Well, the cloud was sorta like that. When you give life, sentience, and magic to a temporary weather feature, that's a bit on the silly side. None o fthem really went sillier than that - though I suppose I might now have to think of a few, if I ever go back to the world.
Also, one more race.
Handsquids. Results of extensive biomagical manipulation and enchantment. The trick here is that they're the size of smallish dogs - and in the worldstructure they live in, that's just too small to support the brainmatrix necessary to hold enough soul to be fully sentient... so they kludge. A fully adult handsquid has basically no brainpower associated with memory. Instead, they have runes of information storage shaped into their flesh. They also have runes that essentially seal extra Soul inside them, and they tend to be partner-bonded with another sentient, who generally takes care of thinking about the broad range of things that one can think about so that the handsquids can really focus (as focused intelligence, in this world, was more efficient at containing Soul than the more general "getting through the day" stuff. Oh - and they tended to fly, when not in the water, and specialized in magics of creation and, by extension, ranged destruction. ("Okay. I want to create a whole lot of Radiation-tainted Fire in that spot over there, right... *now*.")
Their childhoods were particularly interesting, since they *really* didn't have enough complexity to hold a Soul at that age. After a period of time in the eggs, in an area saturated by Soul, with occasional bursts of information being called into their minds by their parents, a swarm of handsquid would hatch all at once, and would actually herd a batch of communal Soul between them, trying to maintain and increase it until they could grow old enough to absorb the stuff individually. Baby handsquid never stop moving, thinking, or talking with one another, and they do all of these things with a *tremendous* amount of energy. Think about the more sympathetic breed of mad scientist, and that way that they get when they're getting really excited about SCIENCE!. Have that image? Baby handsquid are like that All The Time. about Everything.
Also, one more race.
Handsquids. Results of extensive biomagical manipulation and enchantment. The trick here is that they're the size of smallish dogs - and in the worldstructure they live in, that's just too small to support the brainmatrix necessary to hold enough soul to be fully sentient... so they kludge. A fully adult handsquid has basically no brainpower associated with memory. Instead, they have runes of information storage shaped into their flesh. They also have runes that essentially seal extra Soul inside them, and they tend to be partner-bonded with another sentient, who generally takes care of thinking about the broad range of things that one can think about so that the handsquids can really focus (as focused intelligence, in this world, was more efficient at containing Soul than the more general "getting through the day" stuff. Oh - and they tended to fly, when not in the water, and specialized in magics of creation and, by extension, ranged destruction. ("Okay. I want to create a whole lot of Radiation-tainted Fire in that spot over there, right... *now*.")
Their childhoods were particularly interesting, since they *really* didn't have enough complexity to hold a Soul at that age. After a period of time in the eggs, in an area saturated by Soul, with occasional bursts of information being called into their minds by their parents, a swarm of handsquid would hatch all at once, and would actually herd a batch of communal Soul between them, trying to maintain and increase it until they could grow old enough to absorb the stuff individually. Baby handsquid never stop moving, thinking, or talking with one another, and they do all of these things with a *tremendous* amount of energy. Think about the more sympathetic breed of mad scientist, and that way that they get when they're getting really excited about SCIENCE!. Have that image? Baby handsquid are like that All The Time. about Everything.