#birgs

[the1andonlyvoid]

Artfight attack for @iguanodont

Some little details I want to mention.

On the packages there are illustrations of Walking seeds, a Trunkhorse and some Jaubja.

Nouh Whi has a jaubja carving on his rifle.

One of the background birgs is smoking a pipe.

The packaging on the containers is made out of grasses and wood from Birgworld.

Bonus Swooce expression

[merkabatraindepot]

Cold Islanders/Shvuumh

An introductory primer to a new birg culture under the cut. Project done in collaboration with @iguanodont

Across the lashing grey waves of the Messenian strait, and south of the great equatorial ice belt lies a land once thought as little more than myth. Suhurmv vi Hmascah, or as it is known by people of the West, The Cold Islands. Despite the name of the archipelago, the Islands are just as affected by Hyperborea's extreme seasonality as the rest of the planet.

Inland temperatures during summer on larger Islands will often soar to 45C°, while winter temperatures plunge to -64C°. The fauna, and flora (inso much as such terms are applicable, on Hyperborea Adult Sedentary vs Adult Motile are more useful) native to the archipelago are adapted to these extremes. Currents flowing from the ice belts in conjunction with warmer waters from the East keep oceanic temperatures in a range from 12C° to 5C°. The nutrient rich upwellings mean the waters surrounding the Islands are particularly fertile, and home to some of Hyperborea's largest marine life. Inland likewise represents high endemism, the rugged topography somewhat reminiscent of Earth's Aotearoa- including several large flightless distant relatives of the velocifalcons. In the mind of outsiders The Cold Islands are, perhaps not undeservedly, a Burroughsesque primordial lost world.

(Rest of entry under cut)

Suhurmv vi Hmascah is not a land without people. Indeed, the largest island of Ksmah susc (lit; Honored Sma's toe bones) supports a population of almost five million across seventeen distinct polities, and over sixty spoken languages. As a people, every Shvuumh culture has ties to the sea, being the only region on Hyperborea to successfully domesticated fully semiaquatic predators as a kind of damp hunting hound. The attached image of a Shvihiim canoe depicts the less glamorous above water aspects of a hunt.

The Shvuumh (Most common blanket term for the Cold Islanders, taken from the Susmahk language word for "people". All Northwestern Ksmah group languages use a derivative of a common root for this word) are generally considered the most isolated population of on Hyperborea. Historically this had them interpreted as almost mythical, a race of sea wizards during the early days of infrequent Ss'wassoum contacts. Modern science has confirmed their isolation, if provided no clarification on their collective wizarding capacity. Shvuumh are characterized by several cold resistant adaptations found in no other Hyperborean people, including ice belt nomads. Their peleage is dense, but the outer layers rapidly detach in summer heat. Similarly, their facial ruffs are famously expansive. The only true beards on the planet, and are styled a dizzying number of ways. They also exhibit extensive feathering on their limbs, though during the warm season this is often trimmed to fit inside traditionally leather leggings. Their physical colors tend towards paleness, with some piebaldism present in specific ethnicities.

Perhaps the most interesting trait found in indigenous islanders is their incredible internal filtration system. The Cold Islands are the site of Hyperborea's longest ongoing chemical arms race. Nearly every native plant being minimally unpalatable to outsiders, to abjectly toxic. Perhaps curiously, this has also resulted in a society for which hard narcotics are roughly as damaging as tea or coffee in their preferred dosages. Most Twowi heartland street drugs (especially dream stings) would be metabolized by a Shvuumh before any effects set in. Conversely a mild smoke on the Cold Islands would have the most hardened Ss'wassoum glimmerbeak fiend convulsing on the ground within a single hit.

All peoples of the islands practice aquaculture to an exceptionally sophisticated degree, though only cultures on the larger islands have a dedicated land based agricultural system. These land crops are the result of independent plant domestication disconnected from any other agrarian development. Some can be seen in the above illustration, such as the tuberous looking kskhid, which has both rhizome and leaf focused cultivars. Several cultures on the main island are also seminomadic pastoralists who migrate seasonally from different villages (see Kikram long house for the most common form of multi-family summer home) who graze a mixture of indigenous livestock mixed in with introduced animals from both East and West. Shvuumh notably lack the sex segregation which is the norm for most of their world's cultures. Rather large fusional family groups work with almost no separation of roles beyond some ritual acts in various religious events. Even in the more Sedentary cultures, the notion of a gifter or receiver exclusive town is bizarre to say the least- that would be akin to only using one specific color of feathervane log to build a long house.

It is generally believed the ancestors of the Shvuumh arrived to their homeland via island hopping roughly 45k years ago during an unusual warm era (out of the normal long cycle). Their ancestors were from a Southwestern population referred to as Paleo-Masakkid people, who left no genetic trace on any modern ethnicity of the Eastern Continent. For roughly half of their history, they have hugged the coasts, only establishing static inland populations approximately 10k years ago (based off of archeological evidence). Their histories and diversity have been vast, and only began contacting the outside world some 700 years before the present day with global current shifts allowed for outside sailors to visit them.

By 300 years ago, these interactions increased. Some even resulting in interested Shvuumh spending years away from home as itinerate specialists, or in more sinister cases victims of the slave trade akin to the scourge of Pacific blackbirding. 200 years ago, the spectre of colonialism began to rear is head over Suhurmv vi Hmascah. Suddenly every nascent empire found itself interested in a land full of mineral wealth, virgin forests, and valuable botanicals populated by a people without firearms. In most cases, this would mark the beginning of a tragedy- the first act in a sordid drama of subjugation and genocide.

Curiously, it was drugs which saved the day. The very same compounds which attracted attention to their home also gave the Shvuumh an incredible collective bargaining chip against invaders, as early exports of what were to the islanders mild stimulants resulted in an explosion of addicts. This massive demand combined with invaluable pharmaceuticals have safeguarded Suhurmv vi Hmascah from being truly invaded beyond a handful of port towns. Well, that and the fact that it would take roughly fifteen minutes to poison the entire food supply of colonial armies with crushed leaves. Or just leave them alone for the high summer biting gnat swarms. Truly, living in what most of Hyperborea considers a hell has worked out wonderfully for the Shvuumh.

-Excerpt from Bulakul's Reference Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Cultures, 20 year anniversary edition, volume three

[felisgalactus]

Doodled a bunch of spec-bio aliens as cartoon green aliens. Centaurs, avians, bug ferrets, and scuds by @jayrockin, crowns and boxkites by @charseraph, and birgs by @iguanodont.

[chasingrainbowsforever]

"Soar II” ~ By Monica Morrill

[onlyscarcelyscaly]

Some months ago, I created a series of maps and diagrams for @iguanodont​​‘s Birdbug worldbuilding project, representing the planet inhabited by their original species and its planetological data. This isn’t the first time I mapped out this planet, as I was also commissioned by Ripley back in 2020 back when I didn’t have nearly as much experience and knowledge as I do now. Two years later, I’ve been commissioned once again to revisit this world and its peculiarities.

This first map (in Equirectangular projection and poles-centered perspective) depicts the elevation for this planet, with a color gradient applied to the data.

Here is the same elevation data, presented without the color gradient.

This time, the elevation is presented with bodies of liquid water included, such as rivers, oceans, and lakes.

and in this one, the water is isolated from the other data, against a white background

Next, there are the surface temperatures that occur on this planet, the key to which is shown above. The four maps below show the seasonal temperatures for land and sea, in order of Northern Spring Equinox, Northern Summer Solstice, Northern Autumn Equinox, and Northern Winter Solstice.

Correlating closely to the above data is the snow and ice cover, which is fairly extensive on this planet owing to its high obliquity and distance from its star. Land ice only occurs where the snow falls and is compacted year-round, but snow and sea ice can be much more seasonal.

Seasonal precipitation levels were another important phase of this project, and the below diagram shows those levels for a given latitude (y-axis) on a given date (x-axis), with a key attached.

My reference for creating the above graphic is the figure below, which comes from a 2019 paper by A.H. Lobo and S. Bordoni titled “Atmospheric Dynamics of High Obliquity Planets”, and shows Earth’s precipitation levels compared to those of a planet with an 85° obliquity.

The following maps can now be better understood in light of these diagrams and keys.

-Northern Spring Equinox

-Northern Summer Solstice

-Northern Autumn Equinox

-Northern Winter Solstice

I was also tasked with mapping out the extent and density of this planet’s vegetation (or at least its alien equivalent), and from this you can see how wildly it varies by season, with very few year-round holdings. Precipitation is a major factor in where it is possible for plants to flourish, but snow cover and the extreme temperature swings limit it too. Near either pole, for example, within the space of a year temperatures soar far above Earth’s upper limits and also plummet below freezing; if either extreme were to be the annual norm for a region, some plants might adapt to those conditions, but because of the wild fluctuation any adaptations to one extreme would leave plants especially vulnerable to the other. These regions, then, remain barren regardless of rainfall or brief windows of mild temperatures, while areas with less wide temperature ranges allow for at least brief periods of flourishing.

Determining the surface temperatures for this planet required a lot of background work. The first piece of the puzzle for this was knowing the number of daily hours of sunlight for a given latitude and date, which is exemplified first in this diagram for Earth:

and then for the Birdbug planet, below. Since this planet rotates on an axis of 60 degrees, there are many more latitudes within range of either pole that experience periods of sunlight and darkness lasting longer than a day. The higher the latitude, the longer this period lasts, with the poles themselves experiencing either condition for half a year at a time.

Another important factor is the height to which the sun is seen to rise (more scientifically, the angle at which the sun’s light hits parts of the planet’s surface), seen here first for Earth and then for the Birdbug planet. In these diagrams, white represents the sun reaching the zenith of the sky (meeting the surface at a 90° angle), and black represents the sun failing to appear above the horizon (meeting at an angle of 0° or below), while shades of green and purple stand in for angles between those extremes. For Earth and the Birdbug planet alike, the sun reaches the zenith within the bounds of either planet’s Tropic circles of latitude, and fails to rise at all only within the Polar circles of latitude; the difference in obliquity means that the Birdbug planet’s key circles of latitude are flipped compared to Earth’s.

The duration of sunlight and the angle at which that sunlight is reaches the planet’s surface determine a planet’s Insolation, that is, the amount of solar energy it receives. The first image below is a preexisting diagram of Earth’s Insolation, where it is measured in watts per square meter. The next two images are my own attempts at replicating this data for Earth, and then for the Birdbug planet.

As seen in the diagrams above, Insolation on the Birdbug planet differs from Earth not only in its latitudinal distribution, but also in its sheer intensity at the higher latitudes. Compared to Earth there are twice as many latitudes for which the sun is shining longer than one rotational period, and many of those latitudes see the sun shine at a direct or nearly direct angle, whereas the Polar circles of latitude on Earth see the sun shine much more obliquely. Below, we can see the data that all the above figures were instrumental in finding: that is, surface temperatures. The first image is a preexisting figure that measures Earth’s mean surface temperatures by date and latitude, and below that is my attempt at replicating the data by my own process.

This is done not by just copying the seasonal Insolation data, but by also factoring in the yearly average for each latitude.

Above, we see the temperatures of the land by date and latitude, and below, we see the temperatures at the surface of the sea, which lag behind the land temperatures and remain comparatively mild.

Lastly, here’s an image I created to combine the snow and ice cover as well as the vegetation extent and density, as of the Northern Spring Equinox.  This, along with the elevation map also seen here, is what I uploaded to maptoglobe.com in order to produce the screenshot at the top of this post.

These maps and figures (except for the preexisting ones) were all created in Photopea.  Higher resolution versions of many of these images can be seen in my dedicated Reddit posts, linked below: reddit post one, reddit post two

2022

[iguanodont]

look i made a birg out of beds.

Cute!!

[realsparrowboy]

Swooce!!! Wasn’t feeling very inspired w my aliens so I made a quick doodle of someone else’s instead!!!

(Ignore the fact she’s naked i am NOT going to attempt to draw birg clothes)

Swooce belongs to the talented @iguanodont btw!!!! Go check them out :)

[godzillafandoesart]

Some sketches of some creatures for @iguanodont's Birgworld. includes: that big old fossil dude a larger, more wolf-like kin of the jaubja, that's specialized for bringing down flagdeer and other "ungulates" a bizarre, distant kin of the the birgs that's got big 'ol pinnae and a long, extended abdominal segment that's like a dinosaurian balancing tail some "ungulates" and a "whale".