thinking…

Horns (1, 2, 3)

- There’s a divot in the skull to accommodate for retracted horns. Horns are hollow-ish, like goat horns, having muscles inside that can extend and retract the horns. They’re sensitive as well, having nerves in them. They’re typically retracted and covered during hibernation to prevent damage. Horns don’t grow back as well as other body parts and will lose sensitivity if they’re broken off and regenerated.

- Pillar horns are sensitive to changes in air, changes in temperature, and to vibrations. With training, a pillar warrior can use the muscles in their horns to vibrate them in such a way that the air around them is affected. Wamuu’s horn doesn’t spin, but it does vibrate and extend and retract very quickly in very small amounts to manipulate the flow of air around his head.

- As they’re primarily sensory organs, pillars call them antenna.

- The average number of horns on a pillar is three, although a “normal” number is from one to five. Typically, they’ll grow from the frontal bone of the skull, but there have been cases of horns being farther back on the head, which impedes sensory functions. Horn placement is always symmetrical, save for mutations.

- Kars is able to read the heat signatures of people in a room partially due to training, partially due to his horns.

Hair

- No hair grows anywhere that isn’t on the head. Facial hair is never grown, sideburns are rare. If body hair was grown, a lot of it would end up breaking off during hibernation. Hair is often covered during hibernation to prevent hair loss—a regenerated scalp may not grow hair. Eyebrows are for accenting facial expression.

- Hair comes in a very wide variety of colors and becomes desaturated with age, similarly to pillar skin.

Thermoregulation

- Seeing as hair is a typical mammalian way to regulate temperature, moving straight on to temperature regulation seemed right. Pillars lay on cool earth as well as pant to lower their body temperature. As for staying warm, pillars, being communal, huddle. They also shiver! They do not sweat in any traditional sense, not being mammals.

- Pillar stone, when in deep hibernation, may feel a bit warm to the touch, they’re warm blooded.

Face

- Not a lot to say here besides the fact that pillars don’t immediately set off uncanny valley in humans. After a bit of time, or if they’re up close, their faces will start to look off, but most of the time, and especially at a distance, pillar faces don’t invoke that kind of discomfort.

Jaw/Teeth (1, 2, 3)

- Long canines on top and bottom jaws. Incisors and molars like a human’s. Lateral incisors are more pointed than the central ones, the ‘front teeth.’ Between the jaw/gums and cheeks are four more fangs that are sheathed like a viper’s with movable maxillary muscles. These are primarily for show and likely vestigial.

- The jaws of pillars can open quite wide, (not to the point of dislocation, almost similar to a snake’s articulated jaws,) but primarily as a leftover threat display. Because pillars can digest prey using their skin and muscle cells, opening the jaw is rarely used for the purpose of eating. Without properly exercising the muscles used for overextending the jaw, this can become very painful in older and inexperienced pillars, potentially damaging tissue.

Digestion (1, 2)

- Pillars can absorb nutrients through their skin. Prey eaten this way while hibernating indicates the end of hibernation, as food is (probably) abundant enough again for pillars to live off of. Inedible parts are not absorbed, and instead are rejected by the body. If a sleeping pillar eats a hairy animal in this way, a pile of hair may be left outside of their wall. Bones are able to be digested.

- Pillar digestive acids are so powerful that it makes their diets completely liquid. This means their digestive system has to be specialized for an all-liquid diet.

- Adding the urinary tract to this section, yes, pillars pee. While they can excrete nitrogen, ammonia, and urates through their skin, that gets messy, and that is typically only going to happen if they’re absorbing nutrients through the skin and are somehow unable to excrete waste in another way. It is cleaner and easier on the body to excrete waste through the cloaca.

- Related to digestion, pillars have somewhat slow metabolisms, on average eating only once a week. A large meal (say, one entire vampire) may last a month. They’re very easily sated by vampires and aren’t a large threat to humanity, with their small population, low birth rates, and large gaps of time between large meals.

- And related to that, pillars are hypercarnivores, but not obligate carnivores. They can eat non-meats. As a treat.

- A pillar is able to engulf prey (or other pillars) like an amoeba without dissolving them, which they may do for who knows what reason. Keeping meat fresh…ish? Protecting a loved one? Who the fuck knows with how their cells work. Thank you, Jorge Joestar Novel.

- Speaking of how their cells work, it is canon that pillar cells excrete enzymes that place their prey in a state of euphoria and numbness when they’re being absorbed through the skin. This enzyme, combined with the maneuverability of a pillar’s ribs, could be some kind of leftover method of envenomation to sedate predators.

(Metabolism)

Immune System (1)

- Speaking of expelling inedible things, pillars have incredible immune systems and can secrete antimicrobial peptides to keep their wounds from infection, in a way similar to newts. Their saliva has antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory enzymes and proteins, which is similar to human saliva. Pillar saliva stimulates the closure of open wounds, promotes blood clotting, and contains more antibodies than human saliva does. Did you know I read several papers on saliva before I decided I could just simplify this.

- Similarly to their saliva, pillar mucus can just be simplified to the mucus of other animals but more efficient at what it does. It’s rare that a pillar gets seriously sick.

- Like how amphibians excrete ammonia through their skin, pillars can ‘sweat’ toxins they’ve ingested. Alternatively, it’s coughed up in mucus.

- While hamon can not be purged from the body, an intense influx of hamon may cause the ‘sweat’ response as the body tries to rid itself of the energy. The body’s typical reaction to hamon or sunlight is to harden.

Cardiovascular System

- While we’re here, we may as well get this out of the way. Pillars are warm blooded, and some (Esidisi) can train their bodies to bring their blood to boiling temperatures at will, which is extremely destructive to the body. Heating blood and exposing blood vessels is more of a fringe self defense thing. An average pillar is not going to be able to boil their blood. This is, if I had to guess, a product of incredibly controlled shivering.

- The heart may stop beating during long periods of hibernation, bringing to mind wood frogs, although brumination in other amphibian species can lead to incredibly low heart rates.

Ribcage

- The ribs of pillars are very flexible—think of the Iberian ribbed newt. Pillars can stiffen their bodies to expose their ribs in self defense, both to appear bigger and, in more extreme cases, to deter attackers with their sharp bones. Stiffening themselves to this degree causes their ribs to move anteriorly. Similarly again to the Iberian ribbed newt, this causes minimal damage to the pillar’s body. Their advanced immune system and antimicrobial secretions mean that their tissue will regrow without infection.

Chest/Breast

- Pillars have no nipples, no mammary glands, and cannot lactate. Thus, they aren’t mammals.

Hibernation/Transformation (1)

- Pillars do need to sleep, and they hibernate at times where food is scarce. Hibernation can last thousands of years. Pillars are able to eat during hibernation through their skin, and will place “traps” for animals that come near their walls, luring them close enough to eat them. If pillars eat enough during hibernation, they can wake early. It’s a sign to the body that food is plentiful again.

- Pillars can also wake others from hibernation by transferring nutrients through their skin into the sleeping pillars. Similarly to how they can absorb food with their skin if they so choose, pillars are able to transfer liquid nutrients to one another. This is how they feed their young until they’ve developed enough to eat solid food, and how Wamuu awakens his masters.

- When they hibernate, pillars become stone, dirt, or whatever other inorganic material they’ve placed themselves in. To quote Jorge Joestar’s Kars, “[…]the species I once belonged to could operate for a brief period of time in sunlight, and could turn our bodies to soil or metal or burrow into rock and survive partial exposure to sunlight.”

Regeneration

- As stated earlier, pillars have incredible immune systems. And, again, like newts, they’re able to regenerate entire body parts. Depending on environmental conditions and the amount of body mass lost, this can take from a day to a month. Part of a finger being cut off won’t take long at all to recover, but an entire limb will take much more time.

Skin (1)

- Pillar skin tends to be on the smooth side, but that’s not really what I’m here to talk about. Pillar skin is incredibly sensitive to sunlight and will start to crumble if given too much exposure. They have more time than vampires to get out of the sun, but it’s still not much. Exposure to ultraviolet light also slows down their healing processes and can prevent a hibernating pillar from waking up.

- Pillar skin desaturates with age. A truly ancient pillar may be entirely grey!

Nails

- While nails can be filed down to look more like the nails of humans, pillar nails naturally curl into claws. Pillar nails are not attached to the bone, and pillars may lose nails permanently as they age if broken off enough times. A regenerated finger will grow a new nail.

Genitalia and Reproduction (1, 2)

- Pillars are not cosexed.

- A pillar’s genitalia is internal, and pillars have cloaca. The cloaca is located near where a human’s perineum is, slightly closer to the anus than not. I’m not drawing a diagram right now lmfao you can imagine it. A pillar’s penis is situated in the abdominal cavity and can emerge from the cloaca during intercourse. Pillars do not have bacula. Unlike reptiles and amphibians with hemipenes, pillars use a blood vascular system rather than lymphatic fluid to enlarge the penis for copulation. Pillars are unable to perform a cloacal kiss (real term by the way) due to their humanoid body plan and muscle distribution.

- Pillars can identify how closely related they are to a potential mate through the unique smell of their sex pheromones, and avoid inbreeding through this. This method is necessary as pillars are, more often than not, not raised by their biological parents. Raising young is a community effort in pillar tribes, and pillars may never know their closest biological relatives for sure.

- Pillars are ovoviviparous, not being mammals, and therefore not placental. They only bear one young at a time. Twins are incredibly rare. A pillar’s newborn young is not larval and don’t look much different from a human infant at first glance. Infants are very, very small.

- Times when pillars are fertile is erratic and unpredictable, which is the primary reason reason for their incredibly low birth rates.

Nervous System

- Because I nearly forgot to mention it, a pillar’s brain (assuming it’s intact) can survive outside of its body for a very short period of time. A pillar’s entire body can regenerate from only the brain if the brain is kept healthy.

- Pillar eyesight is exceptionally good. But that kind of comes with having exceptionally good senses all around. A damaged eye may stay damaged permanently if not regenerated properly, but that’s an incredibly rare occurrence.

- A pillar’s olfactory senses are also exceptional, being precise and specifically tuned to pick up the scent of blood.

Misc

Dominant and recessive traits

What does a creature of darkness smell like?

Misc organs, skull, body parts

Organ placements, modesty