Thallis, Third planet of the star system, Rigel. More commonly known as the Planet of Exile. Many creatures are exiled on this planet including the following for which references are available.
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Severely schizophrenic creature whose vicious right head has a nasty habit of inflicting grievous wounds on the rather passive left head. This greatly reduces the life expectancy of the unfortunate emu as there just aren't enough brains inside a single head for the creature to stay alive. The only way the left head can keep the right head at bay is to send it to sleep by reading it Zilurian love poems. For the emus of Thwark, hunting for new volumes of love poems is even more important than hunting for food.
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A medium-sized rodent originating from the planet of Lawn. This planet can justifiably claim to be the most boring in the entire Universe, with a surface totally covered in one vast grassy sward kept at a uniform height by a legion of quallies. This creature has an unusual jaw development allowing its teeth to work in a rotary movement and consume the grass in a mowing action. Lawn is now a very prosperous planet with two main sources of income. Firstly the export of quallies to conservationist planets as a replacement for lawnmowers and secondly from tourism centred around having the only arena in the Universe for playing mega croquet. This particularly devious game requires a playing area of twenty five million square miles of immaculately kept grass surface and also keeps the entire population in permanent employment as referees to prevent the two players, who can go several years without seeing each other, from cheating. Quallies have very poor eyesight; there's not much need for it on Lawn, there's nothing to see. This can have drawbacks in their use as lawnmowers as they tend to mow by touch rather than by sight. It is not advisable to keep a qually if you have a thick pile carpet or a hairy cat. Back to top |
| To most eyes flufflelumps appear as just about the cutest and cuddliest creatures imaginable. Most beings find them totally irresistible and despite whatever warnings that may be given let them roam all over their person. As they lick you with stunning sensuality you are lulled into a totally false feeling of security and well- being. The truth is that your very life's blood is being drawn away with every lick of the flufflelump. |
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The appearance of the flufflelump is very much an illusion, the image the brain receives being telepathically transmitted from the flufflelump itself. Only a complex computer will reveal them to be the totally repulsive blood suckers they really are and one would have no compunction at all about squashing one did they appear in their true shape and form. As it is, the only creature recorded to have squashed a flufflelump is the rather clumsy ganglescruncher of Parn over some one thousand years ago.
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Treads a very fine metabolic tightrope between oblivion in a pool of water or as a frost-shattered pile of ice crystals. This creature is unusual in not having a normal skeletal structure as we know it but relies for support and rigidity on the freezing of fluid in special capillaries throughout its body. Temperature is therefore the biggest single governing force in the life of an ice monster. Too warm and the ice melts causing the monster to collapse and drown in its own vital fluids. Too cold and the extra expansion will shatter the capillaries reducing the monster to a pile of broken fragments. Consequently there are more weather forecasters per head of population on Thargon than on any other planet in the Universe. On Thargon even more time is spent discussing the weather than in the northern temperate regions of the planet Earth.
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Almost certainly the most obnoxious creature yet to be catalogued by the Encyclopaedia Galactica. The snottoid emits hideous quantities of vile green snot from its giant proboscis (this correspondent was inclined to prefer the word "mucus", but I'm afraid it just didn't convey the true nature of this extremely unpleasant secretion). The snot is relatively harmless in small amounts but in the vast quantity in which it usually accumulates around the snottoid it can be deadly chiefly due to its horrendous smell and extremely glutinous nature. In fact in an enclosed space and without a mega-handkerchief the snottoid is likely to perish under a mountain of its own secretion. If it weren't for the invention of the mega-handkerchief the snottoid would almost certainly be extinct by now. This truly amazing piece of technology, capable of absorbing and dissipating any sticky fluid of any chemical composition whatsoever, would certainly be the single most useful item for any cosmic backpacker, but for the fact that the handkerchief weighs over five tons.
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Urks are perhaps the most unusual creatures in the entire Universe. They have the obscurest reproductive system of any creature yet catalogued in the Encyclopaedia Galactica, which devotes a whole volume to the amazingly intricate mechanism. Relying much on the theory of infinite improbability, the process ends up producing urks of the most peculiar shape and form. It is quite common for urks to appear in the shape of unlikely everyday objects and the one shown here has taken on the form of a teapot. Unfortunately, most of these guises fail to give the urk much chance of survival. This one for example is extremely likely to get poured out and drunk and needs a constant supply of fresh tea bags to prevent itself getting stewed. Most urks have a very short life expectancy.
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A relation of the famous and ever-pervasive goblins, which seem to be found at every far corner of the known Universe. This particular species is more mischievous than anything else and is often found creating havoc by the misuse of magic spells. The mischief is usually quite unintended but the gobhoblin in common with all his related species has a really awful memory and more often than not gets the spell wrong with the most unfortunate and unlikely results. The principal diet of the gobhoblin is that of magic wild berries which are essential in sustaining their magic powers.
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Although kind in heart, flooks tend to lead a singularly lonely existence. This is principally due to their disgustingly scruffy appearance and the fact that they talk extremely loudly. The raised voice of a flook has in fact been measured at ten decibels higher than the mighty wailing lion of Jungooda. Although in possession of a perfectly good pair of ears, flooks are nonetheless stone deaf due to the vast pile of hair separating their ears from the outside world. Many creatures have tried to broach the flook's personal hygiene problem with them but success has been very limited since they now seem to be smellier than ever. This is perhaps not too surprising since the diet of the flook consists solely of a particularly nasty variety of cheese, slymewold, which apparently takes two centuries to mature to full potency.
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An odd name for a very odd creature. Spiny normans are extremely large animals but are at the same time very timid. When frightened a spiny norman will panic, causing it to run around in circles for a short while. Because of its great size it usually leaves a terrible trail of destruction in its wake. Spiny normans eat a lot of maggots. In fact it is essential for them to eat a large number of maggots for without the rare minerals that they provide, subtle chemical imbalances occur within their skin. This has the rather unsubtle effect of causing the ejection of its spines at a fearsome velocity. It was a particularly large spiny norman that triggered off Cosmic War Four when a spray of ejecting spines was mistaken for a nuclear missile attack. Back to top |
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Googly birds are phenomenally nasty but very sleepy. Googly birds in fact spend nearly all of their extremely long lifespan asleep and object very strongly to being woken up. Undisturbed, a googly bird has been known to nod off for over a thousand years. Their nasty streak only surfaces they are woken up, upon which they flap about for a short while, releasing a deadly energised thread which instantly destroys anything it makes contact with. The reason for it spending so much time asleep is that the googly bird isn't all that happy with life. They are totally paranoid: so nervous in fact that unless left in complete peace and quiet they need a constant supply of tranquillisers in order to prevent a total nervous breakdown.
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A cross between a unicorn, a dragon and a crocodile and possessing qualities of each. It has the enigmatic charm of the unicorn, the fire-breathing ferociousness of the dragon and the laziness of the crocodile. For most of its time the unidragodile is perfectly happy engaging in erudite conversation with itself, but should it be provoked sufficiently it becomes incredibly violent and likely to set fire to anything nearby. Unidragodiles are becoming very rare. Back to top |
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A relative of the terrestrial domestic cat but differing very significantly in having a large number of very sharp spines which are doubly dangerous for being tipped with an extremely toxic poison. This is most unfortunate for the pricklepuss, since in common with its earthly counterpart it has a desperate craving for affection. For obvious reasons though, it finds the utmost difficulty in getting this affection and often as a last resort ends up befriending a creature like the snottoid who is usually so plastered in snot that it is rendered impervious to the poisonous spines. Pricklespusses feed mainly on fish, the eating of which is the only real pleasure in life they get, usually cheering it up after it's accidentally poisoned to death yet another prospective owner.
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