>>6303483(Switching out the Forestry Develop, apologies for burdening your workload more QM)
>MA Develop: Ichorous Immunity>Tech Preq: Ichorous EvolutionAn Arctic fox breaths heavily as it lays in its den, fat and heavy, as her partner watches on in anxiety as a pack elder tries to assist the beleaguered fox. There is no averting this miracle of life- the laborious birth.
One, two, three… and so on, until the eighth arrives with complication. Unfortunately, the change is too great to overcome- the Beast takes both souls, mother and unborn child, onto a journey deeper into the eternal forests in the stars, beyond Occuleih’s ever shifting veil. Or so they comfort the grieving partner.
Amidst the mother’s white coat, marred with crimson and ichorous black, the surviving seven snuggle up against the cooling of their mother’s lingering warmth. In most circumstances, bacterial and parasitic infections would claim nearly half this brood, and natural predation would winnow these numbers even further, but these are the brood of the forest, gifted with the blood of their god etched into their very being. And so the ichor that courses through their veins, burns and corrodes the very micro-organisms that would help the Beast guide more souls into the great unknown, giving each newborn, each Child of the Forest, at least a fighting chance against the ever-present predation of the unseen killers.
This mundane miracle remains unobserved, between the baying cries of grief and seven flickering souls wondering why the world grows so cold.
