The Ecology of the Skeleton Despite being undead, skeletons have their place in the ecosystems of th
The Ecology of the Skeleton Despite being undead, skeletons have their place in the ecosystems of the world. While they are not consumers of materials, they do provide something to their living neighbors. The bone marrow enjoyed by most scavengers has long since degraded, and they have no meat to speak of, making them useless as a prey item. But, depending on their age before resurrection, skeletons are excellent walking deposits of calcium. To most this is nothing worth sneezing at. To molluscs, who require calcium carbonate to make their shells, they are a walking quarry. Ordinarily animals like snails collect calcium over the course of years. Attaching to a skeleton reduces that time extraordinarily, providing them with more calcium than they know what to do with. As undead, skeletons have no self-preservation instinct. If ordered to protect or kill, most of the time they do not recognize these animals as threats to use their power against. This means they will ignore the terrestrial molluscs slowing draining them of calcium, rendering them fragile as glass. Sometimes they will even attach at the joints and render limbs inert. As they are summoned by necromancers for a variety of purposes, they answer this problem in a number of ways. Most are uncaring, as they use skeletons as a source of free labor. When one falls apart they will simply raise another. Less powerful magic-users, who have less energy and time to spend constantly replenishing their forces, may elect someone as a groomer to remove the clinging snails. Those that raise skeletons for ritual purposes and keep them alive for many years at a time will cover them in coats of salt, preserving them and ridding them of pests. –A little doodle based on a bike-ride thought. Back in the day there was a series of D&D publications called “The Ecology of…” a bunch of dungeon monsters. They were scholarly treatises about the habits and characteristics of these beasts. There was a reddit revival for 5th edition some time back. But… they never really focused on the ecology aspect all that much. True they did talk about social habits and their habitats, but never got into detail about how they participated in the great wheel of nutrients. As well, a lot of them were hand-waved as being undead or inanimate, contributing nothing to the circle of life around them. Which got me thinking, and thus produced skeleton snails. Or, snails feasting on skeletons with their radulae. Will I continue this? maybe. -- source link
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