History NightmareFuel / Serina

* The imperious sea dragon is an eelsnake that has evolved to become so large that only the absolute largest of the cygnosaurs can escape predation by them, with the largest sea dragons being longer than a school bus and twice as heavy as an elephant, while strong enough to knock over a ten-ton herbivore with a single strike of its tail.

** There's also the tentatively-named [[https://speculativeevolution.fandom.com/wiki/Unnamed_Giant_Molodont_Predator Unnamed Giant Molodont Predator, a large apex predatory form resembling some sort of semi-mammalian ''Carnotaurus''. Most disturbing is its distinctive red neck markings that give the impression of ''having had its throat slit open''.]]

* The [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-tempuscene-11---50-million-years/the-little-island-of-horrors early years]] of the Kyran Islands seem seem like a fairly nice place to live with no large predators, fruit-bearing trees, and [[GentleGiant big peaceful]] birds known as chubbirds. [[CrapsaccharineWorld However]], once the mothers chubbirds leave the nests to go foraging, the chicks are [[https://i.imgur.com/XuXLEIl.png set upon by]] [[GiantEnemyCrab basketball sized hermit crabs]] that devour any of them that aren't able to kick them away. Even when they grow larger, a flaw in their growth rate means they still aren't able to get up and escape when many times bigger than the crustaceans so they can only just sit there [[https://i.imgur.com/APIVMmX.png and do nothing]] while the crabs [[EatenAlive pick pieces out of them]]. About 85% of all chubbird chicks are killed as a result and even many of the ones who do survive are left with permanent scars and missing appendages.

* During the war with the warmongers, they fishers and pastoralists use gravedigger-made spears laced with the paralytic poison of the fireslime lumpus in the second battle. Due to daydreamer size and physiology, not only is the poison deadly to the warmongers, they can take up to half an hour to drown while paralyzed, [[AndIMustScream fully aware the whole time.]] The warmongers themselves take it as [[TheScourgeOfGod chastisement from the Creator for their actions.]]

* [[ApocalypseHow The Thermocene/Pangeacene mass extinction]]. Extreme volcanism completely buries one continent, blots out the sun for months at a time, and, most catastrophically, creates a greenhouse effect that makes the one Earth currently faces look like a warm spring day. Photosynthesis and thus carbon dioxide absorption has ceased to occur except for one thin strip of forest on the new supercontinent's southern shore and a few pockets of polar sea that still hold oxygen. The rest of the oceans are nothing but a scalding anoxic soup of bacteria. [[HailfirePeaks Serina's equator is too hot to support any life while its temperate and polar regions are completely covered in ice]]. The lack of atmospheric oxygen even causes the ozone layer to thin, putting what life survives at high risk of ''mutation from cosmic radiation''. The extreme DisasterDominoes [[ParanoiaFuel make one worry]] [[GreenAesop how our own world could end up if we're too slow to act...]]

* The woodcrafters are downright frightening in their extreme AnimalJingoism and misplaced ideology, seeking to free all their kind from predators. Which they achieve by ''hunting said predators with spears, brutally torturing them to death while reveling in their slow, painful demise, and taking their skins and heads as trophies.'' Keep in mind that the woodcrafter is a ''herbivorous'' species with no need to kill to survive yet does so for sport, and that its target is [[TheMostDangerousGame itself a sapient creature...]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[UglyCute Aww, what a weird looking fish-doggie]]--[[SurpriseCreepy HOLY CRAP WHAT THE]]]]

* The Skewer from [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-ultimocene-250-million-years/life-of-the-cactaiga "Life of the Cactaiga"]] [[NamesTheSame (not to be confused with the Skewer from]] ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'') is a basal changeling with the {{Squick}}iest methods of feeding in all of ''Serina'': it impales its prey on its movable, needle-like upper beak, then inserts a ''long, spiky tongue'' into the wound that it uses to ''scrape and suck out the internal organs and blood.''

* Some of the more advanced changeling birds are disturbing in a more UncannyValley way for anyone who knows what a bird should look like. [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-ultimocene-250-million-years/the-ultimate-guide-to-metamorph-birds-of-the-early-ultimocene Many of them look more like insects than avians]], and there's even a species that has a parasitic larval stage similar to that of a botfly.

** Cutthroats are an unpublished predatory molodont species whose jaws are [[https://i.imgur.com/6i5cGCa.png massive serrated blades based on tiger beetles. There was even concept art of a saber-toothed molodont whose upper jaw crosses asymmetrically over the lower as its blade-like teeth are too big to fit in its mouth.]] This species has since made its official debut as the [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-ultimocene-250-million-years/the-sabertooth-circuagodog?authuser=0 saber-toothed circuagodog]], and it's still quite [[UncannyValley uncanny]].

* The billion-stingers are a species of ant similar to Earth's army ants, [[UpToEleven except their colonies are far bigger, and travel in mobile nests of their own bodies]]. They are fierce and deadly enough to attack deer-sized circuagodonts and strip them to the bone in a matter of minutes.

* Whitecrown's flock accidently manages to spark a coal fire while hunting, and this causes a fire so great that it consumes them, Brighteye, the woolly wumpos, and everything else on Serinarcta unable to escape. [[WhiteAndRedAndEerieAllOver To boot his illustration is on an eerie white with red glowing]].

* Whitecrown's flock accidently manages to spark a coal fire while hunting, and this causes a fire so great that it consumes them, Brighteye, the woolly wumpos, and everything else on Serinarcta unable to escape.

* The warmongers. Dark-skinned, scar-ridden, giant daydreamers that are the top predators of the Middle Ultimocene seas. What makes them truly frightening is that they are ''sapient beings'' who are perfectly happy to kill and even ''eat'' other sapients: a behavior borne from self-proclaimed superiority that gives them the right to exterminate all "lesser" beings. Because what's more terrifying than a razor-beaked predatory orca-bird? A razor-beaked predatory orca-bird that is, for all intents and purposes, a [[ANaziByAnyOtherName cannibalistic aquatic Nazi]]. Upon finding out that the gravediggers are sapient, the leadership decides that this threat to their superiority cannot be tolerated and decide to try genociding them too, overturning their boats and eating them alive. This makes it clear that they're the ShadowArchetype of the Woodcrafters. Unlike the Woodcrafters who made peace with their former predators after discovering sapience in the Gravediggers, the first thing the Warmongers thought after doing the same thing was to [[FinalSolution mercilessly kill them]].

* The warmongers. Dark-skinned, scar-ridden, giant daydreamers that are the top predators of the Middle Ultimocene seas. What makes them truly frightening is that they are ''sapient beings'' who are perfectly happy to kill and even ''eat'' other sapients: a behavior borne from self-proclaimed superiority that gives them the right to exterminate all "lesser" beings. Because what's more terrifying than a razor-beaked predatory orca-bird? A razor-beaked predatory orca-bird that is, for all intents and purposes, a [[ANaziByAnyOtherName cannibalistic aquatic Nazi]]. Upon finding out that the gravediggers are sapient, the leadership decides that this threat to their superiority cannot be tolerated and decide to try genociding them too, overturning their boats and eating them alive. This makes it clear that they're the ShadowArchetype of the Woodcrafters. Unlike the Woodcrafters who made peace with their former predators after discovering sapience in the Gravediggers, the first thing the Warmongers thought was to mercilessly kill them.

* The warmongers. Dark-skinned, scar-ridden, giant daydreamers that are the top predators of the Middle Ultimocene seas. What makes them truly frightening is that they are ''sapient beings'' who are perfectly happy to kill and even ''eat'' other sapients: a behavior borne from self-proclaimed superiority that gives them the right to exterminate all "lesser" beings. Because what's more terrifying than a razor-beaked predatory orca-bird? A razor-beaked predatory orca-bird that is, for all intents and purposes, a [[ANaziByAnyOtherName cannibalistic aquatic Nazi]]. Upon finding out that the gravediggers are sapient, the leadership decides that this threat to their superiority cannot be tolerated and decide to try genociding them too, overturning their boats and eating them alive.

* In order to try staving off the encroachment of the glaciers, the sea stewards decide to start mining coal in Serinarcta in order to create a fire big enough to destroy the ice bridge threatening to disrupt the currents they need to stay alive. The dangers include the savage gravediggers, which unnerve the thalassic gravediggers with their similar appearance and their ability to plot and probe for weaknesses in the camp walls despite their lack of higher intelligence, and the thorngrazers who the thalassics refer to as "ever-eaters" for their ability to eat just about anything in their path and only kept away by their fear of flame.
** It's mentioned that sometimes the thorngrazers will manage to push their way past the walls, only to fall into the pits behind them and be gravely injured, the gravediggers huddling in fear inside their underground sleeping places as the pits turn into a feeding frenzy for Serinarcta's predators upon nightfall, who eat the thorngrazers alive.

* The fate of male chimera ants. Newly dispersed males will carry off seedlings, dig burrows, and call for a mate. If he's lucky, he'll find a winged queen, mate with her, and build a colony together. However, while queens can live for as long as fifty years, males live only several years. So once her mate dies, what does a chimera ant queen do? Produce a batch of winged workers that mimic queens to lure in a new male calling for a mate. They then capture him, ''tear off his mandibles and wings so he can't escape or fight back,'' and then haul him back to the nest to essentially be a sex slave of the queen, being force-fed by workers for the rest of his life, as he no longer has jaws to eat with.
** The worst part? The queen accepts only ''one'' male at a time. In the event that the winged workers bring multiple males back home, the first-comer becomes her new groom...''and the rest are her dinner.''

* The [[https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/the-ultimocene-250-million-years/grapplers greater grappler]], which has clawed and spike-lined tentacles hiding a huge hooked beak, stands nine feet tall, and weighs half a ton. The scene introducing the species is written in a tone more fitting for a monster attack in a horror novel, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness uncharacteristically for the site]].
** And now it has a smaller, [[LightningBruiser faster]] relative called the [[https://i.imgur.com/2acJTgo.png grapplepard]]. It still stands almost as tall as a man, still has fanged tentacles, and, [[MeaningfulName as its name implies]], holds the niche of a big cat as a [[ParanoiaFuel stalking-and-ambush predator]]. And [[DeathFromAbove it can climb trees]] as long as they aren't too straight. And all grapplers are [[ItCanThink fairly intelligent]].

* While a placid omnivore, the [[https://i.imgur.com/8hmZ9Vq.png Thorngrazer]] is rather startling to look at, especially with all the ''spines growing out of its face.''
** Its ice age descendent, the sextacorn thorngrazer, takes it even further by having [[https://i.imgur.com/Kbkl1w7.png six large horns]] coming out of its face.
* The Gravediggers are carnivorous bumblebadgers that are among the top predators of the Ultimocene. What makes them more frightening than, say, a bear is they are [[ItCanThink highly intelligent, and hunt their prey by digging pitfall traps lined with spears. Eventually, they become true sapients and wage war on their prey, the Antlears, but when the climate change gets dire and the two species are forced to work together, the Gravediggers become the Antlears' hired muscle...paid for their labor ''in the form of getting to eat the Antlears' dead.'']]

* The warmongers. Dark-skinned, scar-ridden, giant daydreamers that are the top predators of the Middle Ultimocene seas. What makes them truly frightening is that they are ''sapient beings'' who are perfectly happy to kill and even ''eat'' other sapients: a behavior borne from self-proclaimed superiority that gives them the right to exterminate all "lesser" beings. Because what's more terrifying than a razor-beaked predatory orca-bird? A razor-beaked predatory orca-bird that is, for all intents and purposes, a [[ANaziByAnyOtherName cannibalistic aquatic Nazi.]]
** Upon finding out that the gravediggers are sapient, the leadership decides that this threat to their superiority cannot be tolerated and decide to try genociding them too, overturning their boats and eating them alive.

* The final mass extinction is pretty frightening in both its existential dread and inevitably. While not as intense or dramatic as the Thermocene extinction, at least that catastrophe was over pretty quickly (geologically speaking) and life quickly recovered afterwards. The Ultimocene extinction is caused by the planet's core cooling down, meaning that it can't be prevented, halted or reversed and once it starts, the world and all life on it are silently condemned to a grim drawn-out death. Once the Mid-Ultimocene hits, almost every entry is about life on the brink, starting with how previous lush ecosystems have collapsed, and often ending with the threat of extinction looming over whatever survivors we see. After reading a few entries, it sinks in just how omnipresent and inevitable the extinction of life on Serina is.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/20200607_150202.jpg]]

* During the war with the warmongers, they fishers and pastoralists use gravedigger-made spears laced with the paralytic poison of the fireslime lumpus in the second battle. Due to daydreamer size and physiology, not only is the poison deadly to the warmongers, they can take up to half an hour to drown while paralyzed, [[AndIMustScream fully aware the whole time.]] The warmongers themselves take it as [[TheSourgeOfGod chastisement from the Creator for their actions.]]

* During the war with the warmongers, they fishers and pastoralists use gravedigger-made spears laced with the paralytic poison of the fireslime lumpus in the second battle. Due to daydreamer size and physiology, not only is the poison deadly to the warmongers, they can take up to half an hour to drown while paralyzed, [[AndIMustScream fully aware the whole time.]] The warmongers themselves take it as [[DivineRetribution chastisement from the Creator for their actions.]]