[center][b]Sirele's Witnessings - Boulder's Ideo-Marked Biosphere 
Part 1 - Imantails[/b][/center]

You are most likely thinking the following:

[i]How come there is a scroll about Sirele’s observations of the Parai that existed in the Valley of the Boulder, when she only learned to write and sketch half a century after she left that land?[/i]

My answer to that is simple — This scroll was not written by Sirele and was instead written by me, Mael, her fifty seventh descendant. I obtained this knowledge directly from my mother after she had retired to the frontier. We spent a lot of time together back then and so I bring to you the knowledge that many had assumed lost.

Without further delay, here is the information.

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I draw these memories from the deepest parts of my soul — They are amongst my earliest and my most valuable, for the things that appear in them have long been taken from our plane.

My first encounter with the Ideo-Marked happened when I was collecting wild leaves to make a concoction for Saries. On that day, on the last bush that I intended to inspect for suitable leaves, I instead found a squirrel, a squirrel that was eating a rock! 

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me — That perhaps my curse had also affected my senses, you know? It might sound strange to you, but back then we had only ever witnessed such strange behaviour from the local Tormenta population. You know, the birds that used to have total control over rain and storm? Rarely seen nowadays — Poached to near extinction by the likes of Kur-Laka… Anyway. The squirrel was [i]really[/i] eating a rock. 

Not only that, but its front teeth glinted in the midday sun, much like the glint one can see coming from metal. And upon closer inspection, the squirrel’s “fur” wasn’t really fur at all, but an incredible amount of extremely thin tendrils of metal, all of them covered in a dark, powder-like substance. 

So not only was the squirrel’s behaviour odd in the sense that it ate rocks and was unafraid of Humanity — It was also anatomically [i]wrong[/i] in the way that only the Tormentas could have been back then. 

That’s when I understood it for the first time. Life was in flux, always changing, ready to show you something new if you take the moment to just [i]look[/i]. 

I grabbed that squirrel and brought it to Saries, who confirmed what I already suspected. It was Ideo-Marked, but in a lesser way to the Tormentas. We named that species of squirrel “imantails”, and soon enough discovered that the black powder that clung to them was a very specific kind of sand that they actively searched for along the banks of rivers. All they had to do to become covered in the sand was roll around for a few seconds, and the sand would simply levitate out of the ground and stick to them as if it had always belonged there. 

It took some time for Amunites to realize that that black sand was a type of metal that worked well for tools and such — Iron. And from then on, finding an imantail anywhere was taken as evidence that a large deposit of such treasure was nearby. Naturally, once this discovery reached the ears of the Accord of Peth-Amun, the Eight Nomes commissioned the person who originally reported the imantails’ existence to go out into the world and document every single Ideo-Marked species in the local regions. 

That person was me. And as payment they allowed me to name this newly discovered branch of life, which I named Parai — Which so happens to be the Shamanic word for ‘paragon’.

And so after I was dismissed from the council of the Eight Nomes, I became Peth-Amun’s first ever sanctioned explorer. That is how I made a name for myself, and it’s what eventually allowed me to find transport out of Amunite territory.

[b]Imantails[/b]
These are Squirrels that have been blessed by the Patron of Magnetism. They are covered not in fur, but in thousands of tiny, magnetic metal filaments that attract sand and/or gravel rich in magnetic material. Those filaments absorb and metabolise that material, reinforcing their musculoskeletal structure in order to permit them to consume a diet of non-metallic rocks and crystals without any ill effects. 

Given that they need to remain near sources of easily-metabolised material, finding an imantail usually means that there is a decently sized magnetic metal deposit nearby.

Given their diets and anatomy, mundane animals tend to not consider Imantails as prey, as their flesh is extremely hard to digest and processing it tends to result in severe cases of kidney stones. On the other hand, they are particularly susceptible to other Ideo-Marked beasts such as the Earth-Blessed or Death-Blessed.

Examples of Imantail variants are: the docile Amunite Iron-Coated Imantails, the rare and territorial Bird-Hunting Platinum-Coated Imantails, and the Dwarf Iron-Coated Imantails of the First Coast.

[hider=Summary]
Short post, styled as if it was an in-world scroll available in different libraries to be read by scholars. Mael, Sirele’s 57th descendant, relays Sirele’s memories of the biosphere that existed in the Valley of the Boulder before its mass deforestation and resulting ecological collapse.
This post describes the Parai(Ideal-Marked beasts, AKA magical beasts, AKA future monsters) Imantail archetype.
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