TIAM

[May Wasserman]

TIAM is a world-dragon, fifteen thousand miles long.  She walks the
starpath which encircles her lover the Sun, except when she gets tired
and lies down for a nap, which happens every day or two. Then the Sun
turns his face from her to let her sleep.  There are no plants on Tiam:
the grasses, trees, and flowers are all her fur, producing neither seed
nor fruit because they are rooted in her body and grow back.  The
springs of clear fresh water rise from her sweat glands.  The mountains
are the ridge of spines down her back.  Everything that lives on Tiam
is her parasite or symbiote, from the infestation of twelve-foot
lizardants eating a bald spot on her left flank to the gentle birdmen
that build their homes from shed tree-fur and feed their young on
dander, keeping the spring-pores carefully clear so the water will
continue to flow.

Tiam cherishes the life she plays host to.  She moves carefully, and
does not fly any more for fear of disrupting the delicate ecosystem
flourishing on her wings.  But the blue seas of her eyes, flecked by
tiny sailing ships, glance yet to the Sun with longing.  She misses her
lover, and one day she will lift her outsstretched wings to rejoin him
….

[vbwyrde]

RADIA is the Golden Dragon, the Sun, and lover of TIAM upon whom lives
the Golden Races of the Highest Nimbus, floating cities that ascened
and descend from his surface according to the magnetic fluxuations
emanating from his inner core. These beings are translucent, trans-
dimensional and shaped like sea mantis. They float on blazing waves
of energy, have mystical powers, are both good and lawful. They guard
the life-species of all the World-Dragons, but do not well tolerate
life forms that creep into the darkness and fester within the folds of
the other World Dragons.

The most distant World-Dragon is HarKor, of the Outer Reaches, upon
whom are highly inimicable life forms shaped like razor edged stones,
with white carnivorous fangs, somewhat like angler fish of the deep
sea. These are super-mentat beings, also trans-dimensional, also with
mystic powers, but are devoted to the darkness of outerspace and
worshippers of the Infinite Void. These are beings are the nemesis
of the Golden Races.

[Terrycloth]

The Blood Lizards, amphibious salamanders living in the dismal swamp
of Tiam's armpits, occasionally burrow through Tiam's skin, which is
soft and thin in their lands, until they reach the lifestream. The
rich blood that flows from the world-dragon's capillaries induces
euphoria and drunkkenness, and the great blood-orgies are an annual
event, where most of the eggs that renew each generation are
conceived.

The Blood Lizard shamans have a rite of passage, in which they enter
the lifestream, sustaining themselves from it alone for days or weeks
or even, once, fifteen years, until the swiftly-moving flow brings
them back to their village, or to another village. Whoever pulls them
out of the lifestream will have their services as a shaman and mystic
for the rest of their lives, because that is where the whims of Tiam
have brought them.

[Bard Bloom]

The moon Omos is Tiam's infant.  He's a tiny thing, barely a thousand miles long, and scampers around Tiam a lot, or sometimes zooms to visit his father the Sun for a few days of nuzzling and petting.  He's just started his own ecosystem ... rather, he's just started his *seventh* ecosystem.  Life on Omos is perilous indeed.  He'll settle down, though.  They always do.

[May Wasserman]

The recovery from the lifestream of a Blood Lizard Shaman by Cho Ti-Lun,
one of the people of the Left Wing Tip, was a seminal moment in the
history of the Left Wing. The shaman's retrieval was regarded as a
divine sign from Tiam, and Cho Ti-Lun was made the leader of his tribe.

The skin on the wings is tough, and breaks like the one that allowed Cho
Ti-Lun to pull out the shaman are rare. But the Blood Lizard's thirst
for lifeblood convinced the tribe to drill a well to gain permanent
access to it. Lifeblood didn't have quite the same effect on the
Wing-People: instead of making them euphoric, it rendered them fearless
and oblivious to pain. Cho Ti-Lun had the warriors of his tribe drink it
before battle, and he led them to victory after victory. He conquered a
third of the Left Wing, from outer bone-spar to the second inner. His
empire shrank after his shaman's death, but a hundred years later its
fortresses and carefully-guarded lifeblood wells still hold a
substantial fraction of the Left Wing, and extract tribute from their
neighbors.

[May Wasserman]

(( Omos! So adorable! <3 ))

The comfort of brushing atmospheres is as much as an embrace, to a
world-dragon, and Omos and Tiam are both content with the contact that
his orbit gives. Though, frequently -- every few months -- Omos will dip
down and push through his mother's atmosphere to touch the tip of his
nose to hers. Little lives near Tiam's nose now, but sometimes very
brave and very foolhardy birdman explorers will fly into the teeth of
the gale winds, striving to reach Omos before he withdraws.

Sometimes, they make it.

Some day, one of them will even make it back.