#gas bladders

[escaped-cryptid]

Something about watching a fish move vertically

Like how did you do that you were up then you were down without moving anywhere else how did that happen you wizard

[kelpsuggestion]

Your friends are like gas bladders: they keep you up when youre feeling down.

[abbovebiggerbob]

Some Floating stilt spirits, and a Gollywug atop a Blimproot.

[abbovebiggerbob]

World Building June Day 9: Fauna

(the squishy bits)

Aether Whales are widely considered the most useful animal ever domesticated. These gentle giants are easily tamable thanks to their herd instincts, and can carry nearly twice their body weight in cargo. They feed on Skrill and other aerial plankton, sucking them out of the air by the tonne. Most of the food they eat is mixed with symbiotic gut bacteria, to produce the great quantities of Hydrogen necessary to keep them in the air. 

Other breeds exist, such as this Vapour Morph bred in Jinn airspace, though both breeds are far flung from their much larger, wild cousins.

The Belles are some of the most successful organisms to populate Nimbus’s skies. They have a  simple and effective shape consisting of a cluster of gas bladders with a knot of tentacles dangling underneath, which they use to capture and devour smaller organisms. Species can range from the size of a coin to larger than a village, and can be found nearly everywhere in the sky.

The Ewemite is another important creature domesticated across the Skies, especially by the Jinn. The thick wool produced by these large, flying insects is essential in clothe production, and is far easier to produce than Whale leather.

The Lummox is a small relative to the Aether Whale, and used as a personal transport across Nimbus. Like their cousins they can lift nearly double their own weight, and feed on vegetation (rather than plankton) that they can easily crush with their thick beaks. Thousands of years of intense breeding and inbreeding has created hundreds of fancy and work breeds, but has left the domesticated variety dumber than the plants they eat. 

The Bulk of life on Nimbus is made up of Tiny airborne invertebrates, larvae, and insect eggs, known collectively as Aeroplankton. The most common of these is a group of small crustaceans, the Skrill. These minuscule shrimp breed in swarms of billions, and are a staple prey for nearly every predator on nimbus. The skrill themselves eat whatever gets caught is the sticky frill at the end of their tail. The frill also keeps them aloft, and wind easily carries them like tiny wind-borne seeds.   

[abbovebiggerbob]

World Building June Days 7 and 8 Magi-techno-lomancy

Missed the “technology” prompt yesterday, but it pairs pretty well with Magic so I’ll hit both.

Golluwugs hold invention and innovation very highly, due to the difficulty of life in Nimbus’s skies. However, without stone and next to no contact with metal, their technological progress is severely stunted. The most advanced creations on Nimbus are experimental motors utilizing wooden clockwerks being developed by the Urdoonian Military. The hope is to eventually construct a working airship. 

The Gollywug relationship with Fire is one of extreme reverence and caution. In a world where all infrastructure is constructed out of wood and cloth and supported in the Air by buoyant, Explosive hydrogen, the smallest uncovered flame can easily destroy a town. Therefore, most cities and villages have laws that keep the creation and use of fire to trained individuals, known as the Lamplighters.

Dressed in thick wax-coated leather and smoke inhibiting face-masks, the Lamplighters maintain fires in Special towers, usually situated on the extreme outskirts of town. 

 Lamplighters dole out rations of fire, usually at dawn. They may travel door to door, or citizens may line up at the towers to receive a daily flame. They also act as chefs, crafting what small amount of cooked foods Gollywugs eat, and in richer communities artificially breed hydrogen producing bacteria, which thrives only in warm acids. The Dangerous nature of the job means that Lamplighters are usually Gollywugs who have lost limbs, sight, or even their family to disaster, and can no longer easily function in society.  

Your average Gollywug is fairly skeptical of magic and, officially, it’s existence is denied by the Golly church. However, that wouldn’t stop the same Gollywugs to seek out the help of The Old Lady who lives on the edge of town (who everyone knows is a witch) if little Timmy is under the weather. Of course, She isn’t really magic, she just knows the right mixture of herbs that’ll heal the bladder flu, but she’s living pretty comfortably off the donations of gratuitous villagers, and thinks “witch” is a far more exotic title than “wet-nurse”.

Occasionally, creatures will float up from the pond that no one can explain, like the Ogglers, bulbous and benign creatures with a single eye that are eerily drawn to flame. They float, yet contain no buoyant gasses, and no one has ever seen them eat...

Rumors of shapes half glimpsed gliding beneath the surface of The Pond, far too large to be anything living, and he babbling of insane trawlers hinting at massive gods of meat and sinew are to be ignored, according to the Golly church.

[abbovebiggerbob]

 I found my old copy of the “Hugo Award” winners from like,1976 (edited by Asimov, swoon!). There’s a story in here called “Hunters Moon” by Poul Anderson. It’s about a pair of scientists living in a colony on some alien planet trying to figure out why the two native intelligent species have been fighting recently. The “Dromids” are centaur-ish segmented mammals that go through several different gender stages during their lives, while the “Ouranids” are flying, gas-filled globes with long prehensile tendrils and silky hair. 

The story’s descriptions of the ouranids led to my obsession with the whole “gas filled sack organism” thing (well, plus the Huragok from Halo). Its the type of thing I draw the most whenever I’m in a rut, my sideblog is dedicated to this type of creature design, and the comic Iv’e been worldbuilding features this type of thing very heavily. It’s nice to re-find where my obsession began as a tiny-babby shortpants-junior Biggerbob.

[abbovebiggerbob]

World Building June  Days 5 & 6

(Whoops)

Today’s prompt was Weaponry while yesterday’s was “fashion”.

Gollywugs tend to wear heavy wool and leather clothing, vests and the like. Richer Gollywugs and royalty adorn themselves in even heavier robes and gigantic headpieces. Jinn wear very little clothing-wise, preferring long flowing draperies and headwraps. Nashr often wrap themselves in the pelts of their kills, and The Trawlers wear whatever they scavenge off of corpses. 

Weaponry: The spear reigns supreme as the greatest piece of military hardware ever invented. Swords are rarely used in combat, due to the lack of available metal. They are often used in religious ceremonies, like the Jinn “Schlimtar”, made of superior Jinn wood folded over itself thousand of times.

(keepin it short tonight, work was brutal)

[abbovebiggerbob]

World Building June Day 4: History

The Prehistory of Nimbus is steeped in mystery. The Nashr and Trawlers do not have written languages, and their oral histories only travel back a few generations. Most of the world’s history is kept by the Golly Church and in wandering Jinn libraries.

It is thought that eons before the Gollywugs and Jinn formed even small tribes, a powerful race of giants built a great civilization on Nimbus’s rocky core, below the smog of the The Pond. The only indication that the civilization existed is the occasional metal artifact launched into the upper layers by the core’s violent geological activity. Fewer than a thousand of these artifacts have ever been discovered, and range from daggers to whole suits of armor, far too large for any existing race to have used. The Golly church claims them as holy relics, and owns a vast majority of them.

1500 years ago the city state of Urdoon conquered its weaker neighbors and assimilated them into a powerful empire, ruling over a massive portion of the pastoral skies. The Empire has kept the skies in a state of relative peace since then, ruled by the current emperor, Cedar Whoozit the 2nd. The Empire has often butted heads with the Golly church, an institution that, until the founding of Urdoon, had nearly supreme control over Gollywug life.

85 years ago the Big Sky Caravan Company was founded, a trading company that has become one of the most powerful institutions of the modern world, on par with the power of the empire and church. The amount of people the company employs is higher than the population of many small countries. 

Other important dates:

aprox 3000 y.a; The Golly church forms, uniting the shared religious ideas of many Gollywug nations into a single pantheon. 

2125 y.a - 2153 y.a; Legendary Gollywug explorer Karmin goes on her famous expeditions, and is the first Gollywug to make contact with the Nashr. She also extensively explored The Pond and the Upper Vapours, and the boundry between the Vapours and open space is referred to as Karmin’s Line.

150 y.a: The Urdoon empire goes to war with the smaller nation of Uk. During the conflict, the Empire seized up to 15 metal artifacts. The Church demanded that, “as Holy Relics”, they should be relinquished into their custody . The Empire refused, and the relationship between the empire and church has been strained ever since.