Rockruiser

Holding up a long neck for millions of years can be quite an effort. In the relative safety of the Martyk Archipelago, a branch of Rockshorian descendants have being liberated from that burden. Appearing as a bipedal rock blindly waddling on oversized feet with a proboscis dangling from its front, the awkward-looking Rockruiser seems like an anathema to its namesake. While it is just as capable of raising the proboscis to check a potential concern or interest, it is well protected and easily camouflaged by its rock-like sauce-shell, leaving it little to be concerned about on land.

Cruising through the water on long webbed toes, floating on air trapped between layers of chitin at the bottom of its sauce-shell, the Rockruiser was well adapted to make the most out of the island environment, replacing its ancestor in its range. As they shifted to make use of their ability to find food, they moved from stalking the shore to actively swimming throughout the Archipelago and seeking underwater prey. Rather than keeping still, they needed to move their mouth fast, losing the long tendons in favor of many quick small short burst muscles. The probosci's tip is rounder and more streamlined for moving underwater, its tusks are held sideways like the pincer claws of a Terran Bobbit worm, followed by dense concentrations of feather-whiskers, a ring of nostrils at the outermost ring, and backward protruding ears, not unlike those of Terran eared seals.

The archipelago has changed the landscape of the mating game. Swimming along the archipelago with their nests on their backs and no longer easily contained by shoreline harems, females started to improve their reproductive chances and the genetic diversity of their outcrop by exchanging male larvae as gifts with females of other outcrops. Earlier reproductive capacity became favored over Fighting and dominance, and once rare developmental disorders inhibiting post-larval development in males have become widespread, undermining the harem system completely and resulting in extreme male neoteny. Males are now slightly larger larvae with developed reproductive capacity and are exchanged as gifts between females, indirectly mating by securing grandchildren in the process. The larva-like male will stay in its mothers nest-shell until given to a new female, where it will use its claws to climb down the female's plumage, holding onto rough ridges around her cloaca and pushing its entire body inwards, leaving out only its respiratory spiracles to maintain its breath. Once done, it will either make its way back to its mother's neck or passed between females, depending on the social circumstances and available mating opportunities in the outcrop.