Martin
Martins
Martins are a bird similar to the Swallow or Tree Swallow, though slightly larger in size, with slightly forked tails. They are dark in colour, males entirely black with a metallic blue-purple sheen, while females have lighter underparts.
Martins consume their diet of insects on the wing, hunting flying prey at relatively high altitudes, though on occasion they may descend to the ground to feed. They engage in sporadic migrations throughout the year, moving from island to island, though they do not have the endurance to cover vast ocean distances, and are ill-suited for coping with salt water and spray. They are vocal birds, chirping and croaking, with a number of distinct songs to mark time and seasons, as well as for declaring territory and courtship.
Martins are native to the islands of the Western Threshold and the Western coast of the Blessed Isle. Their nesting is considered very unusual, for they are largely dependent on humanity: humans place hollowed gourds and large coconuts on sticks or hanging from trees, and the martins nest within. While they can sometimes find natural hollows for nesting, the martin’s numbers are only maintained by the traditional nest-building undertaken by the populations of numerous islands.
The reasons for this support, and this need, are little understood in the present age. Island peoples view the martin as bringing prosperity (more observant persons will note the birds tend to congregate on more fruitful islands, rather than making the islands where they reside more fruitful), and those lost at sea know that if martins are sighted they are sure to be flying towards nearby land where food and fresh water are to be found.
Palantao of the Gentle Gift
The true cause of the martin’s dependence on human-provided nests, long lost to the memories of Creation’s naturalists, is that the trees in which they once made their own nests no longer exist in the West, nor does the remainder of their original habitat. That environment was found on the massive island-continent of Okeanos, which was broken and lost in the great battles of the Primordial War, along with the god responsible for the bird. The minor divinity Palantao of the Gentle Gift, whose responsibility had included Sweetwater Gourd, useful gourd-bearing plants native to Okeanos, took the mantle as god of the martins as he attempted to salvage his own devastated position. Martins and gourds subsisted for a time on the broken islands which remained, and even saw a blossoming when a vast new landmass was forged by the Solar Deliberative, but this too was shattered in the Usurpation. Palantao was forced to support his purviews, which demanded great effort on the part of local humans to keep from dying out in a now-inhospitable environment, by befriending tribal shamans and offering minor blessings to island settlements… in the West, whose gods are harsh and demanding, this gained him great favour amongst mortals, if not power and great ambrosia in Yu-shan, and he continues to emerge from his sanctum, now sunken deep beneath the sea, to travel quietly about the West caring for his gourd plants and his birds.
