Many of the springcroc species live only in swamps and marshes, where they tend to hide under shallow water in wait for a prey item to come for a drink or wander near. Once captured, the meal is taken underwater for slow consumption, with some of the chemical reactions during digestion providing oxygen for the springcroc as it feasts. Digestion is carried out inside the two shell halves, a region which serves as the creature’s stomach.
Figure Six: The entire mantel of the giant snail is capable of digestion, though some cells are better at it than others. Even if one were to grasp the snail’s eye-stalks, the cells would convert and one would begin feeling a tickling as their hand slowly became consumed. Aside from their usual transfer of reproductive cells, giant snails can reproduce parthenogenically: That is, a small piece torn off of the parent body, if given nurturing moist conditions, will quickly grow a shell, small eyestalks and begin its life as a new snail.
Class Gastrognatha has derived significantly, and contains species occupying a wide range of niches. One of the most abundant clades is the snapping flower, which oftentimes hang from pagodas on their long, thin legs, with their clamshell mouths wide open. Fleshy growths in the mouth mimic brightly colored ar-chaeplants, tricking would-be herbivores into becoming a meal for the little springcroc.
This class is best represented by the giant snail, Eponapulmonata giganticus, which has a bowl-shaped shell reaching two meters in radius that was used for a variety of purposes by primitive uthers (Epona’s sophonts). A thick, leathery mantel, made of multipurpose cells, acts as foot, mouth and digestive organ. It sprouts 24 sensor stalks around its rim.
E. giganticus’s primitive distributed nervous system can learn food-seeking behavior with a capacity that increases with age and size. When feeding, E. giganticus glides over any organic matter, mashes it between its foot’s grooves, and forces it up into a digestive/pulmonatory cavity.
For reproduction, E. giganticus drops reproductive cells onto the ground, where they encyst and lie dormant until a passing E. giganticus picks them up and “wakens” them by dissolving the protein coat with its digestive fluid. The fertilized cells are then dropped by the parent. If the new cells are ejected in moist areas, they form bloblike E. giganticus larva that grow tiny shells after a few hundred divisions. Only one out of a trillion grows as big as a cup each year.
Figure Seven: Extensile muscles work by extending, as opposed to the contracting muscles of Earth fauna. Aside from offering mobility to the organism, extensile muscles also act as the entire skeleton, giving the animals a strong degree of flexibility. All organisms in Kingdom Myoskeleta have this soft dual muscle-skeleton. Even Epona’s primary “plants,” called pagoda trees, have extensile muscles, albeit in primitive form.
The myoskeletal kingdom consists of organisms that do not possess mineralized skeletons. Instead, their bodies are supported by continuous lengths of osmotic muscle called extensile muscle rods, a combination skeleton-muscle which makes the organisms very flexible. These muscle rods can extend forward and backward, as well as twist through differential activation of muscle cells. Joints are not needed, for they can be created “on the fly” by animating the proper cell groups. The basic body plan built around the osmotic muscle skeleton consists of a barrel-like midsection with five muscle-rod limbs protruding from either end. The tips of the five limbs are then further divided into three smaller digits. What can such a simple body plan accomplish? A surprising amount.
The kingdom is broken down into two phyla, the myophyta, which consists of photosynthetic organisms that reside in plantlike niches on Epona, and the pentapoda, which has produced a host of animals highly derived from the basic body plan described above.
Figure Eight: Variants of the simple pagoda form depicted here can be found all over Epona, though the greatest diversity exists on the Sunken Continent. A number of tropical pagoda species are able to achieve heights similar to Earth trees, while some ground covering species have leaf diameters less than a centimeter. A subgroup called neopagodas has developed a branching method of growth with some trees making beautiful palmate fractal growth patterns.
These photosynthetic organisms, which have evolved from a tiered seaweed, have a very simple form: The previously mentioned barrel is often carried upright, like the trunk of a tree, and the five limbs on one end are sunk into the ground, like roots. At the top of the barrel, the other five limbs have evolved into a large umbrella leaf, so that a single tiered member of this phylum looks somewhat like an oversized mushroom. Five to fifteen spines, derived from the tridactyl nature of the muscle rod limbs, support the leaf, like the arms of said umbrella.
This “plant” form, known as the pagoda tree, is not restricted to one tier. A new barrel and associated leaf can be cloned from a growth bud that exists in the center of the leaf, quickly adding another level. Growth can continue, carrying pagodas to great height. Some myophytes are capable of branching via a polyembryonic method, effectively multiple cloning, though this tends to be simple and is usually carried out in twos, threes, or fives. Though the branching forms share many features with the pagodas, they are not the same, and are called neopagodas.
There is no wood on Epona. The carbon dioxide required for the wood-making process was not available for the pagoda’s tiered seaweed ancestors, and the terrestrial myophytes have maintained this ancient carbon-conserving trait. Pagoda stems are held rigid by the osmotic pressure in the extensile muscle cells. This osmotic muscle characteristic gives the pagoda animal-like freedoms. Trunks are very mobile, and they easily track the sun. Tendrils and stems can wrap around a support while one is watching. As a storm nears, pagodas can detect the dropping atmospheric pressure, and lift their leaves up or drop them down (like skirts?!) in an effort to protect the large photosynthetic structures from high winds. A natural and striking barometer! Occasionally pagodas will shrug off an unwanted visitor, like an avian myoskeletal critter who’s landed on the myophyte for a hearty meal.
Figure Nine: The pentapod respiratory system is one way, with air coming through the mouth, and waste gases being expelled through pores in the skin. With this unidirectional airflow, pentapods have a much simpler organ system than Earth vertebrates, as they do not require lungs. The muscles operating the windsack also drive the circulatory system, further simplifying pentapod internal anatomy.
Strongly cold climes and pagodas are usually not a successful combination. Having no bark for protection, the winters kill myophytes off by the billions, whole forests decimated by a single hard freeze. However, Epona has a very thin atmosphere, and even in the tropics at sea level the temperatures tend to drop toward freezing during the night. To combat this problem, pagodas produce various alcohols as antifreeze. Be careful with your campfires.