So... I basically watched all three Avatar films back to back to back and I have to say, some of the concepts for the endemic life to pandora are pretty interesting, but it's nothing I haven't already thought about.
I will say this once and I will probably say it again, but Avatar--despite being about ten foot blue cat people who can commune with fungus--is very tame and has made sure that it is palatable to the general audience. There are times when the na'vi feel too human and I wish that James Cameron had taken some of his more out there concepts further.
Some of the idea's I'm referring to are the na'vi's ability to neutrally connect with the roots of trees and mycelium and store memories and entire people in there. In the more recent films it seems to me that Ewya is less the trees and more the mycelium that is scattered everywhere within the planet's crust.
I had an idea about this with an original species I made called vycotans which were metala-mycelic organisms whose life cycle included breaking down into mycelium when they died which could then go and produce more vycotans.
So basically my frustrations with Avatar and my current head canons for the na'vi are a giant inspiration bomb thrown right into the heart of my mind.
SO I have once again decided to revamp my vycotan lore, it's been a couple of months since I have really thoughts about it and there have been some changes as I think more and more about it.
More on that below the cut
Things that have stayed (relatively) the same
vycotans still have metal as a major component in their bodies
vycotans still have patches of armor in their bodies which protect vital body parts from damage
when a vycotan dies their body breaks down into vycelium (which is mycelium but specifically their mycelium so it has a special name) acting as a second stage of life
vycotans are able to reproduce as individuals (which follows the quality over quantity principle of reproduction) and they can reproduce as vycelium (which follows the quantity over quality principle of reproduction)
vycotans have strands of vycelium within their bodies but they are incorporated to act more like a nerve structure.
vycotans breath through two breathing systems, vents located on the sides which can be closed in order to prevent foreign objects from getting into them and an airway in their throat which is located in separate nostrils that the ones used for smelling.
Vycotans talk out of both a voice box in the throat and through vibrations and the pitch and speed of air coming out of the side vents.
Things that are now different but have been translated
*I wanted to give vycotans are more uniform appearance, previously they would have multiple body types in that ranged from having two to ten limbs, walking bipedally, quadrupedally, or even a hexapodal or octopodal stance. I wanted to create a species and not a conglomerate.*
I decided to take a page out of Cameron's book: so they are cat people who stand between ten and fourteen feet tall (they have a muzzle and some subspecies are covered in fur from head to toe and others only have hair in certain places: the ones with full fur coats have cat fur patterns)
the armor on their bodies are located under the skin and while separate from bone and also anchor points for muscle groups.
the armor in the vyctoan bodies is made of metal, however the bones have metals mixed into the hardened structure which reinforce them.
Vycotans have a process far metala-sythesis where they are create metals using a catalyst reaction.
Vycotan organic bodies have a symbiotic relationship with a certain kind of fungus (at this rate if you removed the fungus from the body both organisms would die they cannot live without the other, this is true for all organisms present on their homeworld)
there are two main neurological systems which act like back ups to one another. The brain is the main one which is located within the skull. The second is the mecelial knot which is located in the chest behind the heart and in font of the spine which can be a backup system if damage were to come. (if the head is removed the trauma and blood loss will likely result in death, but if it does not the subsequent lack of ability to eat would kill them, there are some cases where you can put processed foot into the opening but it's not a quality life so many don't try to save if the personality (brain) is destroyed)
Vycotans only produce one kind of gamete, similar to a human egg sell it is large but there is cilia present on the surface of some produced which allows them to move towards an intended target, a second foreign gamete. There are protiens on the outside of these gamete sells which present feralization by cells from the same body. While it does occasionally happen in certain circumstances it is rare.
There has been an interesting line of evolution present that is seen in different vyctoans. The ancestor of the modern day vyctoan was a unisex species meaning that they had both inseminating and gestating organs. However over the last several millions of years there has been a mutation that has occurred where some individuals only have one set of reproductive organs (either insemination or gestion) or they will have both but only one is capable of operating while the other is underdeveloped. This has led to an interesting split.
All organisms on Opis have a symbiotic relationship with fungus
This is my explanation for why there is an ability to connect between individuals, species, and even through different kingdoms of life. This also means that the most successful life form on Opis is fungus because everything cannot live without it. Similarly they can’t live without ther hosts so there is some mutualism happening.
so something that I thought was cool in the Avatar movies was the fact that you could talk to dead people because their minds basically get uploaded into the collective consciousness of Ewya.
I had something similar with my vycotans, the main difference is that they don’t need to be uploaded because when they die their mycelium naturally mingles with the mycelium left by others. People can connect with the left over memories of their dead loved ones if they go to the place they were laid to rest. If they don’t there voice will be faint and more difficult to discern.
Some ways to exclude people who were deemed as bad are handled is that they are left far away from the mass grave that all bodies go to when they die. OR their body is burned and their essence destroyed. This is considered capital punishment.
Going to take a minute to talk about the vycotan home world of Opis (called by humans) and Taā'm'vhra (meaning all voice)
(fun side fact: vycotan is what humans call them, the vycotans call themselves vo'äks (vo'äc singular))
Taā'm'vhra is a moon which circles a gas giant called Remus-4 in a double star system home to a white star and a blue white star. The plant orbits in a figure eight or infinity symbole around both suns which takes longer than the standard orbit of earth around it's own sun. A Single year is completed when the planet is in the middle of both suns once again, this can be seen when both suns look equal in the sky.
Taā'm'vhra is about 1.5 times the size of earth meaning that the gravity is also slightly more than earth but acceptable once adapted to.
So because there is a sub-section of the vycotan populace that are male or female instead of being male AND female there are some couples that don't have the ability to gestate or sire one another's offspring which can lead to some problems.
Sometimes they can adopt the mycelium born children that make it. Sometimes you will find couples that go baby hunting where they deliberately leave out a carcass with the hope that they can capture some creepy marsupial fetuses and raise them into their own children.
Sometimes they can combine two gametes externally which it will then grow into a single use strand of mycelium with an incubation pod which then spits out a full term child when its done. (Know that this method has been abused in the past during war time and by puritan groups that reject sex)
Or they can do that other people do here on earth already.
Sometimes the mycelium that the vycotans break down into when they die decides to reproduce. The life cycle of this type of fetus is much much different from what happens when two vycotans reproduce.
Children can be created in one of two ways when they are made by mycelium 1) they are made through a cloning process called parthenogenesis, 2) they are made when two strains interact with one another and sexually reproduce.
When this happens the mycelium creates a fruiting body which looks like a cluster of grapes.
These clusters eventually unfurl and hatch into organisms which looks a lot like marsupial fetuses. They are under developed but have strong motor skills to allow them to move around and find a place to grow. Usually this sustenance comes from detritus. Not many of these babies make it to adulthood as they are cannibalistic and an easy abundant meal for most animals present.
There does have to be a specification because there are two ways for this species to keep its number up. This one goes over what happens when there is sexual reproduction between two individual vycotans.
The mycelium inside of their bodies comes into play here because of course it does.
There are two kinds of swapping that happens during sex. One the swapping of the body gametes and the connection between the mycelial networks. These tend to happen in line with each other.
With the body portion the two gametes fuse and kickstart the process of embryonic growth.
With the mycelial network if they interact with each other, they will fuse and the non-carrying partner's mycelial network leaves a little bit of their own network with the carrying partner's. It will attach to one section and instigate the growth of a core which will eventually envelope and be absorbed into the embryo. If this process happens too late the embryo will fail.
Children have similar mycelial patterns as their carrying parent's rather than the parent that sired them because the small part that is left behind is a tiny tiny portion of the overall core.
While gestating the fetus lacks a placenta instead they are connected by their own and their carrier's mycelium which is responsible for swapping nutrients between mother and fetus. When the child is born, these strands break and dry eventually flaking off. Often they are obscured by the presence of hair but can be more easily seen in hairless or near hairless variants of vycotans.
