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This kingdom is also characterized by the solid material it uses for its framework. In this kingdom the animals use a flexible protein structure which has evolved into as many different forms as bone or wood in the other kingdoms. Many of the sumoids such as the leatherwoods have also evolved protein skeletons, but there is no resemblance in the creatures and no connection in evolution.
Many species look like roundworms or one of those worms from the black smokers in the deep oceans. As in all classifications as broad as a phylum, there are forms taking all kinds of fanciful shapes and this phylum is the most noted for that on Kassidor, like the nudibranches of Earth. That really, really weird thing in the fish tank you saw, was probably some type of klinoid.
All members of this phylum have a one-piece protein skeleton. Most are worm like and live in the soil. This phylum has exploded in number and variety since the competing phyla were exterminated in Kassidor's technological age, approx. 3200-2500bc. There are some capable of boring into trees and some are destructive to crops. The largest can grow up to a foot in length. All are sightless and have rudimentary nervous systems.
The Limps are a class in this phylum, they suck blood like leeches but fortunately, find human blood quite poisonous.
The Klinton class has many members that are important in cleaning rivers and streams. In places where there is deep water, deep under the wildhull swamps, some species of klintons grow to several tons in size. The klintons are the second most important reason why there are so many sparkling beaches on Kassidor. (The first is the lack of disposables.) They remove all the organic material from the bottom if left alone.
To an untrained eye, the priapatus is an example of a mlukage worm, there are species looking enough like the common earth worm to fool some experienced anglers.
These have jointed protein skeletons. Most digest organic sediment on lake and canal bottoms and under leaf litter. A few are over a foot in length, many are microscopic.
The trilobite-like wevn is common around human habitation, living on garbage and sewage. It is a creature of the dark, full sunlight will kill it in minutes, torchlight in an hour. They can be eaten and can be made palatable with proper spices. Some families in this phylum climb reeds and produce sound to call mates like the lalleets and charraspas. Their calls are squeaks and rasps made by scraping shell parts and not songs made by vocal chords as in the lumins.
The small, straight plants having protein skeletons are placed in this phylum. There is only one class in the phylum, but fossil evidence shows that there were many others, billions of years in the past before the Keltoids, Daikoids and Lonoids evolved and became dominant in the environment.
When they were trees, they probably looked more like the shaftwoods than any other. A few had leaves that circled the stem, most had circlets of leaves on trunks up to eighty feet tall. The last ones fell at least two billion years ago however, and today's reeds have no species over eight feet tall.
Hoseweed is used to grow cheap hosing in three foot lengths. The ends fit inside each other and they last about thirty Earth years. Bigger farmers will grow a small field of it to use as the end members of an irrigation system.
Thruout past ages the Klinid was one of the most important kingdoms of life on the planet because of two phyla that became crop pests once humans were introduced. Vroosh, could be translated as 'grubs' and the Flain as 'slugs' if they were around today. The Vroosh were worm-like and famous for growing in crops. The Flain were slime-crawlers in the damp and dark, and crop scourges since antiquity. In 2601bc, early genetic programming cured these 'scourges' of mankind and exterminated the whole of both phyla with a virus before everything they did in the environment was known. This was a desperate attempt by the military empire to save mankind from overpopulation. Several important species of crop plants as well as whole classes of trees and other plants were exterminated once there were no microscopic worms to open passages for their roots. Many parts of the planet were denuded when that vegetation was lost. The loss of important crops contributed to the downfall of Kassidor's technological age and the precipitous population decline during the Fall.
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