(15 of July: I have changed this thread from "The Beasts and Creeping Things of Iniel" to "The Aleintar." I have started another thread about another Beast, called the "The Karkon.")

There are many sorts of the Hand-beast, but I here is a description of one sort.

The creatures body is always simple: spherical, teardrop, or pear shaped. Their bodies can be as large as a table, and they are hard, except around the mouth, which is similar to a giants mouth.

Of this kind, every part of the body is covered with hair: hair no thicker than horse hair, and often thinner than human hair, and crowded densely together. The hair can be as long as a tree is tall. At the end of each hair is a small hand, unfolding like a leaf from the tiny stalk, but the knuckles are of ordinary size, and the fingers are too large for the knuckles. On each hand there is a second thumb, low down near where the hand becomes thin and tapers to join the hair.
There are short hairs with hands smaller than ants, and hairs as long as a great hall with hands as large as human hands, and hairs twice that length with hands as large as a giants.

There are many other kinds, but they all have long hairs ending in hands. Some have fewer hairs, but never very few. They have many different hand prints. Some have branching hairs. They are always black, or dust brown. The largest hairs can be as thick as a finger, but are at least as long as the mast of a great ship. The strength of these is unbelievable.

They are very beautiful to see, like a flock of strange, black birds, that grow smaller towards the center, where a black spot fades outwards into innumerable, invisible threads to greet them. There is one sort that has all its hairs of equal length, so that the hands are all the same distance from the center. The hands form a shifting bubble, and the center seems suspended in the air in the midst of them.

All of the Hand-beasts walk on their many hands. The hairs, only visible when hundreds are gathered together, are yet as strong as serpents. It is hardly possible to break the hairs, or the body, but the hands themselves can be assailed. The mouth is the only weak spot on the body, but is, of course, difficult to reach. Their bane is fire, though they cannot be burnt, it torments them terribly, and hardly ever does it fail to drive them away.

If a hand is wounded, it shrivels, and a new hand replaces it. If the beast dies, or if one of its hairs is broken from the body, the thin sorts become as easy to snap as a human hair, and the larger sorts become as weak as rotten rope.

It is called Elauyea. What do you think of it?

(15 of July: I have since changed the name to Aleintar, and there is a parallel thread to this in the Bestiary)

The Elauyea is a fascinating and original creature.

Why does not fire burn them?

They are not flammable, just like a rock. They are certainly not made from the same sort of materials as other creatures.

But their mouths are flammable, and if you some how broke open their body cases their entrails would be flammable. I suppose if you somehow contained them and held fire to them they would eventually grow weak or die from no more than the torment and inward convulsions of pain and hopelessness.

But their fear of fire is a fear of agony, not a fear of death or even harm.

So, technically, they are practically invincible? Very very interesting creatures indeed. About how many hairs are they born with? Are they born with hands on the hair? Do they procreate?

So, the hands change size as the hair grows? What happens if the hand is cut off of the hair? Will the hair die or grow a new hand?

Awesome creature, Tsahraf; very original!

eru

Thank you Eruheran!

Other then their fear of fire they are at least nearly invincible. And underwater they cannot be assailed by fire. However they are much more fragile when they are young, and they are very slow to mature, so that few of them do. They do not die of old age, but they can be killed, or die by a disease.

They procreate and give birth through the mouth, and when they are young they look like a grayish miniature of the adult.

Their name is changed to Alentar, by the way.

Now it is Aleintar.