Wuppies
are small spirits belonging to the Lemures family and characterized by
their appearance of small floating octopuses, with two delicate antennae
positioned on the top of their heads.
Due
to their fragile nature, wuppies are unable to manifest themselves in
the real world; instead, they manifest themselves exclusively as shadows
on the background of walls, giving life to sinuous and fascinating
shapes that can easily fool the human eye.
Appearance
Wuppies are spirits of rather small dimensions, with a head
diameter of about ten centimeters when adults. In the spirit world,
wuppies have a fully black body, with two round luminous eyes, a pair
of semi-rigid antennae above the head and ten tentacles that emerge
from the lower part of the body.
They move by "swimming" in the air as if it were water.
They are specialists in camouflage, becoming transparent in an
instant, or completely black to blend in with the shadows. When in
groups, wuppies communicate through body movements, so that they
appear to dance around each other, spinning and spreading their
tentacles like the hems of a small skirt, as well as rising and
falling in wave-like patterns.
Wuppies are so weak that they are unable to manifest themselves in
the material world, at least not with a physical body, but only as
shadows on surfaces. It is possible, however, to see their natural
appearance, even from the material world, when they are in
correspondence with mirrors.
Life cycle
Wuppies paralarvae look extremely similar to adults, only much
smaller in size. Their diet and lifestyle are also identical to those
of adults.
The growth of baby wuppies is isometric from the start (the
proportions are preserved, only the size changes). The oldest
wuppies, those over seventy/eighty years of age, begin to lose the
very dark color of their surface, which fades to brick red; their
maximum lifespan is unknown and for this very reason: the elderly are
much more visible than the young and more easily preyed upon.
Wuppies are at the base of the food chain in many ecto-biomes.
Reproduction
Wuppi reproduction occurs throughout the year, but normally only
at extremely slow rates. When resources increase, however, wuppies
undergo what is commonly called a "reproductive festival",
in which all the specimens gather to feast and take advantage of the
opportunity to court each other.
Courtships take the form of ritual dances, in which all the
specimens make identical movements, which only seem chaotic to an
external eye, but are divided into two categories: those that move
clockwise and those that move counterclockwise. When a wuppi is
unable to repeat the moves in rhythm, it is excluded from the
festival. Those that manage to dance for a good period of time will
then practice temporary fusion, the main mode of propagation of
lemures, and create a new paralarva every time the fusion ends,
giving up a small part of their body mass, which will be combined
with that of the other specimen.
Although each fusion results in a single paralarva, wuppies are
exceptionally prolific, "mating" up to twenty times in a
row, in a day in which they have fed to satiety. Depending on the
availability of energy, food and shelter, wuppi can continue a
reproductive festival even for seven or eight days in a row, giving
birth to thousands and thousands of paralarvae perfectly suited to
survival, which in turn will be able to reproduce within a few weeks
from birth.
Habitat
Wuppi are rather common spirits, often present in correspondence
with anthropic environments.
They are found in hundreds, or even thousands, in the phantomhives
where powerful feudal lords reside, especially those who have an
affinity for heat.
Wuppis cannot stand the cold, so it is impossible to find them in
the Arctic Circles, while they are much more common in tropical and
subtropical areas. In cold geographical areas, they tend to gather
around fireplaces, while they are not accustomed to staying near
electric heaters, much preferring open flames. Like almost all
"domestic" spirits, they are not at risk of extinction,
being strongly linked to human activity and/or that of greater
spirits.
Diet
Wuppis are scavengers and opportunists, who are content with
little: they clean up the remains of other spirits' meals, eat
decomposing souls, and are even able to convert heat into energy for
their small bodies, absorbing it effectively thanks to their entirely
black livery.
They are not capable of killing even the smallest spirits, having
no predatory skills, and if their main source of nourishment moves,
they do it too, following it and creating the so-called "swarming
cloaks", that is, very compact groups of wuppies that act as a
sort of "shadow" (often perfectly tracing the original one)
of the more powerful spirits from which they depend.
Trivia
The wuppi was the first spirit of
the lemures group to be described and studied in detail.
It is thought that the brick red color of the older wuppi is
actually an evolutionary strategy to hide more effectively around
fireplaces. The gradual disappearance of fireplaces, in favor of
other types of house heating, has made this evolutionary strategy
obsolete and even dangerous to them.
