A rough idea of some of the raptor crab’s internal systems.
Note 1 — Gills: Their “gills” are mobile, made for breathing air, and act like a kind of rigid external nostril (they also contain olfactory receptors like a nose). Ekts are semi aquatic, however. Their bodies are covered in small, thin setae and microtrichia that create a film of air around the body called a superhydrophobic coating, a little like a water boatman. It prevents drag when they dive or swim and allows them to breathe underwater for a few minutes at a time. They will periodically replenish their air bubble by surfacing. They swim by kicking their legs and steering with their small hind limbs.
Note 2 — Organs: They have an organ, similar to the pancreas, that produces stomach enzymes capable of digesting rocks and dirt that is ingested while eating or that have been digested by their prey. However, since Ekts began cleaning and processing their food and therefore ingesting less excess dirt, it is easy for them to end up with excess enzymes, resulting in a kind of acid reflux that can be dealt with by purposefully ingesting rocks.
Their blood is copper-based, low viscosity, and filled with organic antifreeze glycoproteins. They have a unique organ called a cuprukidney that filters out excess copper from their blood and cleans their systems, as they consume a large amount of copper from the blood of their prey and abundantly mixed in with the rocks they ingest.
Note 3 — Segmental Valve: This specific intestinal valve marks the mobile joint between the segments of an Ekt’s body. Ekts can temporarily close this valve to prevent absorption of nutrients in the intestine if they have ingested something dangerous, or if they cannot afford to waste valuable nutrients but their back segment is in danger.
The white sketches show a pre-contact portable radio, and the coloured drawing shows a little post-contact device akin to a phone.
Loxuds have fantastic hearing, but less great sight, which actually led to them discovering and harnessing electromagnetic radios faster than even humans did. After contact with humans, there was a technological exchange between the species and loxud radios continued to refine. Now, they have radio shows and audio dramas!
The white sketches show a pre-contact portable radio, and the coloured drawing shows a little post-contact device akin to a phone.
Loxuds have fantastic hearing, but less great sight, which actually led to them discovering and harnessing electromagnetic radios faster than even humans did. After contact with humans, there was a technological exchange between the species and loxud radios continued to refine. Now, they have radio shows and audio dramas!
A speculative sentient alien species I've been working on the last few days.
They're an open species so you can design one yourself! There's a lot I still need to outline for how they work, but I've got a lot of society stuff already written for them.
They took over double the amount of recorded human history to develop into a type two civilization, mostly due to the fact a large portion of their discoveries, such as how stars and the sun works, required post-industrial era devices. This included discovering gravity, and the curvature of their planet.
They have two moons, which are both smaller than earth's moon. They are also a bit farther from their star, resulting in cooler temperatures, and slightly more common eclipses. Because of their moons they are also more protected from interstellar dangers and meteorites. This helped with keeping their evolution rather unchanged and peaceful.
Their planet is almost entirely made up of water, with lots of shallows and small continents that, at most, would be the size of places like the UK. Due to the lack of large land masses, it is often used very sparingly, for farms, resources, and occasionally luxury living spaces. Artificial islands are also a thing, and help contribute to farming and other things that require flat, dry surfaces.
They do not have any understanding of color and light, instead relating light with heat/energy. The only light they produce is on accident, or is from things they use that emit heat, like heating lamps for example.
Fossils are very rare to find, and are usually found on accident. Honestly I think they've accidentally destroyed fossils before, because they've struggled with distinguishing between different rock textures. This also influences how well they're able to tell between certain minerals. Before the industrial era, they were only able to distinguish minerals by feel and sound.
Another thing, considering Selics are soft-bodied, is that when they decompose, they only leave behind their teeth and claws. These are typically preserved and collected, either to be buried in the seabed, or to be hung up in homes as a respectful display. Sometimes families will have generations worth of jaws, collected into a huge heirloom of art
They first evolved in deep water, inside caves with air pockets. They eventually started exploring farther out and made their home near the surface of water. This led to them developing lungs that could handle higher oxygen concentration. A large portion of their oxygen is provided through underwater plants.
For societal systems, they rely on elected councils, and a representative that acts as a monarch. They do have a royal family in order to have more effectively prepared and trained individuals for leading the different factions of their species.
The current day monarch is Monakeem Posi, which I illustrated the other night for fun :D
That's all the general stuff I have so far. If you have any questions, ask me! I'm going to keep working on them as time goes on :)
Some chatting loxuds with fur variations on display and notes on their respiratory system
They have four large nares (nostrils) on the crests at the top of their heads. The frontal nares inhale fresh air, which passes through the primary trachea into the lungs and some of which passes to posterior air sacs for storage. On exhalation, spare fresh air is pushed from the posterior air sacs into the lungs, then up and out of the rear nares with the rest of the waste air that was in the anterior air sacs. This respiratory system is similar to that of Earth’s birds; it ensures fresh air is always available to support flight’s massive demand for oxygen via a unidirectional respiratory system. This is an example of what in-universe scientists call exobiological convergent evolution — a phenomenon in which alien life evolves similar features to those of Earth’s animals.
Loxuds have a larynx in both windpipes, which gives them a unique language. They speak with their secondary nares (used for exhalation) and create tone-indicating noises with their primary nares (used for inhalation) — speaking from two different openings at the same time can make it sound like they have two voices at once. They form sounds with the unique muscles and vocal ridges in their larynges and nasal cavities as opposed to with a tongue. Their nares are flexible, somewhere between human nostrils and lips in terms of movability, and can be opened or closed voluntarily to create different sounds.
I was on a podcast! Thanks so much to Quinn, Chris, and Chris for inviting me on Failure to Launch to ramble about alien design, evolution, and an odd mockumentary adaption of one of my favorite books; Alien Planet.
If you like the speculative technology in Runaway to the Stars and you're interested in the sordid history of aerospace and its many, many terrible ideas and fraught innovations, I recommend listening to more of Failure to Launch. (Also available on Youtube!)
I’m experimenting with different fur colours and patterns.
Anatomically they’re generally a weird kind of cross between azhdarchids and mammals — like if a (mammalian or monotreme-adjacent) hexapod evolved to fill the niche of a terrestrial stalker, which is what Ambourgiania (an azhdarchid) has been theorised to have been. A terrestrial stalker just means these guys would walk around and eat whatever they could reach up until they had their own agricultural revolution. In the case of loxuds, they are omnivorous and will eat meat, eggs, fruit, and even dig for shallow tubers with the horn on their beak.
They walk on the knuckles of their primary hands, the middle fingers of which have evolved to support wing membranes. Their secondary hands (the little ones) are used to manipulate things.
germansingergirl
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
