DEFINITELY not Okapi

Worldbuilding and Talking blog

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Wanted to find some compromise between keeping true to the slug of slughares by making them cosexual VS giving my aliens weird sexes to make everything complicated. Ended up settling on them displaying something like andromonoecy (individuals are either male or cosex) but with a bit of bee inspired nonsense (specifically, worker bees only remain sterile with a queen present and will start producing haploid drone eggs without her).

It seems to have developed to enforce a primitive form of eusociality where reproductive labor was primarily specialized to the royals, but their sapience means that certain slughare cultures entirely upend this structure. Many inland slughare cultures attempt to isolate their hand and royal populations, resulting in an inflated Hand population, while some oceanic cultures take the opposite approach and cull unfertilized eggs to ensure a more “productive” royal majority.

[chuffing-and-huffing]

One common method of finger counting among slughares. Because their hands are so close to their eyes, from zero to six they rely on touching their fingers to their face. Relatedly, two and five are distinguished by either touching the “unused” digit to the other hand or by not touching that digit to the face.

A fun side effect of ending with both hands outstretched and closed is that it gives jazz hands a positive connotation, making it a fairly universal sign amongst sophants.

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Switching gears entirely it’s Shrike time. While I’ve always had a loose idea of the shape of their system and how it was shaped by their time as a weapon I’ve never really figured out the finer details of their personalities and relationships, so now I’m doing that.

Dog was the active weapon, and struggles the most with freedom. On the rare occasions when it talks it’s usually bitter towards the rest of the system. Dog draws itself in their new superhero costume.

Coop manages the system, which has Coop left with the strongest imprint of their previous handlers. Those handlers saw a use in Coop being able to accurately draw people, which it applies.

In theory Bird was the undercover identity, but never really saw use as such. Now she’s taken over and isn’t handling that responsibility well at all. She draws herself for fun and cares the most about how she dresses in her civilian life.

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Slughare planet explorations.

The general topography is a poorly reproduced version of Late Archean to Early Proterozoic earth, except with a temperature closer to that of modern earth. You can also enjoy my crummy biome map, which took two tries and is probably still wrong. More fun for my purposes, we’ve got a rough map of the large Slughare nations! They’re colored to loosely denote their relationships to each other, with their brightness representing their relative age as nations. Also fun is a very loosely guide to the most common phenotypes of each continent.

Putting them under the cut because they’re pissing me off, but some doodles of possible cultural costumes based on the various biomes. They’re not up to snuff for me but they’re cute so they get posted too.

[chuffing-and-huffing]

More variations on the same map! This is the exciting world building you’re here for.

Firstly, the ethnicity map again but with the shells updated! While these shells all probably exist somewhere in the world, they’re used more broadly to represent the continents they’re next to (alien Hetalia is real, because people are people even when they’re aliens).

Then, a variation on the biome map! Orange represents possible farmland, though not necessarily land being used as such because that’s a whole other thing to figure out. Green is the best fishing, areas of warm currents and places where a warm and cold current meet. Magenta is areas affected by the ENSO phenomenon- my poor mapping hides it from view but from one side you can look at the Slughare planet and see no land at all, with that ocean even more empty then earth’s pacific.

And the new variations of the same old map! Consulted my polisci buddy on it, so you can’t critique the realism of my borders. Most of them are very small, the largest (ignoring the polar nations, most of whom accepted that their claim to polar territory extended along the most relevant lines of longitude, however both polar nations on either side of the aforementioned huge ocean contest those borders in favor of greater fishing and trade opportunities) is the central nation on the large south-western continent which is roughly the size of Mongolia. My favorite nation is on the same continent, it’s the western most nation that’s shaped sorta like a bird in flight.

The other map represents those nation’s opinions on the biggest political question on every slughare’s mind “is it acceptable to have a roommate?” A quirk of slughare biology presumably once important to their distant ancestors was that cohabitation can cause some slughares to develop a hormonal imbalance which can lead to depression and even psychosis-like symptoms. While some cultures have been forced to overcome this hurdle to facilitate marine and/or polar lifestyles (leading to cultures where expectations often soften symptoms but also stigmatize signs of distress) others have been able to retain traditional boundaries designed to limit potential contact (and have even exaggerated these practices).

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Considering making the slughare planet really humid (cause. Slugs.) but I don’t particularly wanna deal with all the things that would change. Ugh.

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The robots are pro terrible humidity hell

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

I have basically never talked about it but I’ve been spinning around a sophant based on Springhares for MONTHS because like.

What do you mean you’re a friendly, social species that regularly trades dens with each other as you migrate but also if anyone other than your young are in your den with you you’ll loose your shit??? That’s such a wild instinct to have that’d create such a weird fucking society.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

If you live with someone and they’re not significantly older/more disabled then you the assumption is that you’re doing age play kink shit.

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Should probably add my only other Slughare post to this blog huh?

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Slughare planet explorations.

The general topography is a poorly reproduced version of Late Archean to Early Proterozoic earth, except with a temperature closer to that of modern earth. You can also enjoy my crummy biome map, which took two tries and is probably still wrong. More fun for my purposes, we’ve got a rough map of the large Slughare nations! They’re colored to loosely denote their relationships to each other, with their brightness representing their relative age as nations. Also fun is a very loosely guide to the most common phenotypes of each continent.

Putting them under the cut because they’re pissing me off, but some doodles of possible cultural costumes based on the various biomes. They’re not up to snuff for me but they’re cute so they get posted too.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Thinking about my old oc Φive again, which sucks because I love that freak but they are a super computer so I can’t really draw them in the same way I can for other ocs, but I also am not sure how they’d visually represent themselves given the chance.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Thinking about the Phive logo and now I’m just in a general sci-fi mood so enjoy my dorky little aliens the slughares. Kinda wanna combine them into one story tbh.

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Would you guys be interested in a worldbuilding/talking blog so this one can be more art focused?

[chuffing-and-huffing]

Y’know what I’m doing it fuck it