Now that the ontological threat of sentient furniture is in the past, Barathrumite+ patrons are voting on our next pet animal. Meet the candidates below; we'll know who the winner is by this Friday, January 31st, 11:59 PM PDT.
Live and drink.
Koharta
Koharta! Koharta! Break a glass for the swarthy pig!
Over there, watch the quarterdeck, now mind the braided rig-
-ing. Behind the breaking waves -- there! -- the lady starts to crest,
Longshoreman through the darkling air see strumming in the west
A giant pig. She shakes the seaweed clamps from round her ears,
The bellman rings the whistle through the many-colored cheers
Of salt-lipped children, ringing in the moon at highest angle,
Pouring honey o'er the sensors of a waydroid all a-tangle,
And addled too, then trussing to its scalp a puffy, powdered wig,
For Koharta, the swarthy, strapping, ocean-faring pig!
-a weirding rhyme from Perth
Lyy
Qruu-kas had done just as the folio had instructed him: grease the motor, clean the needle, fill the pipe with ink. He'd spent from harvest dawn to the peaking of the high salt sun stitching the outline into his skin, then coloring the in-between space, until the picture on his forearm echoed the image in his head: top-down view of a tiny, green frog. And so it was with utter bewilderment that he woke the next day at jeweled dusk from a lazy nap to find the picture erased, vanished from his arm, as if he hadn't spent months saving spare drams for the instructional folio, acquiring the tattoo gun, and building up the courage to stitch the mark into his skin. He stared at his naked arm in a broad stupor, and may have continued forever if he hadn't heard a low croak from the floor across the dusty room. He moved his eyes, and his astonishment was replaced with a newer and brighter astonishment. Before him, as unthinkable as it was, a tiny, live, green frog hopped onto the baseboard. In his amazement Qruu-kas let out an exotic noise from his chest and mouth, a high-pitched "lyyyyy!", and threw himself into the air. The frog barely twitched an eye before hopping out of the room.
Qruu-kas, to his credit, did not give chase but instead rushed to his tattoo gun to stare in wonderment. Before he next blinked, he was already refilling the ink.
Iopinax the Younger
The Eustace-Suttan monastery at Athenreach is one of the largest communities of disciples of the Eustace-Sutta outside of the Hanging Hills. It was founded in 114PP by the pilgrim-monk Umay, who blessed the location as sacred because it lay along the path of the prophet Uuchal's pilgrimage toward Iber.
The monastery houses two hallowed artifacts of the Eustace-Sutta discipline: the Scrolls of One Priam, discovered and transcribed by the monastery's erstwhile abbot Flavian the Learned, and the presumptive hide of Iopinax, the great three-headed mountain goat on which Uuchal's is said to have ridden to the waterfall at Iber and whose hide was so tough that it was said to later protect Uuchal from starfire along the Black Stair after the goat's death.
-Excerpt from Across Moghra'yi, Vol. II: Athenreach by the Baccata Yewtarch
scribbled in the margin: "..mumbles of an Iopinax sighting on the Bowl of Iris. Perhaps a descendant of the famed goat?? Damn those Inscrutable Mouths!"
Pri Pri
By piecing together the various documents I've acquired from the dromads -- merchant ledgers, windweird journals, books of song -- I'm able to reach the following conclusion with some confidence. Most of the sailors who shove off from Perth to cross the Pale Sea are headed to Porsicareya for sea glass. A brave few veer north, into the vaporous channel of Fuming God Sea, to try for Yawningmoon. To the west rises the Blair Stair and its unsailable coastline, so the mariners hug the eastern shore, where the Icepyres spray their frozen scree into the dusky water. Once the sun sets the hooting begins, and shadowy forms swing from the pyre-branches to the ship's masts. The sea shanty is now illuminated with meaning:
"Black devils swing from starry masts,beneath the Yawning Moon."
The sailors are able to expel most of the simians from the ship, but it's not unreasonable to imagine a couple manage to stow away, and when the rare vessel does indeed return to the port of Perth, it may deliver its aleatory cargo to a new world.
-Collected notes from the Baccata Yewtarch