flora & fauna
the skies of aerie are not quite so empty as ours. given both magical irradiation and a long enough time to adapt to human life, a lot of them are far more familiar with the patterns of human life than the animals we know now.
aerie animals take a lot of visual inspiration from marine wildlife. however, they act and have evolved a lot like grassland animals—both the skies and grasslands are large open spaces with little cover.
here's a list of some of them. i'm trying hard to keep the population here pretty whimsical.
arcusfish
- disguised as big arcus clouds
- small zone of gravity that attracts clouds
- you could stand on them, if you wanted
- generally peaceful. they graze off schools of fish
- people have set up arcusfish races with horribly unethical inbreeding
babelplants
- carnivore plants
- thin & bendy
- grow all the way from the ground up to the clouds
- generally in small patches/groves
- animals hide in them in dire situations → get eaten by the babelplants
- when the wind whistles through them right, they make a sound like barely-unintelligible speech
- under NO CIRCUMSTANCES attempt rescue missions on “people stuck in the grove”. that is the wind. you will get eaten
baskers
- big seals
- known for "chasing the sun"
- they get cold if they're not in sunlight
cloudwhales
- slow moving filter feeders
- commonly used as hosts for symbiote cities
- advantageous hosts in that they can live for up to three hundred years
- disadvantageous in that they are lone animals—it's difficult to move your city to a new cloudwhale unless it lines up with mating season
fogbirds
- big yellow vultures
- lurk in groups in dense clouds, waiting for an unlucky victim
- good luck with your muffled signal! caw caw
inkworms
- tiny worms that disguise themselves as pen scribbles
- eat snack crumbs and skin debris
mirages
- long sunbleached worms
- lone ambush predators
- play with reflected light to lure prey
- can't affect the other senses, though..
- concentrate in higher-altitude ice clouds
slabfish
- wear concrete debris/asphalt slabs on their backs to warm them with sunlight
- travel in schools, slot together to rest
sylvan butterflies
- spontaneously generate and wink out
- non-material, they phase right through walls and objects
wallmites
- domesticated filter feeders that float around cities
- clean off any fecal debris from birds or other wildlife
- keep the windows shut when they come by they WILL clear out any food you left lying around and get sick
wirrels
- ambush predators that disguise themselves as loose-hanging wires
- not harmful to humans—they only eat city critters like pigeons
- they are a danger to most messenger animals though.
- people get scared of them anyway