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A Venture through the Oramond Fields, by Doctor Alaistar Stanton.
The Oramond Fields that surround the city of Rathleton hold many a marvel to behold. The grasslands are home to many small and larger animals, peaceful like the gloothworms and aggressive like the devourers. Indeed, glooth is what has given the fauna and flora of the isle its particular shape.
Studying old carcasses in the deeper earth layers have led me to believe the creatures may have looked differently in earlier centuries. Glooth residue varies in the bones, indicating the creatures absorbed it somehow and were changed by it - the bones are similar, but not quite alike those of today's animal inhabitants.
The flora of Oramond is less developed than the fauna. Again, I believe the glooth to be the reason. Though in earlier days, maybe the climate was milder too before the mists closed in. The few trees that grow in the shelter of the city centre are the last remnants of forests that must have once covered the southern grasslands. But when the weather grew colder and darker through the mist clouding the skies and keeping off the warm winds, they must have retreated. The gloothworms, revelling in damp and cold earth, spread, and I believe their soaking the earth with glooth residue must have prevented the tree seeds from growing again. The grazing animals consequently chose to eat more of the glooth-imbibed grasses, and adapted to the changed environment, while the carnivores, feeding on them in turn, absorbed the glooth through their prey.
Though much of this is still theory, I am confident that through ongoing research I will one day have a reliable amount of data on the natural history of Oramond to prove my assumptions right.