Aran



"What if titanothaurs are nothing less than living, limited dimensions in their own right that sometimes on our world?"

- Jarash, well-known naturalist

Aran is a titanothaur the size of a small moon on whose skin civilizations rise and fall.

Background
Titanothaurs come in a wide variety of shapes, but all share one difficult-to-ignore quality: mind-blowing size. These creatures emerge at rare intervals in the Steadfast and the Beyond, make for the nearest artificial structure, and attempt to destroy it. The largest monstrosity in this category is estimated to be 1,000 ft. high. But imagine for a moment a titanothaur that dwarfs that one by several orders of magnitude. That entity is Aran, a being as large as a moon on whose back civilizations have risen and fallen.

Aran exists as a living, limited dimension that sleeps for hundreds of thousands of years at a time. A "thin" ecosystem clings to its whorled, craggy hide. And within these canyons and arroyos of flesh, humanoid beings called colchin thrive. To Aran, these beings are as mites on the skin of an aneen, but colchin are as large as human beings, and just as intelligent, though they know nothing of Earth. Instead, the colchin tend herds of smaller, worm-like grubs, raise Rhizomes and other fungi, and amuse each other with a rich diversity of fabulous tales that stretch as far back as the Time of Fire.

Squat and the color of burnt sepia, with several more eyes than a human, colchin speak their own language and utilize only the simplest of tools and weapons. They regard the land as "living" and even tells stories about how once every "cycle" Aran awakes and seeks its soulmate, a creature called Zaar that's composed of pure fire. Once there communion is complete, Aran returns to sleep, and the cycle begins anew. Those colchin that survive are judged worthy to repopulate the world, but only if they can recall the tales of the previous cycles.

The leader of the most renowned community of taletellers is Teller Drasaldion, who suspects the next cycle to be arriving soon.