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Creature Feature: Island Turtles (Aspidochelone), Loretober Day Fifteen!

Added 2025-10-15 21:00:14 +0000 UTC

To the far northeast on the continent of Dracentra lies a coastal country surrounded by rocky islands. It is believed that people first arrived there atop the shells of turtles so large that they were considered their own land masses. Their shells were covered in dirt, sand, various fauna, and enough space for small tribes to survive atop them. Moving slowly across the ocean, these turtles usually stayed near the surface of the water, occasionally dipping lower to feed, without ever fully submerging except in death.

Island turtles were said to have a mutualistic relationship with humans who would clean and maintain their shells, feed them a portion of the fish (typically the most magia-rich) they caught, and ultimately keep the turtle company as it carried them around. Some say that Island Turtles lived for centuries, while others say they were immortal beings, existing since the dawn of time, swimming through space before there was an ocean.

Since an Island Turtle hasn't been seen in hundreds of years, they are said to either be extinct or to have never existed in the first place. No fossil records have been found, but many claim that (when their group of humans arrived in Dracentra) the turtles had melded with the ground to become some of the actual islands that now scatter the coast.

How these colossal creatures stayed afloat despite their weight is a mystery, but it's said that because most of their diet came from the warmer waters of the surface, they must have consumed vast amounts of magia, which allows many miraculous things to occur.