blorboposting

[solraine]

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This is a sideblog intended as a storage/hub for my personal worldbuilding. This also includes Oblivion, and because it does it will include all Oblivion worldbuilding, even worldbuilding done by others.

This will primarily be an Oblivion blog, but other smaller tidbits of other worldbuilding projects may sneak in sometimes.

Important links

About (contains summaries of various parts of Oblivion!)

My Toyhou.se

My art blog

Other Oblivion creators:

Ehar

Chinchilla

Bestest_Fox

ᴮᵃⁿⁿᵉʳˢ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ˣ

[solraine]

The animation industry on Merzen is most comparable to the early home movie experience- you have big productions from the first layer, middling productions of varying quality- usually direct-to-dvd or TV- from the second layer, and the poorly animated bootleg cruft of the third layer.

However, as opposed to what we think of poorly animated movies, Merzen has a fascinaton and deep obsession with them. Many of the most well known, beloved, most aggressively preserved movies are these "low quality" "budget" films.

In actuality, films and shows from the third layer are often passion projects, filled with more clumsy and genuine love for the craft than the other two layers combined. In spite of the cheesy, mediocre voice acting and subpar visuals, they're often fascinatingly complex and well written stories that tie deeply into the heart of the third layer.

The "cheapness" of third layer movies is literal though- they are made as cheaply as possible. Without focusing on visuals the artist can spend less on supplies, and doing the voices themself or with friends and family means they can stretch their units out further in other areas of their life. Come time to distribute, their frugality means they can also charge less when selling discs while still turning a profit.

And that cheapness is what makes the market so viable and how these movies became a subtle, pervasive part of the third layer. Where 500 unit movie tickets can be too much to justify outside of the occasional treat and home videos and rentals being nearly as bad, the 50 unit third layer movies are a much more reasonable option. Coupled with the irregularity with which they are produced and sold, they're a common impulse buy when shopping in the third layer.

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someone remind me to go on an unrequested multi-paragraph ramble about praetariian social trimorphism tomorrrow

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none of you get to escape this btw its not optional sorry. anyways

Solraine tend to look to those around them while growing up to decide what they look like- meaning that solraine often have "regional morphs", where there are common traits shared among a majority of solraine in a region- be it city, country, planet, or even solar system.

Praetariians and their distant relatives on Solumn Natale (the leftovers of a small colony left in their home system when the Fragment was carved from Praeter) have a regional morph in the form of social trimorphism- which is completely separate from any gender they might experience.

Atrem are protectors, generally much broader and fairly tall. Their social roles are generally as guards of varying kinds, but their broader physique means they also excel in physical tasks.

Erul are generally tall and willowy, much taller than Atrem on average. They specialize more in magic, scholarship, and spiritualism. Their bodies are often hyperspecialized for or shaped heavily by their magic type.

Enum are the smallest, generally rather stocky, and unassuming. In Praetariian society they act as craftsuns and fill many miscellaneous roles. Their small size is due to the fact that they don't perform as much physical or magical labor- or at least the labor they do isn't as intense as what Atrem and Erul do- so they minimized their mass to impact food supplies less.

Social morph doesn't lock a solraine into a certain life path- if anything, their social morph is usually determined by the life path they want to follow. It's possible to find social morphs in other societal roles. Some solraine may even be referred to with a social title even if they are physically a different morph.

On the Fragment of Praeter, they still live in relative balance- there's no need to put any one morph down over another. However, on Solum Natale, the Stellat have slowly turned the Enum into a non-person class. Viewing them as property more than valued members of their society.

[solraine]

Tiny lore piece since idk when I'll actually draw this: A Cuvaor home on Usto.

Generally cramped, the underground homes of Usto manage to feel spartan and too full at the same time, especially personal quarters like these. Microkitchens like the one shown are generally only used for snacks and warmth when spending time with friends- meals are generally communal and cooked in a larger shared space. The only other features in most quarters are the obvious nests. There's always at least one hollow, but those with new additions to their family may have to give up the remaining personal space to a makeshift nest box.

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i need to share more solraine lore because sometimes their babies just look like this for a bit and thats so important you need to know that

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you got it boss 👍👍👍

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peasts.

i keep thinking abt oblivions anodyne they are everything to me. you go you 4' star people

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this dude sat like 99% finished open in my art program for . Multiple days. not gonna lie. BUT i got xem finished and put way, way too much thought into how xe (and all rokona really) would wear shorts

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The grass on Usto has achieved its dominance through its pyrophoric reproduction cycle- every plant will grow the same as grasses we're used to, growing bladed leaves and sending out a single stalk to flower. The head of their stalk is made of a cluster of single-petaled flowers. Each flower will put out 1-3 stamen, with each one exposed to wind as they have no pollinators. To aid in their wind pollination, each flower has an extremely fluffy pistil, to aid in catching airborne pollen.

Each flower, once pollinated, will produce a single seed with a very thick shell. When the seeds are fully developed, the plant will kill itself by producing a toxic and highly flammable oil. If the oil is not enough to cause the plant to combust, it will slowly dry out. Most fires on Usto are started by static charges in the dry grass.

The seeds will pop open as they're heated, allowing the seed to sprout and grow. The seeds are buried by the falling ash, and are cooled and watered shortly after, as remaining ash in the air causes rainfall.

Usto's grasses come in a variety of colors, and are often deep reds, oranges, and purples at the end of their life. Different subspecies produce slightly different oils, and will be dyed different colors as the plants die off.

Their seeds are a "seasonal" snack, gathered before the plants die and toasted once the fires die out. When the seeds pop open from being toasted, they can be pulled apart, and the inside can be scraped out with one's teeth similar to an artichoke leaf.

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Merzen's heavily polluted atmosphere means their skies range from yellow in the Valley of Ruin and beyond the crown, to amber around Smallbrooke, all the way to a muddy gray-orange around the Unification. However, their sunsets are a shocking- if slightly hazy- bright blue.

Bonnie has been wandering the Valley for years and has come to find a lot of beauty in an overwhelmingly dead and hostile landscape. No matter where she is, if there's nothing else there, there's always a sunset to enjoy.

i haven't done any traditional art beyond a sketch or maybe some lines in a long damn time. and so i've messed up severely in some areas. maybe later i'll come back through and do a digital cleanup, as it is i just played with some sliders to make the colors prettier. uncropped version under the cut because i do like how it looks with the rough edges too:

[oldmanyaoi-jpeg]

Tell us about the top three sports in oblivion. And also which one you'd play if they were real

Hayden and I are both giant nerds so sports are not really something we've touched on. so here's just all the sports since there's not much substance to most:

The biggest one is EASILY @erezar-zaral-rezanova's Planet Dusting. It's racing taken to the furthest extreme, building a ship to go as fast as possible, with the only limit being how fast you can go before your ship is ripped apart from the speed. It gets its name from the tracks of the big leagues, where racers are going around entire planets. Smaller leagues have smaller tracks, but when you think of Planet Dusting you think of ships circling the entirety of a barren planet in mere minutes. It's pretty popular in both the Court of Trifalla and the Zion-Itan Alliance's space.

Merzen has a few that we've really only touched on a bit- being such a cold planet, they're big on "winter" sports. They have one that's essentially hockey-football, though we haven't done much with that. They do have a full-contact soccer too, played with a solid ball because the ferocity would destroy a normal soccer ball. Magic is also allowed, the only rule is that you can't kill the audience. Killing other players is allowed though, and they usually don't go a season without at least one death either on or off the field. Percentage-wise, they have the same death and dismemberment rate as unregulated factories.

Lots of Solraine societies, Especially Zion, have a really healthy coliseum/sparring culture. Unlike Merzen, you're genuinely not allowed to kill your opponent, but watching some of the big name spars is a Real show. Especially when king Grisvaldt steps on the field.

If you permit Nerd Sports in here then Ita is (probably, waiting on a response) rife with all sorts of competitions. Battle bots, engineering competitions like rocket design, large-scale science fairs, etc. Most interesting to me personally would be the existence of something like FIRST Robotics, where teams compete to complete tasks faster than the other with robots they build at the start of the season. Each season is different and requires use of a different robot- partially because those are the rules, and partially because the tasks can be wildly different every year. (Though maybe I'm biased because I used to compete in FIRST)

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What's the smallest vertebrate animal in Oblivion?

🤔Considering a few animals survived Earth, it's likely a small rodent or frog. Though that's probably not what you were looking for

We don't have a Ton of species developed as we end up focusing on the characters and such, but off the top of my head it'd probably be the sandwyrms on Stuklena Chasha in the Pentaean system. The largest "land" species max out at a foot from nose to tail, though they're usually Much smaller.

I don't have any recent art of them (i think i have a picture of them made in spore but that's way out of date) but they're kind of ugly as hell. All spines and teeth, eyeless nasty little beasts. They have a magic-based venom that is actually capable of killing solraine, but they're like snakes in that you'd have to provoke them to get a bite like that.

There are some much, much larger species in the Silver Sea, which in spite of its name isn't actually water. (Hence "land" earlier.) It's a large patch of extremely fine sand with a very high unstable magic concentration that causes the sand to behave much more like a liquid. There's also a larger, unrelated species of sandwyrm on Zion too, which they brought from their homeworld of Andoran.

If I had to guess where the actual smallest vertebrate would be, it'd likely be Enzorhual. A rogue planet in the cold depths of space, though remarkably warm thanks to a powerful artifact that keeps the planet running without a sun. There's a massive amount of bioluminescent life, and it's generally a lot more fantastical. There's giant Siphonophore like creatures that drift through the air, for example. I can see tiny little glowing mite vertebrates there, perhaps something to explore 🤔

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Are there any popular mascots or cartoon characters in Oblivion? What about video games?

ATOM is kind of a mascot for themselves, but I think they count. They're an EXTREMELY popular planet duster, one who people don't know the identity of at all. Their full body suit and reflective face shield are pretty iconic, though they're also pretty divisive as a person.

Merzen itself I can see having a few mascots for different things, the most popular probably being a cartoon version of their local gods Naskian and Occam. Especially in the countryside which has the highest concentration of the pagan faiths that worship them. They'd likely have cartoons made with them, kind of like christian cartoons, except extremely off-the-wall because Merzennians are insane by default.

There's a giant ship that travels through space and is so densely populated that it acts as a mobile planet- and on that ship they do have One relatively popular "mascot". There's a small bookstore + cafe in one of the commercial sections that has a bookstore cat, a little tuxy named Rover. She's VERY popular, especially among regulars, but also across the ship's intranet.

As for video games, I don't know any names, but I do know what would be the most popular. In general, strategy games are very popular, especially those based around space battle. The (original) X-Wing tabletop game comes to mind, though that's not a video game I know. Exploration and settlement/development games similar to Satisfactory and Minecraft would also be pretty popular, as exploring and settling barren planets is very common in their society, but not everyone has the bravery/skills for that. Doing it in a video game is still fun though!

Per planet/system though...

Merzen- REALLY into walking simulators and wilderness survival sims, at least in the Unification. It's an escape from the horrors.

Drakkam- Same as Merzen, for the same reasons, but also sandbox games. The horrors are many but science is neat too

Pentae System- Their video games are pretty rough, likely text based adventures end up being the best. But computers are energy intensive and if you're running a computer it's for something more important. They're more board and tabletop gamers I think

Fragment of Praeter- Puzzle games and temple crawlers, as those are pretty common in their daily lives. The pursuit of knowledge is embedded deep in their culture.

Zion- Strategy. Again, very battle focused culture, but they're also a mercantile kingdom.

Ita- Sandbox. They're incredibly science focused, creating things is just fun.

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i really need to finish my worldbuilding blog. i'm not going to though. who wants to hear about my cool new drink called a candle

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A lot of Merzen culture and tradition comes from necessity more than anything else- they're a cold planet, with a staggering poverty rate in the Unification. So warm drinks are well loved, but insulated containers can be kind of pricy, and it's hard to keep a container if you don't have a home to live in.

I have yet to come up with a name (i need to get back on the conlang grind) but the drink itself is actually a soft-but-solid fat- traditionally lards from northern ranging species like Direwolves, but once adopted outside of the Herroka system they switch to less toxic alternatives like soy and soy-coconut waxes. Spices, either a traditional "warm" blend or whatever you happen to have on hand, are mixed in and the liquid is poured into whatever you have on hand to solidify. Spices are vastly preferred over other flavorants as they're intensified instead of destroyed when reheated. Wood "wicks" are used pretty exclusively, as they stand up better when the melted fat is removed from the top and can be jammed down into your drink after it's solidified, so you can port around some containers filled with the fat to drink whenever you can next get your hands on some flimsy wooden stir sticks.

It's a very popular "community" drink, where everyone pitches in what they have. If one sun finds a pot, another sun can come up with the fat, a few suns have spices, and others can at least come up with jars or wicks, you have something that can feed a lot of mouths. Some street vendors have also scraped out a living selling their own blends- you provide the container, they'll pour some in and give you some wicks.

Its popularity is largely from its relative cheapness, but it became a staple because it keeps itself warm. Starting a fire is easy, so you just light the wick and it warms up and stays warm, while also warming your frozen hands.

While it gains some popularity outside of Merzen, it isn't nearly as popular as it is there. It's held back by the fact that organic species can't drink molten wax, even when less toxic alternatives to direwolf fats are used.

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donate to my lobster sausage fund

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honestly the more i think about the sausages the more i think that this entire meal would just be Merzen staples. obv not the whole thing, like Bonnie brought the soup hot from somewhere else and it's hard to keep soup hot up north but the Merzen kitchen can almost always be thrown into a bag and taken to go. like, it's just:

hardtack

bouillon cubes/powder

cured meat(s)

dried diced vegetables

shelf stable/dry cakes/cookies

spices, usually just a catch-all mix with tons of salt for filler/preservatives

and ofc since Merzen is solely entities you sometimes get weird additions like metal shavings or harsh chemicals but the majority of the lower layers of the Unification (which is a majority of Merzen's population) and the Valley of Ruin both have diets best described as "prepper pantry clear out". since for those populations ensuring you have food is way more important than how it tastes.

both share the "comfort meal" of 1 bouillon cube 2 scoops dried veggies some strips of dried meat added to jar pour boiling water on top and mix until bouillon cube makes broth soak and eat hardtack while meat+veg rehydrate. sounp

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btw you should always ask @erezar-zaral-rezanova and i questions about oblivion i promise we'll both be normal about it and answer you in a reasonable word count

ⓘ WARNING: This action will trigger a Cataclysmic Autism Event. Proceed with caution.

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The primary architecture in Merzen is a little thing I like to call Absolutely Fucked. Not that their buildings are super messed up- They're pretty much just utilitarian concrete boxes, at least in the Unification. Merzen in general is pretty form over function. No, the primary intrigue in Merzen's architecture is...

(Map by @erezar-zaral-rezanova)

The Merzen Unification, Merzen City, the Unification, or just Merzen. Those shapes on the side are accurate- the city isn't structured in rings but in layers. Malyy is stacked on Seredniy which is stacked on Velykyy. Tall buildings generally terminate into the layer above, smaller buildings may be surrounded by pillars or other supports.

Theres really only two districts of real interest- The Ashen district, where the Bleeding Eye (lead by Csatta) is stationed. They aren't particularly ornate, but they do use black and black-dyed stone which creates a surprisingly stark divide between their territory and the rest of the Unification.

Then there's the Thanatic district, one of the few unpopulated areas of the Unification. It was once a bustling black market, and is now an empty web of melted stone. It'd been fortified very heavily, since two layers rest on top of it, but its ultimately just a twisted and dark heart within the city.

Outside of the city, the most exciting architecture in Merzen is probably Glaciarium and Solaciarium.

(Also by @erezar-zaral-rezanova)

Both of them have a lot of significance in Merzen's 'pagan' religions, being the homes of two gods, the dragons Naskian and Occam. Glaciarium is the only one that actually has anyone else living in it, housing a northern ice-based religion where only the hardiest of the hardiest suns that can actually survive that level of cold. Solaciarium is just a nest for Occam, iirc- that'd be a question for Hayden though