Myriapodia MyriapodiaSolitary by nature, Myriapodia are unique in that they rarely spend time with their own kind except during spawning season, which they call the "hastening." After spawning, female will begin to bud two additional tentacles; they are born with only eight. Most Myriapodia choose to hasten every five years or so, since the budding process leaves one vulnerable, so it is still an easy way to guess a particular myriapod's age.
After realizing that I had never seen a male myriapod, I asked DeritriaEleven about it. She laughed and pointed nearby to what I had taken for simply octopi; apparently only female myriapodia have humanoid torsos.
She also informed me that male myriapodia had a genetic instict in them that suppressed appetite while caring for young. They feast until they are portly and flaunt their size as a method to prove their ability to live long enough to see their children to adulthood. Those that survive long enough to see their children reach the age of self-sufficiency often have a small revel thrown for them, at the end of which they take their own life, proud on the knowledge that they were fine specimens of manhood.
Female myriapodia had nothing to do with their young after spawning. To keep population levels in balance, female myriapods actually eat all but one of their female young after spawning; they can pick them out amongst their eggs due to the color variation.
A small portion of myriapodia have the color-changing chromatophores that allow them to change color, like the Shark does. Those with the natural ability are often drafted into QueenHydra's special cadre of spies, the EchoCoterie?.
-- JuneLaveau
Comments, enlargements, disputes, addenda, tangents and subversions:
Myriapodia make many people uncomfortable because of their life cycles, bodies and habits. Here's one for the squeamish lander readers among us; when a Myriapod is deeply stressed, they will often compulsively eat their own limbs. Most who do this make up a more acceptable story to share.
They also have an unmistakable love of cramped, tight places - SpirosSixteen?, for instance, is a male Myriapod engineer I've had the pleasure of meeting on the SkippingSunset?. Getting him out of the engine room or the steerage once he's in is apparently a chore. I wasn't able to prise his history of fatherhood out of him, but he spoke about engines and vessels like they were a balm.
-- HalloaGrisau
The ancient lines spawn with eight and add two brood tentacles, but between half-twinning, tentacle doubling, and other variations, the more advanced lines of Myriapodia have many numerations. Twenty-three is unusual, I must declare.
One of the highlights of my visit to the Myriapodia of the DeepCourt was a visit to a polyp garden in the lower middle depths. It looked like a dim forest of slowly waving tentacles, arranged in geometric but slightly irregular pattern across the sea bed within a gentle but steady current. When my guide illuminated the OrboLanterns suspended within the garden, such beauty! Like a forest of glass and jewels.
We stayed to watch the budding off of a TympanicMedusa, sailing off with the current to join the ReticulumTentaculum? which spans the seas.
It was a bit cold, so we didn't stay longer than that.
-- LilyQuillpot