual cycle at these lower latitudes where there is no prolonged winter, but rather a constantly fluctuating cycle of warm days and frigid nights. While animals can hunker down in burrows through cold nights, rely on insulating pelage, or otherwise find ways to thermoregulate throughout the day, plants are less able to rapidly adjust to these temperature changes. Trees in the forest refugia cannot go dormant during such short, daily cold periods as they could where winters were long and predictable, as they have to be able to grow during the warm days in between, meaning they must be able to endure nightly chill without damage. Elsewhere along the equator where trees still persist it is the conifer-like cactus sunflowers, related to the cactaiga bushes, which are the most abundant trees. The dominant trees and shrubs that now make up the open, relatively short forests of the refugia however are broad-leaved sunflower descendants, descended from hardy, generalized bushes that once grew in marginal habitats along mountain slopes. Here for many million of years these very primitive woody sunflowers, which never evolved any obligatory symbiotic relationship with ants to survive or reproduce, avoided competition with the ant-trees by growing in the harsh, cool slopes of alpine regions, filling their sap with rich sugars to keep themselves from freezing during the night.

As the rapidly changing climate has pushed obligate ant trees toward near extinction, for the first time in hundreds of million of years, the forest is no longer a battle ground. Ants no longer fight along the boundary lines of their specific host trees, attacking one another and being a bane to all browsers that attempt to feed. These forests now support many varied herbivores which all take advantage of the relatively painless foraging possible when the trees no longer maintain armies of biting insects to defend themselves; species of circuagodont such as the treeskinner have evolved rapidly in response, evolving to strip the bark off entire trees - a destructive, but nutritious diet that would have been impossible just a few million years ago when trees were better defended. The trees of the forest refugia have not had time to adapt new defenses to this onslaught and so have simply adapted to grow extremely rapidly in response to increased predation. The trees here frequently grow from large underground root systems that put out many fast-growing, shorter-lived trunks, effectively making many seemingly isolated trees actually all singular branches of one larger individual. The greater storage of nutrients in the collective root systems of these trees also enable them to recover faster from damage than any single, isolated trees could. But there are downsides to this growth form too - in an environment with so many herbivores, seedlings will rarely survive to maturity. Most of the trees in the refugia reproduce by clonal shoots that grow from the communal root system, rather than by setting seed, with the result that they have little genetic diversity. This leaves them potentially vulnerable to fast-spreading pathogens that periodically kill off large strands of the forest. Yet this also reduces browsing pressure as herbivores are forced to move on, and so even these periodic die-offs of vegetation benefit the tree populations in the long term, as surviving trees are much more successful setting seed and seedlings have time to grow to a sustainable size before the herbivores return to the area.

Like most of Serina as the climate continues to cool in the middle Ultimocene, the forest refugia is an environment without longterm stability, where any lucky mutation can rapidly proliferate and spread, only to die out as soon as something else shifts. It is thus an environment ripe for producing large numbers of new and exciting evolutionary innovations, and this is perhaps also why it is home to multiple sophont species.

Sharing the region with their mortal enemies - gravediggers - the woodcrafters (colloquially: the antlear people) have also eked out a distinct niche for themselves in this residual woodland. They are a social sophont, like us, but descended from herd-dwelling prey. The antlear people are restricted to the forest refugia because of their dietary specializations, which are as much cultural as biological: they eat almost nothing except broad-leaved sunflower trees in almost their entirety, from leaves and stems to fruits, seeds and bark. They evolved here, their ancestors having been a keystone species for millions of years that trimmed and maintained the vigor of forest trees long before they had any conscious awareness of their actions. A skilled gardener by nature with skills further cultivated through nurture, with their bodies shaped by evolution into a perfect tool to shape their own world, the woodcrafters still rarely stray from the ancient ways. They are highly gregarious yet number only a couple hundred thousand, sparsely distributed across a number of small, loosely connected villages (there are more gravediggers than woodcrafters, for despite being antisocial they are much more widely spread over much of Serinarcta. Only one small but relevant subset of gravediggers has been so far referenced, the southerly population that coexists with the antlear people.) The antlear people are largely culturally homogenous because the fairly small and localized population which mixes freely allows for rapid exchange of information.

The day to day life of the woodcrafters, as their name suggests, revolves foremost around cultivating the trees that they use for almost all aspects of their lives. They methodically trim and groom large tracts of the remnant woodland to maximize its productivity to themselves by regularly removing overgrown or dead branches and cutting back woody trunks regularly to encourage a new flush of more nutritious green shoots. Likewise they destroy competitive, inedible plants including cactaiga that encroach on the forest and in doing so are responsible for allowing the specific trees that have adapted to this environment to do so without being outcompeted by more aggressive competing vegetation. Without the woodcrafter to maintain this last forest as its kind has since prehistory, it too would be lost.

above: the antlear people cultivate the trees in their forest home to maximize the output of nutritious green branches at a height that is easily accessed. This is done through frequent, systematic pruning of branches closely back to the trunk, over time resulting in the growth of many more thin shoots and no new woody trunks.

Though near-exclusively vegetarian, the antlear people are not meek and defenseless animals. The direct descendants of the standing antlear, the woodcrafters' ancient ancestors lived in male-controlled harems, with a single dominant male known as a stag fighting all competitors for total access to breeding rights. Subsequently, males were larger and very aggressive, with powerfully hooked antlers and powerful cutting teeth, and were well-adapted to fend off their ancient predators - the circuagodogs and the grapplers, among others. Though many stags lived in bachelor groups, only the biggest and meanest could reproduce, which over time only made them even larger and more formidable. As the antlears progressed toward sapience over time as a result of the gravediggers’ deceptive predation however, which could not be avoided with brute force, the need for cooperative social cohesion became more imperative for survival and the most aggressive, reckless antlears would have been the first cast out of their proto-societies and into the gravediggers’ stake-lined pits. Needing to work together to outwit their predators, male antlears evolved to be less territorial and to replace physical combat with harmless posturing and display, resulting in the modern antlear stag developing extremely bright pelage. Though a highly variable species both structurally and in markings, adult males are still significantly larger than their counterparts and have long manes of usually reddish hair on the neck which takes on a bright orange to violet iridescence in sunlight. These dark manes frame and contrast with a stark white face and one or multiple bands of black pigmentation along the eyes, which themselves are most often a bright gold. Woodcrafters evolved their striking modern appearance very rapidly as a result of a recent evolutionary bottleneck and strong selective pressures, and are now highly distinct from all other antlear species, particularly the males to which no other species are even slightly similarly colored.. They have also evolved a number of facial anatomical traits that are highly unusual for herbivorous circuagodonts, including more forward-projected eyes and round pupils, not the horizontal ones of most non-predatory species. A very flexible brow ridge of cartilage has also extended down from the upper lobe of either antler down over the eye that can now be raised and lowered to adjust the shape of the eye; all of these adaptations have to do with improving close up, face-to-face social communication. Woodcrafters use body language heavily, particularly eyebrow movements, as well as antler gestures. Body language can be used to convey some ideas alone, but is usually used in conjunction with spoken speech. Though dialects vary, a whistling, shrill verbal language, lisping and somewhat reminiscent of the bugles of an elk, is universal (to compare, the gravedigger’s voice is gravelly and their language, though far more varied, is always broken down to the simplest necessary elements and lacks all pronouns.)

The antlear people utilize few tools, as their own jaws and antlers are otherwise usable for most tasks. They have utilized spears defensively for thousands of years but have had no need to move beyond to stronger tools as they use them only defensively against predators, not needing to hunt food themselves, and the species no longer has significant intra-specific conflicts. The woodcrafters’ antlers are strong but not ideally suited to fine tasks, the three primary prongs which function as fingers having a limited range of motion and being permanently hooked downward, an adaptation to pull down tree branches to browse. Nonetheless, some antlear people can weave baskets and bags of bark and twigs to carry materials and use strips of bark as twine. The most notable skill of the woodcrafters is the construction of structures from the trunks of living trees, carefully braiding and grafting the multiple trunks that grow up from a common root stock into defensive fences, bridges over rivers, and particularly the rounded basket-like homes in which they live. The process takes several years, and so the antlear people constantly work on different houses, each growing at a different rate, in preparation for future needs. It is traditional for a female woodcrafter to begin shaping a house when she realizes she is pregnant, and to continue guiding its growth until her offspring is independent and can move into the new dwelling. They use the same few tree species they otherwise grow for food to shape their houses and so pruning the house also provides a meal. The interior of the house may be further lined with dried thatch for insulation in the cool nights but are rarely heavily decorated, with antlear people using them for little except shelter at night and from inclement weather and spending most of their time outdoors in their gardens, where they display whatever art forms and items of interest they may keep prominently. In addition to crafting houses and small useful items, antlear people have a strong artistic sense and enjoy creating gardens that are not only functional but which appeal to their sense of beauty. They plant trees in varying, natural patterns, always avoiding straight lines, and incorporate flowers and entirely decorative plants and have transferred the necessary knowledge gained by cultivating their food plants to domesticate a wide variety of flowering plants primarily for novelty, because they enjoy how they look. They also engage in shaping topiary to create varied living art forms depicting realistic portraiture, models of wild beasts, or abstract creatures from lore. Because the woodcrafters always ensure they have an abundant food supply, they have a lot of time to socialize and to play. Highly vocal, they tell stories, embellishing them for drama and eventually creating tall tales that they tell to their children, stories that became myths and religion over the generations. Yet the antlear people broadly reject restrictive dogma on the basis of religion, perhaps due to an innate evolutionary push away from their ancestral patriarchy where only one strong male had any power, toward a more equal society that also leads them to reject controlling ideologies - and more recently, even their place in the natural order.

above: a woodcrafter village showing their characteristic living, cultivated house structures.

Antlear people place strong values on dismantling oppression wherever it is found, a recurring ideology among their species since they evolved out of male-dominated social groups where few had any significant freedoms. Their kind have long lived with the threat of predation, but today have begun to take control of their environment and reject not only ancient patriarchy, but also their ancient role in the food web by systematically hunting their predators.

Antlear species have cultivated their forest habitats similarly to the woodcrafters for millennia, but the antlear people today modify it more drastically, and their actions benefit biodiversity considerably less than their more instinctive predecessors; woodcrafters, pursued over millions of years by savage wild carnivores and for hundreds of thousands of years by the gravedigger and its ancestors, have grown more intolerant of predators as their capacity for self awareness of their situation has developed, and they now aim to dominate them. Using the strength in their numbers collectively, the antlear people can turn the tables on carnivores, all of which live at lower population densities, that operate by picking out the young and the weak. Predators rely on their prey fleeing and splitting apart when threatened, something the antlear people do not do. Faced with a wall of angry woodcrafters that do not back down, there are no endemic predators that can threaten the antlear people while they are on the alert. Yet some hunters still kill them by ambush, particularly in the night, and so merely standing up to their enemies is no longer sufficient for many who have become proactive predator-killers themselves, hunting the hunters to save their own kind future losses. Though the antlear people live at peace with many species that do not directly pose a threat to their safety and their forest habitats support many other animals, particularly because antlear villages lack large predators, large browsers that feed upon the same trees are also often driven away vehemently as competitors. Other antlear species are particularly disliked, their bestial appearance flung far into the antlear peoples’ uncanny valley as a result of their perceived primitive, savage appearance, their lack of complex thought or language, and apparent acceptance to live by the laws of nature as a pitiful prey species being viewed as highly cowardly and dishonorable.

Yet though their own relatives in the tree of life are poorly received, the woodcrafters have high admiration for some animals that they perceive as showing good virtues; the mammoth trunko for its strength in fighting its own enemies, its devotion to its family unit and the enduring care it bestows upon its offspring is especially respected in a way few other animals are, and during good times permitted to pass through the village even though they will inevitably damage the trees. Very intelligent themselves, individual trunkos and antlear people may develop a sort of bond over time and both species may even become cooperative without knowing the individuals; both species share common enemies and may help the other to overcome them. Mother trunkos pursued by their enemies will often detour into a village for protection, and likewise trunko herds will frequently go out of their way to defend woodcrafters if they see them threatened by predators. Trunkos may also come to the villages if they or their offspring are injured to recieve help soothing the wound, which the woodcrafters oblige with a wide knowledge of medicinal plants. The wild animal will often allow itself to be treated, even though it may be painful, having learned perhaps through passed down cultural knowledge that the woodcrafters will assist it. This level of care is afforded to few other species, with the mammoth trunko being viewed in its own category not quite as a person but neither as a wild beast; the best translation from antlear language for the trunko is “soul teacher”, because the gentle animal is believed to show an idealized way of living that woodcrafters try to emulate. It is generally considered to be spiritually close to the antlear people, even if not literally closely related, though similarities in form including a manipulator on the face but not on the legs and the use of simple tools mean both species share more in common than behavior as well.

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Woodcrafter society is decentralized and self-governing, composed of villages of multiple family groups, with little in the way of authoritative governing bodies; order is maintained democratically by smaller groups without central leadership even on a small scale and individuals that break accepted social rules (ie: intentionally harming another) may be exiled, but the fear of isolation is so great that it provides a very strong deterrent to bad behavior. The basic social structures of the antlear people are generally extended, multigenerational families. These family units can be quite large, as polygamy is still the norm for males, but females too now have much more freedom to choose mates and move between groups within a village; antlear people do not form pair bonds as mates and all individuals in a group assist in caring for the young, not only their biological parents. Ritualized competition among males is universal and often a spectacle, but is now largely irrelevant toward which actually get to reproduce, as most have the opportunity, though the most popular males may get more chances and a wider choice of partners in the same way human celebrities may.

The antlear people are not yet fully-adapted biologically to their relatively new lifestyle living in far larger, mixed sex communities than they originally evolved in and one phenomena observed fairly often is the suppression of sexual maturity in younger males in communities with a lot of mature stags. This seems to be related to hormone blockers exuded by the bodies of what would have been the dominant breeding males in prehistory and used at that time to keep their own male offspring from ousting them by preventing puberty. It is recognized by the woodcrafters, and affected young males will frequently pilgrimage away from their natal groups to new villages; it takes only a short time away from the familiar larger males for their bodies to adjust, and once mature they are not further inhibited by other adult males. Some adolescent males choose to remain functionally juvenile later into life however, being taller than females but still more lightly built than other males and only developing a sparse mane. Such males, less interested in mating, may make better sentries and excel better at other tasks requiring close attention and an ability to avoid distractions; they may identify as female in antlear society, though more often are viewed as a third, separate gender altogether. While it is rarer in modern times, females too can rarely take on a sturdier male build and develop male display plumage under circumstances where they are isolated from stags’ hormones for a prolonged period. Though this does not affect their fertility, it is not reversible, and such individuals take on male behavior traits including displaying and increased attraction to other females. This is likely an evolutionary holdover from their ancestors; if one or more females could quickly adapt a stronger male phenotype if the male leading them died and no other could be found, the group could better fend off predators. Many such females likewise choose to identify as male and become functionally indistinguishable; because the masculinized female woodcrafter is virtually identical to the biological male there is no specific additional term for such individuals beyond the two binary sexes. This transition can sometimes be induced intentionally, and segregated villages exist where only female woodcrafters may travel to spend time away from males, some eventually undergoing the desired physiological changes which are afterward retained through life. Because antlear society strongly values individual strength and the ability to defend oneself and their family from danger, females that take on a male’s bolder appearance and the more aggressive behavior that comes with it may be viewed more favorably than other females, which can lead females to leave on retreats and attempt to develop the phenotype purely for social status, and the popularity it may bring.

The wide expression of antlear secondary sexual traits is not limited to the cases of one sex fully taking on traits of the other; all female modern antlear people have also evolved to have white faces and dark eye markings, albeit more muted, even though these traits evolved at first only in the males as display markings. This may be the result of assortative mating; males preferring females with faces that closer resembled their own markings. Their ancient ancestors may have preferred females to be subservient and weaker so that they could be controlled and kept from other males, but as their society now depends on everyone cooperating and pulling their weight, strong females are now more attractive, and males may view females that look more masculine as being more desirable. Lending more credence to this theory, it also true that modern male woodcrafters frequently find other males attractive; male-male mating behavior is very common in their society and likely became so as they replaced physical fighting for mating rights with harmless displays in which mating was a secondary and non-harmful way to reduce hormonal aggression and further facilitated social cohesion and bonding. Same-sex mating is rarer in females overall, which were never aggressive to one another at any stage in their evolution, but the antlear people are highly individual and highly amorous; varying sexual preferences are not considered unusual.