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Slugcats
The Saint is elderly in the events of their campaign.
It would explain several attributes the Saint has. Old people have frequent digestive issues that requires them to cut out foods from their diet, similar to the Saint and their incapability to digest meat. The Saint's frailty and inability to throw metal spears is simply the product of old age, as they are willing to defend themselves with rubbish, grenades, and fire spears. The Spearmaster's digestive organs are localized in their tail.
Spearmaster has the strangest method of eating — not through their mouth (which they lack), but through the needles that come out of their tail. So, all of the organs necessary for digestion and nutrient absorption are localized in their tail, explaining their unnaturally thin and light frame. This would also allow room to store, say, pearls in their body cavity with minimized discomfort. Organism Purposes
The Ancients purposed worm grass to protect their crops from smaller animals.
... which is why there's so much worm grass in Farm Arrays. It acts as a natural pest control. The Saint was purposed by an Iterator.
They have some unique features that make them both perfect for enlightenment and survival in the cold wasteland. Unlike other slugcats, they have fur, a prehensile tongue, and odd markings on their forehead. Similar to the Spearmaster, they are shown not sleeping in shelters. In terms of enlightenment, their frailty and inability to defend themselves and consume meat encourages a peaceful lifestyle. The Saint can also understand and meet Echoes at any karma level. All these traits make it appear that they were purposefully made to reach ascension. Garbage Worms were created to disarm dangerous intruders of the Ancients.
They fervently take away the spears that are known as lethal weapons, they don't otherwise interact with the ecosystem, and they're one of the few beings around that are invincible. Wonder if they live in garbage areas because it's all they have left to consume... Five Pebbles engineered Miros Vultures to spite the Slugcat species.
Miros Vultures only fly around the exteriors of the in-game Iterator cansnote . They also prioritize killing the player in the pre-quality-of-life version because their interaction priorities have a multiplier that reduces the importance of all its prey except Slugcat, as if they were unmasked Vultures.When the first trailers for Downpour appeared, the newfound fusions between Vultures and Miros Birds just looked too over-the-top. It's a bit of an alien world, so there's definitely terrestrial crocodiles, and piscine bottlenose dolphins (well, if said Jetfish aren't nice), and cyborgs with scissor-like beaks. But In-Universe Mix-and-Match Critters? That was surprising.
In conclusion, Five Pebbles already got fed up with the Slugcats prior to the events of Downpour. And with his self-professed godliness, he did what no Ancient thought to do: combine the flight of Vultures and snipping speed, power, and reach of Miros Birds; and programmed the results to ensure that any of those slug-tailed buggers that go to him or his fellow Iterators will simply die.
Ecosystem
Canonically, virtually none of Rain World's regions are clearly defined.
Aside from the devs stating that karma gates exist solely to get players accustomed to reliably surviving in each area, There exist many boundaries within the ecosystem that aren't rigid. First, several Green and Pink Lizards wander the leftmost entrance of Drainage System; they're terrestrial and can't go underwater, but are the same species encountered in the Outskirts. Said lizards and Eggbugs also frequent the Industrial Complex and, at different time periods, the Farm Arrays. For other examples, the greenish atmosphere of Garbage Wastes leaks to the edge of Industrial Complex, several sea leeches have swam from Shoreline to the lower-right Garbage Wastes, a couple Pink Lizards are able to survive in the top left of Shaded Citadel, the Gutter subregion has similar watery geometry to the Drainage System it links to, and the dark mazelike passages that Black Lizards thrive in is laid throughout part of Subterranean and Pipeyard. The centipedes learn to attack slugcats on sight to protect their young.
As centipedes grow bigger, they learn to distinguish what will eat them and what won't. This would explain why the larger centipedes chase and kill the slugcats without eating them - they instinctively seek out and attack anything that could kill them when they were younger. By doing so, they prevent the predation of the younger members of their species. Garbage Worms use spears to support underground dens.
Which explains why they heartily take spears - sturdy, capable of supporting weight - underground instead of, say, rocks or bombs. Slugcats and Scavengers are in the equivalent of humanity's Stone Age.
Slugcats and Scavengers show signs of high intelligence and quick problem-solving skills. Both species are social, capable of understanding systems such as trading pearls and crafting rudimentary tools and weapons. Art and storytelling are also commonplace. This is all to show that they are very similar to humanity when we were in the Stone Age, with an icy change of climate to boot. Strawberry Lizards naturally evolved from White Lizards.
Both lizards have long and strong tongues, though their functions somewhat differ. Both of their creature icons are a lightly-colored standard Lizard head with closed eyes. Both lizards have white bodies with darker heads by default. Both lizards can see pretty far (only bested by Caramel and Red Lizards). White Lizards employ adaptive camouflage for stealth, while Strawberry Lizards are able to cover themselves in snow, making them grayish and thus harder to see. Aquapedes resulted from a mutation that made Centipede shocks incredibly weak.
If a Centipede shocks another creature in water, all creatures a fair distance from them are electrocuted as well. The radius of an Aquapede's shock is capped to four tiles, so the lack of a huge conduction effect can be seen as some Centipedes surviving with very low voltage in a remote area, then trading legs for fins and underwater breath, so their electrocution ability doesn't wipe out ecosystems they enter and deprive them of prey. The pre-Downpour Rain World timeline takes place during summer, and other time periods correspond to different seasons.
First, despite the huge rainclouds in Rivulet's campaign being caused by the growth of the Rot, daytime would have to be shorter-lasting for it to be cold enough for the clouds to condense into rain long before nightfall. Also, the Wall at Five Pebbles' Exterior and Sky Islands' Communications Array are more vividly colored, implying that the planet is angled so that the sun is south of the game worldnote .Besides, Miros Vultures only appearing in mid-longitude regions during blizzards implies that they thrive in cold areas. Many powerful creatures like themselves only appearing in the earliest and latest parts of the timeline can generally stem from only being active in certain seasons (i.e. fall, winter, and spring). While the vanilla timeline has no visual differences from Spearmaster's and Artificer's campaigns in most places, that can be seen as the time periods being similar distances on opposite sides of the summer solsticenote .
Eel Lizards share Salamanders' aquatic niche via convergent evolution, and are closely related to Green Lizards.
Both lizards are green in color. Both are immune to the bites of most untamed lizards (including Red ones). Both are sluggish in open land, but are surprisingly quick in water and in tubes (though Green Lizards can't dive underwater). Both provide eight food pips when eaten, showing that they are similarly big, though Eel Lizards' length makes them slimmer and thus easier to kill. Without Downpour, Monk's campaign has a Green instead of Caramel Lizard in Chimney Canopy, coinciding with Eel Lizards' first non-crepuscularnote appearance in the Gutter below. Other
Different areas are designed to play to different Primal Fears.
- The Outskirts represent agnostophobia. While this area is simple in a veteran's eyes, the unknown gameplay loop brings a strong sense of unfamiliarity to those just starting off.
- Industrial Complex represents zoophobia. It mixes up the learning of the game with different kinds of animals: wall-climbing lizards, vultures, and larger centipedes.
- Drainage System represents aquaphobia. The geometry dipping into bodies of water is unintuitive to traverse, especially considering the risk of drowning.
- Shoreline represents thalassophobia. Much of the ocean-like water is dangerously deep to be in, with Leviathans having been conceptualized from the feeling of seaweed or similar sealife tangling with you.
- Shaded Citadel represents nyctophobia and arachnophobia. The layout of many rooms is veiled in darkness, increasing the ever-present danger of being swarmed by the swift small spiders.
- The Underhang, upper Chimney Canopy, and Sky Islands represent acrophobia. Hopping and sneaking over heights is ubiquitous, with falling leading to failure in a bottomless pit.
- Five Pebbles represents astrophobia; the feeling of having little control over your movement as you drift like you're in space, making every slight jump a possible condemnation to death.
- Subterranean, mainly Filtration System, represents claustrophobia. The final real area in a traditional campaign, you're made to navigate it and similar labyrinthine areas with caution, so you aren't boxed within the tight spaces by the roaming black lizards.
Five Pebbles dumped out more Rot between Artificer's and Hunter's journeys.
In Inv's campaign, there's a lot of stationary Rot, and mobile cysts attached to it. It could have been forcibly cleared from Pebbles with the passage of timenote and/or electric flux condensors turned on as an emergency measure. Dunno how it could spread from within the Sky Islands (assuming you'd imagine it being partly organic as well) and then disappear without a trace, since those are communication structures not connected to any Iterator.This doesn't account for Rot never appearing elsewhere in Garbage Wastes or other regions, either, but this theory isn't serious.