#theria

📍 Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

🗓 Date: October 4, 2022

🐾 Media: Image

🌿 Species: Eastern Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis)

📝 Notes: Small tree-roosting bat commonly found in forest edges, clearings, and suburban areas with tree cover. Recognized by its reddish-orange fur and furred tail membrane. Often solitary or found roosting in foliage rather than caves or buildings.

Typically active at dusk, feeding on flying insects such as moths, beetles, and other nocturnal invertebrates. May be observed in flight at twilight or roosting camouflaged among leaves during the day.

This specimen was dead upon discovery.

• Theria:

Bearing the surname Aurum meaning gold, Theriaʼs presidential family was the pride of the nation. Consisting of the president herself, the first lady (and also pseudo-general) and their four children. They were happy. It was a common occurrence for the family of five to be seen in the tallest tower of Theria spending time together. Reading, talking, and enjoying one another's company.

The president was a woman of the arts, beauty and grace. Compassionate for her people and loving to her family and the same could be said for her wife, albeit General Hephaestia wasn't much for grace and elegance. Their children were the light of their lives, there wasn't a day where the four Menaces weren't seen stirring up trouble. Especially the youngest, Midas who Hephaestia always referred to as Micro.

Their lives had been peaceful. Until the Sultanate declared war on them. Theria had pleaded for diplomacy, but Sultan Storminghell did not oblige. With the help of the husband of one of his kinsman, the ever infamous Crown Prince Elanuelo, Theriaʼs forces were but mere ants compared to the precision and power of Snow.

Finally, during high noon, the president was returned dead after a last ditch attempt at diplomacy. Her wife, hollow and broken, would jump off the same tower her and her family would occupy so much when their lives were still full of happiness, love and splendor. Leaving her two daughters, Jophiel and Cassiopeia referred to as Cass to witness her death.

Due to prior arrangements made by Hephaestia, the siblings would also later be sent away to a far-away land. Theria would collapse and because of Hephaestia's scheming, Sultan Storminghell would later be pierced by the heart as well by his own guard.

• Aculon:

House Aculon is the opposite of House Aurum in all the possible ways. Where President Aglaia and Hephaestia were kind and loving, Elanuelo and Crow were not. Nor were they to each other. Fighting, ceaseless arguments and hate.

The family rarely spent time with one another. With Crow taking young Fluixon away to the desert to raise him the majority of the time, Ender secretly plotting to overthrow his father and Cynikka being illegitimate and Elanuelo being busy with the empire.

And so, instead of splendor, love, and happiness, the home of the imperial family was simply empty. Cold as the rest of it. Fluixon and Cynikka talked on the scarce days they were allowed too, and during night they would sneak off, awaken their tired brother and drag Ender to the kitchen with them. Always finding treats and eating them underneath the pillow fortresses they always made with Turkey amusedly looking after them.

Their grandmother and grandfather were also very nice. Though they favored Cynikka quite a lot.

(The siblings pointedly ignored the fact Solev would constantly call his granddaughter by a different name eerily similar to the one on a grave in the former emperor and dowager empresses garden. The same one Elanuelo would sometimes whisper in a daze.)

And so, life was bearable. Until such a large argument broke out to the point Fluixon and Crow left for good. To the point Turkey would be dead soon too and that Ender would return with a infant in his arms a year later.

When The revolution would happen, Ender would place his son in his 14 year old sisters arms. Whisper apology after apology even after he witnessed the ship leave for the plains.

Aculon would fall that same night. The knews being delivered to Fluixon by a crow.

~

And that is a lot of words. Apologies if it's too much. The names of the Theria siblings' mom's are based after the gods Hephaestus and Aglaea who were also married in Greek mythology! There's a lot more to the Aculons hut I fear that it would take too many more paragraphs to explain, as for the Cynikka part, it's a headcanon that she looks eerily similar to Solev and Altiera's dead daughter. Also her father's deceased sister.

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nah I KNOW HOW LONG THIS TOOK TO MAKE EVERYONE BOOST THIS POST TO THE MOON FEATHER ANON MIGHT BE MOST DEDICATED ISH STATES FAN EVER

Ch1 of S2 Desert-centric fic is out !!! this is technically the prequel to House of Aculon if yall enjoyed that loll

I did a whole set of seasonal fashion pics of various OCs of mine, just 'cause. Took a while but it was really fun Please, click the Read More to see them all, I like sharing ^_^

Although most Mesozoic mammals were rather small, a few different lineages produced some pretty hefty-sized forms – most notably the metatherian Didelphodon, the gondwantherians Adalatherium and Vintana, and the eutriconodont Repenomamus.

And now we've got another one to add to that list.

Patagomaia chainko lived towards the end of the Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago, in what is now Patagonia near the southern tip of South America. Known from some partial leg and hip bones, it was potentially the largest known Mesozoic mammal yet discovered – estimated to have been similar in size to a modern bobcat, roughly 50cm tall at the shoulder (~1'8") and weighing around 14kg (~31lbs).

Distinctive anatomical features of the bones indicate it was an early therian mammal, the group that contains both modern marsupials and placentals, but it can't currently be classified any more specifically than that. Mesozoic therian fossils are very rare in the southern continents, so Patagomaia's presence in late Cretaceous South America adds to their known range and diversity, as well as providing an example of surprisingly large body size for the time.

Without more material it's impossible to tell what Patagomaia's ecology was. I've gone for a fairly generic life appearance here, and while what's known of its joints and muscle attachments doesn't indicate climbing specializations, plenty of unexpected tetrapods still like to get up on tree branches.

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