Characters / Hamster's Paradise

The sapient species of HP-02017. Individuals are described under sub-headings in their species' folders.

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Glaciocene

Splintsters (Baculartifex hamato)

Sapient, trunked rhinocheirids who are driven to extinction by the harmsters.

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• Canon Foreigner: They weren't present in the original sketches.
• Starfish Language: Their language is described as a series of trumpet-like howls and calls with different pitches and frequencies being analogous to words and sentences.
• Uncanny Valley: The splintsters are persecuted by the harmsters due to their resemblance to them but with strange, alien-looking faces that the harmsters found disturbing.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The splintsters are a new sapient species that arises in the Glaciocene, but they barely make it a couple of millennia, and remain only in Neanderthal-level advancement, before the harmsters wipe them out.

Last Bloom

The last splintster. She befriends the last thorhorn, who she names Boulder.

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• Last of Their Kind: Alone Again, Naturally: An Unlikely Friendship goes over the Odd Friendship of Last Bloom, the last splinster and Boulder, the last thorhorn after both of their species were destroyed by the Pyromaniacs.
• Last Stand: It's eventually revealed that Last Bloom and Boulder were eventually caught by the Pyromaniacs, but managed to take out lots of them before going down.
• Meaningful Name: She got her name because she was one of the last splintsters to be born.

Harmsters (Atroxicricetosapiens species)

As a whole

The first group of sapient species to appear on HP-02017, most of them believe that life exists to kill other life.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • The Harmsters have limited dexterity thanks to their short forelimbs. This isn't much of an issue for most thanks to their ranged weapons, pikes, and agility; however, it is a problem for the Frazettas who are too large to be agile and too primitive to use anything but clubs. The Rockcookers figure this out and devise a more efficient means of killing them by having one distract the Frazetta while another runs up their back where they can't reach and stab them in the base of their skull.
  • Their inability to feel compassion and extreme sadism causes their extinction as they have no medical knowledge whatsoever, leaving them easy pickings for a transmissible cancer.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Harmsters, are a violent, murderous cannibalistic race that take delight in the suffering of their prey and follow Might Makes Right. This is explained due to hypercarnivory in a highly competitive environment, similar to the sadistic behaviors in orcas and in cats. Still, in an example of realism the more cooperative tundra Harmsters essentially bulldoze the other species. They're still pretty evil, but capable of not killing each other on a whim. Ultimately, the whole species collapses when a transmissible tumor spreads, because they were never in the mind set to develop medicine in the first place. In fact, it was their sociopathic nature that allowed the cancer to spread in the first place as it was primarily contracted by either biting or by cannibalizing an infected individual.
• Asshole Victim: As noted by narration, the harmster species subdued by the tundra ones were similarly sociopathic savages which even caused the extinction of another sapient species. So their torture, subservience and violation is horrific and inhumane, but karmic.
• Bathos:
  • The concept of the Harmsters as a whole. A violent and murderous race that engages in war, genocide, bloodsport, religious child sacrifice, unethical experiments, rape of prisoners of war, genetic manipulation of slaves and bestiality with non-sapient slave-animals, among other things, is certainly no laughing matter, but when it's done by a bunch of adorable little jerboa-like hamster-folk the Grotesque Cute dissonance may add a bit of Black Comedy.
  • How the Harmsters meet their end: A Zombie Apocalypse plague that is known as Neuro-Ocular Severe Infectious Harmster Transmissible Tumor, or NO-SIHTT.
• Bizarre Alien Psychology: The harmsters are geared toward sociopathic violence due to their evolution as cannibalistic predators. They have little empathy for others as their fast reproduction makes fellows quickly replaceable, and they find the very idea of kindness and altruism bizarre and wrong.
• Blood Knight: The Harmsters, the first sapient race of the planet, are violent and revel in war.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The harmsters: they're not evil per se, they just believe that violence is ingrained in nature and literally don't understand the very idea of kindness and mercy.
• Body Horror: The Severe Infectious Harmster Transmissible Tumor (or SIHTT) causes cauliflower like growths to appear on the faces of infected Harmsters with one picture showing an unfortunate Frazetta◊ who has it so bad that it pushed their eye out of its socket. When it progresses far enough it can allow bacteria to start rotting the Harmster alive and causes its body parts to fall off. Its Temperocene descendant, the shroomor, is more benign, but still rather disturbing: it is, basically, a free-living cancer that grows on decaying carrion as fleshy pink masses, functioning similarly to a fungus.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The harmsters in the original draft briefly advanced to an industrial age where they wipe themselves out with weapons of mass destruction. The harmsters of the finished project, on the other hand, never advance beyond a somewhat medieval level of technology and go extinct thanks to the zombie-like SIHTT epidemic after weakening themselves with a large war.
• Establishing Character Moment: The harmsters are first revealed from the perspective of a mother ungulope and her calf as they are hunted by them, with the harmsters sadistically torturing the calf before eating it alive, showing the species' inherent cruelty.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: More of Blue-and-Orange Morality than truly evil, but the harmsters, a sapient species evolved to favor violence and survival with a Social Darwinist attitude, literally can't understand the very concept of kindness and compassion as it goes against their very survival instinct, to the point that altruism is considered by them to be insanity.
• Explosive Breeder: The harmsters reproduce frequently and in large litters that mature quickly, as a result they don't care for their sick and elderly since they can be quickly replaced.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Some of the other harmster species had their own takes: pyromaniacs were essentially Aboriginal Australians without humanity, the Raft Raiders were analogous to the Polynesians with a touch of Viking aesthetic, and the Matriarchs drew at least aesthetically from indigenous South Americans.
• Fate Worse than Death: The captured savannah and matriarch harmsters are enslaved by the tundra harmsters and kept as test subjects for all sorts of unethical weapons experiments, and, not content with simply subjugating their enemies, the tundra harmsters later selectively breed their slaves into unintelligent animals used as hounds and beasts of burden. It mentioned several times that the Mountain Harmsters got off easy when they were outright eradicated by the Tundra Harmsters.
• Formerly Sapient Species:
  • When the Tundra Harmsters defeated the other harmster species, they would take a number of the Savannah and Matriarch species as captives to use as test subjects. Over time they would selectively breed their prisoners to be less intelligent and more obedient. Eventually they realized they could be useful for other things and created the Brutes. These descendants of the captive harmsters were no more intelligent than the average mammal and had different breeds that were used for things like hounds, beasts of burden and war animals.
  • The Frazettas are a downplayed example. While they technically remain sapient beings, their interbreeding with the Brutes robs them of most of their higher intellect and ultimately reduces them to savage almost-animals living as cannibalistic predators in the wilderness.
  • The shroomors are the culmination of this trope, being a Meat Moss fungus-like growth that is all that remains of the once-sentient Harmsters - specifically, they're a benign descendant of SIHTT.
• Grotesque Cute: The harmsters are a very small species with a cute, round face but they are also murderous little sadists with a survival-of-the-fittest philosophy.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: The Harmsters' whole agenda is to kill other creatures for sport, with one of their victims being the equally sapient splintsters.
• Had to Be Sharp: Several of the harmster species were greatly shaped by the hostile environments they live in.
  • The matriarch harmster evolved to have larger, more aggressive females due to emigrating back to Mesoterra where they have to contend with extreme climates and their highly deadly riperroo ancestors with one group, in particular, the Badland Bandits, having an extremely pragmatic and opportunistic worldview due to living in the badlands though ironically, the females are less abusive towards the males compared to other Matriarch Harmster cultures due to them seeing such violence as wasteful.
  • The tundra harmsters live in the harsh north which forced them to become more innovative to survive both the cold and rival tribes trying to raid them. This ends with them becoming the most disciplined and technologically advanced of the harmsters.
  • The mountain harmsters are an interesting example. The mountains they live in have scarce resources but also low competition which led to them becoming more cooperative and less needlessly violent than their relatives.
• Heel–Race Turn: In what is probably the most bizarre example of this trope, the harmsters in a way get this treatment when the transmissible tumor known as the shroomors— technically their descendants thanks to having evolved from SIHTT — eventually manages to find a niche in the environment, acting as a fungus-like decomposer and serving a purpose for good.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, harmster sacrifice. The Blood-Sun Zealots sacrificed harmsters to the red Beta sun by burning them alive. While the Ripper Sisterhood view the ripperoos as death gods and offer them sacrifices, both non-sapient prey and other harmsters.
• Karmic Death: There's an odd poetry to the ultimate fate of the Harmsters, an Always Chaotic Evil species of raiders, enslavers and rapists. First, one of their many species, the Tundra Harmster, conquers the others and selectively breeds them into mere animals. These are in turn done in by a transmissible tumor that spreads out of control until it kills the environment sustaining it, like the harmsters themselves. Said tumor - which, mind you, is genetically a Harmster, so technically counts as part of their lineage - is now a mere fungus-like organism incapable of harming anything but the sickest of hosts, in turn, eaten by cave-dwelling grazers as if it were plants.
• Killer Rabbit: The Harmsters. They're a race of three-foot tall, fluffy, chubby-faced bipeds that look like adorable long-tailed Ewoks. They also happen to be a bloodthirsty, war-obsessed species of sadistic, cannibalistic, genocidal psychopaths.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Harmsters, who quickly turn a lighthearted nature-documentary style project into a borderline horror novel with graphic depictions of war, genocide, slavery, experimentation, bestiality, prison rape, and go out with a straight-up Zombie Apocalypse.
• Lack of Empathy: The harmsters instinctively prioritise survival of the fittest and see altruism as a waste of resources.
• Large and in Charge: Females of the Matriarch species are much larger than their male counterparts and abuse them to different extents. This extends to some of their hybrid descendants as well, with the Bruterider warlord Pi-pipipupu noted as having more Matriarch genes than most of her kindred, while Decadent empresses often get so obese they look like furry Hutts.
• Last Stand: The last of the Harmsters themselves go out this way against their NO-SIHTT infected compatriots, with the entry detailing this even being called "Last Stand."
• Monstrous Cannibalism: Harmsters don't shy from this and eagerly cannibalize the weakest of their young. This is taken to the extreme by the primal Frazettas, a faction of Brute-Harmster hybrids whose diet consists mostly of other harmsters as well as feral Brutes. This ends up spelling their doom as one of the ways Severe Infectious Harmster Transmissible Tumor can spread is by eating the flesh of other Harmsters, which becomes even more rampant after the second Harmster world war. The Rockcookers eventually do realize that their cannibalism and face biting is how the disease spreads and call to stop these practices but by then, it was already too late.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: The SIHTT-infected harmsters are zombies in all but name, being decaying creatures whose only goal is to instinctively spread their infection through biting.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Severe Infectious Harmster Transmissible Tumor is a kind of infectious cancer that primarily infests the central nervous system, and which spreads through tissue contact — especially through bites and ingestion of tainted flesh. The damage to its victims' nervous systems reduces and eventually destroys their ability to lucid thought and perception while increasing their aggression to facilitate its spread, while the damage to the nervous system leaves the host vulnerable to other diseases. The result as hordes of groaning, zombie-like shamblers, literally rotting alive and often missing limbs, jaws or eyes, driven to attack and infect as many others as they can before their rotting bodies finish falling apart.
• Reality Is Unrealistic:
  • The Harmsters being a naturally sociopathic species with a treacherous and brutal survival-of-the-fittest society held together by fear sounds utterly absurd but it is basically a more exaggerated version of chimpanzee behavior. While chimps do have some level of empathy for their own offspring, they are noted for having a sociopathic level of viciousness for both their own kind and the animals they sometimes hunt. They also have a might-makes-right hierarchy with (usually) the most aggressive male ruling before another male overthrows him. And ultimately, it's also not far off from the social behavior of hamsters themselves, which are cannibalistic and show little empathy compared to rats and other rodents.
  • As far-fetched as something like a form of contagious cancer like SIHTT sounds, it is actually based on DFTD (or Devil Facial Tumour Disease). A form of transmissible facial tumor that affects Tasmanian Devils that is spread by them biting each other's faces. Its virulence and bumpy growths may also allude to the Canine Transmitted Veneral Tumor, which affects dogs and is transmitted by sex.
• Schizo Tech: The Harmsters are at a level and aesthetic roughly similar to medieval Europe by the second world war breaks out yet their go-to ranged weapon is, in essence, a hybrid between a crossbow and musket they've already been using for over a thousand years and by that point they have also made weapons like bolt launchers, artillery and even flamethrowers that are carried on the backs of animals. Conversely, they had no medical knowledge of any kind due to their disdain for the sick and weak.
• Short-Lived Organism: Harmsters never die of old age due to their violent lifestyles but, even then, they have a very short lifespan as fifteen is considered old for them.
• Social Darwinist: The harmsters believe that all life exists to destroy all other life and that you are defined by what you kill and will generally follow their leaders out of either fear or respect for the strength. However, the Tundra Harmsters are the exception to this as they put more value on things like intelligence, influence and charisma, a trait that most of their future culture retain.
• Starfish Language: Their languages are described as consisting of shrieks and rodent chirping.
• Technically-Living Zombie: The victims of the NO-SIHTT epidemic look and act the part of horror movie zombies, being hordes of mindlessly aggressive, rotting corpses that can infect healthy harmsters through their bites, but are technically living creatures suffering from a transmissible cancer of the nervous system that exhausts the immune system, dulls sensation and leaves them constantly angry, hungry and disoriented. Most notably, this means that they have a finite lifespan as the infection invariably overwhelms and kills its host after a few months.
• Uncanny Valley: The ripperoos have this effect on the harmsters as they are large, animalistic predators that bear a disturbing resemblance to themselves. This led to one group of Matriarch Harmster seeing them as monsters and another to see them as death gods.
• Wandering Culture:
  • The Harmsters are the first sapient species to evolve on HP-02017 and are divided into four separate species. The most widespread of these are the Savannah Harmsters, who live a nomadic lifestyle due to them primarily feeding on large herding animals. One culture known as the Pyromaniacs have also had a very profound effect on the ecosystem due to their fire-based hunting strategy and nomadic lifestyle burning large swaths of land and leading to several extinctions and displacements.
  • The Bruterider descendants of the Tundra Harmsters are also nomadic thanks to their Savannah heritage though unlike the Savanah Harmsters they travel on the backs of large brutes which allows them to move in much greater numbers.
• War Is Glorious: The harmsters are a savage race who certainly behave this way, which ultimately leads their species to bring about its own extinction.
• We Have Reserves: Basically, the cause of the harmster's sociopathic tendencies: they breed quickly enough to recoup their losses and thus show little concern towards the well-being of their own kind.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The harmsters have no mercy for the young, both other species and their own. One chapter details a group of them eating a young ungulope calf alive after torturing it a bit and it's stated that harmster mothers will viciously maul their own children if they prove disobedient and will make sure to do it in front of their siblings as an example. New matriarch harmster alphas will also kill the young of the previous alpha after taking over and wear their bones as a display.
  • The tundra harmsters, upon capturing and enslaving the matriarch and savannah harmsters, attempt to subdue them by lobotomizing them as infants, which is stated in text to be a difficult process with plenty of "trial, error, and a lot of dead babies".
• Zombie Apocalypse: The outbreak of the Severe Infectious Harmster Transmissible Tumor in the aftermath of the second harmster world war causes something like this to happen. The mass cannibalism and scavenging after the war causes the formally small-scale cancer to spread to plague levels, with the behavior-altering neural-ocular strain lowering fear and increasing aggression as well as causing its victims to both lose their fur and even start rotting alive. The result is an army of what resembles walking corpses◊ scourging the land and ultimatly driving the weakened Harmsters to extinction.

Tundra Harmsters (A. cryorex)

Due to living in a harsher environment with fewer resources, tundra harmsters are more co-operative than most, which allows them to conquer the other species. After a war, they split into multiple cultures.

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As a whole

• Always a Bigger Fish: The Tundra Harmsters prove to be this to the other Harmster species. The other harmsters may have been vicious enough to rise to the tops of the ecosystems they were living in but when the cold drives the Tundra Harmsters further south their numbers, advanced weapons and military discipline allow them to annihilate even the brutal Hamazons and sadistic Pyromaniacs.
• Clash of Evolutionary Levels:
  • When the final cold-snap of the Glaciocene forces the tundra harmsters further south they immediately wadge war on the other harmster species due to their inherently violent, tribal nature. The primitive mountain harmsters are completely destroyed while the savannah and matriarch harmsters are enslaved and have their best traits taken by the tundra harmsters through forced breeding. Like a much darker and more intentional take of humans interbreeding with Neanderthals.
  • It's mentioned that a crowd favorite matchup in the Decadent's Beastly Bloodsports are ripperoos against war Brutes, as they see it as symbolic of their own ingenuity surpassing natural design. Despite the ripperoos being larger, more cunning, and cautious, they usually end up losing to the Brute's sheer ferocity.
• The Empire: Unlike the other harmster species that are divided into different squabbling cultures, the Tundra Harmsters have long since been unified in a single empire through conquest. Once they are able to travel further south, they are quick to do the same to the other harmsters and add their unique technologies to their own forces. However, it is mentioned that despite this they are not ruled by a single emperor but have a decentralized government with different chiefs ruling the different clans with delegates beneath them that run the different day-to-day operations.
• Evilutionary Biologist: The tundra harmsters try to breed themselves into a master race by crossbreeding with their enslaved races via Prison Rape, and in the Frazettas' case they even breed with the non-sapient Brutes and become primal, ogre-esque monstrosities.
• Expy: The tundra harmsters, who punished their captured rival harmster species by breeding them into non-sapient animals that they use like dogs and oxen, echo the Qu from All Tomorrows who did the same to the descendants of humans (albeit to a much greater extent).
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • The Purebloods are xenophobic purists reminiscent of the Nazis.
  • The Rockcookers are similar to the Iron Age Assyrians.
  • The Squeakwegs are similar to the 18th century Nantucket whalers with some Pacific Island influence.
  • The hedonistic, blood-sport loving Decadents are a mix of the Ancient Romans and some Mayincatec inspirations.
  • The Bruteriders, a nomadic group primarily known for their riding and cavalry skills are similar to the Mongolian Huns. Fittingly they produce a Genghis Khan-esque figure named Pi-Pipipupu who unites the Bruterider tribes and sets out to conquer the world.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: The Tundra Harmsters wield long-range weapons that act like single-shot rifles. This allows them to easily slaughter the other harmster species from a distance and also negates the main strength of the larger and stronger Matriarch Harmsters.
• Grim Up North: The tundra harmsters bulldoze the other ones in large hordes coming from the north. Granted, their victims were not innocent either (barring the peaceful mountain harmsters).
• History Repeats: The original founding hamsters came to HP-02017 as lab animals. Millions of years later the Tundra Harmsters use the other Harmsters that have been taken captive as test subjects for scientific experimentation. Ironically, the Tundra Harmster experiments on their own kind are far more cruel and inhumane than anything the advanced humans inflicted on their ancient ancestors.
• Hybridization Plot: After the more technologically advanced tundra harmsters are able to use superior weapons and tactics to subjugate their more primitive relatives, the savannah and matriarch harmsters (and outright eradicate the peaceful mountain harmster) they are still able to recognize the physical advantages they possess and forcibly breed with their captives to gain better adaptability and strength. To add insult to injury, they selectively breed them into non-sapient animals afterward.
• Hybrid Power: The Tundra Harmsters invoked this by crossbreeding with the captive Savannah and Matriarch harmsters. They were still culturally Tundra Harmsters, but managed to make themselves stronger and more adaptable by breeding traits like the improved stamina of the Savannah Harmsters and the physical power of the Matriarch Harmsters into their bloodlines.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The tundra harmsters are well on their way to becoming such; they conduct cruel experiments on prisoners of war and seek to become a "master race" while exterminating all others. Though, ironically, unlike the Nazis who sought to become a master race by remaining "pure" the tundra harmsters methods of becoming a master race have them interbreed with other harmster species to assimilate their best traits for themselves. Played straight by the xenophobic Purebloods, who are so obsessed with genetic purity that inbreeding is slowly killing them off.

Bruteriders

• Awesome, but Impractical: The Bruterider's use of rakatusks ended up being this. These beasts allowed them to destroy any fortress wall in their path and provided intimidation factor but they were so limited in number and had such an arduous training period that when the Rockcookers developed a way to kill them, the Bruteriders had no way of replacing them.
• Beast of Battle: The Bruterider harmsters specialize in breeding powerful Brutes, bestial creatures bred from the other, defeated harmster species, as attack animals and war mounts.
• Decapitated Army: After Pi-Pipipupu is killed by a Rockcooker artillery strike, the Bruterider tribes under her command quickly fragment. However, it proves to be a Pyrrhic Victory for the Rockcookers, as the Bruteriders now attack randomly from all sides, which is much more difficult for the more methodical Rockcookers to counter.
• The Horde: During the second harmster world war, the Bruteriders — a loose coalition of barbarian tribes who specialize in warring from the backs of powerful animals — are forced into a united force by a powerful warlord and begin a campaign of conquest and destruction against the other harmster civilizations. They were, however, entirely dependent on their leader for unity, and when she dies in battle, they quickly fragment into a chaotic jumble of warring splinter factions.
• War Elephants: The Bruteriders under Pi-pipipupu manage to use rakatusks, giant hamster descendants evolved into a mammoth-like niche, as massive war-mounts by capturing them as infants and training them to be obedient. This made their armies virtually unstoppable at first as the rakatusks could both destroy any fortress walls and carry large weaponry, but when the Bruteriders go up against the Rockcookers they're ultimately beaten as the latter are more technologically advanced and use flaming artillery to kill the huge hammoths before they can even get close.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Their go-to strategy during the second world war is to simply overwhelm their opponent after knocking down their defensive walls. Once they are no longer able to do this after the Rockcookers start killing their rakatusks, they aren't able to adapt and are defeated quickly.
• Zerg Rush: The Bruteriders don't have much in the way of complex tactics when they begin their campaign of conquest, simply swarm their enemies with waves of soldiers, Brutes and projectiles once the rakatusks knock down the fortress walls. This served well at first until they face the calculating and pragmatic Rockcookers who value precision and efficiency over horde tactics.

Pi-Pipipupu

An old (by harmster standards), scarred warlord whose name means "the twisted one".

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• Bathos: The aged warlord of the Bruterider nation is The Dreaded among harmster-kind, such that her name, meaning "the twisted one", is "the most feared and dreaded among the land." That name just happens to be equal parts hilarious and unfortunate by human standards: Pi-pipipupu.
• The Dreaded: Pi-Pipipupu is the most feared of the Bruterider Harmsters due to the many battles attributed to her but also the fact she's both old and riddled with many disabling injuries yet still manages to be deadly despite that. This fearful reputation is what draws many of the Bruterider tribes under her banner, as they respect not only power but also charisma and intelligence.
• Eaten Alive: She's devoured alive by a family of Chernadogs after being mortally wounded by a Rockcooker artillery strike.

Purebloods

• Fascist, but Inefficient: The Purebloods are a civilization of tundra harmsters obsessed with maintaining cultural and genetic purity in front of the other harmster civilizations developing very divergent cultures and interbreeding with the other harmster species. As a result, they ruthlessly police themselves for any deviation from their ancestral culture and cull any member of their kind who shows any mutation or genetic impurity. This ultimately cripples their civilization, as their obsession with purity leaves them vulnerable to inbreeding and lacking in genetic diversity needed to resist disease, while their enforcement of "pure" culture also prevents them from developing any real technological advancement and allows the more advanced factions to devastate them when war breaks out.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Purebloods take great pride in their Tundra Harmster heritage and will not only kill any hybrid harmsters they come across but also their own pups who display any traits seen as deviant even when it's only a recessive trait that comes from their own genome. This fixation on purity has also led to inbreeding depression within their populations with increased vulnerability to illness and reduced fertility becoming common problems.

Decadents

• Beastly Bloodsports: Harmsters enjoy using Brutes for these. The Decadents in particular become very fond of blood sports, pitting Brutes, gladiators and wild animals against each other in their gladiatorial arenas to enjoy the spectacle of their mutual slaughter.
• Dirty Coward: Their generations of complacency had led to them losing much of the ferocity present in most other harmsters. When the Bruteriders attack, they run and scream rather than try to fight back.
• We Have Become Complacent: The Decadents were once the most fearsome harmster kingdom in Messoterra and this led all their neighboring tribes to avoid attacking them out of fear. This lack of challengers allowed the Decadents to become soft and hedonistic with the hard work being done by their Brutes, it's stated that they wouldn't really be able to defend themselves if attacked and the only thing keeping them safe is the fact that they still look powerful from the outside. Sure enough, when the Bruteriders start their invasion the Decadents all start fleeing in terror once their rakatusks breach their defenses.

Rockcookers

• Better to Die than Be Killed: When the Rockcookers of the last stronghold realize that the SIHTT infection has made it into their fortress, they decide to burn it, and themselves, before they all inevitably succumb.
• Last of Their Kind: Last Stand: Final Stronghold of the Rockcookers goes over the last group of surviving Rockcooker Harmsters holed up in a fortress against the hordes of infected before they eventually burn themselves to death to be spared the same fate.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: They serve as this to the other harmsters once the second world war breaks out. They have access to equipment none of the other harmsters possess such as metal armor and weapons and even artillery platforms that make short work of the other harmter's advantages.

Wipi-pipa

• Ear Notch: He has a notable piece missing from his ear. In fact, his name literally means notch ear.
• General Failure: Wipi-pipa is an utter failure of a military leader as he has no real experience and mostly just barks orders at the soldiers under his command and he's directly responsible for the deaths of the last of the harmsters he leads thanks to his incompetence. It's stated that the only reason he even managed to become the commander of his fortress is because he was the only one still alive.
• Zombie Infectee: When he's nicked by the tooth of an infected, he keeps it to himself and eventually starts infecting his subordinates which leads to the deaths of the last Harmsters. In this case it is more justified since it is noted that Wipi-pipa, like all Harmsters, is extremely selfish and he himself is desperate to maintain the illusion of his power due to his overconfidence.

Savannah Harmsters (A. bruteus)

Plains hunters who use spears made of sharpened sticks as weapons.

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• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Pyromanics were one of the most brutal and sadistic of the harmster species and had committed complete genocide on another sapient species but they themselves (and several other harmster cultures) are wiped out when the last ice age of the Glaciocene drives the more advanced tundra harmsters further south.

Matriarch Harmsters (A. hamazoni)

A harmster species whose females are much larger than the males.

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• Furry Female Mane: Female matriarch harmsters grow long manes that they style in braids or dreadlocks.
• Punny Name: Their species name, "hamazoni", is a portmanteau of "hamster" and "Amazon", as in the all-female tribe of warriors from Greek mythology.
• Speculative Fiction LGBT: It's mentioned that same-sex relations are the norm for Matriarch Harmsters with male and female mating only occuring for reproductive purposes due to the larger, more aggressive female often injuring or even killing the male in the process.

Frazettas

The results of the tundra harmsters interbreeding with the brutes.

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• Bestiality Is Depraved: Most of the hybridization between the three harmster species occurred while the savannahs and matriarchs were still sapient, but one group of tundra harmster would try to further increase their strength by doing the appalling and breeding with their non-sapient Brutes. They succeeded on this front and became the largest and strongest of the harmsters but at the cost of reducing their own intellect and becoming the feral and savage Frazettas.
• Frazetta Man: The aptly-named Frazettas are a primitive savage harmster faction that regressed to a primal state from interbreeding with the non-sapient Brutes, leaving them as gigantic, powerful and unintelligent savages who live in the wilderness, use no tools more advanced than big sticks, and eagerly cannibalize each other and sapient harmsters.
• Hunter of Their Own Kind: The Frazzetas take their species cannibalistic tendencies to the extreme and feed almost exclusively on Brutes and the smaller Harmsters.

Mountain harmsters (A. montenanus)

Relatively peaceful harmsters who live in the mountains of Central Arcuterra.

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• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Most of the harmster species and cultures are various degrees of sociopathic and bloodthirsty. The main exception to this being the small, primate mountain harmsters.(this trope name is even the title of their introductory post!) While they are indifferent to the lives of their own kind, they are not actively sadistic and are the most cooperative of the four species, one population lives a placid existence in the mountains while another lives pastoral farmers who will usually drive away trespassers and predators as opposed to killing them on the spot. The reason for this is due to them evolving in the comparatively barren mountain ranges, the lack of food means that they can't reproduce as much so they can't afford to be needlessly violent with one another and leading to increased cooperation while the low number of rivals meant that they didn't need to be as aggressive.

Temperocene

Calliducyons in general

A family of canine-like pack hunters. Each genus evolved sapience independently.

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• Animal Jingoism: The canine-like calliducyons have a rivalry with the cat-like tigerillas. The latter sees the former as rivals and will kill any they find in their territory while the calliducyons see the tigerillas as monsters due to their tendency to leave the bodies of calliducyons they kill uneaten as they make it a point to kill only to survive.
• Animal Naming Conventions: Calliducyon naming conventions usually join two descriptive words together. For example, the father baywulf from their first entry is named Pale-Beard for the grey marking going under his jaw, while the son is named Strange-Eyes due to his heterochromia. Their name for their species as a whole is “story-telling hunt-beasts". This isn’t just for the names of individuals, but also for animals, natural phenomena, and concepts: predatory animals are called hunt-beasts, herbivores are grazer-beasts, Alpha is called the fire-circle that lights the brightday, while Beta is the red-circle that lights the dimday, and the past is before-time.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: The 'hounds serve as massive foils to the harmsters that proceeded them long ago. The harmsters lived in large groups based solely on pragmaticism and strength, killed for pleasure just as much sustenance, are deeply arrogant about their place in the world and would kill each other with impunity. The calliducyons live in family groups who care deeply for one another, including the old and sick, see themselves as a part of the world rather than above it and make it a point only to kill for survival. A good example is how both species look at the brutality of nature: the harmsters conclude that all living things exist to kill each other while the north and southhounds acknowledge the harm in the natural world but also see the kindness in it as well. There’s also the physical differences: the harmsters are small, cute-looking bipeds that could easily craft their own tools and reproduce rapidly while the calliducyons are larger and more fearsome-looking quadrupeds that are limited in their tool use and give birth to small litters.
• Decomposite Character: The baywulves from the original sketches were split into two species, the northhounds and the southhounds, with the group as a whole being referred to as the calliducyons. The baywulf name is still in use as a subspecies of the southhounds.
• Establishing Character Moment: The calliducyons are first revealed in an entry that depicts a baywulf father telling his son about their people and how they tell stories to teach and remember, showing both their compassion and their wisdom that distinguishes them from the harmsters.
• Excrement Statement: It's stated that calliducyons may sometimes spray their artwork with urine to use the scent to convey their disdain for the theme or subject matter.
• Handy Mouth: They lack grasping hands so what tool use they're capable of is done entirely with their mouth. The baywulves are the most skilled at least when it comes to spear use but all will carry weapons in their teeth. This also means that their more complex tools, such as defensive collars, require aid to remove, further reinforcing their social bonds.
• Intellectual Animal: This is how the 'hounds see themselves. Thanks to the presence of other lycanines who vary in intellect from near-sapient to clever animal but are physically similar to them, they only see themselves as animals capable of speech rather than a "higher" lifeform the same way harmsters or humans do.
• The Nose Knows: They have a good sense of vision and hearing, but as expected of a canine-like being, they experience the world primarily through smell. They use it to tell individuals apart as well as tell each others' sex as they don't have much outward sexual dimorphism. It also has an impact on their art as they add different scents to their pieces to convey emotional nuance that can't be expressed purely through image.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: The case with the calliducyons: rather than having a clear divide between "persons" and "beasts", there is a wide array of other species that are indeed related to them, but vary in sapience: some being more primitive persons, others being described as being child-minded, others being highly-intelligent semi-sapient animals and still others being non-sapient at all. As such, there isn't a clear divide between themselves and other animals, and thus the calliducyons refer to themselves as "story-telling hunt-beasts": simply another kind of animal with a special trait of culture and imagination, rather than as a whole higher class of life-form the way humans and the harmsters did.
• Uncanny Valley:
  • The white-eyes are a species of southhound that developed white sclerae to better nonverbally communicate with each other during hunts. This strange appearance combined with their general silence has led to other dark-eyed southhounds finding them disturbing and preferring to avoid them.
  • The desert falcyons have a very canine-like head thanks to convergent evolution which makes them deeply unnerving to the dog-like drysander northhounds, especially since they will sometimes prey on drysander pups. This earned them a reputation in drysander folklore as flying monsters with the faces of people that swoop down on children.
  • The southounds find the non-sapient lycanines (or silent-ones as they call them) deeply disturbing due to the latter greatly resembling themselves but having off features such as a proportionately smaller head and braincase, a feral unthinking look in their eyes and their vocalizations which sound somewhat similar to the cries of young southhound pups but with no meaning or reason.
• We Are as Mayflies: They have much shorter lifespans than humans (though still longer than harmsters) with the southhounds usually living into their 20s and the northhounds into their 30s. It's for this reason that they usually measure time and age using seasons rather than years.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Rather, what measure is a non-calliducyon, as the calliducyons have close relative species that range in sapience from primitive person to child-minded semi-sophont to mindless animal, partly the reason why they see themselves as merely just another kind of "hunt-beast" (carnivore animal) rather than a different league above them.
• You No Take Candle: The calliducyons talk with short sentences that contain few verbs. A later post states that this is a syntax resulting from their distinct language.

Northhounds (Borealocalliducyon species)

As a whole

• Death of Personality: The northhounds don't believe in a more traditional afterlife the way southhounds or humans do. Rather, they belive that their souls lose their individuality upon death and goes on to become part of a communal spirit.
• Fantastic Arousal: Dark colored fur is considered a very physically attractive trait among the brown northhounds which is part of the reason why the woodwolves are so well liked as they are the darkest of the northhound subspecies. Conversely, this also means individuals with white fur are considered very ugly.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Their tawny fur, long legs, omnivorous diets, and grassland habitats are similar to maned wolves.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The northhounds have eight different subspecies with inspirations from various civilizations:
  • The riveners, which evoke Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures with an East Asian-like spiritual reverence for "duality" a la yin and yang
  • The drysanders, which are tough, rugged desert dwellers with a tendency for racial and sexual prejudice, similar to American southerners and their "redneck" stereotype
  • The woodwolves, a peace-loving culture who indulge in recreational drug use similar to hippies and Rastafarians
  • The brownhounds, which range across plains and are portrayed with a reverence for nature much like Native Americans
  • The mixens, a culturally-diverse group and the source of many beliefs and cultures much like Europeans and middle-easterners
  • The vulpins, which are fond of spiced food and the use of natural traditional medicines like south and central Asians
  • The talbots, which are jungle-dwellers that live near rivers like indigenous South Americans
  • The boldmarks, which travel from land to land raising crops like western Pioneers in the Americas.

Mixens (B. mixenii diversus)

Due to being hybrids of the other northhound species, mixens have a blend of cultures and are accepting of outsiders.

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• Human Pet: The desert wildchild is a small lycanine that some mixen packs keep as companions and pest control for stinging insects that bother them. Other northhound cultures tend to view this relationship unfavorably due to the wildchild's resemblance to northhound pups. Essentially seeing it as keeping a small, child-like person as a pet.

Sundown and her pups

• Happily Adopted: As shown in "Odd Ones Out", Sundown is a mixen who adopted four disabled northhounds that she loves as if they were her biological children.
• Interspecies Adoption: Most of them are mixens, but Bigpup is a brownhound.
• Odd Name Out: Twist is one of the few 'hounds whose name isn't two words put together.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: All of the pups were abandoned due to their disabilities; Twist has a twisted paw, Snowcloud is leucistic, Shortsnout is brachycephalic, and Bigpup has some kind of brain damage or severe mental disability.

Talbots (B. canticum canticum)

• Pardon My Klingon: In "Talk to the Trees", a talbot named Riverstone says "pwi-yipp" to some scaly-creepers who mimic sounds, which is described as a word the elders have forbade him to say.

Woodwolves (B. longipes melanus)

• Evil Counterpart Race: Inverted; they serve as a more benevolent foil to the long-extinct decedent harmsters. Both are somewhat lazy hedonists with a penchant for narcotics but the decedents were cowards who relied on their reputation for protection and sought entertainment from bloodsports. The woodwolves are peace-loving and highly respected by the other northhounds but are also brave enough to step in and prevent needless bloodshed.
• Polyamory: Polyamory and polygamy are fairly common and accepted in their culture, in contrast to most other calliducyons, which tend to be monogamous.
• Really Gets Around: Their proclivity to take multiple partners and their very dark fur (a very attractive feature among brown northhounds) means that their are many northhounds of other cultures with woodwolf ancestry.
• The Stoner: They are known to deliberately consume narcotic fruit and animals for a high. This plays a role in their culture as it is used to exaggerate stories and have what they believe to be visions.

Drysanders (B. l. heremus)

• Fantastic Racism: They're known to be highly xenophobic to most outsiders due to their tendency to see anything unfamiliar as a threat, but they have the most conflict with the riveners due to the drysanders being culturally protective of water due to its scarcity in their home which led to them being at odds with the riveners who live around it. They do make an exception with the woodwolves however, and respect them enough to not go to war with the riveners. They're also the only northhounds shown to be explicitly homophobic.
• Warning Song: The drysanders live in semidesert and arid savannah environments, which are difficult places to live in with one of the biggest threats to their young being predators. As such, the adults of the packs will sing songs to their pups as a way to warn them of the dangers they will face if they aren’t careful.

Riveners (B. l. fluvius)

• Duality Motif: Duality plays a big part in their culture, viewing everything as having two equal and opposite sides to itself. This came about due to the rivers they live on as it provides food and sustenance but can also bring death and destruction thanks to flooding.
• Fantastic Racism: They're currently at odds with the drysanders due to the latter's protectiveness of water and general hostility to outsiders while the riveners simply follow the great river wherever it takes them, which led to some ending up in the drysander's desert thanks to part of the river leading into it. This resulted in them seeing the drysanders as aggressors. It's their mutual respect for the woodwolves that has so far prevented things from escalating into outright war.

Southhounds (Australocalliducyon species)

As a whole

• Alpha and Beta Wolves: Most of the wolf-like southhound subspecies avert this by having family-based pack structures similar to real wolves. However, an exception exists with the outlanders, who are descended from outcasts from the other subspecies. As their ancestors were various unrelated individuals forced into new territories, they developed a strength-based hierarchy with alpha, beta and omega members as well as a more aggressive "us vs them" mentality. However, they still form bonds with each other and share a sense of camaraderie.
• Noble Wolf: The southounds are wolf-like in appearance and social behavior but unlike the harmsters before them, they are peaceful beings who make it a point to only kill other creatures to survive and have a rich story-telling culture.
• Starfish Language: According to this post, their language wouldn't even sound like a language to human ears, just a series of complex chirps, whistles, calls and barks. Each with their own contexts and meanings and each sound being a word in itself and a series of them making a sentence. Tail and ear movement as well as scent would also likely be important in nonverbal communication.

Highbrows (A. fabula supercilius)

• Fantastic Livestock: The highbrow southhounds domesticated a species of large, moose-sized ungulope they call horn-herders for food to make up for the lack of other prey in their mountain homes, though this sometimes causes conflict when rival packs try to steal one another's livestock. Word of God also says that some packs will herd herbivorous podotheres as a backup livestock but this is usually less successful due to their skittishness and the fact that they produce less meat per animal.
• "Just So" Story: Occasionally, horn-herder calves are born with cyclopia, brought on by eating a toxic plant. The highbrows interpret this as the result of an evil one-eyed spirit trapped within the plant attempting to be reborn.

Outlanders (A. f. chimerides)

• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Outlanders have no qualms about killing rivals from other packs but find the idea of killing one of their own pack members abhorrent. So they feed their desire for battle through monitored duels.
• Blood Knight: Their culture has left them with violent tendencies and a desire for glory.
• Duel to the Death: Inverted. Members of a pack will sometimes duel each other to gain status and quench their thirst for violence but these are specifically done to avoid death as they are watched over by spectators who can intervene if it goes too far.
• Evil Counterpart Race: The outlander southhounds serve as this for the mixen northhounds. Both of them are a unique subspecies and cultural group among their own kinds by being the result of hybridization of multiple different subspecies but this is where the similarities end. The mixens came about from the peaceful co-mingling between the different northhounds and are respected by them while the outlanders came about from those who were exiled by their respective people and are widely disliked by them for their aggressive tendencies.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Their origins and group behaviors were inspired by early captive wolves. Much like said wolves, they were descended from strangers forced together in unnatural circumstances which caused them to abandon their original family based pack structure in favor of a hierarchy based on strength and aggression.
• Savage Wolves: Unlike the other wolf-like southhounds who typically only kill for survival and are usually peaceful outside of that, the outlanders are much more violent towards others and are implied to kill even outside of necessity and have an aggression based hierarchy.

Ashfall and the firetheives

Largest of the outlander packs and their fierce leader.

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• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Ashfall's a brutal, xenophobic warmonger but he cares deeply for the welfare of his pack. He also had a mate who perished during a harsh winter, which still weighs heavily on him. He also loves his son Whitesmoke and is devastated by his death.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Outlander culture is extremely xenophobic, with a high emphasis on "us vs them" and they believe everyone else is similarly tribal. As such, when packs of plainmanes, darkears, and baywulves unite against them, they have difficulty even comprehending such as concept and are completely unprepared for such as force.
• Meaningful Name: One of the firethevies is named Dungstain due to his unusually brown coat which is seen as undesirable by the other southhounds. He's also got the unpleasant personality to match and is only tolerated by the other members for his usefulness in combat.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Ashfall attacks the other southhound packs both out of fear of them and to take their land and resources for his pack, but in doing so, he drives them together and gives them a common enemy to unite against. This both gives them greater numbers and allows them to combine their skills to make a highly effective fighting force that delivers a Crub Stomp Battle to the outlanders in their second attack.
• The Starscream: Dungstain was the most openly defiant towards Ashfall but after his son is killed by Switch-Eyes and he pulls back the assault, Dungstain sees this as a sign that Ashfall is an unworthy leader and now seeks to take his place.
• Uneven Hybrid: Ashfall's mother was an outlander, which are themselves hybrids of the different southhound subspecies and his father was a white-eye, giving him their distinctive white mark on his face.

Baywulves (A. f. coastalis)

• Born Under the Sail: Downplayed. They haven't invented boats, but they live on the coasts and gain most of their food from the sea. So much that they've become physically adapted to sea life, such as broader feet for better swimming and the ability to hold their breath for up to five minutes.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: They're based on the Vancouver Coastal Sea wolf (or simply the sea wolf), a costal subspecies of the grey wolf that aquires most of their food from the ocean and have adaptations for better swimming.
• Handy Mouth: They're notable for their skill at crafting and using simple spears made of wood or animal bone which they wield with their teeth.
• National Weapon: The baywulves are known for their use of the wood-tooth, a spear made from either a branch or animal bones that they developed to deal with large sea animals. Their skill with this weapons has made them surprisingly humble as they make it a pointnto use them with responsibility but it also makes the outlanders see them as a threat.

Strange-Eyes and his pack

Family of baywulves living by the coast, lead by Strange-Eyes.

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• Heroic Sacrifice: Pale-Beard puts himself between Whitesmoke to protect his youngest grandchildren and is fatally mauled.
• Improperly Paranoid: The outlander attack and the death of Pale-Beard has left Sharpstripe with a mistrust of other southhounds. However, this is shown to be completely unwarranted with the packs of Narooo-a and Graahahan, who are peaceful and accommodating.
• Meaningful Name: Strange-Eyes gets his name from his heterochromia, which gives him one blue eye and one brown. Likewise, his son Switch-Eyes is so named due to having the same but with the eyes reversed.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Switch-Eyes accidentally kills Whitesmoke in defense of his mother and is left traumatized at having killed another southhound.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The young Shade is shown to have a concerning violent streak. At first it was fairly minor, as she would sometimes bully her sister Sunbeam for her food before being chided by her parents, but after the outlanders attack, things start to take a dark turn. First by saying to the traumatized Switch-Eyes that Whitesmoke deserved to die after he unintentionally killed him to protect his mother and culminating in her mercilessly killing a wounded outlander, much to Switch-Eyes' horror.

Plainmanes (A. f. fabula)

• Cargo Cult: They worship lightning due to it being the only source of the fire so vital to their survival and they treat fulgurites (stone structures caused by lightning striking loose soil) as holy objects which are protected aggressively.
• The Discovery of Fire: They are the only calliducyon that uses fire due to the cold nights they have to endure on the grasslands they inhabit. Notably however, they can't create it themselves and have to aquire it from lightning strikes but they have techniques to ensure what fire they do have doesn't go out.
• Meaningful Name: They seem to be the only southhound culture to avert this, as they have names that simply serve as names with no meaning. Such as Narooo-a.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: They normally only use fire for warmth or light rather than for fighting, but when Ashfall's pack attack Narooo-a's pack and their allies, they use torches to beat and burn the outlanders.
• Wandering Culture: They're described as nomadic, which puts them in contrast to the other southhounds who are more territorial and stationary. This also means that they have frequent contact with other southhounds and know how to speak their languages.

Darkears (A. f. arcticus)

• Baritone of Strength: Their language is described as deep and rumbling to the ears of other southhounds, and they are the largest of their kind.
• Crafted from Animals: They use the tough esophagus' of ungulopes with thorns attached to make protective collars. As they have no thumbs, they need help taking them off or on, and allowing someone to do so is a sign of trust.
• Gentle Giant: They are the largest of the southhound subspecies (enough for the outlanders to see them as a threat) but are also described as the most physically affectionate. Narooo-a even describes them as a kind people.
• Grim Up North: Inverted. They live in the southernmost portions of South Ecatoria which puts them deeper into the south pole of the planet and it becomes very cold and harsh during winter, resulting in their skill at memorizing the seasons.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Being highly physically affectionate means that they don't have much in the way of personal boundaries, which other southhounds can find off-putting.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: The darkears have learned to speak the language of their animalistic saddled baskerville relatives and have managed to form a truce with them.

White-eyes (A. alboculus divergens)

• Everyone Has Standards: They're generally reclusive and prefer to avoid the other southhounds as they know they find them unnerving but its stated that one elder white-eye (all but outright stated to be Ashfall's father) has severed contact with the outlanders when he learned of their "wicked ways", with the implication that he and other white-eyes did so due to the outlanders' violent xenophobia.
• Odd Friendship: The white-eyes are typically avoided by the other southhounds, however, one unusual exception to this would be the outlander, a group known for being rather aggressive and xenophobic. They see the white-eyes more as spirits and feel a kind of kinship with them due to them being fellow outcasts. However, an art one-shot seems to suggest that many of them have cut ties with the outlanders due to their violent, xenophobic tendencies.
• Skull for a Head: The white-eyes are sometimes known as skull-faces to the other southhounds due to the white markings on their face.
• The Quiet One: An entire species of this. Most of their communication is done using gestures and facial expressions with what little verbal language they have consisting of alarm calls and one-word conversations. The reason for this is due to most of their prey being podotheres which have sharp hearing as well as an abundance of tigerillas in their region which will kill any noisy pups they find.

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