Protorowa Peril @ MMU!

All known sapient species have surviving 'ancestor' species who have failed to evolve very far beyond the form they took when they broke with the lineage of their highly intelligent relations. The rowa are no exception, as these members of the MMU Naked Spelunkers' Club are discovering during their field trip to Krestindia VII.

The living protorowa hive snares victims with a highly intoxicating injection that simultaneously begins their transformation into living egg clusters. Grabbed by tendrils and hung beneath mucous oozing orifices, their lower bodies transform, over the course of ten to fifteen minutes, into a pulsing mass of pink flesh dotted with luminous amber eggs. At the same time, their arms are absorbed by the hive. Their breasts are left untouched and exposed, likely to serve as visually appealing bait to help lure new victims. Their heads remain intact as well, their soft, sensuous moans adding to the enticing atmosphere. To complete the trap, the hive spews arousing pheromones from pods topped with luminous amber nodules that pulsate in suggestively hypnotic fashion.

The baby protorowa within the eggs mature from bottom to top. The first eggs will fall from the cluster after a few hours. Over the next week or so, eggs will continue to drop and new eggs will form from the body mass remaining within the cluster. With each developed egg, the victim's lower body gets smaller and smaller until she is just a dangling torso and head. At this point, she will have produced between fifty and eighty eggs. The victim is then pulled into the overhead orifice and consumed, though their living and still conscious brain is not so much consumed but unwound and incorporated into the growing hive.

The protorowa themselves live between six months and a year, keeping the hive tidy and bringing it collections of plant and fungal matter which are picked snared by orifice tendrils and consumed. At the end of a protorowa's usefulness, it is absorbed into one of the hive columns, ensuring that its body mass doesn't go to waste.

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Chimerism is slightly more common among fey'li than it is with other species. It comes in two types: Covert and Overt.

Covert chimerism is the most common type of chimerism among fey'li. This occurs when the fur pattern of both 'sides' is a type match, for example leopard and leopard. The sides generally have a greater degree of asymmetry and a clear division is sometimes visible down the center of the back. Eye color may not match, though this is not exclusive to chimerism.

Overt chimerism is rare. This occurs when the fur pattern of both 'sides' do not match, for example leopard and tiger. In this example, one side of the individual is fully leopard pattern while the other side is fully tiger pattern. An interesting effect sometimes seen in overt chimeras is the lack of the 'false eye' on the back of one ear if the other side is a patter type that lacks the feature.

Overt chimeras are considered very special in traditional fey'li society, and often find themselves in high demand wherever their life takes them.