Butterflies

Butterfly people were a race of humanoid creatures who lived in the forests of the Darklands. Though their existence was largely thought to be mythical, they were known to have large, colorful wings, like true butterflies, and long, slender antenna upon their heads.

Biology[]

Butterfly people had two large anterior wings and two smaller posterior wings that came in a wide variety of colors and patterns. Aside from their wings and antennae, they were human in appearance, though their skin tones tended to be closer to the pink side of the spectrum. Butterfly blood was likewise pink in color. The color of their irises changed in accordance to their mood; there was a wide range of possible colors. Red indicated anger; grey suggested illness; brown denoted confusion; green meant jealousy; yellow suggested fear.

The butterfly diet consisted mostly of seeds and fruits and other offerings from the forest. Their primary sustinence was the nectar made from the pollen of starflower blossoms, and were unable to survive for long periods of time without it. Their bodies developed a tolerance over time to the effects of psychoactive substances. They found the processed foods created by other races to be largely unpalatable; they did not consume meat or other products of animal origin. Perhaps due to their fondness for nectar, the butterflies themselves were purported to taste sweet. The flavor of their skin or wing dust has been likened to honey or cotton candy.

When butterflies of the royal lineage were unconscious and close to death, they were capable of projecting their thought telepathically. This allowed them to alert other butterflies nearly to predators, or other danger, without signalling predators. All butterflies were capable of uttering a primal scream that could be heard from long distances, alerting the others to dire circumstances if necessary.

Butterflies achieved flight by leaping into the air, using their wings alternatively as hang-gliders or flapping them in the same manner as birds. They were extremely lightweight for their size, due to a combination of hollow bones and aerated muscle tissue. Butterflies possessed an acute "direction sense" that allowed them to use the wind currents to their advantage. Butterflies were capable of flying for days at a time if necessary, though short flights were preferable and less exhausting. When flying, they lost their direction sense during heavy snowfall.

In addition to their direction sense, butterflies had a number of other sensory capabilities. They possessed specialized pores on their skin that could detect the presence of pollen and spores; they could distinguish between thousands of scents, alerting them to both valuable flowering plants and dangerous predators. They could detect pressure changes in the atmosphere, and could use the direction, speed, and inclination of the wind to create a mental map of the sky. They also possessed the ability to detect the unique resonance radiated by life forms such as trees, which helped them to recognize living landmarks and navigate the forest. They could detect the call of the planet's magnetic poles, which also aided in navigation. They could ascertain, through direct contact, the approximate mood of another. In addition, they were capable of limited clairvoyance, forseeing the results of their own decisions to a limited degree.

Their visual acuity in darkness was reduced to nearly zero.

Reproduction[]

There were four stages of the butterfly life cycle. Butterflies began their lives as caterpillar babies, born inside egg sacs which slipped away shortly after birth. A mother's telepathic intervention was necessary to motivate him to end his neonatal stage and allow his own entry into the world. A newborn possessed a stronger psychic ability than at any other point; while he did not think in words, he was capable of sensing feelings from those nearby and could even divine his own future. Baby caterpillars were born without legs. After several years, they eventually sprouted their remaining two limbs and grew into grublings, who were humanoid but still lacked wings.

A butterfly youth would eventually undergo a cocoon or chrysalis stage at around nine or ten years of age. Immediately prior to this, their skin typically turned pale, they grew weak, and developed a fever; a cocoon formed around their bodies and they emerged with new wings. Following their chrysalis stage, they kept the cocoons and would usually sleep in them. Butterflies could live for as long as approximately one thousand years, though butterflies who were significantly advanced in age exhibited shriveled wings and an inability to take flight.

Butterflies reached sexual maturation at around one hundred years of age, with a coming-of-age ceremony to mark the occasion, and remained of breeding age until they were around 400 years old. Their gestation period was around eleven or twelve months; near the end of pregnancy, butterflies temporarily lost the ability to fly. Butterfly mothers could sense their unborn spawn telepathically. Unlike other races, butterflies experienced no discomfort during a normal childbirth—though if a baby did not wish to be born, it was possible he simply continued to grow and the mother was forced to push him out, which could be painful and damaging. Butterflies reproduced much in the same was as humans, but with the added component of llenleth, a telepathic ability to temporarily join minds. When mating, they preferred to couple together in mid-flight. They could also use llenleth on its own in order to quickly acquire information from a subject's mind, including his moods, feelings, or even his spoken language.

Culture[]

The butterfly people had a long tradition of oral folklore, filled with hundreds of parables and fables. Their purpose was to teach butterfly children about the dangers of the outside world and to preserve their knowledge and folklore by passing it on to future generations.

Butterfly people did not believe in using proper names. The decision to eliminate them from their culture stemmed from their dislike of labels, which limited a person and his or her ability to grow and change. One significant holdover from a bygone era was the Flightless One, whose name was well-known to members of the butterfly colony. For similar reasons, they disliked assigning numerical values to denote age.

Butterflies prefered to live in seclusion, hiding in the forest and limiting their dealings with other members of the Greater Races. They disliked the Dwarf desire to excavate through the ground or the Human tendency to colonize and expand their territory.

Butterflies believed in communing with nature, living in harmony with their world. They did not take possessions for themselves; they believed in sharing objects equally (indeed, there was no word for "steal" in their language). They did not believe in killing animals except in self-defense, and disliked harming live plants as well. They inhabited the trunks of gigantic petrified trees. but only once the trees had come to the end of their natural life cycles. Unlike other cultures, they never cut down trees in order to build things.

Butterfly people generally lived as nudists, though they sometimes wore simple woven textiles or fallen feathers or sea shells.

Butterflies spoke in the mother tongue, though their communication often relied on nonverbal cues such as the positioning of their wings and/or antennas, which often altered the intended meaning of their words. They could also communicate in an entirely nonverbal shorthand if necessary. Butterflies used a sophisticated circular chart with differently-colored gems arranged in different positions. They used this chart to track the passage of time, document their storehouses of inventory, and leave messages to one another.As a people, butterflies did not practice monogamous relationships. The identity of a sire was irrelevant to them; all members of the butterfly colony looked after the infants and children. Due to this practice, only the daughter of a ruling female could carry on the royal bloodline with absolute certainty.

Some of the younger butterflies had adopted the interjection, "Caterpillars!" The vernacular slang translated to something wonderful and joyous.

Relations with Other Races[]

The butterfly people were largely xenophobic, avoiding contact with other species.

Butterflies were particularly fearful of humans, believing them to be responsible for most of the problems in the world. Butterfly parables that taught their young the dangers of humans painted them as a savage race, hairy hunchbacks with huge teeth and claws.

The butterfly people maintained a symbiotic relationship with the pixies, who also lived in the forest. The butterfly people protected the pixies from predators, and in exchange, the pixies provided the butterflies with weapons and armor made from bloodrock gems.

History[]

The butterfly people may have existed for as long as four thousand years or more. In the wake of the Cataclysm that caused a gigantic rift in the Earth, referred to some as the Great Divide, the butterfly race was forever divided. Many butterflies disappeared into the Great Divide; their fate forever remained a mystery. One group traveled to the South and inhabited the Darklands, eventually becoming the butterfly colony led by the butterfly princess, Mariposa. Another group was forced North into the harsh landscape of the Golden Desert and, over many generations, their evolution diverged into what is now known as the moth race. Yet another group traveled to a forest farther North, but the wayward colonies remained unaware of each other.

The butterfly colony of the Darklands was led by the Butterfly Queen, but over time, she began to suffer from a unknown malady that poisioned her mind and caused her to put the safety of the other butterflies at risk. The queen's daughter was forced to stand up to her and, after being attacked, defend herself with lethal force. The butterfly princess took the queen's place as leader of the colony.

The butterflies had once dabbled in magic, but they had failed to learn how to regulate the amount of lifeblood they devoted to the craft. Several butterflies died before they abandoned the practice altogether.

The human race discovered the existence of the butterflies after they invented airships and were able to travel to previously unreachable areas. The humans hunted and violated the butterflies, forcing the butterflies to retreat deep into the woods. They learned to fear humans, and would not reestablish contact for some 100 years.

It is possible that butterfly sighting by humans inspired their own stories and myths about angels.

The Lost Treasure of Torlynn[]

During Mariposa's absence from the butterfly grotto, the colony of butterfly people was captured by a band of moths, who had coerced the secret location of the grotto from a captive pirate cartographer named Christabel. En route to the Golden Desert, the moths were ambushed by human knights from Torlynn, and in the resultant battle, many of the butterflies were killed. The surviving butterflies were captured by the Torlynn knights and taken prisoner inside Torlynn castle. By the time Mariposa was able to rescue them, her once-thriving colony, formerly numbering in the dozens, had dwindled to seven members.

The Quest for the World-Breaker[]

Mariposa feared for the extinction of the butterfly race until she learned that there were other butterfly colonies still living in the world. She sought out the Flightless One to discover the location of the other butterfly settlements, but she would not find one until she stumbled upon a desert oasis whose waters tasted faintly of starflowers. Following the water to its source revealed a previously undiscovered and thriving butterfly settlement. Mariposa's remaining colony members were invited to relocate.

Trivia[]

By the end of A Butterfly's Tale, the seven surviving members are Mariposa, two male elders, two female warriors (Archer and Slingshot), and two grublings (Mariposa's child and one other). The Curse of the Fate Shifter establishes that Mariposa's colony had grown to 40 members at its largest.

The Curse of the Fate Shifter establishes that the butterflies have existed for at least four generations.

Prior to the events of Embarrasment of Riches, the longest Mariposa had ever gone without nectar was seven days—but by this point she had grown weak and irritable and could no longer fly.

Behind the Scenes[]

Mariposa suggests in The Quest for the World-Breaker that it seems strange to her that humans have shoulder blades but no wings attached to them, implying that she believes humans evolved from butterflies. In truth, it's probably the other way around.

The Curse of the Fate Shifter suggests that the reason childbirth is painful for humans, but not butterflies, is because humans do it wrong. Specifically, their babies are reluctant to leave the safety of the womb. Why don't humans just communicate with their babies telepathically and let them know it's okay?