The Ddiflas Butterfly (pronounced "th-if-lass") could only be described as sickly looking. Hardly a beautiful insect, this decrepit little critter clumsily drags itself along through the oh-so-short length of its existence with about as much fervor as a chronically depressed corpse. However, despite that this bug seems as though it would like nothing more than to be smashed beneath the boot of some random traveller, and maybe even smeared around a bit, it thrives throughout the dank forests of Northern Sarvonia. With blackmoss as its main food source, this flightless butterfly is most commonly sighted in the Votron and Shivering Forests.

Appearance. The Ddiflas Butterfly is, to put it simply, a wretched insect from beginning to end. This insect dutifully trudges along from one place to the next, eating from Blackmoss and reproducing. Despite being a winged critter, it can't fly at all and one will never see this butterfly fluttering along. When it rarely does take to the air, it is from somewhere high so that it can simply glide down to the ground or wherever its destination happens to be. Its appearance speaks volumes of the dreary and joyless existence that it lives.

This butterfly's wingspan can range anywhere between one to one and a half palmspans in length, making it equal in size to the Glass Winged Butterfly. However, that is where their similarities end. The wings consist of two fat oval shapes merged together to create, when the wings are spread, a heart shape. The crest of either wing has a very stiff, but flexible ridge that the insect uses to provide them with their ability to glide. Each wing has two particularly thin tails that tend to be four to six nailsbreadths in length. Though there is no way of differentiating between the genders when it comes to this particular insect, it wears its age on its sleeve. Day after day of dejectedly dragging its wings along takes a toll on the fragile limbs. The older the creature is, the more frayed and tattered the back edge of its wings are.

Unlike most butterflies, with their stunning and brightly coloured appendages, this particular one's tends to be of a rather drab and even ugly hue. The most common colour for this insect's neglected and maltreated wings is a dark muddy brown, though occasionally there may be a greenish or reddish undertone to them. No matter the colour, the most curious aspect of this critter's wings is the fact that they are slightly slimy and will leave a black ink-like residue on anything that it touches.

Its head is heart-shaped and tends to be at least two shades darker than its wings, with two drooping antennae situated on either side of its forehead. Both eyes are a dark red colour with one nestled on either side of the butterfly's head. The bottom of either eye is fringed with lashes the same colour as its wings. Its long proboscis is the same dark red colour as its eyes and curls beneath its pointed chin when not in use.

A Ddiflas' body could almost be considered feminine. It is long and very curvy- for a butterfly. When looked at from above, it would appear that it has hips, much like that of a woman! The insect's 'waistline' grows narrow before flaring out to a rounded shape and then flowing back into a soft point. This critter also happens to sport a 'breast', it's chest being puffed out to form two lumps that could very well resemble that of a woman's chest. Its body tends to be a very dark reddish-brown colour and, unlike the Glass Winged and the Flitter-Twitch, is completely naked of any hair. Instead it is quite slimy and is usually covered with a layer of the same black ink-like residue found on its wings. It is assumed that it is this substance, which their body excretes, that robs them of their ability to actually fly.

This butterfly has four black legs that can carry them just about anywhere. Though long and spindly, their legs are particularly strong since they spend practically all of their time walking around on foot. The legs are also the only part of this butterfly that is truly black. Coating the bottom half of its legs, the hooked hairs that help it cling to surfaces are larger and much more jagged than the normal butterfly's, providing it with a better grip for climbing. Picking up one of these butterflies without a cloth to cover your hand could result in small cuts.

Territory. This species of butterfly prefers to stick very strongly to their preferences, and have seemingly never purposely deviated from where they've always been and what they've always done. Due to their own natural moistness they thrive best in the darker, damper areas of the places that they inhabit. Almost anywhere that you may find Blackmoss, there's a good chance that you may also find the Ddiflas Butterfly slumming about. However, the bulk of the butterfly's population resides in the Votron and Shivering Forests. This miserable butterfly has also somehow found its way to other forests such as the Istarin, Bolder, and Calmarios Forests.

Habitat/Behaviour. As a general rule of thumb, the Ddiflas' seeming demeanor towards the world around it tends to be rather dreary. This poor and surely unloved butterfly lives a deplorable existence pressed into the damp and dark crevices of the forests that they inhabit. The butterfly truly has nothing special about it and no way of protecting itself from being eaten, unless you consider oozing icky black liquid to be 'special' or a defense mechanism. Though, why anything would want to eat this gross, sad excuse for a butterfly is beyond me.

The poor, tortured insect can't even manage to actually fly - though gliding isn't completely out of the question. And the most that this sad critter has a special affinity for is being immensely suicidal. They never perk up for anything and never seem eager to be getting to wherever it is they happen to be going. The majority of their existence is spent trudging dully across the forest floor, hugging close to trees, in search for blackmoss to eat from.

Diet. This particular butterfly strongly prefers the taste of the liquids that they extract from the blackmoss plant. So much so that, if they cannot find any to feed from, they would rather starve to death rather than nurture themselves from another kind of moss. However, such occurrences don't often happen since these butterflies tend to congregate around larger patches of blackmoss.

Mating. The Ddiflas Butterfly doesn't have any kind of specific mating ritual that has to be carried out. Instead, after they flourish into adults, they immediately find a butterfly of the opposite sex and to mate with. The mating can take up to an hour to complete, and they immediately and lovelessly part ways after the mating has occurred. The female butterfly will then drag herself along until she finds a patch of blackmoss to lay her eggs upon. They lay the eggs in clusters of ten to twenty at a time, and all of them are perfectly round and tend to be a brilliant shade of pink.

After a week or so, the eggs will finally hatch and the little black caterpillars that emerge will devour their previous home and then move on to feeding on their blackmoss nest. As the larvae grow larger, they become more brownish than black and little red and pink dots appear down their sides. It only takes a mere three weeks for the tiny bugs to grow fat with moss. During the course of those weeks, they will shed a thin skin three times. The bloated caterpillars will then climb a good ways up the nearest tree and molt their skin for the fourth and final time. The molted skin will then harden and turn into the cocoon inside of which they go through their metamorphosis.

One more week passes before this larvae will emerge from its cocoon a butterfly. And, once it is free of its shell, it will spend an hour drying its wings right there on the side of the tree, steadily flapping them. Since it cannot fly, they will then make their climb or glide down to the forest floor in order to mate and move on with their dreary life. the average lifespan of this butterfly, once it reaches adulthood, usually tends to be approximately two to three months in length.

Researchers. Like many other butterflies accounted for, the Ddiflas was made noted by the researcher Leifloff Sjungnarr. He stumbled upon this sorry excuse for a butterfly while traveling through the Bolder forest and took interest in it. He had soon found that it was quite the easy specimen to study, since it didn't seem to care if it was picked up or bothered with, and it is one of the quickest examination of a species of butterfly that he has ever done.

11th Burning Heavens 1669 a.S. Information provided by Val O'Neil