Mammoth

Mammoth was found frozen deep in the icy tomb of the Banescales. Her egg became overwhelmed with ice magic as it was completely covered by the Gaoler's ice, turning her element from Fire to Ice. She feels deeply conflicted to say the least. The Flamecaller herself called Ice and Plague inferior elements as they wilt in the heat of Fire, after all!

She is very close to her "sister" Tulip because of their elemental grief. Though their lineage has been lost to time, since the clan cared for them both at the same time they treat each other as sisters.

The clan, naturally, supports and encourages them to be happy in spite of their elements. Their self-hatred comes from outsiders who had first found them and were disgusted by their eyes and element. In time the clan hopes to build their self-esteem and overcome this initial emotional abuse.

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Wooly mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius, were classic Ice Age herbivores. They were about the same size as modern African Elephants, standing up to eleven feet tall at the shoulder. Their closest living relatives are Indian elephants and were hunted extensively by early humans, likely contributing to their extinction. Their large tusks were used to shovel away snow from the steppe grasses that sustained these gargantuan beasts. The last mammoth may have died long into human civilization, a dwarf on an isolated island during the time that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built.

Whole mammoths can be found today in Russia where they were frozen in place during massive blizzards ten thousand years ago. Viable DNA can be found in these mummified corpses and some scientists have been trying to revive the beasts by creating mammoth-elephant hybrid embryos and implanting them into elephants. None of these hybrids have survived to birth as of yet, though de-extincition has become increasingly more popular and of interest to the scientific community.

If revived, mammoths could replace bison, horses, elk and other large herbivores in maintaining grasslands and steppes of the far north worldwide where these animals were driven away by humans. This could reduce global warming, as grasslands gather more snow than forests in the same area. This higher snowpack reflects more sunlight, reducing the amount of heat that can warm the planet.

familiar: banded owlcat