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Description
Having been almost completely isolated from all other landmasses for over six-hundred million years, R'lyeh's ecosystems are so derived from life anywhere else on Earth as to be almost an alien planet in miniature. This isolation is most evident for the fact that plant life has never managed to establish a major foothold, and instead flora is comprised of numerous photosynthetic animal clades; mostly scalidophorans, cnidarians, and petalonamids. This has resulted in drastically differing ecosystems than those on the continents, those comprised of flesh, blood, and chitin rather than cellulose, sap, and lignins; of reds and purples rather than greens. The distinct biomes of the corpse-isle are defined based on their closest analogues to those of plant-based ecosystems for convenience, but many similarities are only broadly or superficial.

The geography of R'lyeh has been dramatically shaped over its eons of existence, with numerous violent volcanic eruptions, crustal tectonic up-heavings, gradual animal and water-induced erosion, and the varying of sea levels over millions of years all sharing contributions to the isle's landscape, and by the present day, its terrain is just as warped and alien as those that inhabit it. Its temperate climate rarely gets too extreme due to the relatively small size of the landmass and being surrounded by the ocean on all sides; the sea spray churned up by the volcanism condenses into fog banks that provide the moisture which sustains the life of the corpse-isle.

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VISCERAL SAVANNAHS: Covering much of the interior lowland where precipitation and humidity are moderate, the open "wood"land and savannahs where flora are comprised primarily of the fast-growing cnidarian crowntrees, hive corals, and psycads, with mixed ground-covering of jellymoulds, filet-fronds, and penephytes, with the mosaic of penetrating sunlight and moisture levels allowing a wide range of metazoan vegetation to thrive. So too, do the motile metazoans, for here small herds of so many forms intermingle in the environment which acts as a middle ground between the tangled, nigh-impenetrable jungle and the open prairies. Foraging herds of urchin-hogs and blister-beasts intermingle with more solitary star striders and hooverbeasts, hunted by all manner of carnivores from the deeper forest and the sunlit plains.

FLESH-EATING JUNGLES: Deep within the interior of the corpse-isle is a hungering forest, intwined many metres deep with tangled vegetation and tree-like growths that all but blot out the sun, where perpetual moisture and twilight create a festering, multi-layered underworld of continuous decay and regrowth. Great, towering planimals rise above this ecological battleground, some over fifty metres high, stealing away great quantities of sunlight from the lands below. The composition of chitin and calcium carbonate-constructed trees presents the issue of acquiring the additional protein and calcium to their structure, and to solve this issue, many planimals are partly carnivorous, or symbiotically linked with those that are; in this sense they are more similar to undersea coral reefs, including literally consuming neighbouring competitors. Navigation through the jungles of R'lyeh are a nightmare as everything from the spike-toothed sabrebeast, roving colonies of parasitic naghouls, to the trees themselves attempt to feed upon travellers.

ALPINE FORESTS: Much of R'lyeh is ringed by a jagged mountain range with rings the interior lowlands like a bowl, which captures the daily sea fog that rolls over the island each morning. Although it rarely rains or snows on the corpse-isle, this reliable source of freshwater condenses in the highlands where it accumulates into rivers that roll down into the heart of the island. Carpeting the mountain range in the veil of the dense mists are the cloud forest of the high latitudes which get the first taste of this condensation, bathing them in perpetual dew. This damp environment makes for excellent growing conditions of more soft-bodied planimals like jellymoulds, runaphores, and gastrophytes, and of similar motile animals with permeable skin like terrestrial polypedes, spisognaths, and jelly-walkers. With terrain so difficult to navigate, compounded further by thickly winding vegetation, relatively few large terrestrial animals are present in these habitats, although many clambering and flying animals find themselves well at home. This habitat is particularly widespread in the southwest regions of the isle, where an older mountain range is gradually collapsing, creating a strange labyrinthian region of forested plateaus, spires, cliffs, and valleys.

BLOOD BOGS: Although R'lyeh's existence was formally recognized in the 1920s and most of its surface geography mapped by the 1950s, it wasn't until the late 1970s that the existence of two large lakes (later named Womb Lake and Dagon's Lake) in the island's interior were confirmed. The reason is simple: almost all bodies of water on R'lyeh are so crowded with aquatic vegetation as to be nearly impossible to see the water's surface in most places. In larger bodies of water, this can be several metres deep, allowing one to theoretically walk across a lake without even getting your feet wet. However, such a trek is ill-advised, for in the dark waters beneath the floating tangle lurk all sizes of vicious predators and carnivorous flora large enough even to prey upon people. Huge arthropod-like horrors, aquatic bullbugs, freshwater jellies, and shoals fish-like molluscs crowd the waters in uncountable numbers. The vast connected barges of floating vegetation, riverine swamps, and weed-choked wetlands are trawled and angled by a menagerie of wading and swimming animals, but just as often, these are taken by hunters from beneath the waters.

TENTACLED PRAIRIES: Comparatively drier and level regions of R'lyeh are generally dominated by two specific types of planimal: the low-growing, worm-like tentacle grasses and closely related spaghetti creepers. These hardy, fast-growing and fast-spreading pararthropods form lush open prairies, shrubland, and steppe that can stretch for hundreds of square kilometres, sustaining the most numerous herds of larger grazers on the corpse-isle. The grazing urchin-hogs, blister-beasts, and nocturnal cuttlecrabs are hunted by packs of demohounds, dolchhunds, and large predaceous dracopterids, particularly the night-flying seekers, which scour the exposed prairies as darkness falls. Within the interior lowlands, these form a lush sea of pink and red mottled flesh known as the Valley of Sin, while the windswept plateaus closer to the outer rim these are more scattered, acting as the feeding grounds for the clambering animals of the highland peaks.

BLACK PEAKS: Created by many millions of years of tectonic upheaval and magmatic eruptions, the highest mountaintops in the northern region rise more than three kilometres above the sea, appearing as a jagged, snow-peaked ridge known as the Crown of R'lyeh. Up so high, few flora and fauna except some highland specialists thrive in the cloud layers. Cold and desiccation-resistant penephytes are the primary flora in the mountain peaks, and these are consumed primarily by alpine blister-beasts and squid monkeys, among the only xenotherians with the agility to navigate such a treacherous landscape and the stomach for this distasteful flora, and which are in turn hunted by the winged gargoyles and wiverns. Aside from these, there are relatively few predators in these habitats, and greater danger comes the volcanic earth itself, which are prone to landslides, poisonous geysers, earthquakes, and even the occasional violent eruption.

BLASPHEMED COAST: Beaches of pulverized basalt and volcanic glass create pristine dunes of black that separate the ocean from the sheer cliffs that surround R'lyeh's interior from most sides. Few R'lyehian organisms venture beyond the cliffs to the shores, where the only real animal life are the isolated nesting colonies of seabirds. The geothermal warmth emanating from the landmass is like an oasis in the middle of a vast oceanic desert draws enough marine life to the waters around the isle that entices seabirds to breed on R'lyeh. Occasional raids by the predatory beasts from inland are just the price to be paid. Pararthropodal boreworms and polypedes, and crustacean-like bullbugs are among the few endemics which forage along the beaches, feeding on whatever organic bits that the sea washes in, or hunting any unfortunate seabird caught in their path. Little otherwise hints of the terrors that lie beyond.

SUNKEN GROTTOS: Violent geological activities and the movement of underground rivers over thousands of millennia have carved out miles upon miles of hidden tunnels, crevices, and rifts where strange subterranean life now thrives. How far and deep these caverns stretch is still unclear, but in some areas they open up into gorges and depressions where light reaches, allowing surface nutrients to trickle down and providing glimpses into the underworld within the bowels of R'lyeh. The glitter of bioluminescent flora, the glistening web of roots and filaments reaching down through the rocks from the surface, and the shuffling masses of the troglobites which rarely see light, an ecosystem bizarre even on the corpse-isle. The pale cave striders, the scurrying pickerman and their corpulent bloatslug livestock, scuttling hordes of trillopedes and bullbugs, the hulking cnidarian xin, and many others evolved to inhabit the underbelly of the rotting acropolis.

Description
Having been almost completely isolated from all other landmasses for over six-hundred million years, R'lyeh's ecosystems are so derived from life anywhere else on Earth as to be almost an alien planet in miniature. This isolation is most evident for the fact that plant life has never managed to establish a major foothold, and instead flora is comprised of numerous photosynthetic animal clades; mostly scalidophorans, cnidarians, and petalonamids. This has resulted in drastically differing ecosystems than those on the continents, those comprised of flesh, blood, and chitin rather than cellulose, sap, and lignins; of reds and purples rather than greens. The distinct biomes of the corpse-isle are defined based on their closest analogues to those of plant-based ecosystems for convenience, but many similarities are only broadly or superficial.

The geography of R'lyeh has been dramatically shaped over its eons of existence, with numerous violent volcanic eruptions, crustal tectonic up-heavings, gradual animal and water-induced erosion, and the varying of sea levels over millions of years all sharing contributions to the isle's landscape, and by the present day, its terrain is just as warped and alien as those that inhabit it. Its temperate climate rarely gets too extreme due to the relatively small size of the landmass and being surrounded by the ocean on all sides; the sea spray churned up by the volcanism condenses into fog banks that provide the moisture which sustains the life of the corpse-isle.

---

VISCERAL SAVANNAHS: Covering much of the interior lowland where precipitation and humidity are moderate, the open "wood"land and savannahs where flora are comprised primarily of the fast-growing cnidarian crowntrees, hive corals, and psycads, with mixed ground-covering of jellymoulds, filet-fronds, and penephytes, with the mosaic of penetrating sunlight and moisture levels allowing a wide range of metazoan vegetation to thrive. So too, do the motile metazoans, for here small herds of so many forms intermingle in the environment which acts as a middle ground between the tangled, nigh-impenetrable jungle and the open prairies. Foraging herds of urchin-hogs and blister-beasts intermingle with more solitary star striders and hooverbeasts, hunted by all manner of carnivores from the deeper forest and the sunlit plains.

FLESH-EATING JUNGLES: Deep within the interior of the corpse-isle is a hungering forest, intwined many metres deep with tangled vegetation and tree-like growths that all but blot out the sun, where perpetual moisture and twilight create a festering, multi-layered underworld of continuous decay and regrowth. Great, towering planimals rise above this ecological battleground, some over fifty metres high, stealing away great quantities of sunlight from the lands below. The composition of chitin and calcium carbonate-constructed trees presents the issue of acquiring the additional protein and calcium to their structure, and to solve this issue, many planimals are partly carnivorous, or symbiotically linked with those that are; in this sense they are more similar to undersea coral reefs, including literally consuming neighbouring competitors. Navigation through the jungles of R'lyeh are a nightmare as everything from the spike-toothed sabrebeast, roving colonies of parasitic naghouls, to the trees themselves attempt to feed upon travellers.

ALPINE FORESTS: Much of R'lyeh is ringed by a jagged mountain range with rings the interior lowlands like a bowl, which captures the daily sea fog that rolls over the island each morning. Although it rarely rains or snows on the corpse-isle, this reliable source of freshwater condenses in the highlands where it accumulates into rivers that roll down into the heart of the island. Carpeting the mountain range in the veil of the dense mists are the cloud forest of the high latitudes which get the first taste of this condensation, bathing them in perpetual dew. This damp environment makes for excellent growing conditions of more soft-bodied planimals like jellymoulds, runaphores, and gastrophytes, and of similar motile animals with permeable skin like terrestrial polypedes, spisognaths, and jelly-walkers. With terrain so difficult to navigate, compounded further by thickly winding vegetation, relatively few large terrestrial animals are present in these habitats, although many clambering and flying animals find themselves well at home. This habitat is particularly widespread in the southwest regions of the isle, where an older mountain range is gradually collapsing, creating a strange labyrinthian region of forested plateaus, spires, cliffs, and valleys.

BLOOD BOGS: Although R'lyeh's existence was formally recognized in the 1920s and most of its surface geography mapped by the 1950s, it wasn't until the late 1970s that the existence of two large lakes (later named Womb Lake and Dagon's Lake) in the island's interior were confirmed. The reason is simple: almost all bodies of water on R'lyeh are so crowded with aquatic vegetation as to be nearly impossible to see the water's surface in most places. In larger bodies of water, this can be several metres deep, allowing one to theoretically walk across a lake without even getting your feet wet. However, such a trek is ill-advised, for in the dark waters beneath the floating tangle lurk all sizes of vicious predators and carnivorous flora large enough even to prey upon people. Huge arthropod-like horrors, aquatic bullbugs, freshwater jellies, and shoals fish-like molluscs crowd the waters in uncountable numbers. The vast connected barges of floating vegetation, riverine swamps, and weed-choked wetlands are trawled and angled by a menagerie of wading and swimming animals, but just as often, these are taken by hunters from beneath the waters.

TENTACLED PRAIRIES: Comparatively drier and level regions of R'lyeh are generally dominated by two specific types of planimal: the low-growing, worm-like tentacle grasses and closely related spaghetti creepers. These hardy, fast-growing and fast-spreading pararthropods form lush open prairies, shrubland, and steppe that can stretch for hundreds of square kilometres, sustaining the most numerous herds of larger grazers on the corpse-isle. The grazing urchin-hogs, blister-beasts, and nocturnal cuttlecrabs are hunted by packs of demohounds, dolchhunds, and large predaceous dracopterids, particularly the night-flying seekers, which scour the exposed prairies as darkness falls. Within the interior lowlands, these form a lush sea of pink and red mottled flesh known as the Valley of Sin, while the windswept plateaus closer to the outer rim these are more scattered, acting as the feeding grounds for the clambering animals of the highland peaks.

BLACK PEAKS: Created by many millions of years of tectonic upheaval and magmatic eruptions, the highest mountaintops in the northern region rise more than three kilometres above the sea, appearing as a jagged, snow-peaked ridge known as the Crown of R'lyeh. Up so high, few flora and fauna except some highland specialists thrive in the cloud layers. Cold and desiccation-resistant penephytes are the primary flora in the mountain peaks, and these are consumed primarily by alpine blister-beasts and squid monkeys, among the only xenotherians with the agility to navigate such a treacherous landscape and the stomach for this distasteful flora, and which are in turn hunted by the winged gargoyles and wiverns. Aside from these, there are relatively few predators in these habitats, and greater danger comes the volcanic earth itself, which are prone to landslides, poisonous geysers, earthquakes, and even the occasional violent eruption.

BLASPHEMED COAST: Beaches of pulverized basalt and volcanic glass create pristine dunes of black that separate the ocean from the sheer cliffs that surround R'lyeh's interior from most sides. Few R'lyehian organisms venture beyond the cliffs to the shores, where the only real animal life are the isolated nesting colonies of seabirds. The geothermal warmth emanating from the landmass is like an oasis in the middle of a vast oceanic desert draws enough marine life to the waters around the isle that entices seabirds to breed on R'lyeh. Occasional raids by the predatory beasts from inland are just the price to be paid. Pararthropodal boreworms and polypedes, and crustacean-like bullbugs are among the few endemics which forage along the beaches, feeding on whatever organic bits that the sea washes in, or hunting any unfortunate seabird caught in their path. Little otherwise hints of the terrors that lie beyond.

SUNKEN GROTTOS: Violent geological activities and the movement of underground rivers over thousands of millennia have carved out miles upon miles of hidden tunnels, crevices, and rifts where strange subterranean life now thrives. How far and deep these caverns stretch is still unclear, but in some areas they open up into gorges and depressions where light reaches, allowing surface nutrients to trickle down and providing glimpses into the underworld within the bowels of R'lyeh. The glitter of bioluminescent flora, the glistening web of roots and filaments reaching down through the rocks from the surface, and the shuffling masses of the troglobites which rarely see light, an ecosystem bizarre even on the corpse-isle. The pale cave striders, the scurrying pickerman and their corpulent bloatslug livestock, scuttling hordes of trillopedes and bullbugs, the hulking cnidarian xin, and many others evolved to inhabit the underbelly of the rotting acropolis.