Coral, Wind-Tower Land Coral

Wind-Tower land Corals

The greatest of wind-towers, over 100 feet tall, have trunks composed not merely of cemented organic stone but have infusions of metallic ores garnered by their root-structures from deep in the earth. The thickness of the shell that comprised the hollow trunk grows thicker over time, starting at but 2' thick for a 20' tall baby pipe to 50' thick stone shells for 100' giants. Titians-class wind-towers, between an hundred and a thousand foot in height, are unlikely to have trunks with greater thickness; they rely on superior materials and flying buttresses.

Hooded wind-towers are topped by a single great cowl or a cluster of smaller cowls, set to face in to the prevailing wind. The cowls may face a single direction, but where the wind has two significant sources, two-faced Janis towers are common, whether in lands of seasonal monsoon winds or as along coasts or lakeshores where the wind is off the land in morning and off the water in the evening. In areas where the winds are more erratic, the wind-towers develop their cowls with greater radial symmetry, setting them to take advantage of breezes coming from every direction.

Wind-towers funnel wind in by means of their hoods or cowls, draw it down their trunks, and expel it at either the base, a bit above ground level, or deeper, in to some cavern system in the earth below. Wind-towers are either bonded to bedrock, whether at the surface or some distance down in to the earth, or have deep-drilled stony root-like extensions anchoring them firmly in the depths; wind towers grow to withstand hurricane and typhoon winds.

In most cases, the wind-towers take in the passing breezes passively. In some cases, they seem to exert an influence related to telekinesis and actively draw air towards them. This may be a non-intelligent psychic power generated by the thousands or even millions of polyps within, or a similar nature-magic effect. The effect may be subtle, but some create a constant whirlwind effect.

Wind-towers can be divided in to two classes, throat-catchers and pit-stomached. Throat-catchers catch aero-plankton as it passes through their pipes. The interiors of throat-catchers are bizarre gauntlet-gullets populated by a complex array of polyps, each specializing in snaring a particular sub-class of aero-plankton. The various polyps are set in stony-shelled cells, much as the polyps of common sea corals are. Feather-filter polyps wave baleen-like combs in the wind funneled past them; these may seem very like barnacles. Catch-crabs are like hermit crabs, their bodies set safe in lining cells while they reach out into the passing wind stream with snatching claws. Spitting polyps target passing prey particles with sticky strands, like silk gins. Less complicated but quite effective are those polyps which simply secrete a viscous mucilaginous fluid which coats the interior of the throat; this is excreted, ingested, and then re-excreted continually, all the sumptuous aero-plankton caught in it extracted for digestion.

Pit-stomached wind-towers use a different strategy. In them, the wind is funneled directly down the tower until it reaches a great pit, half-filled with a digestive fluid. The wind passes over the surface of the pit and then is directed back up a short ways before being expelled, either into a cavern system or above ground. While passing over the pit, the wind goes through an opening divided in to innumerable vertical slits, like a comb or a grill of vertical panels. This causes any particles in the wind stream to be knocked out, falling in to the pool of digestive fluid.

Despite tales of wind-towers symphonizing with melodies so mellifluous as to enthrall passersby, enchanting them to climb in and cast themselves in to the digestive pit, practically all wind-towers are harmless. Indeed, many Folk in warm places have been known to cultivate them as natural air conditioners.

Whirlwind wind-towers are an exception. Whether by psycho-kinetic powers or as a phenomenon of natural magic, whirlwind towers are able to project directed tornado-like winds to sweep the lands and skies about them, seeking to suck in prey. The range of a whirlwind tower is generally three or four times its height; heights range from 5 to 500 feet, depending on age and resources.

Being themselves inoffensive does not make wind-towers universally harmless; that depends upon their tenants. Practically all advanced wind-towers are hosts to mixed communities of tenants. These tenants provide the polyps with much additional food, both material dropped from meals the tenants bring home from their travels outside and in the form of excrement dropped down the shaft, to be snagged by throat-catchers or to rain directly down in to the pit of digestive fluids below. The majority of tenants are harmless to passersby, but many a colony of horrific critters has discovered the advantages of lairing in the shelter of these great towers of sturdy stone.

Wind-towers may form part of a reef mountain, which SEE, their great trunks rising up in to the air like living chimneys above the reef coral with which the wind-tower's buttresses merge.

Stands of the rare mellifluous wind-towers are like colossal lving flute-trees, the winds playing unearthly, Aeolian tunes upon their pierced stony trunks. Attempts as cultivating the slow-growing mellifluous wind-towers have not met with any success. Transplanting attempts have also failed, but many a royal garden features a stand of dead mellifluous wind-towers, great coralwood flutes adding an aural element to the refined landscape.

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Last update Apr 4, 2006