Literature / Tales of Kaimere

Tales of Kaimere is a Speculative Biology project by Keenan Taylor.

On a planet called Kaimere, which is about 50 light years from Earth, a bizarre "alien" intelligence, which is composed of microorganisms that evolved on Kaimere itself, has harvested Earth life forms since the Devonian, and has continued to do so until roughly present times. The result is an incredibly diverse ecology and evolutionary history, where groups of Earth's organisms evolved and then met new arrivals from earth, which then continue to co-evolve. Dinosaurs, mammals (including basal groups) and many others populate this ever evolving world. One of the recent arrivals were a group of humans from North Africa, which have developed their own culture and history in this dangerous and intriguing world.

See also Serina and Hamster's Paradise; it is a seed world like them, albeit with many more "seeds".

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This work contains examples of:

• Achilles' Heel:
  • Proboscideans that were harvested from Earth were large, strong, and many times intelligent. However, their one weakness will always be their calves, who take years to gestate and raise and are very vulnerable to Megaraptors.
  • Heterotherms, including the Moorkutlot have a non-newtonian substance over their skin used to hunt prey, which can be dissolved using salt.
• Alien Kudzu: The Houze Grass, a strain of tough and hardy grass from the Eastern Continent that spread far south into the Northern Continent of Ni'Khar, outcompeting any local plants in their thanks to draining the soil of nutrients and their flammability that contributes to the spread of their seeds. Many fauna that couldn't survive on the low-nutrient grasses also went extinct, and only capable herbivores like ungulates can manage.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Assembly avoids direct contact with people outside of the Known World, such as the residents of the Permian Islands, particularly to protect them from diseases. They often rely on outside scouting and Kaimeran translators or traders to understand the Fauna and people there.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The origins of the Simiomorph Sloths, who's location in the Parkadian rainforest means they are barely any fossil records of their evolution. While genetically similiar to two-toed sloths, it's unknown if they're descendants of sloths from the first Miocene harvest 14 million years ago in North America or the South American Harvest 6 millions ago, with some proposing that the Simiomorph clade came from Earth. A similiar species in jungles west of the Cresent was found to be genetically related to the Cougar Sloth, a known descendant of the North American Sloth, so it is believed by the Assembly that Simiomorph sloth could be related if genetic testing confirms.
  • The timing of the Mid-Tyrant Dynasty Harvest that brought therian mammal megafauna to Kaimere. While volcanic activity and pollen fossil from Oligocene North America time the harvest to around 30 million years ago, fossil records show that bronotheres and Leptictis, both who died out on Earth during the Eocene^note Lepticitis did have ancestors in the Cretacrous, but no fossils of them in the Mesozoic have been found in Kaimere, first appeared around this time. Some in the Assembly suspect the harvest took place earlier, and the fossils of Oligocene mammals such as Hyaenadont and Camelids are the result of convergent evolution. Others argue that since Earth fossil record is incomplete, especially from difficult environments such as woodlands and rainforest, it's possible that bronotheres and other Eocene taxa were on the brink in the Oligocene before being harvested and replicated in Kaimere.
• Always a Bigger Fish: For mammal predators harvested from Earth, particularly big cats, they have to contend with not just the far-massive Robust Megaraptors but also their vassals such as King Cockatrices, phorusrhacids such as Firebacks, and the sub-adults monarchs.
• April Fools' Day:
  • For 2022 they were two episodes, a serious episode about Tricksters in Kaimeran myths and the joke episode about the Guerick Unicorn being the dominant lifeforms on Kaimere, which was part of a trend for speculative biologist at the time.
  • The 2023 episode was written in the style of Casual Geographic, focusing on three deadly animals in the Known World. Notably, one of these animals, the Xhetsukaan, turns out to be a Chekhov's Gag towards the Heterotherms and The Silent One's true identity.
  • The 2024 episode focuses on the titular mammal clade from The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades being introduced to Kaimere during the mid-Pliostene harvest.
• Aquatic Hadrosaurs: The spirit of this trope is reflected in the spirit drakes, a branch of thescelosaurs (who took over the niche of hadrosaurs in Ni'Kar after the Dynastic Extinction wiped out almost all hadrosaurs) that are proficient swimmers and can even walk on the river bottom for food. Notably, they are more predatory compared to other thescelosaurs and hadrosaurs of this trope, with fish and small games making up 50 percent of their diet. And for the larger drakes like the Jugashen, "small" game includes people.
• Aquatic Sauropods: The Wawakoku is a downplayed version of this trope, a semi-aquatic Titanosaur that swims across the inland sea to reach different small islands for feed and place to lay their eggs. They're also notable in that their lightweight bodies means that they're terrible divers, which is the opposite of this trope's usual depiction of sauropods as walking on the bottom of water bodies.
• Artifact Name: Fabadonts were originally named for their bean-shaped teeth, which were the most common fossils from the First Dynasty. Such name is viewed as a ridiculous choice for a minute feature after more fossils plus living descendants show them with stretched craniums, beaks, and three eyes.
• Bat Out of Hell: There are giant bats, but these are friendly. Other, unrelated flying mammals and synapsids, however, are the pure spirit of this trope.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Beowulf is a Kaimeran skin-changer, while Grendel was a Homunculus that escaped from Kaimere to find a new home in Denmark.
• Behemoth Battle: Tend to happen between the predatory and prey Megafauna, often out of desperation. They are fights between lone Glanos and Uktans on the Hauze Prairie or between Zentaur and Drenduga in the Arvelith Highlands.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The byamdan is a Rodents of Unusual Size that has the reputation of a Gentle Giant thanks to caring for both non-related pups and other small animals. However, males with viciously compete to the death for mating rights, and both sexes are reported to have killed predators like caimans and red panthers.
• Big Eater:
  • Thanks to the hereditary magic that extends their lifespan and help heals them from injuries, a Kaimeran needs twice the amount of calories than a human of the same size and lifestyle.
  • Demons and Homonculi, also empowered by internal magic, require a large amount of food to sustain their larger and stronger bodies.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Qajar loggers have legends of the Tikka who copy songbird music (hence it's name being synonymous to them) that helps out loggers with hard labor as long as they don't look too close. Descriptions of its apperceive are strikingly similiar to the sasquatch, and a minor theory in the Assembly is that the creature is the descendant of ancient sasquatch harvested from Pleistocene North America. However, most believe it to be either a misidentified bear or sloth or, more likely, a surviving homonculus.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: During mating seasons, Titanosaurs will fight to the death for both mating rights and nesting sites. Their corpses not only help mask the scent of their rivals' eggs, but also draw in scavengers and feed them with a surplus of meat, keeping the eggs safe in turn.
• Blob Monster: Slimes are the earliest demons of Kaimere, the result of the native magic creating bodies from minerals, water, and any indigenous Kaimeran lifeforms before the first Harvest, though a few of these basal endemic lifeforms persist in cave. Slimes that consume Kaimerans and their magic are called Shoggot, dangerous man-eaters who can mimic the apperances of their prey.
• Brown Note: Many non-Therian mammals reflect an ultraviolet noise from their fur to disorient dinosaurs that can they see in this light, such as Megaraptors and Terror Birds. The Litopterm, an ungulate from Micoene South America, also emits a disorienting UV pattern from their inflated snout.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Many Earth creatures have different names on Kaimere, Examples include The Qajarith Jackal, Long-Tail Badger, Shag Rat and Bearcat.^note The Coyote, Striped Skunk, Common Oppossum and Raccoon.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": On Kaimere, the definition of "bird" is any creature that has feathers. This not only includes modern bird relatives and other therapods like Megaraptorans, but also Thescelosaurus (who are from the order Ornithischia) and Pterosaurs (who aren't even dinosaurs).
• Cannibalism Superpower: Man-eating animals can get stronger eating the hereditary magic in Kaimerans or any magic from witches in general. Enough consumption can lead to animals becoming demons like Vaskalamaldus the Raven King.
• Citadel City: Many settlements in Kaimere use huge walls and moats to keep out not only large predators like Megaraptors, but also Titanosaurs and giant ground sloths.
• Content Warning: A warning for the anthropophagy episode, which came out on April 16th, 2024, was added both at the start of the episode and at the end of the previous maneater's episode.
• Creator Backlash: In-Universe for Assembly naturalist André Durand. In the 1800s, Durand used the old feudal system as an analogy for how the ecosystems on Kaimere worked, with the Robust Monarchs dependent on the health and well-being of their "kingdom," which includes both their prey, their vassals such as large cockatrices and terror birds, and the lower nobility of big cats. Later in his life, Durand saw his old proposal as a childish oversimplification, and he publically and privately denounced it to the end of his life. Unfortunately for him, the analogy was heavily favored by the upper-class scholars that made up the majority of the Assembly at that time, and the Vassal Predator model is still used to this day, albeit because it allows modern Earth megafauna to be viewed as nobles rather than mesopredators compared to the megaraptors.
• Cruel Elephant: Actually a Deinotherium rather than a true elephant, but the Koga of the Eastern Continents are far more aggressive and less intelligent compared to other proboscideans. They would even pick fight with Uktan, one of the top predators of their region, if they get too close.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Many non-avian dinosaurs, especially the giant megaraptorans, ceratopsians, and titanosaurs, assume the role of dragons and are referred to as "drakes" by the Kaimerans. Subverted somewhat as natives also expressly consider feathered theropods to be one and the same as birds, and averted by the actual dragons of the Permian Islands, which are highly derived therocepalians instead of reptiles.
• Dire Beast: Many animals are named as Dire versions of Earth counterpart due to their larger size, though like the Dire Wolves most aren't that related to their namesakes. The Dire Bobcat is a type a lynx that's more similiar to a cougar in niche on Parkardia. The Dire Badger is more related to the wolverine, The Dire Panther is a nimravid, the Dire Otter is a semi-aquatic Hyenadont from Kaishel, the Dire Petrel is a Pelagornis, and the "Dire Hares" refer to predatory multituberculates.
  • Due to the most commonly seen proboscidians in the Known World undergoing island dwarfism, Kaimerans see their larger relatives, like the Drenduga from the Arvelith Highlands and the Koga from the Eastern Continent, as example of this trope.
  • In the Eastern Continent, a giant cockatrice called the Komu Ka Bawe evolved to be as large as land-dwelling Robust Megaraptorans and specialized in hunting down Titanosaurs.
• Discard and Draw: When some Tapejarid pterosaurs in Kaishel gave up the ability to fly, they no longer had to devote as much brainpower to navigating the sky. That extra brainpower become devoted to higher intelligence, up to actual sentience.
• Divine Conflict: Defied by the Portal, which is considered a god by many Kaimerans. When defining its territory, the Portal deliberately avoids areas already ruled by powerful magic, such as the Üshalek and the gods in the Arvelith mountains and the Ni'Kar deserts.
• Domesticated Dinosaurs:
  • A handful of dinosaurs have been domesticated by Kaimerans. The most used is the aptly named Common Drake, a thescelosaurs domesticated several times for their meat, labor, and on occasion as mounts for wars and sports.
  • Karakai, a common small firebird, has domesticated themselves akin to cats. As they can fly, they are popular by Kaimerans as their "falcons" when hunting both small and large game.
  • The Keynu, or Hound Cockatrices, is described as a dinosaur domesticated by another dinosaur. When their ancestors arrived to the Known World, they formed symbiotic bonds with Robust Monarchs as guardians of their nests and eggs while Megaraptors brought them food. This continues today with Zentaur and the oritaku continuing to use hound Cockatrices as guard animals.
• The Dreaded: The Silent One of the polar continent Kaishel. While never seen, its keen hearing means that any noise in the Silent Forest is a chance at death by its might. It causes pressure on all life on the continent to avoid making as much noise as possible. Even the First Children, masters of the Living Magic and creators of Homonculi and Demons on Kaimere, avoided the Silent One.
• The Dragons Come Back: The Dynastic Extinction saw the large Titanosaurs wiped out and the tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs that defined the Tyrant Dynasty reduced to relics, leaving the playing field open for Miocene mammals to rule the Portal Territory in competition against small dinosaurs and Oligocene mammals. However, millions of years later, giant armored Titanosaurs and robust Megaraptors arrived from the Eastern and Western Continents respectively, establishing a stable continent and a new status quo of dinosaur rule.
• Dragon Rider: Witches from the Permian Islands rode on the local dragons, and after amplifying them with their magic to be larger, better fliers, and overall more dangerous, they used them to become warlords over the various native humans. When the witch civilization collapsed, the dragons turned feral and interbreed with their wild relatives. Not even witches from the assembly can tame a juvenile dragon, much less an adult. That said, there are rumors that north of the Permian Islands, a new dragon rider has emerged to challenge the local warlords.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The Harvest Gates, which act as portals bringing Earth organisms.
  • The southern polar continent of Kaishel might also count, as there's some kind of supernatural predatory creature that hunts by sound and thus virtually all the creatures that live inland and even the local people have adapted not to use vocalizations to communicate.
  • The Üshalek is a forest to the north of the Houze Prairie that can be described as "Haunted" or "Eldritch", but the truth can be more horrific. Controlled by a very strong hive of endemic magic, the magic detests any form of animal life, and especially humans, in its territory and does everything that it can to drive them away. The bones of animals are displayed embedded within the trunks of trees that border the forest, corpses of various large animals that have wandered in are animated to do various tasks that animals normally perform for a forest like seed dispersal, fertilization and promoting plant growth, and it spreads spores to any explorers that manage to escape that infect the body and cause a slow and painful death, as if to serve as a warning to anyone else who wants to explore the cursed forest.
• Elephants Never Forget: A cultural variant, with the manephaunts remembering how many of their ancestors were captured and experimented on by the First Children, who also killed anyone that tried to rescued their comrades. This plays a part in their initial distrust for outsiders beside their Kentarim Secret Keepers
• Entertainingly Wrong: In Haunted Legacy, Nasiri, his apprentice, and the other characters face off against a mysterious creature under the assumption that it's a homunculus created by the First Children, since it came out of a First Children sarcophagus and it has an impervious hide like Class Three Homunculi. It's only after the Librarian scholar Ra Maslani wakes up and he witnesses the creature that he confirms that it's not a homunculus but rather a Moorkutlot. In fact, it's a predatory Heterotherms that evolved naturally on Kaishel, and only slightly amplified by First Children magic.
• Evil Egg Eater:
  • The Dire Badger is a glutton of a mustelid, gorging itself on as many eggs and baby dinosaurs as it can eat. Their arrival to Parkadia pushed many dinosaurs to endangerment or extinction. Many dinosaurs on the island will kill them on sight.
  • In general, dinosaurs has the instincts to see every mammal as potentially this, first with the non-therian mammals on Kaimere and then with the Dire badgers and the boars. They will preemptively attack any mammal to protect their eggs and nests.
• Extra-Long Episode: "The Ballade of Ka'Hai", which follows the titular Uktan from hatching to adulthood, based on The Ballad of Big Al. The episode spans over 2 hours, far longer than the typical episodes that are at under an hour.
• Fantastic Vermin: Along with normal pests like rats, foxes, and corvids, Kaimerans have to deal with the rat-like multituberculate called the pouch rat, the cellar-digging and tough-skinned hog sloth, the huge flocks of passenger pigeons, and rambunctious juvenile versions of the normally tame oviraptors U'ruek.
• The Farmer and the Viper: They are many Arvelith horror stories of people trying to train and raise Firebacks, giant phorusrhacid , from juvenile that ends with the now-adult Fireback killing their handler the first moment they disappoint. Worse, with how intelligent Firebacks are, the formerly tame predator learned that humans are an easy source of food, and with their mate and companions, they turn entire villages into a feeding ground.
• Fiendish Fish: Kaimere has plenty of large fishes in both the seas and freshwater that are dangerous to humans who get too careless in the water. Three freshwater taxa, the Great Pouncer from Nikar, the Ridgeback Catfish from the jungles and wetland of Arvel, and the Xhe'Rhaka from the Highland Parkardia, are notorious man-eaters.
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Kaimerians have a tradition of burning their dead so that the hereditary magic still in the corpse doesn't resurrects the body and maintain it as a Wealcanlich.
• Flying Seafood Special: In the First Dynasty, Kaimere had entire ecosystems of single-celled aeroplankton composed of the living magic, which supported filter-feeding dragons. However, overhunting by insects and tetrapods had destroyed most of these ecosystems, and they are now found only in Kaishel and several cave systems.
• Foreign Queasine: Kaimerian food culture is quite a bit different from earth food culture. The stand-out is the food of the Shu, which incorporates a lot of toxins for flavorings that most other people of Kaimere are unable to deal with.
• Foreshadowing: Many episodes set up The Reveal of the true identity of the Silent Ones before their feature episode.
  • In the first Kaishel episode, it's mentioned that the indigenous Tlaton, if they need to go into the Silent Forest, wear salt as protection. Salt breaks down the non-newtonian fluid that protects the Moorkutlot's skin.
  • The first pterosaur episode includes the history of flying animals in Kaimere, with the First and Permian Dynasties having a clade of basal tetrapods called Heterotherms that hunt with echolocation and potent venom. The Moorkutlot is part of the same clade (defined as a distinct derived clade of tetrapods seperate from amniotes and amphibians) and was descended from an ancient gliding Heterotherm.
  • The 2023 April Fools' Day episode had the Xhetsukaan, an ancient Parkardian tetrapod that uses non-newtonian fluid to paralyze its prey. The Xhetsukaan is actually a Heterotherms. And like the Xhetsukaan, the Moorkutlot uses non-newtonian fluid to hunt by injecting the fluid into the blood. The Xhetsukaan also has a far larger relative that lives in the Salt desert in the center of Kaishel.
• Great Big Library of Everything: Located in Blondakoi of the Western Ni'Kar Cresent, the Great Library has fund scholars to explore and gather knowledge for thousands of years, creating a robust base of Kaimere that future explorers and the Assembly's humans and occasional non-human can use to explore the world.
• The Great Wall: The Celestial Wall separates the Qajar Peninsula from the rest of Arvel, keeping out large dinosaurs. It was constructed by the First Children after they conquered the region, and the hive of Magic bound to the wall maintains it even thousands of years after its creator vanished.
• Handicapped Badass: Death Walks On Broken Wings revolves around a giant tapejarid pterosaur known as the Raven King, who due to some unexplained reason has lost his ability to fly, either due to an injury or simply having grown too large to take off. Nonetheless, he is still The Dreaded, able to walk and run competently and has a taste for people.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Hares have adapted to the planet, growing larger and eating carrion if the opportunity arises. The largest species of hare, the Prairie Hare, has become an obligate carnivore and attacks people and larger animals, to the point that the people of the prairie associate them with rage. The Komatu from Kairul resemble lion-sized lagomorphs and are fast and powerful pack hunters, established as dangerous mesopredators on the Eastern Continent. These are multituberculates and are only very distantly related to actual hares.
• Harping on About Harpies: The Children of the Sky, called harpies or sirens by the Assembly, are human homonculi with teraton morphology. They aren't acrobatic flyers and live in areas with high cliffs so they can dive down to fly to their prey. They are only female and reproduce through clones. The three clans of harpies, black, red, and gold; are lead by the original progenitor through magic-based influences. Mar'Yalena, the protagonist of Songbird's Lament, is a harpy that broke free of her ancestor Maru's influence.
• Home Field Advantage: While harvested animals tend to outcompete their already weakened competition thanks to advantages such as a lack of predators, they are cases where a native species has better luck. For example, when the Houze Grass arrived to Nikar and a harvest from North Africa was made as a response to the extinctions in the Known World region, they were flightless birds in form of the ostrich from Earth and the Kundi from Kairul. Having co-evolved with the low-nutrient grass, the Enantiornithes outcompeted the newcomer ratite.
• Horse of a Different Color: While horses (particularly breeds from the Mediterranean during the Mercantile Age) are a popular choice, they are plenty of other mounts.
  • Of domesticated mounts, the troqatul, a type of docile litoptern from the Free state, is popular for their agility and more varied diet in the Titan forests. The camelid gatul and cattles are popularin Qajar and in Arvel and the Serids, particularly in war. Many Parkadians are also known to ride u'ruek, an Oviraptor, especially nobles and warriors.
  • For non-domesticated variants, they are pronghorn antelops, Ghlanos, mammoths, Crescent beraphaunt, and other animals that can be tamed but unable to be domesticated.
• History Repeats:
  • As on Earth, the Kaimeran Cobra (a species in a separate genus from true cobras on Earth) learned to spit venom in response to the arrival of Homo erectus.
  • Following the dynastic extinction, there was a frequent cycle of big cats and cat relatives starting out as a widespread and diverse species in the Known World before being outcompeted by a new generalist arrival, with specialists forced to double-down on their niche or go extinct. First were the nimravids being pushed out by barbourofelids following the dynastic extinction, then the combination of tigers, dinofelis, and homotherium pushed out the barbourofelids, then cave leopards and common lions, and finally the common leopard in the most recent harvest from Africa.
  • As revealed with the discovery of Maip macrothorax in real life, small-game hunting megaraptors evolved to take over for recently extinct apex theropods in both late Cretacrous Argentina and post-Tyrant Dynasty Kaimere.
• Honorable Elephant:
  • The Kaimeran Mammoth, while wary of most human species that hunt them, are kind towards village that are amicable with them from the start. These bonds will let the mammoths and villages negotiate for which plants can be eaten, and they are cases where mammoths have helped villages with tasks such as cleaning weeds, construction, and even protecting them from predators.
  • The Khorikoim (or manephaunts) are sapient dwarf elephants who have a culture that promotes pacifism among their own kind and their warriors are mostly for defense rather than attack. While they are suspicious of outsiders thanks to previous bad experiences, they only capture intruders and put them on trial to explain themselves, unlike the Notzokidue who (according to Word of God) kill any outsiders who sneak into their territory and display their corpses as a warning.
• Horrifying the Horror: The Legends of the Tlaton say that the First Children, who had enslaved and experimented on various people and sophont species on Kaimere and are the myths of horror, were scared off of Kaishel by the Silent Ones. However, while the First Children couldn't conquer Kaishel, they were able to capture a few of the Silent Ones and use them as ingredients for their Third-Era Homonculi.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs were once the dominant and most spread genus of Dinosaurs in Kaimere during the Tyrant Dynasty. But after the Dynastic Exctiction, they have been pushed to the shadows with the omnivorous Nehamu and the Gurkan as the sole respective representatives of these mighty clades.
• Humans Are Special: Human witches in the Assembly can learn faster and become much stronger than their Kaimerian peers, since they lack the Hereditary Magic that would hinder outside magic.
• Human Subspecies: They are a few different human subspecies on Kaimere, the descendants of either archaic humans or Homo erectus harvested earlier. They range from the common Kaimerans of the known world to the Maku of the Eastern Continent to the Hinterland Giants. The First Children were a branch of humans that died out in the past.
• Hunter of Monsters: Nasiri, a hunter from Parkadia and the protagonist of many of Keenan's stories. His reputation is a hunter of man-eater, ranging from Leopards from his home island to the Demon Titan Crow, Vaskalamaldus the Raven King; and finally, alongside his three apprentices, to a sleeping Moorkutlot that hidden in a First Children artifact.
• Hybrid Power:
  • A non-physical variant with hybrids of Kaimerans and Hinterland Giants. While they cannot reproduce, their lifespans being in between the two races make them good candidates for leaders of their villages.
  • The ilduga, hybrids between mammoths and drenduga, are infertile but are much bigger than even the tallest of drenduga. The most famous was Dukilgun, the partner proboscidian to Munarak who help in the conquest of the Qajar Peninsula and lived a long and luxurious life afterwards. An ilduga born on the Qajar Peninsula is seen as a sign that a great conflict will come to the republic.
• Intellectual Animal:
  • A species of miniature island proboscidian, called the Khorikoim or the Manephaunts, have become intelligent enough to form their own civilization. Even many of the regular proboscidians are highly intelligent and are capable of communicating with those who learn their language and even striking deals with them.
  • Many flightless species of Tapejarid pterosaurs, who no longer have to devote brain power to flight navigation, are far more intelligent. A few species like the Notzokidue of Pakardia are sapient beings rather than mere beasts.
  • A branch of Enteledonts have evolved to be more social and intelligent, even capable of mimicking human words. They are even rumors that their domesticated relatives in the Eastern continent are capable of actually speaking with their riders.
  • The Skraa'aae, a sophont theropod from Southern Kairul. They not only use tools long before humans, but can easily learn human languages from both Kaimere and Earth. Along with the Manophants and Crowfolk, they were initially distrustful of the Assembly due to the First Children abducting and experimenting on them, but a few have joined the Assembly in studying Kaimere.
• Introduced Species Calamity:
  • Certain Earth animals end up as this when they arrive. For example, Kaimere in the past had a diversity of wetland species. Almost all of them are outcompeted by the arrival of the common hippo.
  • Ironically, the Portal organisms bring in animals from Earth to stabilize the ecosystem after an extinction event. When either the new species can't compete against the local life forms and die out or outcompetes the local species into extinction, this causes the Portals to bring in more species and speed up the process.
  • The Earth pigs brought to Kaimere and breed with local boar pigs carried diseases into the merchant era, which spread to local hogs, then to slaves. The Barren Plague caused a mass quarantine in the known world.
  • The pouch rat, a multituberculate from the island of Pakardia, is unique in being an island endemic that was able to outcompete against mainland multituberculates and rodents when the situation is normally reversed. This is because the enhanced grains made by the First Children, who the pouch rats stowed away with, boosted their health and breeding rate.
• Ironic Name: Played with. The Silent Ones of Kiashel are named as their presence and great sense of hearing forces all life near or in the forest to be as quiet as possible. They, as the derived-tetrapods Moorkutlot, are actually quite noisy due to their echolocation.
• Irony:
  • On Earth, Elephants are associated with huge size due to being the largest land animal. On Kaimere, the majority of large Proboscideans died out and most surviving lineages underwent insular dwarfism. Kaimerans in the known world associate elephants and their relatives with being moderate-size mammals ranging from the size of a dog to the size of a horse. The Drenduga is an exception to this rule, but it is seen there as a giant version of the smaller elephants rather than a fairly normal elephant in a region of the world populated mostly by dwarf elephants.
  • In a post showing a preview of ogres (who like other homunculi are humans modified with other animal DNA), it's the Prarie Giants, who have the most influence from Titanosaurs, that retains the most of their original human shape compared to their cousons with influences from fellow mammals, such as the hukolgor sloth and the drenduga. This is because the lighter bones and air sacs from Titanosaurs mean those ogres don't have to invest more in size-related anatomy like their cousins.
  • On Earth, Toxodon fossils were baffling for naturalists like Charles Darwin for how unusual they were compared to living taxa. On Kaimere, the large number in the Known World along with their lack of noticeable physical traits make them seen as a generic beasts to Kaimerans.
• Kraken and Leviathan:
  • The seas of Kaimere are filled with giant cephalopods called krankesn, five from the Known World from the clades of cuttlefish, octopuses, and ammonites. Old legends describe massive krakens are responsible for the storms and waves.
  • The Kaimeran Leviathan is a massive basilosaur-like multituberculate that feeds at the bottom of the inland sea. Their ancestors came from the seas by Kairul.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: The Great Dying, the largest mass extinction on Earth, took place at the same time when the Permian Dynasty began a golden age of biodiversity on Kaimere.
• Living Distant Ancestor: While most homonculi created by the First Children have died out and survived by cloned descendants, many of the original harpies are still alive and lead their clan. The overall leader of harpies in the Prarie is the First-Mother Maru the Black, also joined by her fellow mothers Koro the Gold and Zinea the Red.
• Long-Lived: Due to hereditary magic. Kaimereans enjoy far longer lifespans then Humans of Earth. Pregnancies last up to 3 years and a Kaimerean isn't considered an adult until their 80s. Even the animals tend to live longer and have slower growths then ones on Earth.
• Lost World: Isolated islands such as the Permian Islands and Continent are so far off from the Known World that they have species with lineage from early harvests not found anywhere else on Kaimere. Exploration by the Assembly will often subvert this.
• Low Fantasy: Essentially what it is; magic is vague and many organisms loosely resemble dragons, unicorns, and the like. There are also things like mermaids and demons that clearly didn't naturally evolve, but might be the result of experimentation by The First Children.
• Magic A Is Magic A: The portal that brought prehistoric animals and plants from Earth and Kaimere. The hereditary magic that allows the Kaimerans to live for centuries. The magic that creates demons and homunculi and gives power to skin changers and witches. All of them are the results of the endemic single-cell lifeforms that reside in Kaimere.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: The Steppe Mammoths were first harvested during a cooling period 1.5 million years ago, and their smaller descendants (along with the Stegodons and other ice age megafauna from Northern Europe) live in the cooler Arvelith Highlands in the Southern part of the Western continent.
• Maniac Monkeys: Many non-human primates thrive on Kaimere, and for a very long time it was believed by Kaimereans that they were homunculi with human and cat traits. While they're better known now as natural animals, there are some species that are quite dangerous. The most dangerous is the Gotwat, a huge macaque that is similar in disposition to a chimpanzee and will attack and kill people if given the chance. Actual chimpanzees, which are now extremely rare, if not extinct, are regarded as terrifying cryptids due to their aggression and propensity towards mutilation.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Dinosaurs versus placental mammals versus eutriconodonts + pterosaurs and pretty much every major megafaunal niche Earth ever had, oh my.
• Masquerade Enforcer: Between diseases that came from Earth to Kaimere and modern human history of colonialism, genocide, and pollution, a group of magic users on Earth known as the Assembly is dedicated to make sure no one finds out about Kaimere.
• Meta Origin: Homonculi such as giants and harpies along with skin-changers and vampires are all the result of First Children experimentation. Non-human sophont species like manephaunts and Skraa'aae have legends of the First Children abducting members their kind who then escaped and become witches, though human and Kaimeran witches are uncomfortable of the idea that their powers came from their Abusive Precursors.
• Misplaced Retribution: The Barren Plague that ended the merchant era and killed 24% of the known world was blamed on Earth humans, and many Kaimeran words for humans are derivative from pestilence. In truth, the plague originated from Earth pigs that were brought and traded by Kaimeran merchants from the Free States.
• Meek Mesozoic Mammal: Mammals, particularly multituberculates, remained as small but diverse generalists in the main continents of Ni'Kar, Arvel, and Kairul during the Tyrant Dynasty, even holding up against incoming competition from Oligocene mammals brought to Ni'Kar. This was subverted following the Tyrant Dynasty. While small multituberculates in the Known World faced competition from incoming rodents, marsupials, and rabbits; in Kairul they were able to grow to large forms even in competition against late Cenozoic mammals and dinosaurs like eudromaeosaur and sub-adult Monarchs. These range from the wolf-size mesopredator Komatu to the aptly named whale-like Kaimeran Leviathan.
• Mistaken for Dog: Inverted. Since homonculi and demons are known in Kaimere, many animals like monkeys and the Silent Ones are mistaken as the results of either First Children experiments or rampant swarms of magic infecting a host. Monkeys, for example, were thought to be homonculi with human, cat and/or bear traits. They are actually the result of natural evolution like any other animal on Kaimere or Earth.
• Monster Is a Mommy:
  • Most cases of large animal attacks, such as from Hukolgor sloths or the massive caiman Hrugetaur, are usually mothers protecting their nearby young.
  • Fire in the Shadows has one Played for Drama, as the Pouch Lion antagonist that kidnapped a young Kaimeran child is a mother who lost her cub recently, and tried to use the child as a replacement to overcome the grief.
• Multicultural Alien Planet:
  • The Known World alone has five major culture groups of Kaimerans. They range from the diverse and sea-faring Khalin to the horseback Cha'Khati Empire.
  • There are also smaller populations of different non-kaimerian species. Some are hominids with common ancestry to the kaimerans, such as the fast-learning hinterlands giants or the diminutive pakardians. There's even a few species of entirely non-human sophonts. One is a population of sapient miniature elephant on a hidden island and another are several types of tree-dwelling flightless, tapejarid pterosaurs, with the Pakardia crow folk being one of them.
• Named After Their Planet: The major Human Subspecies in the Known World are called Kaimerans after their home planet. This is averted with other sapient non-Kaimerians such as the Maku from the Eastern Continent or the Tlaton from the Polar Continent, and especially for the Parkadian Crow Folk and the Manophants.
• New Life in Another World Bonus:
  • South American mammals harvested during the late Miocene period, especially sloths, gained an advantage on Kaimere both to familiarity with two-legged theropod predators (terror birds on Earth and Megaraptors on Kaimere) and, in the case of xenarthrans, their lower metabolism helping them adjust to the warmer climate compared to other placental mammals.
  • The trilobites of earth were reduced during the Devonian and went extinct during the great dying, but the ones transferred to Kaimere found great success thanks to the same conditions that affected them back home not happening with the same intensity. They survived to the modern day and are one of the more abundant marine invertebrates.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Zig-zagged, as each culture in Kaimere has its own views on sexuality and orientation
  • The clans of Pakardia are matrilinear, so children are always raised in their mother's family and are usually conceived as diplomatic unions between clans. Romantic unions are seen as distinct from reproductive partners, and these are decided solely by mutual attraction and compatibility regardless of gender or sex, and both remain together for many centuries or even life. Additionally, Pakardia see gender and sex as distinct as the body and spirit, and when they come of they will have their true gender recognized
  • The Qadanith people of the Qajar Republic and the Free State are patrilinear, so there is an emphasis on male-female marriage is enforced so fathers can ensure the paternity of their children. While queers aren't rejected in as they don't threaten the paternity structure and are encouraged in pre-marriage individuals and the mercenary bands and the military^note only with the same rank, as relationships with a high rank on campaigns would lead to accusations of favoritism, same-sex marriages aren't recognized.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Inverted. While big cats and proboscidians were the dominant predators and herbivores respectively on Earth, on Kaimere they are severely outclassed by megaraptors and titanosaurs.
• Not So Extinct:
  • Nyctosaurs were thought to have gone extinct in the Dynastic Extiction. However, a flightless species of Pterosaurs called the Byurin from the northern Inland Sea was confirmed to by a Nyctosaur. Reports from north of the equator suggest other species of Nyctosaurs continue to thrive.
  • The prairie oliphants were believed to have gone extinct thanks to the proliferation of houze grass and the ghlanos but a population was eventually discovered in Kairul.
• Not Quite Flight: Plenty of gliding vertebrae evolved on Kaimere as on Earth, and are especially successful in the open Titan forests. These include multituberculates like flying gophers and adaptiforme primates like flying lemurs. The largest glider is the man-sized White Cockatrice from the Cresent Mountains, who use gliding to land precisely on their prey below.
• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious:
  • Even in a world of dinosaurs and homonculi, Kaimere has its fair share of cryptids, such as a giant aquatic Firebird in Parkadia or the chimp-like Hechekha in Arvel. Like the okapi or gorilla, they were many real creatures that were originally thought to be cryptids but were eventually confirmed, such as the Ru Kel or the Emerald Fabadonts.
  • Many cryptids on Earth are either believed or confirmed by the Assembly to be homoculi created by the First Children or their Harvest Men.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • The main flyers of the Permian islands are creatures known as dragons, which are named due to their resemblance to the mythical beasts, being quasi-mammilian animals with bat-like wings, large skulls, longer tails and horns. They evolved thirty million years ago but evolved into large predators after the cynodont mega predators went extinct in the Dynastic Extinction. A few thousand years ago, witch lords domesticated them and made them larger and more volatile thanks to First Children magic. After the civilization collapsed, the now-feral dragons interbreed with wild relatives and are now the dominate predators over the Permian Islands.
  • The dimorphodonts and rhamphorhinchids of the previous Mesozoic dynasties would resemble dragons thanks to their size, fangs and tails. One species of the latter was even larger than the azhdarchid pterosaurs.
  • The Torosteonia, a class of endemic land tetrapods from the First Dynasty, produced their own dragons in that era. Some were predators that hunted its herbivorous relatives with projectile venom at their thin skin and reaching their secondary lungs. Others were flying filter-feeders that fed on the swarms of indigenous Kaimeran magic in the skies. Volant Torosteonia are still found in the far-east jungles of Kairul.
• Our Giants Are Bigger:
  • The naturally evolved giants are the Hinterland Giants, or Homo atlus, descendants of Homo erectus harvested over a million years ago. Adults are at least 7-feet tall. They have their own language but also live in mix-species villages with Kaimerans in Arvel.
  • The ogres are far larger homonculi created by the First Children. They are the results of infusing Homo atlus with DNA mostly from Titanosaur and other large megafauna like sloths and drenduga. The forest ogres are mostly hukolgor sloth and live in the Arvelith forest, often in conflict with Qajar loggers and the sloths. The hill giants are mainly proboscidian-based, and can even listen to the mammoths infrasound network and use it themselves. The Prarie Giants are the most success, spreading across Nikar into the Hauze Prarie.
  • The Kaimeran Trolls are more predatory compared to the omnivorous ogres. They are a reclusive species with a greater and lesser variant, and it is believed they can reproduce asexually to sustain a seemingly small population.
• Our Gods Are Different: Gods in Laimere refer to large and powerful swarms of endemic singe-cell life forms that can shape an ecosystem. These include both the Üshalek Forest that turns intruders into its sentinel, a powerful magic within the mountains of the Jurassic Islands, and the Portal itself.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: The griffins are different branches of derived Dicynodonts from the Permian Continent. The griffins and owlbears are the top predators, while Hippogriffs and Perytons are common herbivores.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are the results of strains of magic originating from homoculi created by the First Children, who can infect anyone with a compatible blood type and no allergic reaction to the infection. They get nutrients primarily from blood, and if they go too long without blood they'll go into a stasis akin to their heterothermes origins. Ironically, they not only lack the weakness of sunlight from myths but metabolize it for extra healing and nutrients.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: The Portal Organism in its natural state sends out smaller swarms to other regions (originally on just Kaimere but then to spots on Earth), break down viable resources and animals, and around a century later replicate them in the main region to enhance the environment quality. The process is only a one-way trip from Earth to Kaimere. After the First Children captured and modified the portal using the Whistling Door, it can now bring people and animals in both directions in a matter of minutes.
• Panthera Awesome: Kaimere does have its share of big cats such as a species of Dinofelis, two Homotherium species, a primitive tiger relative, two leopard subspecies (One arriving from Mid-Pleistocene Europe and another from Late Pleistocene Africa; with the latter becoming the most common big cat in Kaimere), a species of cave lion and a subspecies of modern lion (with most populations having the males with smaller manes). There’s also a species of nimravid eking out a niche in known Kaimere; larger species of nimravids and barbourofelids still do exist in the large Eastern Continent. That being said, few of these species can claim to be the apex predators of their ecosystem as they have to compete with therapod dinosaurs that outweigh them by several orders of magnitude.
• Pieces of God: Pakardian legends describe every animal, from the tiny karakai to the massive jurazhent, as autonomous creatures that can be possessed by the spirit of their respective species. When Indrakai terrified the spirit of Man, she shattered into various pieces, and he quickly saved her by inserting her fragments into her human bodies, giving them both independent personalities and internal magic that lets them heal and live for many years.
• Precursors: The poorly understood "First Children", an ancient race of humans that have gathered control of the living magic to create an empire that expanded beyond the Known World. They used the magic to create homonculi and demons, put ancient Kaimerans under their control, and even took control of the Portal to allow total access to Earth.
• Pregnant Reptile: The Koordu, a sauropod from Kaishel, gives birth to live young rather than lay eggs like other sauropods. This evolved in response to the colder climate of Kaishel making it harder to lay multitudes of eggs like their non-polar relatives.
• Perilous Prehistoric Seas:
  • The seas of Kaimere are dominated by the descendants of prehistoric macropredators. Macroraptorial whales and Megalodon from Miocene Earth were initially the dominate predators after the Dynastic Extinction, but Mosasaurs, particularly the Motamozar from the Northern Hemisphere, came to dominate the Known World. In the Southern waters, plesiosaurs rule the colder waters in competition with the Cachalot and the Sea Wolves, and the deep seas are ruled by ancient amphibians from the early harvests. Even in the past the oceans weren't safe, such as a large marine therapsid from the Permian Dynasty with an appearance similar to Pliosaurs and Mosasaurs. It's actually mentioned that the main reason why Kaimerans don't typically voyage far past the coasts of their home continents is because the open oceans are very dangerous to traverse due to attacks from the likes of Motamozar and open ocean elasmosaurs.
  • The oceans of the Northern Hemisphere are separated from the Southern Hemisphere (and thus the Known World) thanks to a heat belt around the equator, and while it's not impossible to pass through (the tropical Motamozar from the Northern Hemisphere and tropical cetaceans from the Southern Hemispheres being some examples), this means that unique lineages of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and marine synapsids can become the top predators. The top predators of the far north are the qomanqa, a long-necked plesiosaur that evolved to mimic its plisosaur relatives and acts as an ambush predator, and the troqlanot, a relative of the Motamozar that thrives in the cooler north. The marine horsetail forests are ruled by the jormungandr, a gigantic Madtsoiidae snake that hunts the equally large walrus-like odobenodontid dicynodonts. The temperate waters are also home to predatory sea dragons, therocephalians that are related to the dragons of the Permian Island.
• Predator Turned Protector: Downplayed with Omegatyrannus queens to their Agricolasaurus herds during the Tyrant Dynasty. The queens will protect the herds from predators, including other Tyrannosaurs, and will mainly hunt outside of the herd's nesting colony. However, Omegatyrannus queens are more akin to farmers rather than true protectors. A queen will kill any hadrosaurs that are weak or injured, and while she recognizes every member of their herd she will target members she encounters far outside the territory.
• The Purge: When the First Children invaded the Qajar Peninsula, they killed off all the large megafauna and most of its people, and keeping out large dinosaurs with the Celestial Wall. They also wiped out large American megafauna like mastodons and sabertooth cats that were harvested in response to their purge.
• Raptor Attack: Modern Cockatrices on Kaimere are a clade of derived eudromaeosaurs whose ankles have fused together like tyrannosaurs and robust monarchs, which help them rub faster over longer distances. Rather than pinning their prey down with their foot claws and biting out their flesh like basal raptors, Cockatrices will use their teeth to grab onto their prey then stab at their vital areas with their sickle claws.
• Recap Episode: An episode focusing on Nasiri, a recurring protagonist from the series, aired on July 11th, 2023 and narrates his stories from the first volume as a prelude to "Haunted Legacy" from Songs from the Inland Sea.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming:
  • Three species of madtsoiid snakes are named after serpents from different myths on Earth. The Rainbow Serpent of the Known World and the Dreamtime Serpent from the waters of Kairul take their names from Australian folklore. The massive marine Jormungandr from the seas near the Permian Continent is named after the world serpent from Norse mythology.
  • The largest marine therocephalians of the Northern Hemisphere is called Tiamat, named after the primordial godess of Babylonian myth. A filter-feeding mosasaur is named after the greek monster Scylla, due to being mistaken for a fearsome predator when first discovered by the Assembly.
  • The video on the Sebecids reveals that this is standard practice for the Assembly thanks to their strict rules on contacting cultures from outside the Known World. As a result of these rules, Assembly naturalists will often not know what the local names for unfamiliar fauna and flora are and so use terms from Earth as a neutral stand-in - hence, the last known living Sebecid genus is called the Ammut because both because of similarities to the figure from Egyptian mythology and because the Assembly wasn't willing to interfere with the cultures who interacted with it on a regular basis just to find out what its name is.
• Retcon: As science marches on and Keenan refines the world of Kaimere, these happened on occassion.
  • The Bilaruk was originally a non-therian mammal that came from the Eastern Continent by walking on the sea floor to the Inlands Sea of the Known World, with a misshapen skull to keep an eye out for predators while feeding on sea grass. Once concluding the Bilaruk couldn't make it to the Known World by walking, Keenan gave the Bilaruk's original design to a non-therian exclusive to Kairul, while Bilaruk instead is an old name for the Kaimeran Leviathan, a Basilosaurid-like multituberculate that feeds on seagrass and tiny crabs and worms it sucks up.
  • The original elephant episode from 2021 had only two island dwarf proboscidians in the south seas of the Known World, the pig-sized Paleoloxodon known as the Tuga and the intelligent Chuga that are the descendant of Asian elephants. The 2023 elephant special expanded the history and number of species of surviving elephant on Kaimere. The Tuga is now an old general term for southern dwarf proboscidians of various lineages harvested from Earth, and the Chuga is the name of a mythical human-elephant hybrid based on the Manophants, who live north of the Known World and are descendants of gomphotheres.
  • In the early videos, the new common ornithischian after hadrosaurs were wiped out in the Dynastic Extinction were called parksosaurs, since at the time the parkosaur clade was considered a basal ornithischian like elasmerians. After new research place Parksosaurs as members of thescelosaurs, Keenan split the Parksosaurs between the thescelosaurs of Ni'kar and the elasmerians of Arvel.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Parkadian legends say that the creatures from the Highland are the original inhabitants of the island, before being pushed into the interior. While this is true, some of the Highland natives, such as the Gogamoti and the An'Garu that are seen as endemic as the crow folks and the Fabadonts are actually descendants of mainland invaders follower the Dynastic Extinction.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The byamdan, a Dinomyids rodent from Miocene South America. They can grow as large as ungalates like Buffalo or rhinos. They are found in the Kentarim Islands, and are Gentle Giants that get along with various small animals.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Not quite evil, but in a Patreon Q&A video Keenan brings up that the Portal, modified by the First Children into a two-way gate between Earth and Kaimere, could cause vast ecological damage if released from the Whistling Door. Either it picks Earth as its primary territory and "improves" the biodiversity by harvesting animals from Kaimere or it gets stuck in a feedback of harvest and replication, either option becoming nothing but disaster.
• Shout-Out: More than a few
  • A species of upright walking, bipedal crocodile relatives which inhabit the oceans and Permian Islands have more than a passing resemblance to Godzilla, the latter region's species even having gojira as its species name.
  • The flying lemurs (a type of adapiform primates) are based on Momo from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • The Silent Ones are based on the Future Predator from Primeval and them targeting anything that makes noise bring to mind the Death Angels from A Quiet Place.
• Simple Solution Won't Work:
  • They are those in the Assembly that suggest bringing back recently extinct animals on Earth, notably the passenger pigeon and the mammoth, by using the portal to bring some survivors from Kaimere. These proposals are shut down as their sudden appearance plus genetic drift would risk exposing Kaimere. In addition, as intelligent animals the mammoths would be at risk of trauma and poaching if brought to the unfamiliar ecosystem of Earth.
  • During a Q/A video, a Patreon asks why doesn't the Portal help restore Earth after mass extinctions with Kaimeran flora and Fauna, as it would invest in "seeds" for harvest if Kaimere suffers any extinctions. Keenan provides 2 arguments: one, the Portal in it's natural state was a one-way harvest from Earth to Kaimere; and two, the Portal is focused only on the quality of biomass in a specific region of Kaimere and has no interests outside it on both planets. Reducing the biomass from its domain to send it elsewhere, even temporarily, is out of the question.
• Smarter Than You Look: Despite having relatively small skulls compared to their body, plesiosaurs, particularly those from the genus Thalassocolubrus, are quite intelligent with complex social groups and hunting strategies. That's because they have the most neuron-dense and efficient brains of any tetrapod, allowing them high intelligence even with a small brain, such as the meadow serpant with brains as big as a beer can.
• Spiritual Sequel: Dylan Bajda's Sheatheria, which had the same premise basically (and since reworked into Pluvimundus, where all animals are indeed extraterrestrials that happen to resemble earth organisms instead).
• Starfish Aliens:
  • The portals are endemic hives of single-cell organisms that can scan objects or lifeforms and recreate them elsewhere. These organisms can also inhabit the bodies of Earth-derived organisms and even grant them abilities like shapeshifting. In a sense, magic is the native lifeform of Kaimere. While none have achieved true multicellular forms, some form colonies with other species of Kaimerian single celled organisms to be strange aeroplanktonic organisms that float high in Kaimere's atmosphere, much like siphonophores in Earth's oceans.
  • Some of the earliest tetrapod life brought from Earth during its Devonian Period are quite strange compared to Earth life and later Kaimeran lifeforms. A total of six clades endemic to Kaimere exist in its fossil record, and all have some living representatives somewhere on the planet, usually in remote parts away from the Portal like Eastern Kairul or the deep forests of Kaishel. These included the three-eyed Fabadonts, the blind and non-newtonian spewing Hetereoterms, the walking, five-limbed descendants of lobe-finned fish known as Ambuloichthyia, and the massive Dignathium with Nested Mouths use for vegetation.
• Stealthy Colossus: The jugashen can reach lengths of 12 meters and weight up to 9 tons, but they are capable of sneaking into villages at night and make off with several people undetected. The missing people and webbed footprints the following morning being the only clues they were there at all.
• Third Eye: Fabadonts, a distinct clade of Tetrapods endemic to Kaimere, have a third eye in their forehead that's the derived version of the parietal eye basal tetrapods had. Along with their stalked side eyes, it gives them a steroscopic field of view and they can see in ultraviolet light, with their only blind spots being above their heads and in the dark.
• Token Minority: The Bokudo is the sole mammalian apex predator on Kairul, where therapods like Robust Megaraptors are the monarchs like in Nikar and Arvel.
• Toxic Dinosaur: Two groups of closely-related theropods, the colorful Firebirds and the semi-aquatic Penguin Raptors, both evolve venom to quietly and quickly kill their prey. The Penguin Raptors need to kill their prey fast before other predators in the coast could arrive, while the Firebirds have to be quiet and not draw out the Silent Ones.
• Transplanted Aliens: Almost all life on Kaimere is descended from Earth species brought there through the portals.
• Treants: The Wealcantrow, a magic-born giant that take the physical likeness of trees in their environment. While the Great Library consider them to be homonculi, many suspect them to be skin-changers that took traits of nearby foliage. They can sustain themselves with their photosynthesis if they stay still, but must eat like other giants if they regularly move.
• Unicorn: The Kaimeran Unicorn is a species of Sivatherium with a prominent horn that have a wide range across the continents of the Known World.
• Unseen No More: The Silent Ones, the mysterious and feared predators of Kaishel, finally have an episode exploring their evolution and ecology on July 4th, 2023.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People:
  • The Nerotan Lions of House Nerotak are kept as either guard animals, war companions, and even house pets. Justified as they have been bred over centuries akin to dogs on Earth or the Akanuk Dogs to the South, and even have notable physical differences compared to wild lions such as lack of manes (mainly for hunting and war lions) and different skull shapes.
  • Parkadians have a range of unique pets, including pangolins, simiomorph sloths, and a small firebird that's the mix of a falcon and a cat.
  • The Maku from the Eastern continent keep domesticated Marsupial Lions as their pets. However, they were originally from Parkadia and were first domesticated by the First Children.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • When the Dire Badger arrived to Kaimere, their gluttonous appetite for eggs pushed many dinosaurs to endangerment or extinction. The dinosaurs capable of raising the next generation were the ones with the strongest instinct against nest-raiding mammals, which led them to be preemptively aggressive to all mammals, humans included.
  • After the First Children culled the megafauna of the Qajar Peninsula, the Portal attempted to bring megafauna like mastodon and smilodon from North America 11,000 years ago. Their sudden appearance, along with the rampage from mastodon and predators hunting down the First Children and their slaves, caused the Children to find out about the portal. This leads them to capture the Portal and trap it in the Whistling Door.
  • Ancient gomphotheres arrived on Kaimere and were present when Megaraptors evolved into the top predators. Both groups entered an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey. So when the Portal brought any other proboscidians to the Known World, many were wiped out by Megaraptors that knew how to best kill them thanks to instincts honed against gomphotheres.
  • 1.5 million years ago, a cooling period and a mass extinction in the Known World caused the Portal to bring in flora and fauna from Southeast Asia and later Sahul to replenish the lost of biomass. Not only did the influx of competition and disease caused more extinction to weakened species, but among the animals brought were Homo erectus. The ancient homonid was a clever and skilled hunter that would cause another extinction and harvest in the Arvelith Highland. Over a million years later, one branch of erectus evolved into the First Children, who not only enslaved and experimented on other sophont species and wiped out the megafauna and native people of the Qajar Peninsula, but found out about the Portal and captured it for their use.
• War Elephants:
  • Munarak Aramu Bhatugal, the son of a banished Qajar lord, gathered an army of 70 mammoths and Drenduga plus 500 men to invade Qajar, fighting the various lords and bringing the peninsula together into the modern Qajar Republic. Notably, these elephants were all willing volunteers and Munarak would invest heavily into things like armor for them to keep them alive.
  • While not elephants, the war ghlanos were very similar in application. The Shu would accomplish this by both gelding young male ghlanos and having them imprint on their herds of horses so as to make them easier to train. They would also be fitted with armor and use their massive claws to help tear down castle walls.
• Walk, Don't Swim:
  • A repeated strategy for some sloths and the Kurajaku in the inland sea, using their negative buoyancy to come down to the sea grass, then walk or sprint along the bottom towards food. A non-therian mammal from Kairul also travel and feeds in the same manner.
  • The Renzhuyo, a seal-like Hyaenadont, moves across the river floor by dragging itself with their front claws. A wetland Hyaenadont from Kairul is mentioned to run across the river towards its prey like a predatory hippopotamus.
• Wham Line:
  • In Trickster's Gambit, Indrakai has been keeping Ja'Kosi company during her trial in the forest for murder. After he saved her from Kiriq, she confesses that rather than killing a scorned and wrathful Olenari after finding out about Ja'Kosi and Kiriq's affair, Ja'Kosi killed Olenari out of terror as the other woman tried to calm her down and admits she now believes his stories. Indrakai smiles in caring warmth, then says the following line.
  Indrakai: I'm so proud of you, Ja'Kosi. You finally believe. I'm glad you now understand why I'm going to kill you now.
  • After Ra Maslani wakes up and sees the mysterious predator of Haunted Legacy, he can identify it from both Library's records and stories from those in the south. The creatures's titles will ring familiar to those who watch Keenan's videos, particularly the Kaishel video and especially back when Songs from the Inland Sea first came out in October 2022.
  Ra Maslani:The southern islanders call them Moorkutlot: Through Death They Create Silence. Often called the Makers of Silence, or Silent Ones.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The Portal's solution for whenever an extinction has occurred is to harvest animals and plants from Earth to take the place of the deceased animals. While this generally works in the long run, in the short-run it leads to already weakened species going extinct from either disease or competition.

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