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⠀⠀➥Mutagenic Sludge
⠀⠀Sludge is everywhere! Depending on the type, it provides food, aids in healing, and can even bring characters back to life.. sometimes for the better, but more often for the worse. Sludge is also used as a proxy for hybrid conception and "birth", although it is imperfect and prone to errors and downsides!
Attributes:
۞ Sludge takes various bits of organic matter and attaches them onto other lifeforms. This is how very elaborate mutations have formed on animalkind.
۞ Sludge is non-reactive with metal, clay, glass, and rock, but anything organic is fair game for mutagenic shenanigans
۞ Colors: Iridescent and swirly like an oil slick.
۞ Material: Thick, extremely viscous and extraordinarily heavy. While sludge can be moved, it's a long and arduous task involving many years (and likely multiple animals) of digging out downhill channels for gravity to pull it.
۞ Animals may dip in it, but risk over-exposure (can cause them to develop random, sometimes life-threatening mutations).
۞ Depending on the age and quality of the sludge, it instigates bodily organic material to either copy itself (creating meat), heal/mend, or even create new mutated lifeforms, if the pool is especially old and well-cared-for.
۞ Meat on its own spoils after an hour or two, thus carnivores go directly to a meat-generating pool to feed.
Types of pools:
۞ Meat Mother: New sludge that produces quality meat by copying what is exposed to it (bits and pieces of flesh, tissue, bone).
۞ Birth Mother: Old, steeped pools have a diverse, valuable DNA bank to creatively spawn successful living creatures.
۞ Healing Mother: Rarely seen, ancient sludge pool that mends and heals animals. When dead bodies are placed in the pool, they eventually come back to life, but far more mutated and strange than they started (and memories of their previous life hazy at best, or completely gone).
۞ Dark Mother: has a messed up or contaminated genetic pool.
Well maintained Meat, Birth, and Healing Mother sludge pools are of huge value to the animals and so they guard them from contamination, or from being seized.
On the other hand... their Dark Mother counterparts are avoided. Formerly-healing Dark Mothers mutate you instead. Dark Birth Mothers are the most dangerous (they produce the Horrorbeasts), while the Dark Meat Mothers make foul-smelling items, typically barely edible, or sometimes poisonous.
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⠀⠀➥Materia Shamanism
⠀⠀This "religion" venerates their sludge Mother. Animals who share these beliefs more readily form truces and bonds. That said, every now and then, some animals may adopt heretical and backwards viewpoints to the mode.
The following are common beliefs held by critters in this society - they are not actually true to canon! Rather, it's simply how the animals think things work.
Beliefs
All creatures are believed to be "comprised" of:
Body - Symbol: 〇Also known as Mother (sludge pools): creation and life bestowing, the #1 entity to defer to and shrouded in awe and taboo. Blood, as part of the body, holds religious significance, used as seals for promises, blessings and treaties.
Mind - Symbol: 〣Plants are seen as Mind - wisdom, guidance, shelter, memory. When animals are reborn from the sludge, their memory is hazy... Consuming some plants, like the leaves of the Wisdom Tree, is believed to grant "access" to hidden memories, and are ritualistically added to Birth Mother pools.
Soul - Symbol: ∆Light and luminescence. Celestial bodies (sun/moon/stars) represent youth, creativity, essence, and are gazed upon for inspiration... Mythologically speaking, light is said to be used by Birth Mother to create new life. Due to the continuous nature of sludge-induced rebirth, souls are believed to exist beyond the "flesh" until Mother is ready to incorporate them. Bioluminescent creatures are said to be extra full of "soul".
Practices
"From meat we come and meat we go.. we are all siblings in the same flesh."
۞ The Birth Mother is the Right Mother: A practice of devotees avoiding becoming pregnant, so that only the sludge will create babies for them. A surprisingly common custom, as the vast majority of creatures can't mate anyway unless the same species, and many form romantic connections without being same species.
۞ Trifecta ritual: Daily ceremony performed by Clerics who collect symbolical ingredients (such as leaves, blood, and bio-luminescent mushrooms) and add them to the Birth Mother with flair to "appease" the pool.
۞ Dipping the body in sludge: A risky practice referred to as "talking" with Mother, done as self admonishment to atone for perceived wrongs.
۞ Determining final judgement on community matters: Clerics place bioluminescent shrooms, leaves, and the blood of those on trial in Mother pools and "read" the swirls of sludge.
Holidays
Festivals and events tied to the sludge:
۞ Winter Solstice: A gift-giving holiday where you take an approved organic item you want to give, and with a Cleric's blessing, dip it into a known-mutating (but usually harmless) Dark Mother... then try to find someone who'd like to take home whatever freaky item you get back out.
۞ Spring Equinox: Tons of food is gathered and then shared in one big feast in the Forests. The Meat Mother receives a huge portion of the food, with each attendee carefully placing their offering into the pool under a Cleric's oversight. Afterwards, the animals make a trek together to the Canyons, participating in a communal dance under the stars for a prosperous harvesting year. Those looking to have the Birth Mother located there create offspring for them will donate their own organic material as well, with guidance from a Cleric.
۞ Happy Sludge Day: A big, communal birthday party, annually held on the Spring solstice in the Canyons, which is usually when the Birth Mother produces a ton of babies.
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⠀⠀➥Society
⠀⠀Animals here tend to live in cooperative multi-specie groups. Lifestyle and tech range is tribal, slightly past foraging-gatherer lifestyles, but are not fully settled nor using agriculture.
As meat is abundant, predators and prey are often in factions together, forming friendships, and even families to raise sludge-made offspring. Those who step in to foster these orphans are still referred to as parents.
The sludge is animals' main form of reproduction, so terms focused on descendants or blood-related family / generations (such as grandparent, second cousin, etc) are not used or included in hierarchy. Instead, their culture venerates wisdom that comes with age and ones' parents' ideals. This is also why gender and sexual reproduction are not typically a focus.
Since the sludge is so integrated into daily life, the majority of animals follow Materia Shamanism; if not by belief, then deeply ingrained awe/superstition and taboos, as follows:
Customs
۞ Mother pools should always be carefully maintained by knowledgeable Clerics to avoid becoming Dark Mothers.
۞ Certain special materials should placed inside various Mother sludge pools, including for death, rebirth, and gaining of children, as well as other ceremonies.
۞ Always share a portion of any feast with a Meat Mother (it's considered a success if the pool "burps" after the fact.)
۞ Form chosen family to raise orphans from Birth Mother pools. Teach them your trade to pass on your wisdom.
Taboo / Societal Laws
Visibly breaking a societal law has cultural consequences, depending on severity:
Repercussions
۞ Labeled Oathbreaker - blacklists you from receiving services from any Faction
۞ Trial and potential imprisonment
۞ Banishment -
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⠀⠀➥No tech
Typically you can expect animals here to default to using their own bodies to accomplish something, rather than manipulate the environment. Here is a list of common hobbies they engage in, and the kinds of building they can do:
Animal Activities
۞ Roles are given to specialists, such as meat-skimming, creating soft nests, etc. in each Faction
۞ Past-times: oral storytelling, dance, and scent marking. "Writing" (painting symbols) is rare, mostly for ritualistic purposes
۞ Flyers like birds and bats help to spread news
Structures
۞ Warren - A group of caves, burrows, or stick-nests on the ground with soft bedding materials like moss or dried grass, and sometimes a piece of "decor", such as pebbles or quartz.
۞ Tree Collective - A mass of very loosely trimmed and woven tree canopy with many nests, primarily inhabited by arboreal creatures. Some locations are shaped from many different species of tree, and others are one massive clonal specimen (like Pando).
۞ Midden Heaps - Where players can leave their dung and find out who has recently left theirs!
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