Challenge #02131-E302: Strangers in a Very Strange Land

planetary survey on new world gets progressively jaded as they meet real mythical animals -- Anon Guest

Welcome to Mythos. Here, there be dragons. For real, actual dragons. They don't breathe fire, but they do have an acidic spray from their own digestive tract that's almost as bad. Their original gengineers started with the largest Terran lizard - the komodo - and worked at it from there. They're sluggish and make nests out of shiny objects to attract their mates. Beyond that, they're not nearly as fearsome as they should be.

Unicorns graze in the plains, but they are not nearly as graceful and beautiful as the imagination would want. The closest the gengineers could come to the rainbow mane was a piebald tortoiseshell appaloosa. It certainly didn't flow like magic. Real unicorns didn't sparkle. It had taken years for the gengineers to get the spiral horn pattern, the cloven hooves were comparatively easier, but it meant that these creatures meant to evoke the magic of mythology had the slotted pupils of the goats and sheep in their ancestry.

Fairies are not magical. They're not intelligent, and for that, Humanity should be grateful. True Faeries are never to be messed with. Just ask the Irish. Gengineers took large butterflies, the hissing cockroach, and tweaked the two together to produce a butterfly that can sing one note. Which it does. Monotonously. The only plus side is that they look weirdly humanoid except for the slightly repulsive abdomens. If you could count that as a 'plus'.

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