#nautilla

Just a drawing of a certain Overseer, his lusus, and his MONSTROUS PET.

Since @altamaranempire has done a lot of work on the cat-earwig family of lusi that the Satsan line usually ends up with, I wanted to post up some of my own thoughts on Malkul’s lusus Percilla and her relatives - the Chinautilida group, colloquially known as Trawler Rats! Their common name comes from their rodent-like appearance and proneness to being caught up in nets by their tentacles by commercial fishing rigs on Alternia. Luckily, they’re amphibious and won’t suffocate if caught, but they often loose most of their mature tentacles in their attempts to escape. Trawler Rats are fairly uncommon as far as lusi go, covering a slim section of the hemospectrum between Purple and Violet. Though their borderline planktonic young are common, they are considered a tasty food source for other deep-sea creatures, thus they have a very high infant mortality rate. Those that live long enough to become sub-adults and reach the shoreline are what most Trolls are used to seeing. During this point in their lives, sub-adults stick close to the shore and prefer coastal environments where they feed on seaweed, small fish, mollusks, dead sealife, and weakened or fallen shorebirds using their formidable beaks. Eventually, when their urge to breed kicks in during prolonged warm weather and they’re not occupied with raising a troll, they will leave the shore for deeper waters to find a mate. Very little is known about their mating habits or where they spawn, if they spawn at all. Afterwards, they return to the coast and either continue living wild or select another troll. After either hundreds of sweeps or many trolls have come and gone, the Trawler Rat will leave the shoreline and permanently move to the open ocean. These lusi are extremely long lived and most don’t manage to survive till they reach true adulthood, so very few have documented what they look like at this stage. Only anecdotal reports exist, and most seem to suggest a dramatic increase in size, a tangle of dangerous tentacles fastened tight to the bottom of the sea, or a radial mass drifting soundlessly through the water with sharp points dangling from the underside. Components equivalent to Earth life: Chinchillidae Family x Nautilida Order Figure A -  A Nautilla (approx. Chinchilla x Nautilus). They’re the best suited of the group to raise trolls, although they’re much less commonly seen than the more commonly sighted Nauscacha. Their apparent rarity is partly because they tend to parent trolls who are Purple/Violet cusps or tow the line. Their tentacles are very simple in structure, but while they’re not very specialized, they can be dropped and regrown easily which aids in their survival. Figure B -  A Nauscacha  (approx. Viscacha x Nautilus). These are, by far, the most common variety of this group. Nauscacha tentacles have simple grasping pads at the end which help them to grab onto food and manipulate objects. Decently hardy and quite active and mobile on land as well as in the water, they usually parent Purple bloods and very rarely Blue bloods. Figure C - An Acanthible. Based off of extinct representitives of the Chinchillidae and Nautilida families, this variety rarely picks trolls to parent and usually remains wild. By the time it reaches full maturity, it’s usually much too large and dangerous to realistically leave the water and raise a child. When they do select a young troll, they’ll almost always do so at their sub-adult stage as shown above and will only select seadwellers. Their tentacles are covered in vicious barbs, which they use to stick to and impale their prey so they can’t escape. Their shell is unique among the Chinautilida in that its shell grows spines that lengthen with age.