Get three extinct animals raised to life as monsters in D&D: https://www.scintilla.studio/extinction

Episode transcript: https://scintilla.studio/monster-extinction-florida-fairy-shrimp

Guides:

Tierra Curry, Senior Scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity

https://twitter.com/TierraMussel

Did you like this stat block? Let me know on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SparkOtter

"Extinction Theme" by Alexandre Miller, The Boy King of Idaho

Oh my goodness.

That's amazing.

I love it.

Super strong and powerful, and it just

captures all the weirdness and complexity

of fairy shrimp because they're such

weirdos and they're so mysterious and you

don't necessarily think of "fairy shrimp"

as being tough, but they're so tough.

Like their cysts can live, they

can withstand drying, freezing

heat, solidity, outer space.

They're just like waiting for conditions

to be right to spring, back to life.

Hello, and welcome to Making a

Extinction., The bite-sized

podcast, where we explore the

history of species extinct from the

real world and retell their stories

as Dungeons and Dragons monsters.

It's all a part of Book of

Extinction, a monster manual of

extinct species resurrected for D&D.

I and the team at Mage Hand Press are

proud to announce our partnership with

the Center for Biological Diversity

to protect endangered species by

raising money through the first

three monsters in the book before

it comes to Kickstarter in 2022.

The Center directly inspired one of

the first entries I wrote for the

book through their advocacy for the

now extinct Florida fairy shrimp.

One of the scientists who worked

on that petition is Tierra Curry.

And I asked her to take a look at the

monster I came up with and how our artists

had rendered it based on some of the

earliest advocacy work in her career.

This is a story of near misses and perfect

timing, more than 10 years in the making.

And I'm so excited to share it.

We'll be taking an exclusive sneak peek

at new art from Book of Extinction.

So if you want to see what we're seeing in

this interview, you can visit the episode

page at scintilla.studio/extinction, or

just follow the link in the description.

So I'm Tierra Curry.

I'm a senior scientist at the Center

for Biological Diversity, and I direct

our Saving Life on Earth campaign, which

is a focus campaign to raise awareness

of extinction and getting people

involved in the fight to end extinction.

You know, I'm a journalist by

training and a game designer by choice,

and neither of those are conservation

scientists, so I'm really grateful to have

you on board to keep me on the straight

and narrow and make sure that the research

that I've done matches your experience

of the world and this field in particular

I think you're pretty

solidly moving into being a bonafide

conservationist with all of the

advocacy and research that you're doing.

I think you can add that to your title.

I will, thank you.

I wanted to be there when we talked

about the Florida fairy shrimp, because

the way that I generated the list of

extinct animals that we were going to

be using was by just Googling lists of

extinct animals and, looking at some

and a couple of books on the subject.

Then just kind of, you know, what were

the ones that showed up every single time?

The, the Tasmanian tiger, the passenger

pigeon, the Carolina parakeet, those

consistently make the top of the list

and then kind of working my way down

to fill out another 70 to 100 slots.

And one of the ones that came up was

your press release on the Florida

fairy shrimp and the Florida rainbow

snake, which is back in 2011.

And it's kind of, it's kind of funny

in a way you could say that that press

release is the whole reason that, we

were able to make this partnership

happen because I don't know that I

would have, I like to think I would

have run into the Center eventually.

But I don't think it would have been

nearly as cool if if we didn't have this

Yeah, I

think it's really cool too.

And I'm actually excited that you kind of

made this reveal all mysterious because

I've been in my head this morning.

I was like, what's a Fairy

Shrimp going to look like?

Which is one of the questions we've had

about this species all along, right?

Like no one has a photo of it.

There's a couple of specimens

in jars, so I'm really excited

to see it brought to life.

Let me paint a picture for you.

I wanted the Florida fairy shrimp on

the list and I didn't start working on

it until after I had given a brief to

my artist, but it was late October and

I suddenly realized just how little we

know about the Florida fairy shrimp.

And I was trying to figure out

how on earth we're going to do it.

I worked on it all day and I got

nowhere and I gave up and went to bed.

And at 11 o'clock, I had it, I

got up, I came back downstairs

and I wrote for like three hours

and that's how we got, but we got,

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I see that.

I see that The Book of

Extinction first page.

Should I scroll forward?

yep.

There's 1, 2, 3 others.

Before you get to the Florida

fairy shrimp, I'm hugely

excited about each of these.

This is the most

words anyone's written about

the Florida fairy shrimp.

It's totally living again through this.

Oh my goodness!

That's amazing!

I love it!

Super strong and powerful, and it

just captures all the weirdness and

complexity of fairy shrimp because

they're, they're such weirdos and

they're so mysterious and you don't

necessarily think of fairy shrimp as

being tough, but they're so tough.

Like their cysts can live, they

can withstand drying, freezing

heat, solidity, outer space.

They're just like waiting for conditions

to be right to spring, back to life.

And then there they are.

And like the, the energy behind

this picture totally captures that.

It's just waiting for the right moment.

And then boom, there it is.

It's perfect.

There are still just such little weirdos.

Like they swim upside down.

They're see-through.

One of the problems with the Florida fairy

shrimp is like, it might come to life once

every 15 years when conditions are right.

So if someone would have to be there

at the right moment to, to find it.

It, so it makes their conservation

challenging too, because you're trying

to protect an area where someone might

not have seen something for, for decades.

And, and because you're doing this project

and you have this awesome illustration

where people are going to be curious

about the fairy shrimp and maybe like, be

willing to go look at it, or if they're

out and they see something weird in a

puddle, they can put it on ice naturalists

then, and it could be an obscure

undiscovered or rediscover fairy shrimp.

Is it true that these are this

in the same type as a sea monkeys?

Do you remember?

I do remember seeing

monkeys like you, you would buy the

little kid and add water or send away

for them and they would send them to you.

I don't know what species sea monkeys are,

but that probably like, it sounds right.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a order Anastroca, that also

includes brine shrimp, which are

more commonly known as sea monkeys.

And I did get to write about this.

It's called diapause.

The ability to enter a dormant state

where growth and metabolism are arrested.

And the diapause

for these guys, conditions can

just go crazy and they'd pop up

again when conditions are right.

So they can withstand fire or drought

or a blizzard, probably not going

to get a blizzard in Florida, but

they're just so resilient until someone

comes along and paves their habitat.

And then, and then that's the end.

But short of that, their whole

life strategy is to withstand

hardship and then spring into

action at the right point in time.

They're a perfect monster.

When we talk about this on

the writing team, it's history and

lore, so history is what it actually

was and how it actually came to be.

And then lore is the stuff that

I'm making up for the game.

And there's, you know, usually

between 600 to a thousand words

of, of history, assuming I can

find it, this one's a little short.

And then for the history section I've

added the stat block, so you can see

on the top of page 12, this is if I

were to just take the fairy shrimp

as it was known, in the real world.

These are the numbers and abilities

and traits that it would have.

So every creature has, you know, armor

class, hit points, speed, and these

six different statistics that define

its ability to interact with the world.

strength, dexterity,

and constitution, and then three mental:

intelligence, wisdom and charisma.

And for, for this creature,

all of them are very low.

Cause it's a tiny beast.

It's the smallest animal

category that I can make it.

And then I've, I've rewritten

diapause for Dungeons and Dragons.

And I think if Wizards of the Coast had

had something called diapause in the game,

they might call it drought resistance.

Yeah, that, that make sense.

That's definitely one of the,

their life history strategies.

Like the whole reason they're found

in these small bodies of water is

to avoid predation because they're

such a key part of the food chain.

And so by popping up in these

very temporary pools, they

avoid the larger predators that

have to have permanent water.

So drought resistance is their

key to survival over the long run.

I want to look at one more thing

I have your press release and I want

to talk about how, how that came to be.

So this was, October 5th, 2011, a

little more than 10 years to the day from

" The Florida

fairy shrimp is an all too common gut

punch story of too little too late.

The species was known from a single

population living in a pool, just

south of Gainesville, Florida.

It was originally described in 1956.

It was reclassified as an

entirely separate genus in 2002,

making it even more unique.

Returning to review the animal

for endangered status in 2011,

researchers found the pool had

been paved over by developers,

rendering the species extinct."

Did I get it right?

Is that kinda how it, went?

Yes.

So one interesting detail is the

scientist who found the fairy shrimp,

he collected a couple specimens in

the 1930s, had them like in a jar in

his workshop and didn't publish the

description of the species until 1956.

So it became known as an official species

to science in 56, but he had collected

it in 19 I think 1939, the late 1930s.

And so the area where the vernal

pools were, where he got it, was then

developed, but there's still a lot

of natural habitat around that area.

So there are people, there are scientists

at the Florida Natural Areas Inventory who

think that it could still be out there.

It's just that, because it can

go into diapause for more than a

decade, a researcher would have

to be there at exactly the right

time in this undeveloped habitat.

So we have no evidence that this,

that this particular species

still exists because fairy shrimp,

because of their life history

strategy, they're highly endemic.

They're just found in these little

areas cause they only spring to life

in these temporary pools of water.

So of course you're going to have like

a lot of species in different areas.

But this one, because there are

natural areas not far from where it was

discovered, it could still be out there.

And so the scientist that I talked

to in Florida, he wants people in

the Gainesville area like when it

rains to go look in puddles and, and

take pictures of the fairy shrimp or

collect a few and send them to him

because it might still be out there.

Because the whole area, it's

not like Miami, the whole

area hasn't been developed.

There's still some natural

areas around this particular

locality, south of Gainesville.

That's amazing.

It is!

And I think like, because you're

doing this project, people

might become interested in it.

And so there's a greater chance that

citizen scientists would be like,

cause see, I thought that's what

Fish and Wildlife Service would do.

When we petitioned for endangered

species act protection.

I, I was a lot more idealistic and younger

and naive about how things actually work.

And I was like, "Stop the presses!

It could be extinct!

Go find it!

We don't want to lose a species."

And I didn't realize that there there's

not that much of a sense of urgency,

that I still think that there should be.

I think there should

be a sense of urgency.

If it's out there, let's protect

all of the areas where it lives.

but it could be out there.

Oh, there's two things

I want to hit with that.

One is that I have the, because

the internet is amazing, I

have the article by Ralph W.

Dexter, I have his description

of the fairy shrimp.

okay.

I'm not going to be able to pronounce this

at all, but here we go, "A morphological

re-evaluation of the anostracan families

Linderiellidae and Polyartemiidae, with a

redescription of the linderiellid Dexteria

floridana," our Florida fairy shrimp.

From what I understand this paper's

argument that the Florida fairy shrimp

can be thought of as a distinct species

hinges on a morphological re-evaluation

of the creature in particularly,

the way its genitals are shaped.

Yeah,

that's really common in

Is it really?

Yes, spring snails in

particular, the species are based

on the shape of their penises.

And so they have like different

lobes or knobs or, or ducts.

And that's how you have, like,

you have to collect them and

get an electron microscope and

like study them in great detail.

And so the 2002 paper that, that

reclassifies this one, a lot of it

is based on its penile morphology.

That's amazing.

That's a detail that didn't make the book.

There's a couple of things

based on this conversation.

I'm probably going to have

to add back into the entry.

Even at a second cut, I don't

know if penile morphology

is going to be one of them.

Just to add, to

like all of this strange things

about this animal, right?

Another super interesting thing about

them is as they go through their different

larval stages of development, they have

different numbers of eyes and different

numbers of arms and legs, like the instars

gain complexity, they start out with one

eye spot and they end up with two eye

stalks or they're started out like with

a couple appendages and then end up with

11 or it's just, it's they're so weird!

I know if you were trying to just sit

down and brainstorm up a super weird

little monster, like I wouldn't have been

creative enough to come up with this.

Starts with one eye, ends up with

two; starts out with six arms

and legs ends, up with 11 pairs.

22, I guess.

That's one of the particular

difficulties of designing for

Dungeons and Dragons is because it

has this, this really interesting

dichotomy between hero and monster.

Mostly for copywriting reasons,

anything that is not a player

character, anything with one of

these stat blocks is a monster.

So a person, a frog, a tiny shrimp

fairy, all considered monsters

and monsters don't level up.

Heroes level up.

That's what heroes do.

You go from level one through 20, and it

might take you three to five years, but

that's kind of the course of the game.

So there's a weird disconnect when you

try to bring naturalism and conservation,

too much verisimilitude to the real world

to Dungeons and Dragons because you can't

necessarily write a creature that goes

through several stages of development.

I had to kind of pick one and I might

be able to, I might be able to use the

same statlock block for both the for

both the larva and the shrimp, or,

and the adult, but I can cause some of

these numbers are so small and there's

so little here that I don't think

mechanically, it would change much.

But I wish I could have told people that

it starts with one eye in three legs

and ends up with two eyes and 22 legs.

Cause that's crazy.

Yeah, three

pairs of legs starts with three

Oh, three pairs.

pairs.

But even like even egg is what's so

amazing because the tough little egg

cyst is what can survive everything.

Like sometimes I wish I could just take

a break from life, an existent, wait for

things, things to improve, or just like

take a long break and then come out, "Pow!

I'm ready now!

The fairy shrimp, or

rather the shrimp fairy, cause

I kind of switched it around.

I needed them to have distinct names and

I, I didn't know where to go with this.

So I'm flipping it around.

This is a, to my mind, this is an actual

fairy, in the world of the game and

it would necessarily be a shrimp fairy.

It's tiny, it's an inch and a half tall.

I didn't change that bit.

And this one does have three

pairs of appendages and, but

it, but it has the two eyes.

One thing that I really

like about this drawing, like as a

human prone to anthropomorphizing

things, is it looks like a tough

human, like the stature of it.

I can, I can relate to it.

It looks like a, like a superhero

human, like figure, even though

it has too many arms and legs.

And I

yeah, I didn't expect that

and that's all down to Lucas.

Our artist is also named Lucas,

so it's a little bit confusing.

But that's down to, to his genius.

Cause I gave him this bizarre little

alien weirdo and he came back with

something that was, that we could really

relate with something that sort of

conformed to logical anatomy at least for,

for something that could be considered

a humanoid within the span of the game.

And Dungeons and Dragons does have some

history of insectoid creatures that

we're drawing on for this, there's a

race called the thri-keen, I think that's

a Planescape one from way back when.

This isn't entirely unprecedented

in, in the D&D world.

But it, it did, you know, it kind

of gave us the language or a way of

interpreting these sort of exoskeleton

forms into something that's recognizably

human, something that a player

character would want to relate to.

This is what I gave to, to my artist.

And then I'm going to show you the sketch.

The thing that got me out of

bed was that the fairy shrimp

are an inch and a half tall.

And the other thing you might not know

about D&D is that it operates on a scale.

One 60th, so that one inch is five

feet, which means that anything that's

an inch tall, if I were to put it

on my table, while I'm playing this

game would be the size of a person.

So there's a weird consonance here between

a creature that's an inch and a half long,

in the real world compared to a game where

an inch and a half tall is, you know, what

we accept as being the size of a person.

By making them an inch and a half tall

in the, in the game itself, I can kind

of give a D&D player, this weird sort

of meta experience where, when their

players encounter this in the world of,

of imagination, it's going to be the

size of a D&D miniature something that

they have a real point of reference for.

so with them being the size of D&D

minis, I wanted them to have a culture

based on performance and storytelling.

So I've changed all of the statistics here

between the history and the lore version.

Its physical statistics

are still very low.

It has a strength of one out of

20, which is the, you know, there's

nothing that this little inch

and a half tall thing can move.

But it has an extremely high

wisdom, 19 out of 20 and a high

intelligence, 16 out of 20.

So these are creatures that know

things and understand the world

and pass their memories together.

And because this is a world of magic, we

can give them a kind of telepathy, a kind

of a way of communicating with creatures,

much, much larger than them, and telling

them things that they, the fairy shrimp

might have remembered from long ago.

That's really neat

that like the size connection

worked out and that you put all of

that together and the dimensions.

Thanks.

I was trying to figure out

how to pose this thing.

Cause I knew I wanted it to be humanoid

and I knew it was going to have a

long tail and weird feathery face

things and an odd number of legs.

It was like, how in the world am I

gonna make this make sense immediately

to someone who's picking up this book?

So we went to modern dance.

We went to Cirque de Solei

and contemporary choreography.

And that's how we got this power pose.

Yeah.

Based on like the it's

swimming upside down, right?

Yeah.

Kind of really

gymnastic and athletic and adaptable.

We always get a sketch,

so we have time to make some

changes before he commits to

rendering and painting everything.

So these are the sketches that I got back.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

There's just so much personality in these.

I like the power pose that

you ultimately went with.

Thanks.

There's a few different poses here.

All of which are drawn directly

from reference photos, from

Cirque de Solei and modern dance.

And, the one we ultimately went with is

the second one that he came back with.

But there's, when you see them all kind of

in the same way, there's, there's a real,

there's a real magic to this because you

get, you start to get a sense of how this

version of it might ambulate in 3d space.

The third pose here was our runner up

because it has so much personality.

It has a lot of movement to

it with the feathers kind of

moving back from its face.

And despite the fact that it has these

stocked multifaceted eyes, like I can

almost read that expression even though

there's hardly an expression to read.

Absolutely.

I think that one looks like

really friendly and chipper.

Like, I'm going to figure this out.

I'm going to persist.

And I like the other ones too.

It's kind of got martial arts influence

and like gymnastics influence.

I just love how much character and

power and vibrancy you've given this

extinct species so that even in the

imaginary realm, people can, can

picture it and honor, honor its memory.

And like it can live on

in the human imagination.

Yeah, and that is one of the other

things I think I sacrificed to die a pause

in favor of, of making that more of a

point because the lore that I've written

for this creature is that these are,

these are creatures that live in a place

called the Feywild, which is just kind

of an amalgamation of a lot of different

cultures talking about the other world

or the underworld or, the mirror world.

Alice's adventures in Wonderland

is, is a good example.

It's, it's a world that's slightly

askew from the rest of the world.

It's a world where all of the fairy

stories of Titania and Oberon come from.

I've put this creature there

because it just felt right.

It's kind of where all the weirdos go.

I liked the idea of this creature

being in the Feywild, a world

where everyone is scheming.

Nothing is, as it seems, and you

can't take anything at face value.

So I wanted this creature to be

in this world, in these pools

where they're really grounded.

And they have a memory of how things were

before and they're able to literally share

it with each other so that each, each

shrimp fairy remembers all the experiences

of its fellows past and present.

"Though a single shrimp fairy might live

for no longer than a few decades, it has

the wisdom and maturity of the entire

population of shrimp fairies that has ever

existed in the pool in which it inhabits."

I love it that you

grabbed a deep time there because

these are really ancient creatures.

They've been on the planet

for such a long time.

I think they all the way

back to the Cambrian.

And so that's the perfect skill or

attribute to give them this long memory.

The other part of that is that

if you're moving through the Feywild,

someone with a strong and clear memory

is going to be a lifeline for you

because memory is weird in the Feywild.

Time moves differently.

The things that you remember

might not have even been real.

So for this thing to, to be there as

kind of a point of a point of reference

or an anchor for your experience in

that world it's going to give it,

it's going to give it a real real, or

it's going to give it that urgency.

Like you, you need this thing on your side

and if you upset them, they will remember,

and you might not ever see one again.

Which is, I think me being a little

bit heavy handed with my own sort of

attitudes about extinction, and playing

to that idea that if they are endemic to

a single pool, and then they're gone that.

We can't get that back.

And there's a real value to that in,

in the memories of the way things

were in the Cambrin in the information

that we might've gotten about how

to make other things what kind of

technologies or science we could have

drawn from the way these weirdos are

put together and the way they swim.

So I, I jettisoned diapause in

favor of something a bit broader.

I think it's great.

And I think that like them

disappearing forever it's reality.

Like they can survive almost

anything except for pavement

and like a lot of pollution.

Oh man, that slaps:

"anything but pavement."

I think there's one last thing to

show you and then we might be done.

this was the final product and

you've seen, you'll see it, but

there is a color variant here.

I thought about doing something

with it, where this is kind

of the male and the female.

Although I think if we wanted

to do male and female, we'd

have to change the feathers.

Yeah.

Yeah, add, add the appendages.

I think both these colors are great.

It's kind of like a gold and a rose gold.

In real life, they are pretty much clear,

which is another of the weird things

about them, but I'd like the, the gold,

because it's appealing and they like it.

It's hard to depict clear things.

Yeah, I think it would have

been asking a lot of my artists to

not only figure out how to pose this

thing and how its anatomy worked, but

then go ahead and make it transparent.

And now you have to figure out

its digestive tract and where its

lungs are and whether it has any

No, for sure.

I hear you.

I have it.

I have a tattoo of a clear wing butterfly

and everyone who sees it, who doesn't

know about clear wing butterflies is like,

oh, are you getting to get that finished?

no, no, it's done.

When I, when I first

saw one, like it was sitting on

a leaf in the Amazon and you, you

literally see through it and they

have like a little dot of color.

So you just see this little

thought of color moving around.

And I was with a friend and

we were both like of a little

thought, well, what was that thing?

And then it lands and you

totally see through it.

And I was like, I'm getting one.

That's so cool.

But if you don't know about them,

then you think it's not done so I

totally defer to adding color to the

artwork for the purpose of mass appeal.

And we do have the

luxury of saying, this isn't

quite what the history is.

This isn't quite reality.

It's, it's kind of a hyper real thing.

And I want people to

be,

Yeah.

And I want people to learn to

walk that line between what they

experienced and what they see and

what, what they imagine it could

be, because I I want them to imagine

these things as great and charismatic

and beautiful and full of potential.

Even if that comes at the cost of a few

of the, the real-world details of it

being too transparent and upside down

and tiny and not actually a person.

Well, that's

the beauty of this project.

I mean, this animal is extinct.

There are no photos of it.

The only place where it can still

live is in the minds of people.

And so you're giving it a life, a suite

of powers and an audience to think

about it and help it continue to live.

I think extinction is a political choice.

It's doesn't have to

be, it's not inevitable.

And so the more people who know about

it and are passionate about it, we

can put pressure on political leaders

and at all stages of government,

local state national to get people.

Involved and committed to not losing

any more species to extinction.

And so I'm excited to be partnering with

The Book of Extinction because you're

bringing plants and animals that we've

lost back to life and reaching a whole new

audience of passionate, smart, interested

people who can help keep the memory

of what we've lost alive, but also get

involved in the campaign to make sure we

don't lose any more species to extinction.

Where do people find out more

about the Center for Biological Diversity?

So you can go to save life

on earth.org that lands on our extinction

crisis campaign page, or you can go to

biological diversity.org and there you'll

find an overview of all of our programs,

environmental health oceans, climate law.

Population and sustainability and

dangered species, just all of the

work that we're doing at multiple

levels to, to try to end extinction,

Fantastic.

I'm gonna do some

more homework on fairy shrimp

anatomy and get back to you.

I think this is like a lovely

and fascinating rabbit hole.

lovely.

Yeah, please do.

Cause, this was one of the ones that,

just from the research that I was

able to do, I was at a bit of a loss.

I was worried that I was going to

have to cut this one, because I didn't

think I had enough to fill the history

section, to fill 600 words on it.

And, I think the only reason I didn't was

that I had already given the brief to the

artist, I'd already sort of decided that

this was what we were going to work on.

And so I was, I was forced

to, to stick with it.

And it's another one of those bizarre near

misses that, yeah, it's, it's still here.

It's still a part of the

project through some of the most

bizarre, possible circumstances.

You're a leading author

now on the Florida fairy shrimp, because

it is not, it is not a crowded field.

You've spent as many hours

investigating it as anyone.

And you're publishing something about it.

Like as many words as anyone else has

written, since it's two descriptions.

Oh, no, I hadn't

even thought about that.

I have been keeping a bibliography.

So it is my hope that people can

check my work when this comes out.

And it, that is like, that is really

encouraging that, oh man, we're, we're

going to have to make this with a

certain level of scientific rigor because

it's just the only, in some cases it

might be the only thing about this.

And I don't want to lead people astray.

Yeah.

I mean, there's not, this

was one of those species.

There's three papers.

There's the petition we wrote to get

protection and there's the denial

the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote.

And now there's your Book of

Extinction account and that's it.

That's cumulative.

Ooh.

All right.

let's make Wikipedia.

I think Wiki right

now is just the, the account from

our petition in fish and wildlife

service saying it's extinct.

So we could totally go edit that

Wikipedia article to put a link to The

Book of Extinction, because there's

like a pop culture section that they

do, like references and culture.

So we can absolutely link that.

All right.

So new metric of success for this,

not just can we get on Wikipedia

for this, but how, like what

percentage of the things we cover?

Can we do good enough work on that

we will make the Wikipedia page?

Yeah, I think for all

of the species, like the more recently

declared extinct species, there's

just not very much known about them

because they were discovered and then

their habitat was ruined and then they

were declared extinct and we don't

have any information from the interim.

I want to circle back just a second

to like the tight storyline of

"discovered, lost, declared extinct"

because unfortunately the Florida

fairy shrimp, isn't an outlier there.

It's the story of dozens of quiet

extinctions that have happened

around the country, the Tatum cave

beetle, the, beaver pond Mar Estonia

spring snail,, you have the original

descriptions and the so much development

dams, pavement pollution happened.

And then they're just gone and

we never got to learn all of

the amazing things about them.

And so people like in general,

the, the modern lifestyle and the

way that we pave everything and

grow food with tons of pesticides

and have tons of stuff like that.

That is the villainous side of this.

But like the hero protagonist side of

this is we can make things different.

We can change.

We don't have to live in the

world the way it is right now.

And it's just enough people.

Waking up to that and realizing

that, I mean, it's suicidal of

us to keep a wiping out nature.

And assuming that it's separate from

who we are and separate from human

wellbeing, by wiping out nature and

paving everything we're hurting ourselves.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

Okay.

That's where we're at.

That's what we're doing.

Cause yeah, heroes change.

Villains have stat blocks and

heroes have character sheets and

your character sheet can change.

You can level up.

And we really, I mean, we

just have to put so much pressure on.

Policymakers so that things, the

status quo doesn't keep happening.

We don't keep burning fossil fuels.

We don't keep looking at every patch

of forest as a future subdivision.

We like set those areas aside and take

concrete actions to fight climate change,

to have cleaner energy, to have fair

energy that doesn't disproportionately

harm marginalized communities.

And the, I mean, part of it is

just not getting overwhelmed by all

of it and finding an action that

you can take and then taking it.

And that's like the antidote

to personal despair.

And it's also the way to end extinction

is to just find something that you can

do and do it and not feel like there's so

much bad stuff, but I can't do anything.

Yeah.

And that's what this, that's what

this project is here to do itself.

In the cosmic scheme of

things, it's so small.

And it's such a short first step.

But I think it's one of the most

incredibly powerful things that we can do.

And it's one of the things that

D&D players are best suited

to do is to tell stories.

I haven't written a

prescription with this.

These are all tools.

These are all places to start.

And if you bring this to your table

and you suddenly, and if, you know,

you sit there for three or four hours

and you go through this story in the

way that only D&D can, where you're

present and immersive and emotionally

invested that I think to my, to my mind,

and the reason I'm doing this, that's.

Yeah, that's the best

thing I know how to do.

And I think it's the thing that D&D

players can do better than anybody else.

So this is the opportunity that

we have and kind of the first

step that I'm giving people.

Yeah.

I am so grateful for

you and for this project, I think

it's creative and wonderful, and it's

going to be, it's really going to

make a difference in the long run.

Tierra, thank you so

much for being here and taking

another hour to go over this.

I'm glad that you were as excited to

see this as I was to show you this.

Thanks for listening to Making a Monster.

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If you want to support The Book of

Extinction and endangered species

conservation at the same time, you

can visit the project's landing

page at scintilla.studio/extinction.

That's S C I N T I L L A dot

studio slash extinction to

download the first three monsters.

You can pay what you want for them.

And whatever we earn from that sale

will be donated directly to the

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