Silly little bit of Scrimshaw rambling here since I likely won't be able to fit the discussion into the fic itself.
Names in this kind of setting are weird...at one point I toyed with the idea that the MC would come up with their own nicknames for the leviathans, which may or may not have been accurate. This was mostly in regards to Dust, who would have likely been called "Ghost" or something like that, but I scrapped that pretty quick. It just got too confusing.
So in the end, what we have is that the leviathans don't really have names in their own language, at least not names we can understand. The writing uses the names the MC picks for them purely for simplicity. It varies from leviathan to leviathan, too.
Killer likely had a specific sequence of sounds among his pod that he would be identified as; dolphins do that too. They were in pretty large groups, double digit members at least, so it's important to keep track of who's who. But now there's no one left that knows his name...if he ever figures out a way to indicate it to the MC, he'd be very happy if they tried it out.
Dust and his brother didn't really have specific calls for each other, because it was just the two of them and they knew the difference intrinsically. Pretty much just differentiating "you" and "me" when communicating with each other.
Horror (when he appears) has no real name at all; he's the most solitary of the bunch given his environmental requirements being more extreme. Sorry y'all, couldn't find a good spot for Horror Paps in this fic, so Horror's just an only child.
And Nightmare is...a special case. :) We'll get to that later.
And as far as pronoun use goes, all life on 4546B is canonically sexless and reproduce asexually, so if you headcanon any of the skellies as using different pronouns or presenting differently (I see all the lovely trans/genderfluid/nb/etc. takes on characters and give them and their creators loving forehead smooches) that's entirely fine! I mostly just had the MC default to he/him for the characters because that's the way most people identify them and it's easier to write.
Tl;dr, all the leviathans in this setting use any pronouns and would probably respond to any name the MC gave them :>
(Unrelated but it's 105 degrees outside and it's going to be hotter tomorrow an alien ocean sure would be refreshing right about now)
Scrimshaw ramblings 3: Ecological notes about Dust's species
Like with Killer, we’re sticking with calling them “Ghost Leviathans” even if the name doesn’t come up in the story proper.
This one is interesting because we know more about ghost leviathan development than any of the others in game! It’s part of why they’re my favorite design 😊 So I got a liiiiittle bit carried away with this one.
As before, hints to future parts of Scrimshaw under the read more along with mentions of poor coping mechanisms and death.
Ghost leviathans are far more solitary than their smaller counterparts. It’s rare to see more than one at a time in the crater zones, as they’re a highly territorial species. They usually prefer to live in deep dark waters and are built more for low temperatures than excessive heat.
Ghost leviathans spent most of their adult life out in the Void beyond the crater, swimming in wide open water and feeding off of microplankton and other species. They need absolutely massive amounts of this food to feed them, and grow according to the amount of food they have available. Truly large specimens can even match the Sea Dragons in size, though there aren't many that can reach that size these days.
Ghost leviathans typically only breed one or two times throughout their lifetime, and will stick with the same partner every time. Traditionally the leviathans will return to the Crater and the Lost River, laying their eggs in the safety of the Tree Cove before promptly abandoning them. Each adult will lay only one egg, and while they’ll tolerate the close vicinity for those purposes they do sometimes fight if there’s not enough space in the cove that year.
Each egg contains multiple embryos and usually hatches multiple baby ghost leviathans. The babies already have a territorial streak and will almost immediately fight one another for the best prey and territory. Infants don’t really develop into filter feeders until they’re young adults.
Because of this hatching brawl, very few leviathans will survive long enough to enter the river from the cove, and even fewer will make it to adulthood. Like if 3 eggs are laid with a dozen babies each, it’ll be a miracle if 1 baby from each egg survives.
Social dynamics: As mentioned, ghost leviathans don’t really care to spend time around each other. They’re perfectly fine remaining solitary for 90% of their lives, and interactions between adults out in the void range from a wary greeting to outright hostility depending on temperament, prey quantities, etc.
It’s possible this innate wariness comes from their rough start in life having to fight their own species desperately for survival, but at this point it’s a cycle so ingrained in them that it would be difficult to convince them otherwise.
They have exceptional eyesight and can pick up on small amounts of light from far away; a handy skill to have when you spend most of your life in the dark open ocean. Most close interactions are avoided by simply seeing another ghost from 3 miles away, screaming out a warning and then switching directions if they react aggressively.
Ghosts will rarely fight with each other directly. Most of the time they’ll square up, circle around with a few posturing screams while flashing their lights, and the smaller/weaker one will back off and go elsewhere. They’ll often charge after other void-dwelling leviathans though, particularly Void Chelicerates that they share a territory with.
(Nightmare had to deal with his fair share of them getting aggressive in the Void when he was much younger. It’s been a long time since he was small enough for that to be a problem. They usually avoid him now.)
They’re mostly defensive and would much rather intimidate or bluff charge rather than risk serious injuries. They also don’t pay much attention to smaller creatures without reason, unlike in the game. In the fanfic proper, Dust first got agitated by the Cyclops thinking it was a new rival leviathan to deal with. He might not have noticed the Reader at all if they were just zipping around with their Seaglide, though the lights may have eventually caught his attention…
Vocalizations consist mostly of hisses and raspier growls or groans at a close range, with their trademark ear-splitting shriek as a “you are going to die” warning right before attacking or chasing something off. When happy, they’ll hum quietly.
They’ll hold grudges like you would not believe, but can be quite affectionate with their mate. Even if they meet up only rarely, they stick with a single mate for life. Often they'll even “sing” to one another, much like humpback whales on Earth, as both a courting method and a way of staying in touch after parting ways.
(Nightmare quite liked hearing their songs. The void is a lot quieter these days…)
Hunting: As infants and juveniles, ghost leviathans will eat pretty much anything they can fit into their mouth. Which is the majority of other creatures in the Lost River, actually. As they grow larger and the caverns grow more claustrophobic, they eventually leave the river to feed off of even larger prey in the darker Grand Reed and Blood Kelp zone.
(They COULD exit through the Mountains, but that’s historically been Reaper territory, and the two species don’t particularly get along. So the reef and blood kelp it is!)
Once they reach their late adolescence, close to adulthood, they switch to being primarily filter-feeders. Their jaw structure and throats are built more for swallowing small prey whole rather than ripping and tearing chunks the way the other leviathans are, so it becomes more efficient to feed off of highly nutritious microorganisms as they grow larger.
They can and often will still occasionally swallow a larger stray fish, but they no longer put energy into hunting them down for that purpose. I'd say they behave more like whale sharks or basking sharks than baleen whales, if we're going to compare to earth species.
Things specific to Dust: Dust and his brother hatched from the same egg. Through something of a fluke, there weren’t any other hatchlings that year. The other eggs present just…didn’t work out. This has become more common over the past few decades; likely a side-effect of the bacteria affecting fertility rates.
Either way, with much less chaos and competition, they didn’t have any need to fight and ended up sticking close together. They were quite literally together from day one.
Since they weren’t scrapping for survival from day one like most baby ghost leviathans, they weren’t as driven to eat, grow, and swim out into the void as fast as possible like most of their kind. With no competition they were free to take things a bit slower, play around and explore the old ruins in the river. That was good, because Dust’s brother was rather nervous about the dark open waters.
…unfortunately, the Kharaa still took its toll. Dust has been able to handle the illness better than his brother did. I don’t really have a good reason for this, it may just be a fluke of genetics or it could be related to their differing personality types. Dust was always a lot more sedentary and relaxed than his more high-strung and excitable sibling. But when it got to the point of being unmanageable...
He didn’t let him suffer.
For a normally solitary species that was Dust's one real connection and he doesn’t really know what to do without it. He certainly doesn’t have any interest in going out into the void alone. It feels a lot more daunting when you’re used to companionship. He spends a lot of his time collecting glowing objects and things that his brother would have found interesting, especially lights since he got nervous in the dark.
He usually chases away scavengers and sometimes even ‘grooms’ the bones to clean up any obvious decay. He KNOWS his brother is gone, he just doesn’t know what else to do with himself.
He gets along best with Horror since their travel routes often overlap. Horror is the only one who met Dust’s brother when he was alive and he remembers him fondly. Their interactions are briefer nowadays, as Horror can’t stand the cold of the river and usually takes faster routes that don’t cut as much through Dust’s current haunts. But they usually give each other a friendly greeting if nothing else.
Dust’s growth has been stunted by his poor diet and habits, exacerbated further by his brother’s death. Most adult ghost leviathans are almost twice the size of Killer, while Dust is only about 30% longer and not much bulkier. I imagine (when translated) that Killer would tease him with the equivalent of ‘runt’ or ‘kid’ being nicknames, despite himself being both smaller and younger than Dust.
Funnily enough he would be considered downright extroverted by his species’ standard for being able to tolerate being around another living being for more than a few hours at a time.
(He tries not to think about the fact that, if they had gotten up the courage to swim into the void a little sooner, they might have found Nightmare out there before Killer introduced them. That maybe his brother could have…)
Heeere's ghost leviathan Dust! I kinda gave up on drawing his arms/hands and I'm not entirely happy with it, but I think it gets the point across at least.
...dust looks weird to me without a hood on, so I tried to incorporate it. Oh well.
