HANUNAH TURTLE

The Moving Mountains:

The Hanunah Turtles tend to sleep for the majority of their lives, absorbing the nutrients of the ground beneath by means of mere skin contact. They are often confused for an island or landmass due to the vegetation, animals, and ecosystem that forms on their backs when they feed for hundreds, and at times even a thousand years.

The Hanunah are immortal creatures only capable of dying by means of injury, starvation or dehydration. They are similar to lobsters in regards to how they keep growing the more they feed. Depending on how massive a Hanunah is, it is said that when some awake, the land for thousands of miles quake as they move to new nutrient rich soil. They are literal moving landmasses when awake, often taking not just the nature growing on their backs, but also the animal life with them.

Once these creatures find a nutrient rich area, they bury themselves with their claws and vibrate the ground underneath with undulations that resemble purrs similar to a crocodile's vibrations in water. For long periods of time they feed off the nutrients from the ground, killing the earth, but in a strange way serving as its replacement as plants, creatures, and life flourish on their backs.

In Caligo, some sprite civilizations worship these massive beings and refer to them as Old Whispers, others believe them to be good omens due to their need to find good and fertile ground, which in irony... they also destroy in order to survive. The Hanunah have three primitive eyes which remain closed at all times, unless they need to move. They mostly rely on sensing environmental conditions with their skin touching the Earth.

Recent centuries, majority of the Hanunah Turtles that have lived for thousands of years have found it evermore difficult to keep supporting their nutritional needs, especially as they become more massive. Ambrite Scholars have found the shell of a Hanunah to span nearly 300 feet according to some records with the largest on record listed at 328 feet. Ambrites believe that the mass of a Hanunah Turtle becomes too much for them after the shell reaches over 200 feet. The weight begins to kill them at this point, and they become less able to migrate to new territories when an area runs out of nutrients. Some grave sites are as large as cave systems, with the bones of a dead Hanunah being a core foundation of the infrastructure.

When size becomes an issue, they often starve to death, but in their death, their bodies enrich the land with nutrients. It is said that the death of a Hanunah marks the start of a new Eden as their corpses serve as the richest source of nutrients to turn the land they once absorbed, into vast forest or even a jungle. When they decompose, their bodies tend to take a long time and the smell attracts animals from far distances. Rumor states that an undocumented Hanunah, believed to be even larger than 328 feet, formed the heart of the Amazonian Jungle.

These beings are a cycle of life and death, a representation of the world. The surface of their shells are composed with solidified rock or petrified organic material with grass or trees growing on it. They have massive mouths with a large eerie tongue that sucks the moisture from the ground. When they bury their bodies, they use their tongues to absorb moisture in the soil. In fact, the tongue targets water sources and have been stated extremely long, but none of the Ambrite researchers have been able to locate a Hanunah that hasn't decomposed.