Prehistory

Avishraa's crust cools sufficiently - and is hit by infrequent enough heavy impactors - for water to condense out of its atmosphere and form the oceans.

The first animals appear, though they are at this point little more than sponges.

Having been approaching each other for the last hundred million cycles or so, Seluurin's Palace begins its first collision with the lenticular galaxy later known as the Mists of Khezri. As with most galactic 'collisions', one passes through the other with virtually no physical strikes, but their mutual gravitational pull ties them together and distorts their shapes. Mikurmiya is pulled outward toward the edge of the galaxy.

The first hexapods appear. These are descended from long-finned fish that use their limbs as navigational aids among the dense vegetation growing in the shallow waters of wetlands.

While hexapods capable of leaving the water have now existed for some time, their eggs had to be laid in water. The development of eggs with a protective layer allowing them to be laid on land allows them to roam further away, and feast on the invertebrates that have thus far had inland areas to themselves. Early in hexapod history, the tantines diverged from the common ancestors of the nitvighines and zalkines.

A clade of small, arboreal zalkines whose lifestyle had previously involved leaping between branches in dense forest - not unlike Earthly squirrels - develop their anterior limbs into wide, flat surfaces for gliding: the draconiforms. They enjoy modest success in the equatorial rainforests, feeding on seeds, nuts, and fruit, though the air is currently dominated by flying nitvighines.

Sea level rise over the past few hundred thousand cycles triggers a widespread shift in habitat distribution and accompanying mass extinctions. The preferred lowland forests of the draconiforms are temporarily decimated, but the appearance of extensive marshes and, eventually, mangroves, spur them to develop the capacity for true flight, and to adapt to a piscivorous diet. This proves to be the beginning of a period of adaptive radiation, with draconiforms diversifying into niches once held by nitvighine species now extinct or in decline. Most of them are small- to medium-sized fliers.

While the radiation of draconiform species never fully stopped, its impetus fades by this time as the new dry period gathers strength; by now they have become a ubiquitous sight around the coasts and oceans of the world.

While the earliest draconiforms had spread easily along coasts and other water bodies, residing permanently in continental interiors, beginning around 1.3 million CBP, had proven difficult until the advent of another wet period in Avishraan history. Among these are the first takmoids, who occupy a niche not unlike those of Earthly wading birds, having long legs, a long neck, and a long, narrow muzzle. Their descendants slowly grow larger and less dependent on flight for their living.

By the time that the wet period had ended, many takmoids had taken up lifestyles that took them away from the water and into the wider grasslands for lengthy periods. The lineage known as the takmids are among the largest and sturdiest; though they spend much of their time ambushing prey on land, they retain an affinity for the water and for fish.

At the time bipedalism appeared, the takmids had already begun to diverge into separate populations, separated by mountains. The tendency developed more fully in those residing in the Sea of Grass, but for those in what is now the brightness, an alternation between bipedal and quadripedal stances became the norm. By this time, the two groups have fully separated, and are known as the dvidalins and takmins respectively.

Though the Brightness is, at this time, a grassland, it was already drier than the Sea of Grass and has been becoming drier all the time. This has driven a tendency, in the takmins, for multiple males to bring food to female nests for aid in child-rearing, which in turn has led to a more fully-developed cooperative polyandry in which several one or more males actually reside with a female on a long-term basis. This development roughly coincided with several other sociobiological shifts that resulted in the development of the first takmin societies above the level of packs, of female dominance hierarchies, and presumably of language.

With their habitat continuing to shrink, the proto-takmar begin to strike out from the river valleys and oases they have been inhabiting. While some of them are able to join the proto-xtauh, with whom interbreeding is still possible, others migrate through the somewhat more hospitable foothills of the spine_of_sirdanth. While there are already other proto-takmar living here, it provides a useful corridor to other lands, and bands of proto-takmar use it to go around or through the mountains toward the foothills on the southern side. Over several subsequent waves of migration, the cerulean_tangle is also colonized.

Gene flow between the two populations has almost entirely ceased; the two have effectively become separate species, the takmar and the xtauh. Spongiform scales, the genes for which are derived from the same ones that produced cavitated scales, have begun to appear with greater frequency among the takmar.