Emei Mustache Toad aka Taosze Spiny Toad, (Leptobrachium boringii), family Megophryidae, endemic to SE China
ENDANGERED.
The larger males grow keratinized spines on the upper lip, which they use to defend territories, during the breeding season. The spines fall off after the breeding season.
photographs: Hudson and Fu; Jingsong Shi; ChinaFotoPress
Holy shit, it all makes a little more sense now. He was thinking like an immortal when he should have been thinking like a mortal. Even a long lived one might have made things better.
something that doesn't come up very often in the How Bad Is Emps discussion is that he's. he's really old. millennia old. there's no way his sense of time isn't flagrantly broken. i mean look at him! every time we get an immediate perspective on him the dude is making plans with thousand-year timeframes. all of his buddies (well, ex-buddies) are perpetuals. emps has more in common with the eldar or the necrons when it comes to sense of time than he does with literally any non-perpetual, and that includes the primarchs.
just think about it. the primarchs are, what, three centuries old at Ullanor? they're BABIES. ok, maybe they're not babies, they're clearly old enough for simple tasks like systematic genocide and aggressive expansion, but c'mon, they haven't even reached their first millennium. of course emps isn't going to burden them with adult concerns like the encroaching threat of Chaos, or the potential dangers as humans evolve into a psyker species, or the existential challenges imposed by their warp-entity-wearing-flesh natures. they're kids! let them be kids! their brains are still growing, probably.
so yeah, emps holds off on some big conversations. and yeah, he ducks out of the crusade to go work on the webway by himself, what's wrong with that? it's just a few decades! he's spent more than a thousand years uniting humanity, surely he deserves a little time to himself. from emps's perspective, he's just spending an afternoon building a treehouse in his workshop. the kids are old enough to know better than to stick forks into electrical outlets, they'll be okay for an evening. horus you're a responsible guy, you're in charge.
but then like five minutes later magnus fucking bursts through the wall like the kool aid man screaming bloody hell about horus and then the hole he made starts puking daemons everywhere and yeah emps loses his temper and yells but he was gone for FIVE MINUTES. and now there's daemons all over his workshop! magnus what the fuck! only magnus fled as soon as emps started yelling without explaining a damn thing. also the hole is still puking daemons. ok, ok, emps will stay in the workshop and try to fix the hole before everything is covered in daemons, but he still needs to figure out what the hell is going on. leman, you're an obedient kid, hell you're always boasting about it, surely YOU'LL listen. go get magnus--yeah, i know you don't get along, this isn't the time--go get magnus and bring him here so he can explain himself.
emps goes back to the hole and--leman did WHAT? magnus did WHAT? HOW DID THEY FUCK UP BASIC INSTRUCTIONS. hang on, what's this about an isstvan. horus is rebelling? fucking HORUS??? nine legions????? HALF THE ARMY????? wtf wtf wtf oh shit it's chaos isn't it. emps looked away for five minutes and chaos got its claws in his boys. it's been six years. that's like a bathroom break. how did the boys break everything in SIX YEARS???
Ancient spirits of primeval, transform this failing line... TO DRAGON SWEEP, THE EVER-HORNY!
Welcome to Round 4, the top 32 contenders! Only the best remain! With a fair few surprise hits that have beaten out some of the original top contenders.
On the left, the highest ranked in the qualifying rounds, the Red Dragon! It's the biggest chromatic dragon, so adults are roughly in the 30-90 foot (9.1-27.4 m) range. The spellcasters among them lean toward spells like "dominate person," as basically everything in thier culture is about domination and power play. They're prideful, powerful, the epitome of dragon kind to most, the classic fire breathing dragon!
BUT ON THE RIGHT! Having already slain a dragon and taken out a member of the top 32, we have the androsphinx! 10 ft (3 m) long, gruff and somewhat pessimistic with a noble heart, can control time from within its lair, guards ancient mysteries and secrets, and can summon feasts on command! They're also known for being gruff and blunt but generally trying to do the right thing.