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xenoblademisadventures · 5 months

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I'm bored, so Imma list more ecological shit that I'd headcanon would be different between Earth and Bionis. Also, no bullet list because Tumblr has acidic ass cheeks today and cummed all over my intended formatting.

Bionis has ether, Earth obviously doesn't. But I don't think Bionis has nearly the same depth of naturally occurring venoms & poisons as Earth does. Like, there's the venom in Bionis, evidenced by the poison status effect and the spears used by Faced Mechon, however, those weapons work by dissolving ether. I don't think stuff like neurotoxins or tetrodotoxins exist on Bionis. Mainly because those would be terrible gameplay mechanics if taken literally. But, something like a Komodo Dragon, which hunts by biting its prey once and letting the toxins take effect much later, I don't think that exists on Bionis.

I already mentioned how migratory species couldn't exist on Bionis due to there literally just being one landmass (and it would be bad for Zanza to have some species just fucking leave).

Likewise, I also mentioned the lack of saltwater species that could've existed. But I imagine freshwater species would also have to be quite limited. Like, almost all bodies of water on Bionis flow into a bottomless pit, whether that's the Makna Falls, various streams in Bionis Leg, or Eryth fucking Sea. So, a lot of river dwelling life would likely be quite limited, and a lot of staple species we (I) associate with rivers, namely salmon, couldn't exist here.

I imagine mutualism that doesn't directly benefit Zanza would be quite limited. So, parasitism would simply be gone. But also, it appears that there are basically no pets, but there are domesticated species. Nopon have domesticated Armu and Pterix, Hodes have domesticated Orluga, and Ignas have domesticated Volffs. Most of these don't really track logically. Like, Nopon realistically should be prey items to Pterixes, how did they even encounter Armu? Also herbivores are much worse animals to domesticate than carnivores. The relationship between Ignas and Volffs could probably mirror the relationship between humans and dogs, and I could see mutual benefit between Hodes and Orlugas. It's mostly the Nopon that don't make sense. But, the more interesting thing to consider is that I don't believe Homs would really understand the concept of pets. Which is really weird considering how much humans and domestication go hand in hand. Like, I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but holy shit have so many animals evolved based on their relationship to our species. And I can't help but think "hey, we probably have some evolved traits too that assist in our relationships with other animals," like, first thing that comes to mind is our posture. A lot of carnivorous animals won't see us as prey because we look nothing like their typical prey items. But Homs just don't have that history.

And another big mutualism thing that I imagine would be missing is parasitism. My main logic for their absence is that parasites are quite taboo or villainized to humans, Zanza is a human who clearly has no issue with overwriting nature without really caring to understand it. Like, I think it would thematically make sense, at the very least for his understanding of the world to be very self-centered, so he creates a world full of creatures based on aesthetic merit. Meanwhile Meyneth created most of the life on Mechonis with companionship in mind, meanwhile life on Earth is very heavily built around the concept of "survive long enough to reproduce." Humans don't like parasites because they're really some of the only animals that can regularly hurt us. Zanza is a human, so he didn't include parasites.

But, mutualism does exist on Bionis. It's already evidenced by domestication clearly being a thing. But also, everything's relationship with Zanza is technically mutualistic. Zanza provides habitats, the species provides energy upon death. That's mutualism.

I feel like bacteria wouldn't exist on Bionis. Which would make Zanza's "the homs are nothing more than bacteria clinging to my body!" line extra funny because the homs are just standing there going "wtf is a bacteria??" But the reason bacteria and viruses probably wouldn't exist on Bionis is the same reason I imagine parasites wouldn't exist on Bionis. Alongside the fact that these two things are able to evolve very quickly, which would make keeping them under control potentially harder. Like, I imagine if a species of bacteria evolved to consume ether, that would quickly become a global threat.

A lot of biomes simply do not exist. Basically all ocean biomes, gone. Arctic? Gone. Deserts? Gone. If I had to guess, Bionis is either a tropical or subtropical area. Evidence: no one wears any fucking clothes; the Valak Mountain lore is that it's cold as shit because of the lack of ether caused by an injury in the battle vs mechonis, so we know that the Bionis emits heat (plus Xenoblade 2 also says that ether is warm and having less ether causes titans to have colder climates); Makna Forest is the closest thing to an irl looking environment on Bionis, in fact, Makna Falls looks almost exactly like Iguazu Falls, which is located in the Amazon. So, I don't think stuff on Bionis is particularly evolved to deal with arid or cold environments.

I imagine animals that manipulate the environment are much scarcer and are also closely managed by Zanza. Like, the only species from Bionis that we know to be capable of construction would be the Homs, Nopon, High Entia, and Giants. The Giants were wiped out by Zanza; the Homs keep their constructions rather modest all things considered, the High Entia are super localized, and the Nopon are really just the outliers here. There's no real evidence of nesting behavior in the game. Or rather, I found two instances of "nest" related stuff checking the wiki. First, there's the Nest enemies, which appear biological in nature. More like an angry egg than an actual nest. Second is an item called Ivy Nest, which describes nesting behavior, but it is found in Mechonis Field. There's no real evidence of Tirkins or Ignas being able to manipulate the environment. And I imagine part of the reason Zanza annihilated the giants was because of how drastically they were able to manipulate the terrain.

I can only think of one instance of a structure that exists to fundamentally alter the nature of the surrounding terrain, and that would be the dam in Satorl Marsh, which is a High Entian construct. An abandoned one at that. I have a separate theory revolving around all that. I think there used to be High Entia in the lower regions of Bionis, but they were turned into Telethia. Which is how the High Entia have heard of the Fate of the High Entia. There's some evidence for this idea. The main one is Alvis's Sani Telethia. It is the only Telethia in the game with that model and it makes an appearance during the Unfinished Battle cutscene, so it predates the transformation. However, you can still get an item called a "High Entia Soul" from it using Riki's Yoink ability (it's got a rare chance, if I remember correctly, Dickson's Telethia also has this item). What's also interesting is that the Sani Telethia is the one that looks the closest to the depictions of the High Entian ancestors. So, yeah, very mysterious random enemy. Thanks Alvis.

Also, I have another headcanon about the Telethia in general. I think both the Telethia and Faced Mechon were derived from the Artifices. Artifice Siren in particular looks like a hybrid between a Faced Mechon and a Telethia. So, I imagine that Alvis can control Telethia in a very similar manner to how the Artifices could be controlled by the Trinity Processor.

But going back to the construction thing, stuff like Beavers would be a big no. But, also, how would dens work on Bionis? The only den we see in the game is the Antol Den in Valak Mountain, which isn't really a den. It looks more like a territory within a cave system than anything the antols actually constructed. Hives also don't appear to exist on Bionis. There are a few references to the concept in Xenoblades 2 and 3, but not 1. So, like, imagine Shulk in Future Redeemed sees a hornet's nest for the first time and is like "I should add that to my collectopaedia" only to engage the wrath of a million tiny insects.

Consider that the process of necrosis canonically works differently on Bionis to Earth. Like, on Bionis, corpses sort of just dissolve while their ether returns to the Bionis. Like, in Xenoblade 3, we see that by substituting Zanza with a different system, necrosis is still very different. So, that's gonna have some major impacts. Like, scavengers just wouldn't exist because corpses dissolve or turn into stone too quickly. Also, they'd be directly competing with Zanza for resources, which ain't gonna fly. Which is sort of a big deal considering how many animals rely on occasional scavenging to survive. Like, a lot of herbivores will occasionally bottoms up a dead body, which helps them get some important nutrients. Plus there are tons of small animals that call dead bodies home.

I don't think the Xenoblade games really feature much in the way of biological mimicry or ambush predators. Ambush predators being absent definitely makes sense given that they'd probably fit kinda awkwardly with the rpg mechanics. But still noteworthy.

For some reason dragonflies exist, and I think that's very funny. Like, those bastards predate the dinosaurs, so seeing a virtually unmodified variant of them right fucking here.

Truly they cannot be stopped. Like, that also means that dragonflies, in the lore of Xenoblade, are technically the longest-lived organism. Behold, the ultimate lifeform. It would be even funnier if, like, Zanza was not responsible for them showing up and they just tore apart the local ecosystems for a little while.

Anyways, I'mma list some irl animals that would probably tear apart Bionis's ecosystem. For funsies.

Mosquitos. Easily would cause issues. Consider: Mosquitos 1000% have a higher body count than Zanza. Like, googling real quick, about half of human deaths in history can be attributed to mosquitos, which vastly outnumbers our murder rate. Within the series, there is only one reference to mosquitos, that being a collectible in Xenoblade 2. So, they probably don't exist on Bionis, so the Homs probably haven't evolved around their existence. This would be made even more of an issue considering just how many Homs live either in or near environments that would be ideal for mosquitoes. Colony 9 is above a lake, meanwhile, the upper areas of Bionis Leg and Satorl Marsh would be great areas for mosquitoes to thrive. So, yeah, I imagine the mosquitoes would be a massive fucking issue for homs should they suddenly exist. And it probably wouldn't just be the homs. A lot of animals on Bionis don't really have shit to deal with mosquitoes. This is all assuming that mosquitoes would come packaged with blood parasites.

Cane Toads. Like I said, I imagine poison isn't super common on Bionis, so I sort of imagine Cane Toads would have a similar effect on Bionis as they did in Australia, where their predators just wouldn't be adapted to their existence and would die on mass trying to eat them, which would sort of just leave Cane Toads the freedom to overpopulate.

Cockroaches. Admittedly, I think they'd make themselves more of a problem in Mechonis than anything. But, like, imagine being a Machina but then a bunch of cockroaches start hanging out in your body. That would be horrifying. In fact, there are cockroach collectibles in Central Factory.

Komodo Dragon. I already mentioned them when talking about venom, but I think they'd do upsettingly well in Bionis due to their hunting style. I think the ether + rpg enemy nature of most animals in Bionis would result in the majority of irl apex predators just struggling, but I'd give the Komodo Dragon a good shot at being effective. Same goes for other venomous creatures.

Hippos. All things considered, I believe in the abilities of Hippos to brute force their way past everything I said about how big irl animals would probably fail to brute force Bionis's ecosystem. Hippos are just built different. I think they'd be especially effective on Bionis Leg.

Cape Buffalo. Another creature that would probably beat the shit out of the average rpg enemies. These guys have very flattering nicknames like "Black Death" and "Widowmaker." They're kinda just one of those animals that you don't fuck with. if you have no choice but to fuck with them, by whatever you wish to swear to, find another choice. Like, imagine a bulletproof truck with a vengeful nature and a basic understanding of ambush tactics.

Snow Leopards would probably do better on Valak Mountain than anything on Valak Mountain simply due to being actually adapted for that environment.

Just curious, if anyone else has any ideas for what other animals on earth would probably become issues if they were air dropped onto Bionis.

#like this is all just headcanons and speculation and stuff #xenoblade chronicles #xenoblade spoilers

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