Western Coffee Swamp

Fauna & Flora

There are plenty of native plants and animals in the water and on land, and there are a number of species originally found on Kivanc that were introduced hundreds of years ago and have adapted to the differences in the environment. In the water, and the areas immediately adjacent to the water, the native plants thrive. There are grasses, ferns, trees, and shrubs, but the grasses and the ferns outnumber the woody plants significantly. Native plants share the driest parts of the swamp with plants from Kivanc. Here there are more native trees than in other parts of the swamp, but some parts of the dry land are dominated by enormous mushrooms up to thirty meters tall that have come to be called Mushrees. Mushrees are the mutated descendants of a fungus of similar size that was introduced by Strat. There are also smaller, carnivorous mushrooms introduced and mutated in the same way as the Mushrees. In the areas with acidic pools, fewer native plants thrive, and varieties of acid-loving and acid producing fungus originally from Kivanc are common. Some of these fungi are dangerous, from the creeping fungal latices that conceal deadly pools of concentrated acids to the deadly popshroom, which can sense movement and burst when creatures are nearby in order to infect them with its spores. Popshroom infections can be fatal, and creatures who die while infected usually become the nutrient bed for a new field of popshrooms. There are numerous species of native bird, fish, rodent, reptiles, and amphibians. There are also some larger mammals, such as deer, wolves, and the mutated descendants of rhinoceros. Some noteworthy native species are the so-called "acidgator," a mutated alligator that thrives in acidic pools as well as ordinary water and the "jumbo toad," an amphibian that grows up to a meter and a half in height. Alien animal species are much less prevalent than alien plant species, but those that are in the swamp are significant. Strat introduced some of the fiercest species from their home world in order to continue their hunting traditions. Among them was the Tss'ss'ssr'rahk, a truly alien creature over three meters tall with eight twig-like legs that are almost impervious to damage, four grasping tentacles, two arms ending in pincers, and a tail with a scythe shaped blade at the end. Tss'ss'ssr'rahk Queens are even larger, and lay dozens of eggs at a time; there are Tss'ss'ssr'rahk Queen nests in the buried wreckage of the old world under the Western Coffee Swamp.

Type

Wetland / Swamp

Characters in Location