Luddy (SciiFii)

The luddy (Pascoquaticus ludibundus) is a species of medium-sized, featherless, pliosaur-like bird with smooth blue-green, brown, black and white skin. The luddy originally did not exist, but has since been created by SciiFii and introduced across the world's oceans to help boost biodiversity. The luddy is one of the only five living members of the porplet (Paelagiuvenatorinae) subfamily, which are most closely related to a widespread subfamily Carduelinae. Unlike the closely related daydreamers, the luddy is a herbivore that primarily feeds on many aquatic vegetation such as kelp. Due to being fully-aquatic, the luddies give birth to single live young rather than laying eggs. As a near-sapient porplet related to the daydreamers, the luddy frequently lives in close proximity to the fishing daydreamer. Luddies have learned over the decades to stick close to them for safety, not just from less benevolent daydreamer races, but other carnivorous animals too, as most predators are generally not able to distinguish between those daydreamers which only eat fish and those which will hunt anything they can catch. These inter-species interactions go back nearly as long as the fishing ecotype itself has existed, and so over the last decades the fishers have developed an overarching belief system that as the self-proclaimed physically strongest, most mentally advanced, and most certainly most moral of all the porplets, it is their role to play as a sort of protector to those species which are less able to defend themselves. This means that their culture is strongly tied to those of smaller and weaker, intelligent species like the luddy, and is thus itself a multi-species society, though unlike that of the gravedigger these interactions are more peripheral to day to day life, and none of them are between full equals. The luddy has the small and chubby appearance, which triggers protective parental instincts in daydreamers (at least those that have not been socially conditioned from childhood to eat them.) Fishers and luddies communicate verbally, both species adopting elements of language from the other over the decades, but luddies are incapable of high-concept thinking like daydreamers, and their conversations tend to be simplistic by necessity. The conservation status of the luddy is Least Concern due to successful conservation efforts, the luddy's wide range and its tolerance to many of the human activities.