#Name of National Parks in india

[dazonntravels1]

Explore the untamed beauty of India's top 10 national parks! From the royal Bengal tigers of Jim Corbett to the lush Western Ghats of Periyar, each park is a sanctuary of biodiversity. Immerse yourself in the wonders of nature and witness India's diverse wildlife in their natural habitats. For more information, visit our website: or Contact us now:+1-888-216-7282.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

"Raiders Of Hives"

Satpura National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India

"In the dense forests of Satpura, a pair of Oriental Honey Buzzards raid a beehive. These raptors hunt for food in beehives and wasp nests but, unlike what their name suggests, they prefer bee and wasp larvae over actual honey."

By Pranav Mahendru

2023 Nature “inFocus” Photography Contest

[mindblowingscience]

Brazil's Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famed for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons in the rainy season, was on Friday declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The vast park, named for the dunes' resemblance to a bedsheet spread across the landscape—"lencois" means sheets in Portuguese—is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes. The decision was taken during the 46th annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee, which is taking place in India's capital New Delhi.

Continue Reading.

[tsalala]

Meet a tigress called Arrowhead from Ranthambhore. This picture is from 2015 when she was still a cub. Her brother Pac Man is running behind. (I named him after a Pac Man video game mark on his head.)

Arrowhead and Pac Man as cubs Ranthambore National Park, India Photographed by Aditya Singh

[ghost-mantis]

Hunter and Hunted: Historical Horror Reading For Your Halloween

Burned out on masked stabbers? Yawning at the movie monster of the week? Alien abductions falling as flat as a cow dropped from a tractor beam?

Try reading some historical accounts of people hunting man-eating Tigers in India and never walk willingly into the dark again!

Towards the end of the colonial era in India, growing populations and deforestation were causing the same issues with wildlife that we see today. The difference being, there were thousands and thousands of tigers and leopards, far bigger populations than today, prowling the land.

And while still rare, a lot more animals means a lot more potential murder cats. In an era just before and during the advent of cars and phones, most people still lived in small communities surrounded by fields and forest. People that were easy prey for big cats that were too elderly or injured to hunt other prey, or just decided they liked to eat humans.

So imagine you and your friends are out in the fields or at the well doing your normal thing…

And a Giant Goddamn Tiger leaps out of the grass, grabs your friend, and drags them screaming into the woods to eat them. Right in front of you.

Oh Shit!The Economy!

Or when you walk home, the last person in line silently disappears and the only trace left behind is a piece of clothing.

This was the reality across many places in India.

Imagine this happening to SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE in your community over the course of a few years. From ONE Tiger. And everyday you leave the house praying you aren’t next, while you can do fuckall about it.

Fuck…

This thing is a goddamn ghost, and while volunteer hunters go after the thing, they’re always one step behind. News of sightings and kills travels only as fast as people can walk, and the Tiger is hitting multiple villages in the region.

So along comes this guy from out of nowhere, he tells you he works on the railway or something? Then he tells you he’s going to try and kill this tiger. Just another trophy hunting jackass right?

But this guy never asks for anything other than a place to sleep and maybe a cup of tea if you can spare it.

And he’s running himself ragged walking 20+ miles a day between villages to where the tiger was last seen. For weeks or months on end.

And every night he sits alone, in the dark, in the woods, by a tethered farm animal he bought off you. Or the corpse of a half-eaten victim. Sometimes in a low tree branch or just sitting on the fucking ground.

The crazy bastard is hunting something that very much wants to kill and eat him. A thing that can see in the dark where he can not. By moonlight.

Or if seen during the day, the guy walks in after the Tiger, tracking the paw prints and knowing it is actively hunting him.

What could possibly go wrong?

But somehow, using the finest old-timey gun technology, he kills these nightmare monsters again and again. Some while they’re charging him!

He never asks for a dime, never cashed in a government reward, and takes the dead tiger back to the locals to prove its dead and provide closure and peace of mind. He genuinely cared about the locals and did everything he could to help at great personal risk. For decades.

Jim Corbett slayed man eating monsters under terrible odds like he was the goddamn final girl of every horror movie. And while it sounds far-fetched, his accounts were backed by many people, and his own photographs.

In his later days he became a staunch conservationist and recorded his tales for all to read in a number of books that read like the greatest horror fiction.

He was so beloved that he has a national park and a species of Tiger named after him!

All his works are available free on the Internet Archive. There’s also a YouTube channel with narrated versions of all his stories and context. The narrator grew up reading these accounts and does a fantastic job making audiobook recordings of his stories!

His accounts and this history have largely faded from public memory, but make for some of the finest horror reading ever penned.

And he wasn’t the only one doing this! Another hunter in the same era, Kenneth Anderson, was dedicated to hunting man-eating Tigers and Leopards across India.

Anderson, a madman who would sit in a blind made of two beds and a chair, and armed with a dying flashlight and a rifle, peered out into the dark and went face to face with one such monster. Point blank in pitch dark.

Just look at these creepy-ass covers and tell me this isn’t horror.

There are also written accounts of man-eating sloth bears, serial killer wild elephants, and general animal related nightmare fuel.

I’ll be writing about African man-eater books in a subsequent post. Many accounts are just as terrifying, all the more because it’s not fiction.

Happy Reading and Sleep Tight!

[southeastasianists]

Singapore’s prosperity has long set it apart from many other former British colonies. There is another difference, too: Singapore has clung to honouring its former colonial ruler — and it wants to keep doing so.

Special accolade has gone to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who is considered to have founded modern Singapore in the early 1800s. For decades, Singapore’s textbooks credited Raffles with transforming the island from a “sleepy fishing village” into a thriving seaport. He has been the central character in a larger official narrative that says imperial Britain had set up Singapore for success as an independent nation.

Dedications to Raffles dot the landscape of Singapore. A business district, schools and dozens of other buildings bear his name. Two 2.5-metre likenesses of the man loom large in downtown Singapore.

But a new statue of Raffles, installed in a park in May, has revived a debate about the legacy of colonialism in Singapore. On one side is the broader establishment, which has held up British colonial rule positively. On the other are those who want a closer inspection of the empire that Raffles represented and the racial inequity he left behind, even as Singapore became wealthy.

This divide has surfaced before, perhaps most prominently a few years ago when Singapore celebrated the bicentennial of Raffles’ arrival on the island. Now, the new statue has set off a fresh debate, with critics pointing out that other countries have for years been taking down monuments to historical figures associated with slavery or imperialism, or both.

“The thing about Raffles is that, unfortunately I think, it has been delivered as a hagiography rather than just history,” said Alfian Sa’at, a playwright who wants to see the Raffles statues destroyed. “It’s so strange — the idea that one would defend colonial practice. It goes against the grain on what’s happening in many parts of the world.”

The new statue of Raffles stands next to one of his friend Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist, at Fort Canning Park. Tan Kee Wee, an economist who pooled $330,000 with his siblings to commission the statues, said he wanted to commemorate the pair’s role in founding Singapore’s first botanic gardens, which were his frequent childhood haunt. He donated the sculptures in his parents’ name to the National Parks Board.

Opponents have also criticised the government for allowing the statue to go up at the park because it was the site of the tomb of precolonial Malay kings. The parks board said it considered historical relevance in the installation of the sculptures.

Questions about the statue have even been raised in Singapore’s parliament. In June, Desmond Lee, the minister for national development, responded to one by saying that Singapore did not glorify its colonial history. At the same time, Lee added, “We need not be afraid of the past.”

The plaque for the Raffles statue explains how Singapore’s first botanic gardens “cultivated plants of economic importance, particularly spices”. That, critics said, was a euphemism for their actual purpose: cash crops for the British Empire.

Tan defended the legacy of British colonialists in Singapore, saying they “didn’t come and kill Singaporeans”.

He added: “Singapore was treated well by the British. So why all this bitterness?”

Far from benign

But colonial Britain was far from benign. For instance, it treated nonwhite residents of Singapore as second-class citizens. Raffles created a town plan for Singapore that segregated people into different racial enclaves. And he did not interact with the locals, said Kwa Chong Guan, a historian.

“He was very much a corporate company man, just concerned with what he assumed to be the English East India Co’s interests,” Kwa said.

Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819 as Britain was looking to compete with the Dutch in the Malacca Strait, a crucial waterway to China. At the time, Singapore was under the sway of the kingdom of Johor in present-day Malaysia. Raffles exploited a succession dispute in Johor to secure a treaty that allowed the East India Company to set up a trading post in Singapore.

Within a handful of years, Singapore was officially a British territory. Convict labour, largely from the Indian subcontinent, was crucial to its economic development. So, too, were Chinese immigrants, which included wealthy traders and poor labourers.

Singapore achieved self-governance in 1959, then briefly joined Malaysia before becoming an independent republic in 1965. It has since built one of the world’s most open economies and among its busiest ports, as well as a bustling regional financial hub.

In recent years, the government has acknowledged, in small ways, the need to expand the narrative of Singapore’s founding beyond Raffles. Its textbooks now reflect that the island was a thriving centre of regional trade for hundreds of years before Raffles arrived.

In 2019, officials cast the commemoration of Raffles’ arrival as also a celebration of others who built Singapore. A Raffles statue was painted over as if to disappear into the backdrop. Placed next to it, though only for the duration of the event, were four other sculptures of early settlers, including that of Sang Nila Utama, a Malay prince who founded what was called Singapura in 1299.

To some historians and intellectuals, such gestures are merely symbolic and ignore the reckoning Singapore needs to have with its colonial past. British rule introduced racist stereotypes about nonwhites, such as that of the “lazy” Malay, an Indigenous group in Singapore, that has had a lasting effect on public attitudes. Colonialism led to racial divisions that, in many ways, persist to this day in the city-state that is now dominated by ethnic Chinese.

“If you only focus on one man and the so-called benevolent aspect of colonialism, and you don’t try to associate or think about the negative part too much, isn’t that a kind of blindness, or deliberate amnesia?” said Sai Siew Min, an independent historian. (Story continues below)

Role of race

Race relations played a role in Raffles’ ascension in Singaporean lore. Soon after Singapore became independent, the governing People’s Action Party — which remains in power decades later — decided to officially declare Raffles the founder of Singapore. Years later, S Rajaratnam, who was then the foreign minister, said that anointing a Malay, Chinese or Indian as its founder would have been fraught.

“So we put up an Englishman — a neutral, so there will be no dissension,” Rajaratnam said.

The decision was also meant to indicate that Singapore remained open to the West and free markets.

In a 1983 speech, Rajaratnam acknowledged that Raffles’ attitude toward the “nonwhite races was that without British overlordship the natives would not amount to much”.

Critics of the Raffles statues also argue that his legacy should reflect his time on the island of Java. Although Raffles outlawed slavery in Singapore, he allowed trading of slaves in Java, including children as young as 13, according to Tim Hannigan, who wrote a book about Raffles.

The new statues of Raffles and Wallich were created by Andrew Lacey, a British artist. The sculptures evoke the two men as apparitions — symbolism that Lacey said represented the world’s evolution away from the West.

Lacey said he had “wrangled” with the public reaction toward his sculptures and he had no qualms if Singaporeans wanted to take them down, destroy them or replace their heads with the Malay gardeners who were instrumental in creating the botanic gardens.

“I was cognisant of the complexities of making any dead white male,” he said of Raffles. “I wasn’t cognisant of the degree of complexity around him.”

[butterfwiesndinorawrs]

Welcome to Aminal Facts wiff Zaboo part 6!

Todays we has special guest Simba! He's here to help us learns bout Lions 🦁 He just couldn't wait to be king n now he is 👑 so no one better den da king of kings himself right?

🦁 Female lions called lionesses do da majority of da hunting because dey is smaller n more agile, dey have very effective stwategies for hunting in a pack.

🦁 Da lionesses' often synchronize da births in da pride allowing all da females to looks after da young.

🦁 Da names for baby lion are cubs, whelps, or lionets.

🦁 Cubs are born spotted to help dem camouflage in da wild as dey mature da spots fade.

🦁 A lion can run for showt bursts up to 50 mph n leap as far as 36 feet n jump as high as 12 feet in da air!

🦁 Even though dey often called da king of da jungle, most lions live in grasslands n on plains.

🦁 Dey is da only cats to roar togeffer n dey roars can be heards up to 5 miles away.

🦁 Most lions live in Africa but a small population can be founds near Gir Forest National Park in western India.

🦁 It is believed dat there is 8 diffewent types of lions altogether.

🦁 Lions hunt at night n duwing stormies when dey prey is less likely to hear n see dem coming.

🦁 2 thousand years ago over a million lions roamed da earff in areas like Syria, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan and India, today a little over 20 thousand are found in da wild n mostly in Africa wiff a few still in India.

🦁 Da name for lion in Swahili is Simba.

🦁 Aslan is da Turkish/Mongolian name for lion n da name of da lion in da Lion da Witch n da Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

We finish off dis Aminal Facts wiff Zaboo showcasing some aminal cwafts! Hope yous enjoys! If you do any lion cwafts we woulds love to see! 🦁🧡

[the-broken-ear]

William Ricketts

William Ricketts (1898-1993) was an Australian potter and sculptor.

Born in Richmond, Victoria, in 1898. William settled permanently in Mount Dandenong, Victoria, in 1934. Although not trained as a potter and never technically superior (his works, large and small, frequently exhibit cracking), the power of his vision of a modern Australia that embraces Aboriginal spirituality and respect for the natural world was his general message throughout his artworks.

From 1949 to 1960 he made frequent trips into Central Australia to live with Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte Aboriginal Australians, whose traditions and culture inspired his sculpture. He was not an Aboriginal by blood but considered himself adopted by the Pitjantjatjara nation.

In 1934 he started his major artistic work, creating the sculpture park now named William Ricketts Sanctuary. He worked on this project until his death in 1993. In the 1970s, he spent two years in India, mostly at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram spiritual centre in Puducherry, developing spiritual empathy with Indian people and knowledge of their philosophy.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Black headed Ibis (Threskiornis melanocephalus) seen in Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India. Photo: Navin Verma Karola (Aug 18, 2024) :: [Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

I am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter such erasing makes one voracious if you teach me something beautiful I will name it quickly before it floats away  -Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

[alive on all channels]

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazilian dunes dotted with dazzling pools make UNESCO heritage list

Brazil's Lencois Maranhenses National Park, famed for its white dunes that fill with blue and emerald lagoons in the rainy season, was on Friday declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The vast park, named for the dunes' resemblance to a bedsheet spread across the landscape—"lencois" means sheets in Portuguese—is located in the northeastern state of Maranhao, in a transition zone between the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga biomes.

The decision was taken during the 46th annual meeting of the United Nations World Heritage Committee, which is taking place in India's capital New Delhi.

Lencois Maranhenses is the 24th site in Brazil to make it onto the list of places of significant cultural or natural significance.

Continue reading.

[mutant-distraction]

Navonil Dutta

Sc. Name : Rhinoceros unicornis

Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India

[choii-143]

The Sangai Deer

The sangai (Rucervus eldii eldii) is an endemic and endangered subspecies of Eld's deer found only in Manipur, India. It is also the state animal of Manipur. Its common English name is Manipur brow-antlered deer or Eld's deer. Its original natural habitat is the floating marshy grasslands of the Keibul Lamjao National Park, located in the southern parts of the Loktak Lake, which is the largest freshwater lake in South Asia. Sangai is called the dancing deer. However, it is not the Sangai that dances, but the peculiar nature of its habitat that lends this trait. While treading through phumdi (grasslands that float on water), the Sangai's hooves sink in the spongy, moist ground which from a distance looks as if it is dancing.

[allycat75]

Important events that actually took place on September 9th and were in no way a figment of a sad, delusional man and his advisors' imagination in order to continue a nefarious and daft lie.

1543- Mary Stuart, at 9 months old, is crowned Queen of Scots

1675- New England colonies declare war on Wampanoag Indians

1753- 1st steam engine arrives in North American colonies

1776- Congress officially renames the country as the United States of America (from the United Colonies)

1817- Alexander Twilight, probably first African American to graduate from a US college, receives BA degree at Middlebury College

1836- Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes his influential essay "Nature" in the US, outlining his beliefs in transcendentalism

1850- California becomes a state

1880- President Rutherford B. Hayes visits San Francisco

1888- Easter Island / Rapa Nui in the Pacific is annexed by Chile

1892- Edward Emerson Barnard at Lick Observatory discovers Amalthea, Jupiter's 5th moon

1904- Boston Herald again refers to NY baseball club as Yankees, when it reports "Yankees take 2," Yankee name not official till 1913

1908- Orville Wright makes 1st 1-hr airplane flight, Fort Myer, Virginia

1908- Russia annexes part of Poland

1911- 1st European post delivered by air (Hendon to Windsor, England)

1921- Guatemala, Honduras and San Salvador agree to Central American Union

1922- Turkish troops take the Greek-held Anatolian city of Smyrna during the Greco-Turkish War

1926- National Broadcasting Company created by Radio Corporation of America

1936- New York Yankees beat Cleveland Indians, 12-9 at League Park to clinch AL pennant on the earliest date in history

1939- Nazi army reaches Warsaw

1942- Compulsory work for women, children and old males in Batavia

1944- Allied forces liberate Luxembourg

1945- 1st "bug" in a computer program discovered by Grace Hopper, a moth was removed with tweezers from a relay & taped into the log

1950- 1st use of TV laugh track by "The Hank McCune Show" in the US

1951- 1st broadcast of soap opera "Love of Life" on CBS-TV

1955- Don Zimmer, hits 4,000th Dodger home run

1956- Elvis Presley appears on "The Ed Sullivan Show" for the 1st time

1957- US President Eisenhower signs 1st civil rights bill since Reconstruction

1960- Pakistan ends India's run of 6 consecutive Olympic field hockey gold medals with a 1-0 win over their sub-continent rivals at the Rome Games

1963- Alabama Governor George Wallace served a federal injunction to stop orders of state police to bar black students from enrolling in white schools

1965- LA Dodgers future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax throws his 4th career no-hitter and first perfect game in a 1-0 win over the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium

1966- The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1st federal safety standards for vehicles and roads

1967- 1st successful Test flight of a Saturn V

1969- The Official Languages Act comes into force in Canada - making English and French the country's official languages (replaced 1988 by new Official Languages Act)

1971- Apple Records releases John Lennon's second solo studio album, "Imagine" in US; it tops the charts in US, UK, Australia, and 3 other countries

1972- West German equestrian rider Liselott Linsenhoff follows her dressage teams gold in Mexico City with the individual dressage title at her home Olympics in Munich

1975- Paul McCartney & Wings begin their "Wings Over The World" tour in Southampton, England; 65 concerts in Europe, Australia, Canada, and United States, runs through October of 1976

1978- Ayatollah Khomeini calls for an uprising in the Iranian army

1979- 31st Emmy Awards: "Taxi"; "Lou Grant"; Ron Leibman & Ruth Gordon win

1983- Radio Shack announces their color computer 2 (Coco2)

1985- President Reagan orders sanctions against South Africa, targeting apartheid

1987- Larry Bird of the Celtics begins an NBA free throw streak of 59

1987- Gary Hart admits on "Nightline" to cheating on his wife

1990- George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Helsinki & urge Iraq to leave Kuwait

1990- Liberia president Samuel K Doe is captured by Mr Johnson's forces

1991- Mike Tyson indicted for rape of Desiree Washington

1993- Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization exchange letters of mutual recognition

2010- A court in the Philippines orders Imelda Marcos to repay the government almost $280,000 for funds taken from the National Food Authority by Ferdinand Marcos in 1983

2012- Armenia wins the 40th FIDE Chess Olympiad

2015- Apple unveils the iPad Pro and iPhone 6S in San Francisco

2015- Queen Elizabeth II becomes Great Britain's longest-reigning monarch at 63 years and seven months, beating the previous record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria

2017- Egyptian archaeologists announce the discovery of a 3,500-year-old tomb of a goldsmith and his family in Draa Abul-Naga, Egypt

2018- CBS chief Les Moonves departs the company after six more women make allegations of sexual abuse in "The New Yorker"

2019- Poet John Milton's own copy of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623 has survived with his annotations according to scholar Jason Scott-Warren in Philadelphia library, could be world's most important modern literary discovery

2020- San Francisco Bay area blanketed by dark orange skies and smoke due to California wildfires

2021- Tom Brady becomes first player in NFL history to start 300 regular season games as he guides Tampa Bay Buccaneers to an opening day 31-29 win at home to Dallas Cowboys

ALL of these are more important than something that never happened on this day.

[crionn]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ☁︎. : guide to myrithen !!

visual concept: myrithen is located in the heart of orion's dense wood, known to be a mysterious place full of whimsy and magic. here, trees grow hundreds of times larger than normal and are hued with odd colors year-round. denizens of myrithen live in harmony with nature, with their places of residence built into the hollows of the wood, or nestled within the crooks of the branches. passageways are built into the trees, which are all intricately connected to one another.

portal: the valmiki national park in bhutan, india, deep within one of its dense forests. outsiders would find it difficult to access due to its surrounding terrain, but it is possible with the proper gear, a good compass, and determination. the portal takes the form of a wooden doorway suspended in the middle of the forest.

ruling house: house of avalon, under elected queen titania.

heir: (name reserved for jude to decide here).

motto: from life comes life.

the city-state of myrithen: myrithen is a small realm vastly closed-off from outsiders, and much of their culture is kept a secret. however, they highly value the perception of the world around them; when they do allow visitors into the main city, they are known to prepare for the visit for months in advance. they're infamous for throwing the most extravagant, picturesque parties on the edge of the wood, which is about as far as most tourists are allowed to get when they visit myrithen. myrithen houses many races, and if you are a denizen of myrithen you may call yourself myrithinian.

locations: the edge of the wood houses a vast artisanal market filled with stalls selling food and trinkets for the tourists; the arbor hotel is quite popular for those looking to experience living inside a tree. deeper inside you may find vast libraries with books on every subject, flower gardens, workshops for artisans-in-training, sports fields and tracks, farms with animals and agriculture, apothecaries, and a large river cutting through the wood.

how to reach myrithen: the trees at the edge of the wood are readily accessible to outsiders, with elevators (on a pully system) built in. however, trying to slip past security to go deeper is nigh-impossible, especially if you do not have a silver bond mark on your palm.

population: sylphs and myrithines make up the majority races living in the wood. myrithen also houses an overabundance of magical flora and fauna.

jobs: artisans of all kinds (blacksmiths, instrument-makers, painters, craftsmen), farmers, musicians, athletes, scholars and academics, authors, chefs, fishermen, those elected to the government, healers.

mythology: a deep reverence for all of nature's gifts, including every plant, animal, and beast. many myrithinians choose to abide by vegan diets, but you won't be judged if you eat meat.

myrithen, a society: the society of myrithen is very active and relatively free, unrestricted by old-fashioned customs (besides the ever-valued practice of bonding). there are always boisterous events held in various parts of the wood; even the elderly in myrithen are blessed with the energy of the young. it is a bit merit-based, and having flashy accomplishments (like making the best steamed buns in the wood) makes your life so much easier. people will be more inclined to invite you to parties or give you discounts if you're cool like that. they hold sporting events in high regard. some parts of myrithen's society can be quite cutthroat, as word travels fast amongst the trees -- falling out of favor can mean immediate changes to the way you're treated.

the myrithines: the native race of myrithen are known as myrithines - characterized by sharp features, a point in their ear, and often some other strange animalistic trait (elves with a bit of plant/animal mixed in, basically). above all, those living in myrithen value their relationship with nature, life, and earth.

the sylphs: the second majority race of myrithen. the sylphs have actually been there longer than the myrithines, so technically they should be called myrithines, but... well... the person who writes history first makes it! the sylphs are humanoids, and are slightly smaller in size. they possess insect wings, large eyes, and boundless energy. they are able to fly, which makes them indispensable in the upkeep of myrithen's tree-based society. they are proficient in light, air, and illusion magicks.

the practice of soul-bonding: myrithines practice a form of magic known colloquially as soul bonding, wherein the user extends their life force outside of their body and interacts with the energies around them. this has an effect on their physical bodies, often giving them some trait from their bond partner.

bonding: basically establishing a life partnership with an element of nature, whether that be plant or beast. this bond is a highly valued part of the culture, which everyone is eventually expected to complete, usually by the time they come of age (twenty cycles). myrithines are highly discouraged from leaving myrithen before having bonded.

the process of bonding leaves the myrithine with a characteristic silver mark on the palm of their hand, and establishes a psychic link of sorts between the myrithine and their partner. they are able to freely share life energies with one another and understand each other's communications. when one comes to harm, the other will feel it in some manner. over time, this relationship has a visible effect on the physical body of the myrithine, and they develop traits from their bonded.

bonding must be consensual from both sides, and may happen with plants or beasts outside of myrithen, although that is rare and discouraged, as the nature of this magic is a guarded secret. bonding cannot happen between a myrithine and a member of a humanoid race of equal standing.

bonded creatures or plants are off-limits from being harmed in any manner. more vulnerable bond partners (like bugs) often must be kept in protective enclosures, although the status of being bonded gives them magical protection too.

only one bond may be made in a myrithine's lifetime. a myrithine and their bonded usually expire around the same time, as they share life energy with each other. however, there have been cases of a myrithine double-bonding after their bonded passes away.

life energy manipulation: this is the magic practiced by those of the wood. denizens of myrithen are more sensitive to the vital energies of everything around them. with practice, talented individuals can draw that energy into themselves to channel into other types of magic, although that comes with the decay of their source.

hunters, fishermen, farmers and the like must pass a series of tests in order to obtain their license for taking life. only those skilled with life energy magic are qualified to do this on a mass level; this also ensures that no one's bond partners are accidentally harmed, as this status can be sensed in a creature or plant's aura.

dragons: one of myrithen's most highly guarded secrets are its dragons, creatures unique to the realm, born out of the abundance of natural energy. no one really knows much about them, except that they exist and tend to make their homes at the very tops of the realm's tallest trees and mountains. they range in size, shape, and color as much as precious stones found in the earth and are highly intelligent. most are scaled creatures with fire in their gullet.

it is possible for myrithines to bond with a dragon, and those who have dragonbonded are highly valued. often they come away from the bonding with tougher bodies, bright jewel-like eyes like their dragon partners, and sharper teeth.

bonding with a dragon is an arduous, dangerous process that involves journeying to a mountain’s peak to present oneself to the dragon population. only those chosen may bond. if you are met with disapproval, you may be thrown from the peak — but glory is granted to those who succeed.

dragonbonded individuals learn to love the sky as much as their dragon, flying with them on their backs. with their vast amounts of life energy, they are able to perform more impressive feats of magic.

the realm’s protector: a dragonbonded individual by the name of varshahn, and his dragon nasuada.

[tsalala]

A tigress named Arrowhead Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, India Image by Bobby-Jo Photography

[demi-shoggoth]

2023 Reading Log, pt. 15

I am behind on my writeups: the last book here I read the week of Thanksgiving!

71. The Body Fantastic by Frank Gonzalez-Crussi. This book made for a surprisingly relevant pivot from Cult of the Dead, as it starts with talking about how Christianity has made a long history from denying and denigrating the flesh. This book is a miscellany of odd medical trivia and historical beliefs about the human body, from wandering wombs to the curative power of saliva. As someone who’s read a lot of medical history books, this one didn’t stand out so much to me, but it would probably be a good starting point for someone looking to learn some of the odder highways and byways of how people have thought about bodies. The author’s sensibilities are philosophical, leaning mystical, and his personality shines through. This is particularly true in matters of food and drink—he feels disgust over eating competitions having gone hungry in his youth, for example.

72. Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie. As the name suggests, this book covers all of the extant bear species, although more from a cultural and conservation perspective than evolution or ecology. The author travels around the world in an attempt to see all of the bears in the wild, or at least in local captivity (such as going to a panda preserve in China). I think the book’s strongest chapters are the ones in South Asia, where she sees how in India, humans and sloth bears are being pressed into conflict through land use, and the waning in visibility but still strong market in bear bile in Vietnam. I was also pretty surprised about the chapter closest to home—how the black bears in Yosemite National Park were outright fed by park management for decades as a tourist attraction before the realization that, wait, getting large strong omnivores used to associating humans with food is a bad decision.

73. The Delusions of Crowds by William J. Bernstein. This is an odd one. It poses itself essentially as a sequel to Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a book about mass hysteria and fads from the 1840s. It narrows down Mackay’s wide scope to two major domains—economic bubbles and millenialist religion, and then progresses in a roughly chronological order. The problems are two fold. One, the narrative never really draws much linkage between these two types of “delusions of crowds”, leaving the book feeling disjointed. Second, the author assumes a lot about the reader’s background in economics (possibly because he’s an economist himself), so the explanations of the exact financial chicanery involved in the various bubbles are not always fully comprehensible. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.

74. Spirit Beings in European Folklore 2 by Benjamin Adamah. The second of four volumes, this covers primarily north-central and north-east Europe. Germany, Finland and the Netherlands get the most attention. The monsters contained within include a lot of house and field spirits, as well as many variations of alps and other sleep paralysis monsters. Again, what monsters the author decides fall into his category of “spirit beings” and which ones don’t is somewhat arbitrary. Tatzelwurms and stollenwurms, for example, are listed, even when more traditional dragons are not. I also think that the author needs to be more careful with their word choice, and/or spend more time studying folklore as a whole. For example, the book talks about the spoukhoas, a ghostly hare from the Netherlands. It talks about the spoukhoas as being a “were-hare”, despite the only lycanthrope-like trait in the entry being its vulnerability to silver… which is not universal to werewolves, and only became inexorably linked to werewolves due to Hollywood. No references to being a person at all!

75. Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek by Tom Parker, Chris Mansa and RJ Palmer. This is an art book, tied into the Saurian video game in which you play as a dinosaur. As such, the book takes an in depth look at the habitat represented by the game, and discusses the flora and fauna of the late Maastrichian South Dakota. The book is, of course, gorgeous. Both in terms of the dinosaur reconstructions and the landscapes, this makes a wonderful coffee table book. This might sound like an odd complain for a coffee table book based on a video game, but I do wish it had a bibliography. The book talks a lot about specific diets and habitat preferences of the animals within, and I want to have some sort of a guide to sorting out what’s supported by evidence, and what’s creative license.