Bats
Bats are a group of mammalian shifters characterized by the membranous wings on their forelimbs, largely nocturnal habits, and echolocation abilities. They are the only mammalian species capable of true flight (as opposed to gliding).
The bat group contains bats such as the free-tailed bat, leaf-nose bat, myotis bats, vampire bats, hoary bats, and white bats.
Basic Information
Anatomy
- Wings: Bats are characterized by their long, narrow wings and a calcar, a small tail-like bone on the foot used for crawling. Their wings are typically made of a thin membrane of skin stretched between elongated fingers.
- Echolocation: Bats use echolocation to navigate and hunt in the dark. They emit high-frequency squeaks and interpret the echoes bouncing back from objects to form a mental picture of their surroundings.
- Eyesight: While not their primary sense, bats generally have decent eyesight, although they prefer low light such as moonlight or crepuscular conditions.
- Diet: Many are insectivores, but some species are frugivorous (fruit eaters), nectarivorous (nectar eaters), or even piscivorous (fish eaters).
Civilization and Culture
Beauty Ideals
The health of a bat's fur and the quality of their voice are the two most prominent factors for bats seeking a companion. Sleek, well-groomed fur is a sign of someone who pays attention to one's appearance and health. Since echolocation is such a fundamental part of a bat's life, possessing a strong voice with a broad vocal range is an attractive quality among bats. Individual species may also assess the size of a potential partner's ears, the shape of their nose, or the length of their wingspan.
In their natural forms, there is very little sexual dimorphism between male and female bats. The most common method of distinguishing between sexes is by length of the forearms and first and second finger. Female bats typically have a broader wingspan, which is facilitated by longer forelimbs and digits. When shapeshifted, female bats have thick chest fur over their mammaries, which enlarge while pregnant or lactating. The thickness of a bat's chest fur is often cited as a factor in attraction.
Gender Ideals
Both male and female bats actively participate in the majority of roles in their colony, evenly sharing the responsibilities for navigating, foraging, hunting, repairing and maintaining the colony's residence, and caring for the young. However, there are some specific areas where roles for bats are somewhat gendered.
With their typically shorter wings and smaller bodies, male bats are considered more agile fliers. They often take on roles within the colony as navigators, since they are able to quickly scout ahead through dense forest or cave networks and report safe passages back to hunting or foraging parties. They are often found in the upper levels of a colony's residence and are inclined to maintain the high levels of the hanging gardens or insect farms, since they can slip into the spaces between cave ceilings and these structures.
Very young pups are taken care of communally, and female bats are considered most fit for pup nurseries. This is because bat colonies practice communal nursing of their young, meaning that any available bat could nurse any given hungry pup. While male bats can rarely be found performing duties in the nursery for infant and yearling bats, this role typically falls to the females of the colony.
The teaching of young bat pups is also somewhat divided by gender. Male bats will typically teach young pups the secrets of navigating via their echolocation, the colony's specific shorthand signals, and where to evacuate in the case of danger. Female bats are often relied upon to teach young pups how to fly, which foods are good to eat and which should be avoided, and the history and traditions of a given bat clan.
Courtship Ideals
Bats are polygynous, forming harems with one male bat and several females. These harems can be permanent or transient depending on the species. Some bats will form harems temporarily in the spring and summer while they are birthing and raising offspring, only to dissolve this particular group when their pups move from the nursery to the creche. Other bats form permanent harem groups, living, hunting, and foraging together for the rest of their lives.
Harems typically form with the female bats first. Bats are extremely social and form extensive friendship networks, especially while young. Cohorts of young male and female bats will collectively eat, sleep, play, and learn together until they reach adulthood. Some of the social bonds formed in the creche last a lifetime, especially homosocial bonds. These friend groups of female bats will evaluate a potential male collectively, assessing not only their physical appearance but their personality and the potential fit with the existing female group.
Courtship can happen throughout the year, and is instigated by male bats. Within female friend groups, hierarchy is largely based on relative age and personality - the leader is most often the oldest bat within the cohort, or one with a dominant personality. It is considered bold of a male bat to directly approach the leader of a female group first. Socially, they are meant to indicate their interest first by being casually friendly with the quieter or more submissive members of the group. This indicates to the leader or leaders that the male bat is willing to do the work of ingratiating himself with the shyer or more reticent group members. Cohesion of the friend group is of the utmost importance, and a male who ignores the quieter members or seems to favor a particular bat over others will often be rejected.
Male bats demonstrate their worthiness as mates by giving gifts - handcrafted decorative items, rare or valuable foodstuffs, sought-after artisan goods - and by singing. Bat songs are often described by other species as piercing and unpleasant, but demonstration of a wide vocal range through song, especially if the male is able to master the fine art of utilizing echoloation to shape images and tell stories as he sings, will often make a female bat swoon.
Male bats also form homosocial groups, which function as emotional support networks during the all-important period of courtship. Male bats will give each other ideas for gifts, support each other through rejection, and suggest particular female groups they feel might be a good fit for one of their members. After joining a harem, male bats will remain friends with one another. A colony is typically made up of vast friendship networks of male bats along with their harems.
Homosexuality is somewhat common among bats. A friendship group of female bats may reject all male advances, preferring to have romantic relationships with one another within the group. Homosexual male bats tend to pair-bond, seeking one another out to form monogamous or sometimes polygamous partnerships.
Relationship Ideals
Group cohesion, emotional support, and collective assistance are considered the most important factors in stable bat relationships. Since children are raised communally, bats may or may not form strong bonds with their biological parents. If a bat's mother is one of the female bats in charge of the nursery, it is likely a bat pup will gravitate toward their own mother. However, if their mother fulfills a different role in the colony, the pup may form a stronger bond with one of the nursery bats as a surrogate mother figure. Bonds between children and male bats typically form later, once the pups move from the nursery to the creche. Father bats often bond strongly with their own offspring, whom they are able to identify by smell. While the nursery is almost exclusively staffed by female bats, creche caretakers are equally divided between genders.
Bats begin forming strong friendship bonds in the nursery, which carry over to the creche. Bats are raised and educated together in cohorts of the same age, and by the time they reach the creche and begin their educational years, they have formed small friend groups of between 3-6 bats. These groups can be mixed gender while the bats are still younger, but tend to solidify into homosocial groups as they approach maturity. Cohorts will learn collectively together in the creche, but will inevitably divide into their smaller friend groups when it is time to practice or apply the lesson.
Transient harems that form in some bat species only during mating season still serve to strengthen the friendship bonds of a colony. The brief "spring fling" relationships where a male bat is invited into a female friend group for a time for the purpose of siring children are considered a form of social entertainment by the rest of the colony, who often actively gossip over who had a fling with who in past years and who they might roost with this spring. In rare cases, the same male may be invited back repeatedly each spring, provided they get along well with the rest of the harem members.
Permanent harems must balance the social and emotional needs of all of their members, both the male bat and the females. While two individuals within a harem may at times share a stronger, closer bond than with others in the group, bats are encouraged to constantly make themselves aware of how much time and attention they give to each member of their harem group, to ensure friendship or romantic bonds remain strong and resentment does not form between members of the group.
Ideal relationships are considered those where all members of the harem are able to devote an equal amount of time and emotional energy to their individual favorites as well as the harem group as a whole. Open communication is strongly valued to maintain social cohesiveness and ensure everyone's feelings are considered and supported.
Common Dress Code
Jewelry such as bracelets, necklaces, or anklets are often avoided because the jingling sounds of these types of jewelry can interfere with echolocation. Piercings are well-spaced on the body to ensure they do not hit each other in flight and produce additional noise. The most common sites for decorative piercing are the base of the ears near the skull, the septum, various sites on the wing membrane near the bone (piercings near the edge of the wings are avoided as they can tear out of the thin membrane of skin), eyebrows, lips, and the tail membrane in species that possess it.
Scarves are the most commonly worn garment. The way bat wings attach to the body (from the wrist to the upper thigh) makes it difficult for bats to wear garments such as shirts, pants, or even skirts. There are several traditional ways to wear the wide, patterned scarves favored by bats - male and female bats often wear the scarves on their heads, held in place by a woven or metal circlet and left to drape over the shoulders or flow behind the head in flight. Bats may also loop long, narrow scarves around their necks several times to create loops on their chest or back, then secure it with a scarf pin.
Thin, translucent blindfolds are another commonly worn clothing item for bats. The blindfolds often have embroidered details and are worn across the eyes when bats must venture out of their caves or shadowed roosting places during the day, and protect their sensitive eyes from sun damage.
Bats are one of the few mammalian species known to tattoo themselves, as most mammals are too thoroughly covered in fur to engage in this form of body modification. The expansive membrane of a bat's wings can become a canvas for inclined bats. Most bats who have a tattoo have one small tattoo, often depicting a sentimental object, the clan's sigil, or other spiritual symbols associated with strength, protection, prosperity, or luck. However, there are some bats, in particular shamans and other mystics, who have so heavily tattooed their wings that little of the natural pigment of the skin remains. Decorative geometric designs interspersed with spiritual symbols and clan sigils are often features of these highly-tattooed bats.
Culture and Cultural Heritage
Bats have their own native language, although dialects and pronunciation vary wildly across different species of bats and different clans within that species. Each colony of bats will develop shorthand signals - specific combinations of tone, pitch, and sustained length of a note that can quickly communicate points of interest or danger to the rest of the colony.
A bat colony will claim one specific site as their home and will not move from that site unless it becomes clearly untenable for the colony - not simply one year of hardship, but perhaps several years of declining insect populations, drought, or other indication that the colony site has collapsed and the bats must migrate to a new one. Since colony sites are so important, they are carefully planned out when established. An existing cave system will be divided into regions, with the nursery and creche near the rear of the cave and the gardens and insects farms near its mouth. Similarly, when roosting in trees the nursery and creche are often placed in higher branches close to the trunk, to keep the young bats safe. Colony sites are therefore richly steeped in a bat colony's history, and the walls of the cave or the outer bark of their home tree is often carved with depictions of famous colony members or significant events in the colony's history.
Each colony site will also have a place to remember and pray to the ancestors. Given the extensive interconnection of bat colonies, each particular family or harem will not maintain a singular ancestral shrine, but rather the shrine is maintained collectively by the colony, placed in a central location, and cared for by the colony's spiritual leaders.
Aside from veneration of the ancestors, bats revere the gods of the moon, night sky, and four winds, as well as the spirits of the mountains and forests. The most prominent diety is the two-faced god/dess of the moon, depicted in bat culture as an intersex deity with two heads, one with black fur and one with pure white fur, representing the duality of the moon providing light but also shadow. The Two-Faced Moon is considered a capricious and volatile deity, one that is as likely to derive amusement from mortal hardships as they are to provide bounty. The dark head is said to be what visits shame on the hearts of those who know they have done wrong, while the bright head blesses righteous bats with joyful lives.
Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals
Bats of all species celebrate three major festivals throughout the year that concide with seasonal events for the colony.
The First Flight Festival takes place at the first snowmelt in the spring. This celebrates the colony's first flight out of their home after winter has ended and the resumption of normal colony activities as the bats emerge from their hibernation. Young bats are taken on a trip from the creche to the colony's hanging gardens, where they are taught to prepare the soil and plant seeds for the year. Adult bats spend the day before the First Flight painting each other's wings with glowing paint made from bioluminescent lichens and fungi. The colony will then mass at the entrance of their home before taking flight in unison as the sun slips below the horizon. Aerial displays of acrobatics paired are paired with songs as the bats take to the skies, and the colorful array of painted wings is a sight to behold. After returning from the flight, the adult bats will gather around the shrine to the ancestors and share stories, using their echolocation to paint pictures as they go.
Crecheflight is the year's second festival. It takes place on the summer solstice, the shortest night out of the entire year. This is a coming of age ceremony that marks the graduation of young bats from the creche into full adulthood. As the sun rises, the graduating cohort first goes to the nursery and moved the cohort of young pups who are graduating from the nursery to the creche, and introduce them to the creche keepers. During the longest day, these young bats hold silent vigil near the entrance of the colony's home, where the sun is brightest. Once the sun sets, they must embark on one of the most important tasks of a new adult bat's life - finding a day roost to call their own. The majority of premium spaces in the colony will already be taken by bonded harems or friend groups of adult bats, so the small groups of young bats will need to quickly seek out and claim the best spots available. This process involves the young group carefully crafting new neighbor gifts for the bats they will roost near, as colony cohesion is always of utmost importance. New neighbor gifts must be handcrafted, and are traditionally something that will be of use to the new neighbor - a bowl, a protection charm, a tool, or something of that nature. They can be decorated, but should not be aesthetic over practical. If even one group of potential neighbors declines their new neighbor gifts, the young group of bats will need to seek out a new roost. It is, however, tradition for accepting neighbors to be playfully critical of the new neighbor gifts, pointing out flaws or possible improvements. This should be taken with grace and good humor by the young bats, who are meant to see it as a lesson.
The year's final festival is the harvest feast. As the harvest comes in, either from the hanging gardens or the insect farms, the colony busiest themselves with preserving as much food as can be preserved. Species of bats that eat fruit will make preserves, jam, or dry the fruit in the sun. Species of bats that eat insects will use varied methods to preserve insects for the winter which often involve storing them in cold cellars to slow their metabolism, or freezing them in the snow outside. Once the tasks of harvest have been completed and the hanging gardens or insect farms are prepared for the winter, the days of feasting commence. Bats wear their best scarves and most expensive jewelry. The first day's feast is prepared as a communal potluck, with each family preparing enormous meals and carrying the dishes out of the colony entrance. Colorful streamers will hang from the mouth of the cave or the branches of the tree, and the bats will enjoy their meal under the setting sun, often wearing meticulously embroidered blindfolds to mute the sun's rays. Subsequent feasts are prepared by the colony's communal cooks, who use this opportunity to use up anything that cannot be preserved for the winter. Each night after the meal has been consumed, the colony gathers around the shrine to the ancestors. Here, bats will sing, dance, put on plays, and tell stories until the sun rises. This goes on for four days, and at the conclusion of the feast the colony's elders will call upon the ancestor spirits to guard them during their long hibernation, protect them during the winter, and see them safely to the spring.
Common Taboos
Bats are highly communal and social, and therefore regard activities that disrupt the colony's harmony as especially distasteful. If two or more bats have a conflict with one another, they are expected to handle it outside the colony altogether and leave the conflict at the door when they return. Starting a fight inside the colony will result in a swift condemnation by all bats in the vicinity and will often result in the offending parties being ejected from the colony until they can sort their problem out amongst themselves.
It is also considered unconsciable to leave a member of the colony behind. If a bat becomes lost while hunting or foraging, their party will remain out, calling for them for hours and well after the sun rises. If they aren't found, a colony-wide search is organized. The search will continue until the missing bat or their remains are found. If they are injured, the colony will care for them. If they are found dead, the colony will return with their body and hold a funeral. If they are not found at all, the searches can continue in some capacity for months until the elders finally make the heavy-hearted decision to call the efforts off.
History
When shifters were first raised from simple beasts during the War of the Gift, bats were not typically participant. A combination of their smaller size, notcturnal habits, an reclusive nature immediately following the Gift led to pockets of isolated bat communities around Amara during the first few years of Aētheli's establishment.
By Y12 of the new kingdom, King Llyn Goldfire had begun exploring mining opportunities within the Flame Mountains. While there were known sources of gold in the Coastwalls, in both Skytalon and Sunspear territory, it was not known what type of resources might be mined from the comparatively weathered Flames. It was the great horned owls of House Moongazer who initially made contact with a community of cave-roosting mouse-eared bats (a species of myotis bat). They had made their home in an extensive network of cave systems beneath the mountains that proved to house diamonds.
Upon excavating the diamonds and proving that there was a rich seam beneath their caves, the clan of mouse-eared bats was elevated to vassal nobility and given the name Duskflap. As word spread about the enobling of House Duskflap, other communities of bats began to emerge from caves or roosting spots in forests to make contact with the various shifter species around the kingdom.
Since the establishment of contact and patterns of exchange, bat communities across Amara are known for their superior mastery of hanging gardens, vertical engineering, insect farming, and navigation.
Scientific Name
Yangochiroptera
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Bats are a highly diverse group, with hundreds of different species contained therein, but there are some commonalities among bats when it comes to fur color and markings.
The majority of bats are brown, ranging from dark brown to medium brown. Some bats have darker brown points on their faces backs, with lighter bellies, while other are uniform in color. Hoary bats are dark brown or black with a lighter brown top coat, which gives them a frosted appearance. There are a small number of species with black fur, and one type of bat with white fur.
Geographic Distribution
Related Organizations
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