#gouons

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I love that my BFA is allowing me to bring my passion project to life <3

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A couple of First Ones. Their tattoos are actually infections from the Gouons they’re symbiotic with that imitate the Gouon herself. They glow like the Avatar State whenever a Gouon assumes direct control to speak with their subjects. They can always turn it off and it doesn’t hurt after the initial infection.

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🌻

I have an entire original species I made up back in high school that I have iterated on and expanded upon since 2014 at the very latest. They’re flower fairies who reproduce exactly the way flowers do. They grow seeds on their bodies, drop the seed, and then pollinate them with their fairy dust (which is actually their pollen and comes out of their wings when they vibrate). Theyy have a symbiotic relationship with another species of fungus, who transfer their pollen and mutate them to create genetic diversity and thus a more robust and adaptable species. In return the fungus have absorbed some of the DNA of the fairies and now their mycelium (the enormous network of fungus that live underground) has gotten into the habit of taking on vaguely-fairy-like bodies.

The fairies are called Corioli and the fungus are called Gouons and I love them.

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ssboat​

Is the angel living or a statue?  How about the “old world”? What happened to it?

The angel, according to the bugs, is a being made of metal said to have created the world in the name of the God 4,000 years ago. Originally, the world was made of metal like the angel, though once God saw the craftsmanship and ingenuity of the angel, the world was brought to life.

According to reality, the angel... is in your fanmail inbox ;-P 

What happens to the failed experiments? Do they die immediately or do they live suffering?

Machigaia is a failed experiment, actually. She was plucked from the ground while the pieces of her were smashed together, in an attempt to see if the bugs could “adopt” a gouon and raise it somehow. Trying to stretch all those creatures who were only marginally glued together resulted in Machigaia losing her arms, and getting stretched out to proportions unsustainable for a gouon of her size.

While this was happening her ambassador Zekko sort of “felt” how much pain Machigaia was in and rushed to her after the bugs dropped Machi to the ground when they realized trying to pull her out would just kill her. Hence why Zekko must protect Machigaia.

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A little character blurb for a gouon. Might do more of these, might not.

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More Gouon Answers

ssboat

Rapid fire answers! Thank you, god I almost DON’T want to reblog this thanks to the upDATE D: Are there any other sentient beings outside of Gouons and Fairies? How do they react to the giant women and tiny people they share their world with? How do the living creatures “destroy” the spores? Are the living against this sort of zombification? And poor Machigaia. Does her fear cripple her, and if so, does that affect amy of her subjects (id imagine she wouldn’t be much good at defending anything).

I love answering these questions! I think I might make an updated character sheet for all the gouons and the species involved, try to organize my thoughts more in some kind of masterpost. We’ll see. But first...!

Are there any other sentient beings outside of Gouons and Fairies? How do they react to the giant women and tiny people they share their world with?  

Yes! There are these fairy-size bug people who salvage ancient technology and worship an angel made of metal, who live on a series of floating islands in the sky several miles away from the ground. Their technology is metal-based and dedicated to matching the technology of “the old world” to the best of their ability, which contrasts most fairy technology which is based on masonry and textile engineering.

Most of them kidnap fairies who abandon their gouons and use them as slave labor, so they count as one of the monsters fairies get gouons to protect them from. They consider gouons mindless brutes, and sometimes certain colonies of bugs try to find spores to create their own gouons and study them. The controlled environments and smallness of the islands make it almost impossible for a gouon to develop properly, though, so most of their experiments end in failure.

Certain colonies of bugs in the sky try to control newer generations of their fairy-slaves by telling them if they fall off their island, they’ll either die from the fall or a gouon will eat them. Usually their parents pass down more accurate depictions of gouons, but depending on how many generations have passed, most island-born fairies are afraid of gouons and stay on the islands to avoid them

How do the living creatures “destroy” the spores? Are the living against this sort of zombification?

The zombification isn’t dangerous to them, since the only thing a reanimated creature can do is walk incessantly in a certain direction until it finds another zombie of the correct spore type and starts smashing into them. Most living creatures destroy the spores before it reaches them by squishing them or avoiding them. If a living creature DOES get a spore on them, depending on what type of living creature it is, it’ll either flush the spore out of its system or assimilate with it.

Sometimes living fairies get infected with a spore of a gouon and become ambassadors. They retain their ability to speak and communicate, but they also have a “window” or sorts into the mind of the gouon they’re attached to. They can’t fuse with the gouon’s body, but they can relay information and talk to fellow fairies about what the gouon wants. Most of these people die of natural causes after a few decades of being an ambassador.

And poor Machigaia. Does her fear cripple her, and if so, does that affect any of her subjects (I’d imagine she wouldn’t be much good at defending anything)?

Machigaia only has one subject, and that’s Zekko, an ambassador who had been infected with one of Machi’s spores a few years back. Machigaia can’t fight anyone because she has no arms, so Zekko has to protect Machi rather than the other way around. Other gouons find this either adorable or pathetic.

The ones who find it pathetic are hostile to Machigaia, so Zekko tends to lead Machigaia in nomadic routes that avoid the ones who want to kill her. The ones who find it adorable tend to give them things to carry around, and one gouon decided to give Machigaia some clothes so it would be less embarrassing for her to walk around.

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mocca-latte-in-my-veins squigglydigg

You're both right! Gouons take the pieces of other gouons and make clothes out of them, and they get offerings of clothing from the fairies. Ingmirry's outfit is a lot of leather sword hilts sewed to form a tutu type thing, and Zebwelder's outfit is made of miles of silk from the fairies plus the arms of the gouons she has defeated. One of the arms in her skirt also belongs to Ingmirry, which she has replaced with a sword.

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The first time I ever drew Zebwelder. I love her design so much that it has barely changed at all,… The first time I ever drew Zebwelder. I love her design so much that it has barely changed at all, even a year after I first made it.