Okay so I think I've settled on the 'Qin' for those space-au bug aliens. They're a primarily female species that are about maintaining community harmony with rigid castes and hierarchies, everything and everyone needing to be categorized and in it's proper place. I'm working on a draft where a close friend of Danielle's is an outcaste by the name of "Dehabilitated-Rustwright-Of-The-Crownless-Antoeci" but Dani just calls her Dhebbie.
(cy is helping me develop this species i came up with a while ago that isnt affiliated with space corps because ive been meaning to make more of those. figured id start with something i already had, when cy suggested an insectoid species and i was like, hey, ive already got one of those!!!)
some notes:
qin all kinda have these bell-shaped cloak things that they wear p much all the time, that have these holes for the wings. danielle helped dhebbie make that scarf. most qin don’t wear scarves. i still haven’t decided what they look like undern
i still need to come up with what colors to put where (im thinking mostly the browns/dull greens with some colorful spots as accents since a lot of aliens in the au so far are really really colorful), as well as species variation and stuff like that. but heres some initial ideas
A NEW PLANET im so excited about this one guys. inspiration credit for a gem species goes to ghostinabluebox but i thought it needed some fleshing out, so i tweaked some stuff and ended up making and an entire planet out of it. oops. (excuse to worldbuild? excuse to worldbuild)
the idea behind this planet is that the ENTIRE PLANET is mineral-based. there's two main types of 'crystal'--living and nonliving-- made out of similar substances to quartz, ruby, etc. im calling the planet 'czochra' (pronounced vaguely like 'chakra'), and the species is lazulite(s). again, those names are probably not what the locals use, but its at least something humans can pronounce. well, sort of. those names are a bit of a mouthful arent they haha
so starting from the outermost part of the planet/atmosphere, which is extremely vapor-like, the environment condenses as you move closer to the planets core, basically going from gas to a liquid mineral solution to solid crystal at the center. different species of lazulites live at different layers, and are generally more complex as you get to the core. most species look pretty aquatic, because most of the planet is in a liquid state. found at all layers, however, are the sea monkeyish things seen in the left side of the second pic. they collect/grow waste or nonliving mineral material on their fins, and then eat it using their 'hands'. most czochra 'eat' this way (when they dont eat each other). but these little guys function kinda like those snails that eat algae off the side of aquariums. pretty much all sentient species come from what are basically seed crystals, and grow essentially like crystals, evolving from a simpler state to a more complex one. some of them, while still crystalline and hard, are a little softer, and have a little give/flexibility to them like they were made of some kinda cross between jelly and sand or something. helps with swimming.
the lazulites have two options for reproduction. the first is by laying a seed crystal 'egg', which will float towards the outer atmosphere to hang out with other, simpler species until it starts to grow/mature. the second reproduction option is to directly create a 'copy' of themselves at present. this takes longer than creating the egg things and leaves the lazulites incredibly vulnerable, but takes much less time overall than waiting for a seed crystal egg to grow to maturity and make its way back to the core as a mature adult. the copy, while already fully mature, is not exact because the environment influences this process heavily. when a lazulite grows to maturity it is generally impossible to tell which reproductive process was used to create said lazulite. sex/gender is not a thing for lazulites. dying is more of a process of being unable to hold structure any longer, and so when they die they dissolve into the atmosphere to become nutrients for other living species. theres a balance between the amount of nonliving and living crystals held together by the living crystal species' life cycles.
some of the mature ones are space corps members, but the ones that are dont really wear uniforms- its more of a badge-sticker thing since even though they are kind of amorphous and can change their structure to some degree (like miobes), they are a lot less fluid so the uniforms are not practical enough to work.
lazulites have a highly nonverbal culture, and though they can read/write they mostly communicate by gesture (even if humans etc cant really understand), and occasionally writing. they make noises, but only from shifting/moving around--not for vocalization. for this reason (and many others), ive decided that there arent really any dp characters that would actually BE a lazulite, except maybe, say, the ectopusses, and others of the more animalistic ghosts.
another important note: czochra runs on a different sort of logic than most other places in the galaxy; lazulites have a different understanding of geometry and the universe at large, and the way their planet works kind of reflects that. certain laws of physics are sometimes bent a little bit and perceptions of non-lazulites are often skewed. theres even plenty of nonliving gems on the planet that have incredible (sometimes hypnotic) effects on the minds of foreign species; some are more susceptible than others. we hypothesized that this is where freakshow got his reality gems in this au...
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sophie and i collaborated for this next part: say freakshow went to czochra, found a way to harvest some of the non-sentient crystalline material without it dissolving upon breaking free of the atmosphere (which the nonliving mineral species usually do once removed from the super-pressurized environment). or he just takes some of the liquid to mess with later. anyway he experimented on it (probably using a method something like this) in order to make a supervaluable gem to sell, but accidentally creates a less-potent version of the reality gems- which i would imagine induces a dangerous form of hypnosis and suggestivity (ie doesnt ACTUALLY warp reality, but the people besides freakshow dont know that, right away anyway). for example, he sometimes uses his earring to control lydia. maybe you gotta let the crystal charge between uses or something. theres more about this but ill make it a separate post later on maybe.
