Loloto
When Pinau and the Mu'o'a first came to Motu, they found a lush and verdant paradise - but it was not uninhabited. It was ruled over by a race they named the Loloto, who nearly ended the story of the Mu'o'a forever. The Loloto were strange and dangerous - they could poison with a touch, or belch out a gritty cloud of dust that drove the Mu'o'a into berserk killing sprees. They did not speak, but could communicate with strange whistling noises that emerged from dozens of holes in their bodies, that would burst open for the purpose and then seal again. Their skin could shift color, but was typically pallid with streaks of red and yellow that shifted and swirled. When they chose, they could become nearly invisible in the jungle, shifting their coloration to camouflage themselves.
There was never a moment of peace between the Loloto and the Mu'o'a. As soon as Pinau and the Mu'o'a landed, exhausted from their epic voyage, a Loloto attacked. It drove the warriors into a fit of insane rage, and then seized Pinau's partner, disappearing into the jungle. When the rage cleared, Pinau led a rescue mission, but found only more Loloto waiting in ambush. The Mu'o'a fled the monsters, and nearly fled Motu entirely. But Pinau was determined to make the creatures pay, and the Mu'o'a retreated only a short way to the island of Te Kohanga, to watch and learn the ways of their enemies.
Fire proved to be the answer. The Loloto ignored the weapons of the Mu'o'a, simply absorbing the spears and clubs into their bodies and consuming them. But they proved strangely flammable, and once Pinau discovered this, he and the Mu'o'a used it to great advantage. The skies above Motu grew dark with the noxious smoke of the burning Loloto. As the Mu'o'a advanced, they found a large and shallow lake of pinkish ichor in the heart of the island that they named Vaituloto Lolo. This lake was teeming with long, transparent eels as long as a Kikipua tail. The Mu'o'a saw them hatching from the eggs the Loloto vomited into the lake, and saw some of the largest eels lurch onto land, changing into the adult Loloto. Pinau ordered the lake itself set alight. The ichor burned, destroying the Loloto hatchery. Today, this place is known as the Hinekōkō Crater, and its history with the Loloto is not spoken of.
After the destruction of Vaituloto Lolo, the Loloto seemed to go berserk. They no longer waited in ambush, but charged wildly at the Mu'o'a war parties, and were easily set alight. After a year of war, the Mu'o'a had survived, although at an enormous cost - more than half of those who had survived the journey to Motu were killed by the Loloto. There were rumors of giant eels seen fleeing the island, but in all the years since the war, no Loloto has ever been seen in the physical realm. The Dream proved to be another story.
For long after the destruction of the physical Loloto, the Mu'o'a Fai Tala reported encounters with Loloto in The Dream realm. They believed them to be the manifestations of the nightmares of those who had survived encounters with the original creatures, but that made them more dangerous than their physical counterparts. To combat this plague, the Fai Tala took measures to suppress the tales of the Loloto, burying their stories and the memories of them. They do not forget the Loloto, but they do not speak of them, and the tales of that war are not shared with the community. Today, few who are not Fai Tala will even know of them.
Basic Information
Anatomy
The Loloto were strange creatures. Their flesh was moist and spongy, and seemed to lack any permanent bones. When they moved, coral-like structures formed and dissolved beneath their skin, creating temporary supports that caused their skin to bulge and split, healing as soon as the pinkish coral was reabsorbed. They had large, toothless mouths like frogs that could swallow a full-grown Kikipua whole, their whole body reshaping and contorting to contain their prey. Across their body bulged multiple eyes, usually around a dozen. They could move these eyes about - it would recede into their flesh, creating a bulge that moved across the Loloto's body to pop out of the skin in another location.
Most of the time, they would have two legs and two arms, although they could stretch the length of their limbs at will. The earliest accounts of the Mu'o'a who met them claimed they walked on all fours, but that they changed to a bipedal stance later, as if imitating the newcomers. Occasionally, they would extrude another limb, and in the last days of the Loloto they almost always had long tails as well.
Beneath their mouth was a transparent sack, filled with black and white orbs in a red gel. These are the eggs of the Loloto, which they held in their bodies until they were ready to be vomited up into the caustic lake the Mu'o'a named Vaituloto Lolo.
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