Lilac Mjellic

Once a symbol of Larea's exotic wildlife, the lilac mjellic's beauty played against it as soon as the rest of the Haan Archipelago gained contact with the island. As efforts to keep the species alive in captivity fail far more often than they succeed, the beautiful bird's story stands as a lesson for all societarians about preserving ecosystems.

Pysical aspect

The lilac mjellic was a rather large bipedal bird.
Both sexes had grey eyes, pale grey legs and a bare pink face with a short grey beak covering only the tip of their mouths and wattles under the chin, though the male had a much larger wattle and a crest as well. They had a mildly long tail covered by plumage.
Immature males and females had a plumage consisting of pink, lilac and purple feathers that would vary in tone across the body, with pale lilac in the chest and legs, pink in the neck and rump, and a lilac-purple gradient in the back, wings and tail.
Adult males had an iridescent neck which was dark blue at the top and pinkish purple at the base, a less subtle lilac-purple gradient in the back and wings and a pale lilac belly. Around the base of the neck, they had a pattern of square-shaped white short and wide feathers with an iridescent cyan circular pattern in the middle.
Outside the breeding season, the male's tail would consist of segments of dark purple feathers sided by big and long cyan ones. During the breeding season, they would grow additional patterned feathers, with short purple and blue ones at the tip and long, rounded orange ones crowning the sides. During this period the males were able to fan out their tails, making the brightest new feathers more visible and making the bird look much bigger.

Behaviour

As with most native Larean creatures, the lilac mjellic was considered to be simple. While it was capable of flight, its big size and ostentatious plumage made that ability quite reduced, especially for breeding males.
Like all mjellic species, the lilac mjellic was herbivorous, feeding mostly on seeds and fruits.

Courtship and Reproduction

During the breeding season of the lilac mjellics, the tail of the males would grow a large set of special feathers in striking colours in their tail, and the skin on their face and crest would become brighter red.
Males would band together in groups of 3 to 7 individuals, and create a circular clearing in the forest of around 5 meters in diameter.
Each of the males would build a nest in the outer borders of this clearing, and begin emitting long calls to attract the females. Once one would approach, the males would fan their tail feathers out and wave the tail to the sides slowly.

Demise

The Larean islands were once an ecological paradise free of any major predators, which allowed the species there to evolve in ways that prioritized reproductive selection over their abilities to escape predators. The original settlers of Larea did generate some damage to the ecosystem by hunting, but their nature-oriented culture and their diets allowed the creature species to stay afloat.
However, when sea travel and commerce eventually brought lyraiks and khoms to the island, the mjellic population started to decline rapidly as the first would kill the adults, and the second would break and eat the eggs. The species was also widely hunted by tourists and traders for their exotism, and many were traded as live trophies to other islands, where most perished without reproducing.
While eventually the Lareans took many strong measures to prevent the access and spread of predators on the island, the lilac mjellic is considered extinct in the wild today, with only a very small count of individuals alive in the few private collections that managed to breed them successfully.

EXTINCT

Classification

simple creature

Conservation Status

Extinct in the wild, between 10 and 30 exist in private collections.

Geographic Distribution

• Larea

Sightings

Through the recent years, a few individuals claim to have seen creatures resembling the lilac mjellic in the west coast of West Larea, close to the town of Point Tamerlac.
However, none of these sightings were confirmed by experts, and the inhabitants of the town deny these claims categorically.