#atagoans

Hey, I got another Halloween headshot done! once again, it’s always Halloween on my blog so shut up. This time it’s @a-beepbop’s Atagoan character Rememdet, from their project Atago!

I had to use my own teeth as reference points.

House pink is one of the four royal lines that rule a very large atagoan country. House pink is in control of trade and colonization. Outham was the atagoan that led the colonization of what now identifies as the Charrot Nation. Outham began to see how badly they were treating Charrots, so they organized with rebellion groups in secret to help them build an ‘underground’ infrastructure that they could eventually use.

The reason they would choke is because it would hinder their ability to breathe, but most amphibians don’t completely breathe through their skin. Their skin is just a major site for respiration.

This is called Cutaneous Respiration, and it’s gas exchange through the skin. Cutaneous Respiration occurs in many animals, including vertebrates. It occurs in many fish species and the entirety of the amphibian family. Reptiles don’t do it as much because they’re covered in scales, and mammals hardly do it because their skin is thicker and more impermeable.

In reptiles it can happen in areas between scales and with reduced scales. However, some turtles rely on Cutaneous Respiration from their cloaca region when they hibernate underwater (which basically means they breathe with their asshole). In some sea snakes, Cutaneous Respiration can account for as much as 30% of their total oxygen uptake when underwater, which is actually pretty impressive!

Cutaneous Respiration occurs mammals in very little amounts. In bats, their highly vascularized wings are responsible for 12% of carbon dioxide excretion. As for humans and most other mammals, Cutaneous Respiration accounts for a measly 1-2%.

Amphibians skin is a major site of respiration in all species. Cutaneous respiration is the sole respiratory mode of a family of salamanders called Lungless Salamanders. These little weirdos don’t have lungs, and even weirder is the fact that they’re the largest family of salamanders. Cutaneous respiration in frogs and other amphibians is sometimes the primary choice of respiration during colder temperatures. Some amphibians have evolved to exploit Cutaneous Respiration by having extensive folds of skin to increase the rate of respiration (as if amphibians haven’t abused Cutaneous Respiration enough). Some good examples of this would be the Hellbender salamander and the Lake Titicaca water frog. Cutaneous respiration in hellbenders accounts for more than 90% of oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide excretion. Let that settle in for a second. These aquatic salamanders are almost able to breathe exclusively from their skin, simply because they have saggy and oh so flabby skin.

Now from what I know, your Atagoans are an amphibian-like race that can only live in humid environments. Atagoans also need a humidifier in order to travel to non-humid environments. This information SCREAMS Cutaneous Respiration, since water helps gasses diffuse through the skin of amphibians. Plus, since Atagoans and Earth amphibians share many things in common, I think it would be reasonable to assume that they have thin vascular skin. But I’m pretty sure that Atagoans are more comparable in size to humans than they are to their Earth counterparts, and thus have thicker skin, so it’s more likely that they have highly vascularized skin as opposed to boring old vascular skin. If this is true then that means that Atagoans do breathe through their skin to some extent.

But ultimately it doesn’t matter how Atagoanians breathe because… well it’s smoke that they’re dealing with.

And if there’s smoke, then the Atagoan will choke. It’s as simple as that.

I have a suggestion to help you flesh out Atagoanian respiration. Atagoans could have a respiratory surface on the lining of their mouth on which gas exchange takes place readily. While at rest this could be their predominate form of breathing, and it would only fill the lungs occasionally. This idea is actually ripped right out of the Frog’s book, since this is an actual thing that they have.

Also, if you do decide that Atagoans can actually breathe through their skin, then you should go check out the Temperate Freeple page on @citysaurus’s Amphiterra Project for inspiration on how a sentient amphibian-like species could live in a complex society with minimal exposure to fire. It may not be much (especially since Freeple can’t tolerate fire and thus probably couldn’t build spaceships) but you might be able to form an idea after reading it.

I’m going to address the second sentence first since the answer is shorter… No, no they would not be prepared.

The first sentence requires me to dive into detail about what an Atagoan Guardian would look like and function. If an Atagoan infused with a colony of Formaerem then the Guardian that would be created as a result would almost certainly be completely different from an Atagoan. However, in the borderline impossible case that the Guardian is still an Atagoan for the most part, then this description of an “Ataguardian” is one of the many possibilities. I don’t exactly know how large it would be though.The first major anatomical difference is the thickening and strengthening of the limbs in order to help the Ataguardian bear the weight of their new Kaiju body (with the help of their own gravitational field of course). The section of the spinal column in between the first and second set of limbs is more flexible to allow a wider range of dorsoventral movement. This allows the Ataguardian to stand in a more upright posture to better interact with their surroundings. Other skeletal and musculoskeletal changes would also be present to help compensate for their Kaiju size, although I’m not sure what else would change since I don’t know what the skeleton of an Atagoan looks like. The whiskers are lengthened and have bioluminescent tips. The Ataguardian’s luminescence is limited to certain types of chemiluminescence; bioluminescence and possibly phosphorescence would be the exact types, since I don’t really see an Ataguardian as the kind of organism to have radioluminescence or thermoluminescence. Their prehensile tongue is now vastly longer and more powerful, and it’s tipped with four claws. Their mouth and tongue can put on dazzling bioluminescent light shows. The eyes of the Ataguardian are able to pick up more types of light and thus be able see more color. Their external gills have dramatically increased in size to be better at breathing, and the Ataguardian is now able to stay indefinitely underwater or on land (although there would most likely be a preference for water). The tail is flattened dorsoventrally to aid in swimming. Since a Kaiju’s large size makes it have thicker skin, I’m not exactly sure if having vascularized skin would work out for them. If not, then the skin has multiple muscular pores that force air in and out, and can seal themselves underwater. The long sensory organs on the Ataguardian’s back (I think they’re derived gills right?) can now pick up vibrations in the air and underwater. They also allow the Ataguardian to sense electromagnetic fields; effectively giving them electroreception. In terms of new defensive and offensive abilities, the Ataguardian doesn’t have many new tricks. The few it does have are pretty reasonable enough though. The tongue can snag and drag opponents, and the ability to stand upright would give them a wide range of combat abilities. They’re able to break the bones in their hands and feet and force the sharp bone through their skin like a Hairy frog (also called the Wolverine frog for this reason). This, coupled with the quick regenerative abilities of Guardians, means that the Ataguardian has retractable bone claws (pretty gnarly right?). In terms of ranged attacks, the Ataguardian can spit a rapidly hardening ball of mucus. The Ataguardian is also able to generate intense amounts of electric shocks like an Electric eel, though this means that it has to also be pretty chubby. There’s some poisonous skin as well.