Even with all the work I’ve been putting onto The Strongest in the Forest, I still wanted to make this month’s featured creature. In this one, we’re looking at another creature that plays an important role in the story. And in all World of Green and Black stories probably. A creature that Strongest’s Mentor would have a ton of ancient memories and theories about. A creature that Human think they know, but they often miss how strange it is.

Today, we’re talking about bipeds.

_____________________________________________________

Name: Biped (Also known as Avatar, Ambassador, Facilitator or Forest Human)
World: Black
Material: Flesh
Thought Type: Untethered
Species Type: Mammal
Habitat: Tropical Drid Rainforests

Out of all the creatures to come from the Black Forests, the biped is the strangest. This statement is controversial, since they appear so similar to Humans, and are often described as a reassuringly familiar presence for Humans dealing with Dridkind. However, it is this familiarity that makes them so strange.

Biped’s greatly resemble Humans, except they have grey skin, larger eyes, their hair grows beyond their scalp, going down their necks and shoulders, their teeth are altered to better eat the flesh and fruit textures of the Black World, and they have bony horns at the base of their skulls that end in telepathy tendrils. They are apparently surprisingly easy for Drids to telepathically possess, considering their mental complexity. They do not speak or clothe themselves when unpossessed, but they do make and use basic tools of stone and sticks, and they live in family groups that follow a social hierarchy. Besides Dridkind and possibly the cluster farei or the far-away, they are considered the most intelligent creatures in the Black World.

Most of the time, when a Human encounters a biped, it is being controlled by a Drid. Whilst Dridkind do not have languages of their own, many individuals learn how to speak the languages of Humankind through a biped. Making and wearing clothes in Human styles for bipeds is also a popular hobby in some Forests, and there are reports that even in Forests that do not interact with Humankind decorating bipeds with fabric is a popular pastime. Whilst a biped is dressed and talking thanks to their Drid possessor, it can be quite easy for the Humans interacting with it to start thinking of it as just a different cargo of Humankind. Indeed, there are some naturalists, both Human and Drid, who believe that bipeds may have been a cargo of Humans dropped from the sky by the human Gods in order to allow communication between Humankind and Dridkind. A strong counter-argument for this claim though is that bipeds are bound to the Black World, and cannot eat or be eaten by Green World lifeforms. Feats of creation that the Gods of the Sky should not have been capable of.

The most obvious strangeness of bipeds is that they only have four limbs. This makes them appear familiar to Humankind, but within the Black Forests they are unique. The only other lifeforms with four limbs are insects and some aquatic creatures such as armoured fanged grabbers. Absolutely no other Black World mammals are quadruped, even though all Green World ones are. Early naturalists theorized that biped limbs may have fused together or shrunk down so small they were absorbed back into the body, however examinations of biped skeletons show no trace of vestigial limbs. Indeed, there is not even a vestigial central pivot (the pelvis-like structures attached midway down Black World creature’s spinal columns that the central limbs attach to) and their ribcages extend too far down the spine to even leave a space for one, as opposed to the high placed but low hanging ribcages more typical of Black World lifeforms.

The skeleton of the biped is in fact so similar to that of Green World creatures, that when the Vynik naturalist Carro Lockat presented the headless skeletons of both a Human and a biped side-by-side at the University of Lynitistia to a group of hundreds of the world’s best naturalists, none were able to definitively tell which was which.

Carro Lockat afterward revealed the key difference between the two headless statues; the hole of the vertebrae which the spinal column passes through is wider in bipeds than in Humans, with the bone reshaped to accommodate the larger opening. Carro Lockat theorized that a wider spinal column is needed due to thoughts capable of telepathy being ‘larger’ than non-telepathic thoughts, however Drid naturalists claim that narrowed spinal canals are not observed in Black World mammals that lack telepathy.

In addition to bipeds lacking middle limbs and pivots, there are other oddities about them from a scientific perspective. There are no ‘cousin’ or ‘parent’ species to bipeds, either amongst living creatures or the fossil record. This makes them an ‘orphan’ species when it comes to the familial taxonomical system. Whilst orphan species are common amongst Green World lifeforms, Drid naturalists report that they are rare amongst Black World organisms. They are also reported to not fit comfortably in Black World ecosystems, and when not managed by Drids can become destructive. Even in death they are strange, taking almost twice as long as other Black World creatures to fully decay.

Whilst it is obvious to both Humankind and Dridkind that bipeds are strange, there is no consensus on their origins. The following four theories have been proposed:

1. They are a cargo of Humans created by the Gods in the Sky. As mentioned before, it has been speculated that bipeds were created along with Humans to facilitate communication between Humankind and Dridkind. However, this theory has theological, historical, and scientific problems that are too nuanced to detail here. In short, the idea of Black World organic matter existing in the sky is inconsistent with other accounts of the Sky Gods, and it is generally accepted by all histories that Humankind was initially ignorant of Dridkind, which would not happen if bipeds were present at the Birth of the Green World.
2. Bipeds are Human children transformed by proximity to Black Forests. There is a memory from the Upper Stalax River Forest from the Time of Myth of a Human woman birthing a biped and gifting it to an ancient Drid. However, Drid historians admit that reshared memories this old are unreliable, and despite Human settlements existing alongside Drid Forests for centauries now, a biped birth to a Human mother has never been observed.
3. They are Ai-eys made of flesh. Many of the Ai-ey Towers of Knowledge, when asked about bipeds, have claimed responsibility for creating them at the end of the Age of Chaos, in order to allow communication between Humankind and Dridkind and bring about the Age of Myth. Outside of techno-cults, this claim is mostly dismissed, since bipeds are clearly not made of the same material as Ai-eys, and the Towers of Knowledge only speak in riddles (see the entry on Towers of Knowledge for more information). However, the time of creation given is consistent with historical and archaeological findings.
4. They are a product of natural generational selection, and evidence of cousin and parent species is not yet discovered. The most commonly accepted theory amongst Human naturalists is that biped ancestors adapted to look and act more like Humans because being able to facilitate communication between Humankind and Dridkind was advantageous. Despite being the most acceptable theory, it is not a satisfying one, as it seems unlikely that a species that has gone through such rapid change so quickly would be an orphan, and the time such generational selection would take is longer than the existence of the Green World. For these reasons, Drid naturalists utterly reject this theory, and cite the origins of bipeds as something that can never be known. Human naturalists of course are not satisfied to classify something as ‘unknowable’.

Despite the mystery surrounding them, bipeds have become one of the most important creatures in the Worlds. They are highly prized pets amongst Drids, even those who do not communicate with Humankind. Their role in allowing the two species to communicate has proved invaluable, as it is hard to imagine the two peoples being able to communicate at all without them. They also remind us that Dridkind are morally Human, a classification that is more prevalent amongst Humans who have interacted with bipeds. Whatever the origins of bipeds, they are creatures that both Worlds need to cherish.

______________________________________________

There are a lot of secrets in this World of Green and Black, and the origins of bipeds are one that maybe I’ll get around to revealing one day. These creatures will undoubtedly show up in any story where Drids and Humans interact. They show up in The Strongest in the Forest (which you can start reading HERE.) They also feature in my previous novella Neighbour, which can be read HERE, or downloaded as a MOBI, an EPUB or a PDF file.

This has been a much busier month for me than normal. Next week I’ll do one more post; the conclusion of The Strongest in the Forest. Make sure to come back on April 29th for it.

Until then, please enjoy this strange world I have created.

~ Jayde