Yrinths are deep sea-dwelling creatures with long lifespans and relatively short gestation periods. Given time and assuming that all goes well, Yrinths slowly grow into megafauna that can be thousands of kilometers tall and width. However, due to environmental pressures and overall ecological competition between creatures, high mortality rate is expected.
As of currently, there are only 7 adult Yrinths in the world, all residing within their respective oceans.
A Yrinth's biology is capable of amphibious traversal on both land and sea, though their biology is much more adapted to living in the sea due to how they feed. What knowledge is known about them at this time is that such creatures, despite their weird appearance, are taxonomically related to the phylum cnidria. Yrinths are more akin to a colony of coral polyps that are much more advanced than their taxonomic relatives. And with more complex species come cell specialization.
For the record, Yrinth polyp specialization isn't complex enough to the similarities most animal organs. Thus, they are more like pseudo-organs. These pseudo-organs are made specialized polyps that have adapted to function in similar ways that we understand as organs, though the big difference is that anatomically speaking, the organs of a Yrinth are typically located in a heavily protected hunchback section of their body. Much of the body that is seen is more like an extension of muscle and exoskeleton.
Young Yrinths usually live in the Photic Zone of the oceans where they hatch and feed on local wildlife. They are omnivorous, and as they turn into adults, their need for consuming both aquatic plant and animal life is ceased to a halt. As they age, they slowly descend into the deeper depths of the oceans, eventually resting upon the very bottom of the Benthic realm (though current ocean depth estimates indicate there may be deeper depths they reside in). Once reproducing (an automatic process), the adults then begin to age and decay whilst alive, their bodies providing life to the ocean around them.
Due to the size they grow as adults, most adults simply communicate with one another through currently unknown means as they watch over their children as they grow. The adults have contained themselves through self-imposed inaction, even if it may result in the detriment of their children. This inaction is the main reason why Yrinth children mortality rate is so high. However, it's not the only case. Due to the natural long lifespans of Yrinths, they tend to learn about many things in their infancy where humans would in their later adult lives. So it's not unheard of for infant Yrinths to be depressed or pessimistic.
Much of Yrinth culture is based on the past knowledge of their ancestral kin. In a process akin to organ transplantation, Yrinths can transfer one's own specialized polyps to other should they need to. The adults themselves act as polyp donation (as long as the specified polyp population isn't decaying), and said adults contain preserved pieces of old generation polyps that are aggregated for future generations. When a young Yrinth becomes and adult, they are given access to such polyps so they may harbor such knowledge for the generations after them.
Such implications for younger generations potentially trying to get the polyps by themselves are impossible for 1 reason. The reason is that whatever information they may be looking for will be divided amongst more polyps than they could count (assuming they actually got the knowledge to do so). Even if they did, the nutrional amount required to maintain such cells would immediately sap the rest from the other cells.
Because of their method of knowledge transferrance being so direct, Yrinths can remember certain events quite clearly. Though, that is assuming that the knowledge and physical health of the polyps in question have not decayed or have been damaged in any way. Because of this, brain polyps are often the most heavily protected of all speacialized polyps.
Yrinths are an ancient species that layed within the oceans of the world, living and giving life to the watery depths below. They are a forgotten species of people who have occassionally come from the ocean to see the sights on land. Though their reasons or keeping to themselves are yet to be known, their existence has now recently become a fresh memory in the humans of the world that had forgotten them all those centuries ago.
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