Flora and Fauna of Maja

A fiery planet with no native biosphere, Maja is not a hospitable place. The flora and fauna which reside on this world were all engineered with the assistance of House Cygnus many in the wake of The Scream, in an effort to ensure that the food and resource shortages would have a less drastic effect on the world going forward.

## Ashtures

These large birds with several meters of wingspan were genetically created by House Cygnus at the request of House Fornax. Their grey and black feathers however are not what gives these ash vultures their name; inside of their beak they carry a small trunk that they use to suck in actual ash, which is what the Ashtures feed on.

Introduced to keep the Majan cities clean, these winged creatures spread even outside of the city domes in small numbers, where some of them adapted well enough to thrive and become larger than any of their city kin ever would.

Inside the walled off areas, the Ashtures are seen as symbols of House Fornax who make good out of little (or even dirt) and who so closely resemble the vultures that Fornax noble sometimes like to style themselves with.

Rarely Ashtures are born with more colorful feathers, these birds then are sold as pets to those who can afford them (again, mostly but not exclusively Fornax nobles). Especially orange and red feathers of Ashtures are supposed to be lucky charms, serfs finding them can make good credits by selling them - although most keep them for good fortune.

A Majan AshtureArtistic depiction of an Ashture's trunk in its beak
## Ash Peppers

Several types of pepper are cultivated in greenhouses on Maja, but one species survived the brutal conditions of the Majan surface, and has adapted to thrive along the lava streams that dot the landscape. Ash peppers are extremely spicy, a staple in many dishes of Majan cuisine. The plants are fertilized artificially by ash from the volcanoes they grow below, a strange symbiosis built into them with the assistance of House Cygnus’ genetic editing. The squat pale green plants with thin yellow veins are a distinctive sight across the Majan surface, seeming strangely out of place on the lava and dark stone coated slopes of the volcanic landscape.

## Earthquake Detecting Fainting Goats

Curiously, one species of old Terran descendant goats that tends to faint easily by being scared found use on Maja.

These goats for some reason detect earthquakes long before the rumblings become apparent to humans, even before the finest instruments of the first colonists could. They bloke loudly, run to try and find an elevated position, then faint.

The first settlers on Maja used these goats for safety and many lives were saved by this biological early earthquake detection & warning system. Their meat is very tender once fainted.

## Fire Flowers

These beautiful orange and red dappled flowers flicker with inner light, seeming to shimmer and glow. Before they bloom, they are warm to the touch, with the temperature rising as they get closer to maturity. Through all stages of their lives, they produce a low yellow-orange glow, which brightens as they reach full bloom. This luminescence makes them a popular source of emergency lighting and heat, since they can be relied on in the event of technical or power failure during a disaster.

## Fire Pandas

About the size of a large house cat, fire pandas are curious creatures. Covered in red-brown fur whose coloration mimics that of Majan rock, their distinctive fluffy appearance makes them easily visible, except in patches of fire flowers, their primary food source.

Rather passive by nature, they have a unique method of defending themselves when startled. Their fur is naturally fireproof, and when surprised, they puff out their fur, similar to how a cat does. This causes special oils on their fur to burst into flames, creating a bright flash which gives them time to escape.

Their long fur is valued for its fire-retardant capabilities, and it is not uncommon for fire pandas to be raised for their fur, which regrows quickly once cut. Additionally, some individuals have taken to keeping these creatures as pets, though without proper care, they can cause significant damage to personal property due to their natural fire starting abilities.

## Fire Vegetables

As part of ensuring Maja would be able to sustain itself at least for a short time should another event like the Scream occur, a number of Terran vegetables were modified to grow in the harsh environment of Maja. Most failed, but those that did not became well known staples of Majan cuisine. The most notables are fire olives, a spicy variant of Terran olives, and fire onions, whose bright red tops are a favorite food of fainting goats.

## Komodopedes

Another Cygnus creation, the Komodopedes were a bit of an experiment and thought to be failures at first.

What started mostly as a joke between a Fornax and a Cygnus noble became a gigantic reptile with hundreds of legs, resembling both a Komodo Dragon and a Centipede, that burrows itself through the rocky surface of Maja, digesting rocks for nutrients.

Once introduced to the planet, these odd creatures absolutely exploded in numbers and even the Cygnus nobles responsible for creating it were more than surprised, had they first thought they cultivated a gross joke of an animal that would never survive anywhere for more than a few days.

Instead the Komodopedes thrive on Maja and the planet’s people quickly realized that not only do these large beasts not pose a threat to humans, as they don’t eat meat, their droppings also include refined materials.

What started as an experiment ended in an animal that eats rocks and drops ores or even simple processed materials.

## Lava Crabs

These small shell making creatures are an essential part of Maja’s limited ecosystem. Able to survive the intense heat of lava flows on Maja, these creatures produce tough shells from the lava with a peculiar trait. Lava crabs live in colonies, and their shells are constructed in a particular arrangement so that they interlock. Crabs create new shells every 6 months or so as they grow, leaving their old shells to reinforce the walls of the lava canals, preventing the molten rock from wearing away the walls of the canal, protecting the colony from having its habitat disrupted. These creatures are rarely seen, only venturing out of the lava to feed on the plants that grow beside the lava rivers, and yet they are essential to the environment, preventing structural damage to the landscape that might result in harm to Majan enterprises.

## Lizards and Salamanders

A number of species of lizards and salamanders also reside on Maja. Originally sold as inexpensive, resilient, pets for serfs, a number of these creatures managed to escape into the wider cities, and of them, a lucky few were able to adapt to and thrive in the harsh environment of the Majan undercities. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see such reptilian creatures skittering along the base of serf dwellings on the planet proper, and over time, some species have begun to venture further, adapting to the harsher environment present near the edges of the cities.

## Majan Fly Trap

With pests like lizards introduced to Majan cities, action was needed to control and contain their numbers. Vulture bees did some work, however, they brought their own problems. Things remained nebulous for a time, until the discovery of Haqanian Navilizards that had managed to make their way to Maja aboard cargo ships. The danger they posed to ships, Majan cities, and the Aeternus’ Chain itself led to the project to create Majan fly traps.

Somewhere between plant and animal, the fly trap has an outer shell that looks and feels like stone. In its center there is a small hollow opening, and if enough pressure is applied there, the shell will collapse over the target and uses pressurized, corrosive gases to melt its prey. It lures small creatures, particularly Navilizards, with electrical signals concentrated at its center, combined with ultraviolet patterns, only visible under special lighting sources.

While dangerous, if the outer shell is broken and the gas pod removed, the remaining plant base can be consumed safely, and is regarded as a delicacy in some areas.

While most prevalent in dockyards on the Aeternus’ chain, potted Majan fly traps are also present on many Fornax ships, as a safeguard against the very real danger that Navilizards pose.

## Majan Vulture Bees

Long before the Scream occured, a Fornax noble -or maybe one of their kids- was demanding for large quantities of honey. Naturally, instead of importing it, the noble paid House Cygnus for a species of bees that would both be a good representative for Majan and Fornax culture as well as producing honey, even with the little plants the planet had to offer.
The choice fell to genetically modified Vulture Bees and the plan was simple:
Down on the planet’s surface, in the Majan cities, these Vulture Bees were supposed to buzz around in the greenhouses and similar areas, eating meat and producing honey.

The meat was to be provided by small and medium sized lizards, who entered the premises the Vulture Bees would house in. Since aeons ago the first serfs started to keep lizards as pets, these quick and adaptive reptiles have spread anywhere and are the only thing resembling a pest on Maja.

And so the Vulture Bees were sent on their mission and through their genetic modifications they attacked and killed lizards that entered where they shouldn’t, brought the lizard bodies to composting areas and feasted on the meat as soon as it started rotting.

Except that there were too many lizards and the Vulture Bees quickly changed their supposed behavior to be more aggressive and to hunt more than originally planned.

Serfs started to complain about the Vulture Bees who sometimes would attack them, stinging but also simply nibbling on people's extremities (even without breaking skin in most cases).

As the Vulture Bees started to hunt more and more, their honey production dropped to smaller and smaller numbers, before stabilizing at today’s quantities. The little honey that remained also had a strange, unique quality. It was produced primarily from the sugars extracted from the meat Vulture bees used as their primary food source, rather than the flower nectar most honey is made from, something some found distasteful. That allows the Vulture Bee honey to be marketed as an exquisite rarity from Maja but left the honey loving Fornax nobles with a problem to solve: Where would they get the honey needed for their drinks, cakes and other recipes?

They would find a very Fornax solution for that...

## RoboBees

Despite being well adapted to Maja’s harsh climate, Vulture bees were not suitable for every task required of them. Their unusual honey making method, where rotting meat is used rather than pollen, made for a product which was considered distasteful by some, and in general, did not produce enough honey to both sustain the bees and allow for harvesting regardless.

As a way to remedy this issue, Fornax Artaefexs were tasked with the creation of robots which were able to mimic the honey creating abilities of bees, which, in theory, would allow for a vast increase in honey production capabilities, since robotic bees would not need to consume any of the honey they made. RoboBees were the result of this project, which are often cited by members of House Fornax as an example of the superiority of robotic systems over synthetic organic ones.

RoboBees are tiny robots, approximately a centimeter in length, designed to resemble the bees they replace. Workers who interact with them often refer to them as buzzers, due to the faint humming sound produced by their flight system. Each unit is capable of collecting both nectar, used for the creation of honey, and pollen, used for pollination of the plants visited by the RoboBees. Once they have collected as much nectar as they can, the individual units return to their base station, where it is then deposited into specially developed frames containing the enzymes needed to convert it into honey. After several days, the nectar finishes the process of conversion into honey, and is drained into containers for storage until use. Due to the lack of biological contact outside of the flowers that produce the nectar used in it, honey produced by RoboBees is much less likely to contain any sort of foreign contamination than honey produced by biological bees.

## Myths

### The Red Whalepanda

Stories told to Majan children speak of the great Red Whalepandas, mythical beings that swim through volcanoes, eating massive amounts of molten rock and filtering out anything nutritious out of them, much like whale sharks (or whales in general) do with schools of krill, fish, etc.

If you see one and manage to get its attention by speaking the words it wants to hear, they can grant you a wish - usually very fire-centric though, so be careful what you wish for!