SinghSong
Minstrel
So, in the world of this new fantasy web novel/manga I've tentatively begun sketching the first few chapters of, 0.4-1% of the general population have the magical ability to both acquire infusions of the Qi/essence of other animals through physical contact, enabling them to magically splice themselves with those animals (effectively enabling them to become were-creatures at will)- and, perhaps more importantly in the context of world-building, this also extends to blending the Qi/essence of any two living things together to create magical chimeras ('Alchimerism'- though I'm open to other suggestions for the name of this magical art).
There are a number of rules related to 'Alchimery'- firstly, this only works on members of the same kingdoms (i.e, animals, plants, fungi- creating animal/plant, animal/fungi, or plant/fungi chimeras isn't possible). Secondly, more tenuously interconnected chimeras (eg. vertebrate/invertebrate, flower/conifer) are both far more challenging to create, and involve a lot more trial and error, with a far lower success rate; these magical chimeras spontaneously die at magical conception more often than not, and are always inherently infertile regardless of how skilled the 'Alchimerist' responsible for their creation may be. And thirdly, for a sufficiently skilled Achimerist, chimeras created by melding together two sufficiently closely connected species (i.e, sharing common ancestry less than 50Mya) can be made genetically viable, capable of producing fertile offspring, and thus constituting entirely new hybrid species (though vegetative propagation allows markedly greater scope for success for plant chimeras).
Any Alchimerist with a basic level of skill and training can magically create cross-breeds/cultivars between members of the same species; the '1st Rank'/level of mastery can be achieved through successfully magically splicing two different species together, with each rank corresponding to the exponentially more challenging feat of successfully creating living magical hybrids which bridge different levels of taxonomic rank. 2nd Rank=inter-genus chimeras, 3rd Rank=inter-family chimeras, 4th Rank=inter-order chimeras, and 5th Rank=inter-class chimeras. 6th Rank, i.e, inter-phylum chimeras, is borderline achievable, but only by a select few (less than a dozen in recorded history, 3-5 still alive) elite Grand Master Alchimerists, and only with members of sufficiently closely related phyla/divisions (i.e, deuterostomes or protostomes). And each rank corresponds with the two below when it comes to magically creating genetically viable hybrid species (i.e, only the few 6th Rank Alchimerists can create new species from two members of different biological Orders- e.g, primate-bat, pigeon-parrot, grasses/palm trees, etc).
As you can imagine though, there are still a whole world of possibilities for successful new hybrid species in this setting. So, I'm asking for a bit of creative input, and setting the challenge of coming up with a bunch of fresh, interesting, diverse and imaginative magically-created chimera species (albeit having to be composed exclusively from living things which co-habitated the Earth with humans IRL), to add some breadth and depth to this world's biosphere. Up for it?
There are a number of rules related to 'Alchimery'- firstly, this only works on members of the same kingdoms (i.e, animals, plants, fungi- creating animal/plant, animal/fungi, or plant/fungi chimeras isn't possible). Secondly, more tenuously interconnected chimeras (eg. vertebrate/invertebrate, flower/conifer) are both far more challenging to create, and involve a lot more trial and error, with a far lower success rate; these magical chimeras spontaneously die at magical conception more often than not, and are always inherently infertile regardless of how skilled the 'Alchimerist' responsible for their creation may be. And thirdly, for a sufficiently skilled Achimerist, chimeras created by melding together two sufficiently closely connected species (i.e, sharing common ancestry less than 50Mya) can be made genetically viable, capable of producing fertile offspring, and thus constituting entirely new hybrid species (though vegetative propagation allows markedly greater scope for success for plant chimeras).
Any Alchimerist with a basic level of skill and training can magically create cross-breeds/cultivars between members of the same species; the '1st Rank'/level of mastery can be achieved through successfully magically splicing two different species together, with each rank corresponding to the exponentially more challenging feat of successfully creating living magical hybrids which bridge different levels of taxonomic rank. 2nd Rank=inter-genus chimeras, 3rd Rank=inter-family chimeras, 4th Rank=inter-order chimeras, and 5th Rank=inter-class chimeras. 6th Rank, i.e, inter-phylum chimeras, is borderline achievable, but only by a select few (less than a dozen in recorded history, 3-5 still alive) elite Grand Master Alchimerists, and only with members of sufficiently closely related phyla/divisions (i.e, deuterostomes or protostomes). And each rank corresponds with the two below when it comes to magically creating genetically viable hybrid species (i.e, only the few 6th Rank Alchimerists can create new species from two members of different biological Orders- e.g, primate-bat, pigeon-parrot, grasses/palm trees, etc).
As you can imagine though, there are still a whole world of possibilities for successful new hybrid species in this setting. So, I'm asking for a bit of creative input, and setting the challenge of coming up with a bunch of fresh, interesting, diverse and imaginative magically-created chimera species (albeit having to be composed exclusively from living things which co-habitated the Earth with humans IRL), to add some breadth and depth to this world's biosphere. Up for it?