The Realm of Ovo

Haeckel's Embryos
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16745-visible-embryos/7

The Realm of Ovo:

• Virtue: Fertility - Growth
• Fault: The Creator, Reversed - Abandonment
• Fate: Nature - Life Energy vs. Energy Sapped

http://www.daviddarling.info/
encyclopedia/D/dinosaurintell.html

In Ovo, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. But unlike most realms and spheres, in the realm of Ovo, every being born into the world can in fact step off the evolutionary ladder at an earlier stage and be born as an earlier - or even divergent - life form. So a bird can lay a dinosaur egg. Or lay the egg of a dinosaur-man. And a human mother can do the same. This is a natural propensity of all organisms.

Ovo is therefore incredibly diverse. There are innumerable species of every kind.  In every generation, there are new clades of intelligent creatures, and numerous variations on all types of animal and plant species. For this reason, many singleton creatures - intelligent or otherwise - will never find a mate that looks exactly (or sometimes even closely) like them. Pairings and matings across species are the norm, blurring the lines between natural and unnatural, one species and another, animals and plants.

Because of the nature of birth and transspeciation in this world, mothers are often unable to nurture their children, and children and parents are often separated early. This separation produces a profound sense of abandonment that breeds monsters. It also leaves progeny vulnerable to capture by unscrupulous Spherewalkers hunting for curiosities to populate menageries on other spheres.

The intelligent creatures of Ovo - particularly the small bands of humans in this realm - hide themselves from Outsiders. No one wants to be captured and used in a breeding program.