literature

Aren Bestiary: Of The Simurgh

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Azaios is the first to mention the mighty simurgh in his writings detailing his ideas of evolution and his classification system: "The zhyammarugh, which the natives of South Erdasia call camictlahaw, is a most unusual beast. Like the ostrich and the griffon-kin, it is one of the few creatures that have feathers though they do not fly. Indeed it seems most like the latter. If reports of its size are true, it must be the only feathered creature too heavy to fly, and thus its plumage must have another meaning." 

These musings eventually lead Azaios to the theory explaining bird flight and the evolution of gryphids. It is worth noting that Azaios mentions the Ataluc name for the animal, which translates to 'the lord of death', which is reflected in the Madjastian name 'Zhyammarugh', which cannot be understood unless one knows that the supreme judge, the Master of Justice, next in power to the Dazmar Emperor himself, was known as 'Zhyammarandji', while 'rugh' means murder or manslaughter. Thus Azaios named the beast 'the master of killing'.

It is notable that the earlier Deirhestres of Alzarath did not appear to mention the animal at all, hinting that it may have been unknown to Madjastians during his time. As most information on the simurgh was in Azaios' works detailing evolution and classification, they were never translated to Debarian, due to Debarians' opinion of evolution as a heretical concept, and thus were inaccessible to Ordosian scholars for millennia. All they knew was based on "Of Animals" by Sardun of Fahistar, who seems not to have understood even half of Azaios' writings. He describes the animal thus: "In Erdasia there is a feathered animal greater than any other; it is called the Zhimmurg. It is able to lift great weights with its clawed limbs, and its tail is very long and powerful. Its legs are said to be strong like columns of stone, and the ground shakes as it walks. Each part of its body is of a different colour."

Curiously the Debarian translation of "Of Animals" contains an interpolation not present in any of the older manuscripts written in Masharasin. It is located much later in the Debarian manuscripts and reads: "The greatest of all birds is the rokh that nests in the southernmost lands. It is a bird of prey that carries oxen and oliphants to its nest to feed its young. The feathers of the rokh are white as the clouds and eggs too heavy for men to carry." For the uninitiated this sounded like a completely separate animal, and was treated as such.

The Thelquam Bestiary, written by Thelmar, priest of Shogasta, only continued to add to the confusion. The 'simmourg' Thelmar describes as: "a beast like the gryphon, but winged, and with a very long tail. It walks on feet that are very strong, for this beast is very heavy. Its plumage bears all the colours of the rainbow." His descriprion of the 'roch' is different: "The Debarians speak of a very great bird, greater than any flying beast with feathers; it is called the roch or the zhiz and it nests far in the south, perhaps in Erdasia. It can lift even oliphants with its great talons. Its colour is bright white, allowing it to hide amongst the clouds of the sky"

Thelmar's work was widely and uncritically copied in Ordosia in the following centuries. This lead the writers of bestiaries to describe two increasingly divergent creatures: the simurgh, which at some point became an alternative name for the hippogriff, and the roc, which was eventually equated with the phoenix. So convoluted had the case of the simurgh become that when Ordosian travelers came to Erdasia in Imperial times in search of the catoblepas and the tarasque, they could not recognize the simurgh when they saw them. The first reports simply describe it as a "strange and terrifying gryphon-bird" and mention: "the locals call these immense beasts 'death-lords' in their language."

However, at the same time scholars were translating the lost works of Azaios from scrolls written in Masharasin and Madjastian. In there they came upon a proper description of a mysterous beast called zhyammarugh: "The zhyammarugh has a tail longer and more powerful than the gryphon, but otherwise similar. Its face is white, neck black, and the beak which precedes the vicious cutting teeth is pale in colour. The locals say the plumage of its body is blood-red from the blood of its victims, but I believe this to be its natural colour. The arms, which are clawed, are tawny in color where the skin is bare of feathers, as are the toes and legs. Red, white and black seem to alternate in its plumage, although I am told it may exhibit other colours as well."

"What comes to the arms and legs, these are the most interesting parts of the animal. While its head resembles that of a gryphon, it walks on its hind legs, which are described to be as strong and wide as trees, which they must be to carry the whole weight of the animal. Its taloned forelegs are like the arms of the basilisk, used for grasping and carrying prey; the zhyammarugh is said to carry animas as large as oxen in its arms. Thus its posture and walk must be more like that of an ostrich than a gryphon. Although the feathers on its arm are described as long, it is never implied to be capable of flight." This text comes from a manuscript written in Madjastian, in the Masharasin version the animal is called Zhimmurugh. Thus the simurgh was understood to be the same animal the Atal called the deathlord.

While explorers were still looking up to the skies in search of the mythical roc, an entirely different kind of discovery proved their efforts futile. A complete version of the ancient Dazmar epic "The Journey of Zinnoor" was found and translated, filling in the blanks missing from other surviving manuscripts. It had been popular in Dar-Isnar, but instead of translating it, the Debarians had written their own version of the tale, which often had only some elements in common with the original. This was the first time in millennia the entire story could be read in its original form, and it contained a full description of the rokh.

"The Journey of Zinnoor" told the tale of a Dazmar noble that fled from his homeland fearing for his life. He sailed with his men around the Malan ocean, encountering many strange creatures and foreign peoples. When they were in the land farthest in the south, half of his crew was imprisoned by the cannibalistic natives, and Zinnoor had to recover the egg of a rokh to buy their freedom. To reach the nest, the men disguised themselves using ox hides and were carried into the nest by the rokh, where rokh hatchlings were already dining on an oliphant. Being ignored by the rokh young, they seek to escape only to realize they would have to make a difficult climb down a cliff, unable to carry the enormous egg with them. They quickly weave a basket and lower the egg down with a rope, rescuing the imprisoned sailors just in time to escape the fury of the mother rokh looking for her egg.

The rokh described in "The Journey of Zinnoor" finally tied the descriptions of two animals into one. It was not described as flying, though its nest was located up on a cliff, and its arms were described as being feathered wings as well. Its colour is described only when its head, being white, is the only part of it visible against the night sky when it comes to grab Zinnoor disguised as an ox. At the end of the story it is said to run shaking the ground as it attacks, and grabbing on to natives with its hooked beak and claws. Not knowing the anatomy of the simurgh, Debarians had reinterpreted it as a white bird of prey in their version of the tale. They would also have missed the fact that the name Rokh appears to be derived from the Dazmar word 'rogh', which means violent death - a word that was loaned into Madjastian as 'rugh'.

What is interesting from a zoological point of view is the mention of an oliphant in Erdasia. A subspecies of the Arbaysian oliphant known as hajagh once lived in the land of Khai and Northern Erdasia, but became extinct during the Great Drought. It is quite possible the species once spread all the way to South Erdasia before being presumably hunted to extinction by the Atal. If so, relict populations may yet hide in the rainforests of Erdasia. While small for an oliphant, the hajagh would be too heavy for even a fully grown simurgh to carry, so the oliphant of the story may have been a calf or a youngster. Some however maintain the inclusion of the oliphant was an exaggeration typical for a tall tale, and doubt the existence of an Erdasian oliphant. 

What is known for certain is that a simurgh has enough strength in its stocky arms to carry a grown man effortlessly. They have a tendency of carry smaller prey or even chunks of large carcasses, which may be the reason why the palms and inner surfaces of their arms are bare of feathers. The elongated forearrm feathers seem to serve a dual purpose in display and brooding the eggs and hatchlings. The eggs themselves are roughly the size of a human head, so undoubtably hard to carry when scaling a cliff face, but the fact that simurghs do not nest in such awkward places suggests the author of the tale of Zinnoor in the nest of the rokh was perhaps a bit confused about the nature of the beast.

What all the old descriptions did get right is the large size. The simurgh is the largest predator in Erdasia, and quite possibly in all of Aren. Body lengths of 10 yards are not unheard of and body mass can be as high as 1.5 tons, though the largest individuals are limited to South Erdasia. As can be expected from such large carnivores, they target the largest prey species available, including catoblepi and several species of hippogryphs. If the Erdasian oliphant is or was a real species, it would most probably have been hunted by the simurgh. The Atal also maintain that the simurgh is the only animal that can best an owl-bear in a fight, though the existence of such a creature remains dubious.
The bestiary entry for Simurgh you can see above is about 45% original from 2006 and 55% written in November 2013. The reason is that while I finished writing the description in 2006, that file was wiped out entirely when the hard drive storing it died. The was no recent backup and the only surviving print was missing everything concerning the uncovering of the simurgh-roc connection as well as the description of the living animal itself. With so much time passed I could not remember in any meaningful detail what I had written originally. All I could do was write the missing half anew, which forced me to do rewrites to the remaining original text where it contradicted the new additions.

In case you are wondering why I decided to make the simurgh flightless and synonymous with the roc instead of creating a separate Argentavis-sized giant bird, the reason is simple: the giant aerial predator niche is completely overtaken by dragons. Geographical isolation allowed me to play with the convergent evolution of gryphoid and mammal lineages, but it doesn't work on animals that can fly over seas and mountains and have had 5 million years to radiate throughout the world.
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Hyrotrioskjan's avatar
Wonderfull written story/description =)

Quote: "In case you are wondering why I decided to make the simurgh flightless and synonymous with the roc instead of creating a separate Argentavis-sized giant bird, the reason is simple: the giant aerial predator niche is completely overtaken by dragons"

That's also my explanation for the lack of giant eagles (with two exceptions) in our world! :lol: