#geolings

[shuttlecarrier]

a pair of partnered geolings (Smithy and @t34-mt's Mouchard drawn as my sophont). these two are a good example of what a happy and healthy adult of their species looks like now (my older art of them is really outdated..!! wow!!)

Geolings as a species are incredibly gregarious and also tactile. In partnerships, it's common for two individuals to practically be glued together at the hip whenever they're both outside of their working environments and to show themselves off as being joined. In this case, they have matching paint on the claw tips of their front most pair of limbs (which are the ones primarily used for manipulating objects).

It's common in polar cultures to get matching tattoos as well, but not in this specific case where copying the tattoos would be seen as deeply impolite. The darker individual is from the southern part of the Wyu’hlkee archipelago where receiving lip tattoos to mark large milestones and accomplishments is standard practice. The majority of his are to show off an exceptional record within his working group, which is seen as nearly equally important as the familial group in most cultures. The three dots near the inner part of the lip denote age, another indicator of social status. He'd be considered rather impressive for his age, but not particularly attractive in the southern pole where higher coat contrast factors majorly into physical appeal (he has a little bit of facial makeup to try and make up for it).

The lighter grey individual here would be considered to be more or less a smoking hot babe in the polar culture (Kaswassa, although they're ethnically mixed Kaswassan/W'ehlki) they're from. Being especially fat with good contrast, a shiny coat, and big horns will get you a lot of potential suitors, but they're very happy with their mid spouse.

[styllwaters]

Mini art dump raaagh!! 💥

First image is an oc for my discord server's Space Station AU! You might have seen it floating around in the spec bio tag. Basic premise is a whole bunch of our sophonts living together on a giant space station named Karen. Si'Saak is a shore-dweller crawler working as a security guard.

Next up we got more server shenanigans. Just some silly doodles for a sophont theatre thing where all our aliens dress up as each other! Shown here is hypothetical masks for sea crawlers featuring @shuttlecarrier's geolings and @arkelyon's maanuls!! (who also helped me design the sea crawler armour lol ty MT <3)

Aaand lastly a geoling sona for the seal army. Really swag epic species go check them out right now

[fagpepper]

A sopping wet beast for @shuttlecarrier

[honkowo]

wet beast for artfight heehoo >:)

yarara belongs to @shuttlecarrier

[shuttlecarrier]

they're letting big alien seals play ball now‼️

AF attack for @the1andonlyvoid

[shuttlecarrier]

have you drawn any geolings recently? If so can you share some art of them?

You may have a selection of my sketches ❤️

[shuttlecarrier]

After almost 4 whole years I've updated Dana from his previous design, he's up on artfight this year, which tends to be the biggest thing that motivates me to do character references these days.

[shuttlecarrier]

I was scrolling through your blog and found a post about geoling dwarves. Do you have any more art or lore on them?they sound really interesting.

I don't even remember the post or when I made it or where it is LOL (my fault for not tagging most things), I haven't thought about them or drawn them in a while but they're still solidly a fixture of polar cultures and feature as one of their primary mythical creatures until you reach the tropical valleys in the equatorial landmasses where "elves" are more prominent. Neither of them are real, but one of them is based on the geolings closest living relative, usually called 'Asusu' in the islands.

Geolings are island giants and most of the animals in the same clade as them are all relatively small. These guys fill a similar niche as otters and monk seals and range mostly in temperate and subtropical-tropical reefs, so some of them occasionally stray far enough into the southern ocean to end up on the Wyu'hlkee archipelago, tho this is a more recent development relatively speaking and an uncommon occurrence. The name of the landmass this smaller relative comes from was dubbed 'Asugé Ké' at the time when the first people from the northern part of the archipelago visited it, the name more or less meant 'little Person (fairy) island'.

When these guys would first show up on the Wyu'hlkee islands though, people there thought they were literally some kind of dwarf or fairy since they looked kind of like a little version of themselves. That was how the first bits of folklore surrounding them started, and some of the most common stories were that 'gnomes' would come to someones home disguised as a beached or injured asusu. The person encountering them would be subjected to a test where if they gave one of these gnomes food, water, gifts, and then returned them to the sea that they would gain the protection of 'sea fairies', but if the person turned away and left them outside, the gnome/dwarf would remember the way that they were treated when they eventually returned to the sea. The common belief is that the 'sea fairies' live at the bottom of the oceans in between the boundary between dead and living People, so when someone who wrongs them dies they would take that persons corpse and drag them out of the water. The body would either be left on the ground to rot, have the bones scattered all over, or their corpse would be dragged into a sulfur field and infested with miasma. All of these actions would have the purpose of trapping someone in a purgatory, or in the last one, would make it so that even if their body was returned to the sea their own dead family wouldn't recognize them.

They're a lot more friendly in the stories told in the mainland polar regions though, where their main goal is to invade your house and give you little tasks. It's believed that they only come onto land once a year, so in the communities along the mainland polar coast and valleys there's a little celebration every polar winter when the sea ice is at it's highest concentration that people spend the whole day making little meals of miniature food that they won't eat, and then leave it out for the gnomes.