#spec evo

[roots-of-aurogir]

attack on @xylographica's paleolithic minotaur, Kiro!

[theelderworld]

Here we are - first attack of the month. Rawr and a Rawrling for ExistentialBread on Artfight!

[lolpyi]

Its Artfight time!!

[freakyfishyfreakshow]

ermmmmmmmmmmmm alien #alien

No formal name for them yet but i call them squidaliens. and i think its sticking because it sounds silly. Im going to give very basic descriptions until i dedicate more time into it.

INFORMATION BLAST BEWARE ⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

RED ORB

Red Orb’s ocean is red and covers nearly all land. Islands are very small and in clusters, typically connected to a volcano. Some feature sky islands connected by vines. The sea is a violent thing, being in low gravity makes waves massive and crash hard.

Iron based life forms living in a salty, iron sea. All life uses iron oxidation for cellular respiration.

plants and animals on this planet evolved similarly; both having chemoautotrophic bacteria which feed off of iron. Plant cell walls are thicker than animals, but that is the only difference between plants and animals on this planet. Kindof like how charnia is an animal.

muscles work in cycles by both pushing and pulling cartilage or bone to move.

INTELLIGENT LIFEFORMS

The drive for their intelligence came from the unstable, unpredictable environment they lived in. They had to evolve to predict tides, avoid predators, and navigate complex social structures. Squidaliens excel at prediction, structure, organization and strategy. Additionally, there was another intelligent species evolving at the same time they were, and they are still in a race for intelligence.

COMMUNICATION

They communicate electrically. In their tails they possess an electrical organ which sends signals to other members of their species. An advantage they had over their echolocating competitors was that they could stealth around them. Squidaliens had echolocation at one point but their vocal chords became vestigial after not being used.

In addition to electrocommunication, they communicate with body language, pheromones, and written text.

Squidalien evolved alongside plants as their language grew. They selectively bred plants for functions similar to technologies now.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

There are two distinct types of societies squidaliens have: Colonial and nomadic. Colonial is categorized by an authoritarian system, functioning under a central hivemind consisting of deceased ancestors or minds made for ruling. These hiveminds are called Queen Systems

Queen systems operate similarly to computers, they are a storage of minds of past and present, and hold encyclopedic knowledge on everything. Queens can operate and communicate simultaneously. Scientists, those studying law, and similar minds are added to the pile, but very rarely workers are.

Ideally, they are not biased, and value their underling’s lives and individuality, but there are outliers.

Princesses are individuals set to become part of the system. They are intelligent, typically older individuals with boundless wisdom and information in their brains. They are very specialized in what they do, and have stuck to it their whole life. Princesses are fed a diet which enhances their memory retention and recall, while shutting down every other system in their body not directly benefitting brain function.

LIFE OUTSIDE THE COLONIES

Nomads do not operate underneath queen systems. Rather, some choose to work alongside them rather than directly under. Those operating under queen systems revere them as religious, containing the memories, minds, and knowledge of their ancestors. It is considered an honored death to be preserved in this way.

Nomads are physiologically different from colony squidalien. It’s like comparing a specialized dog breed to a wolf.

Above is a colonial squidalien, they are typically skinnier and smaller.

Above is a reeds nomad, traveling between islands. They are an example of “John Squidalien”

Nomads possess a cap that sits above their head which blocks and scrambles electrical signals in their brain, allowing for less electrical signal pollution in the ocean. Colonial squidalien don’t have this cap, it allows for their queens to read the brain signals of their workers and manage them further.

Nomads live in clans which are then split into pods and then family groups. One family group leads, and the other members in the leading pod have authority over others. Duties are split between pods.

Governmental duties are split between mediators (legislative), guards (judicial), and police (executive). more explained in the doc but its boring and long.

Nomadic life has its clear advantages, being more individual than colonies, but they give up the protection and certainty of the queen and staying in one location.

this is a summary of all i have written !! very very heavy wip but thank you for reading!!

[oculsss]

Go beat my ass at artfight artfight.net/~greensnail !

spec evo artists are highly welcomed

The last one is 3d btw

[behavioral-multicellularity]

WORLDBUILDING NOTES: URBAN MODULES

The single, biggest question I wanted to answer about life in a human body is how gravity is dealt with. Previously it was like, this flat plane? Bc that’s what’s implied in the canon? But that was FAR too restrictive in what could actually be done. How does it move? How does it exist in a way that at least makes SOME sense?

What I decided on was basically a very humanlike 3d structure. It stands up and moves and does all the things that a human body does, whether or not I want to talk about them. Any organ you can think of, structurally at least, is just “real life but mechanical.” Each one has its own quirks and lore and everything, but that’s the framework. Just so SOMETHING exists before manual adjustment.

But cells don’t function on the organ level, so we have to go smaller. And that’s what this fucker is

This is what the inside of an “urban module” looks like. There are millions of these scattered throughout the Body, each specialized to its specific tissue. If you were a cell, they’d be roughly the size of a large college campus or town square (but can be as big as a metropolis or as small as a supermarket) and houses about 30-40 thousand cells.

The reason they fix the gravity problem is that they can rotate freely. The module is made of two spherical shells—the outer shell is anchored to the Body’s flexible matrix, and the inner shell is unattached to anything. The space between the shells is filled with a slippery, fat-like substance that allows free motion of the entire module. This happens readily because the lower half of the module (underneath the city) is weighted with storage units, though emergency correction technology helps prevent damage due to sudden motion.

Those Twinkie-looking things between the shells are shuttles. To get in and out, red blood cells must pilot them to climb through the tangle of ventilation and energy cords to get from the blood vessel to the nearest docking station, which is what you see against the wall there. It’s clunky, but it works. It also makes the passive spread of pathogens incredibly difficult.

The most populated regions of the city are the two ring-shaped buildings. The outer ring is all apartments, and the thick inner ring is all workplaces. This particular module is in the vascular endothelium, but different tissues will have different specializations in both workplaces and living arrangements. But no matter what, every module will have two (sometimes more) huge radiators to dissipate heat from respiration, which also maintain homeostasis of the module in general. The little “gardens” also serve a purpose. Those are synthetic cilia, they a) look pretty and 2) trap pathogens, especially bacteria. In this AU, bacteria are no longer sapient, so they’d naturally be looking for places to hide. The idea is that they’ll hide in the cilia where they can be ambushed by immune cells and processed in the hidden bunkers underneath.

Lastly, every module has a synthetic nerve communicating with it, which provides a good chunk of their energy as well as their primary communication system. If two common cells want to talk to each other across the Body, sending pen-and-paper notes via blood cells will have to do. But urgent messages and orders are given instantaneously through rhythmic surges that resemble Morse code.

[cathartes-aura-shitposting]

behold: a semibot riding their "terror bird".

because i thought it'd be a very funny yet epic visual to draw. not just any terror bird though; a large, purposefully inaccurate and generic terror bird. don't ask what happened to the little guy, he's probably gonna get all that fixed soon. probably...

anyways

this is a Greater European Diatryma, a species of "terror bird" known throughout much of northern Europe. unlike their smaller, leaner relatives, these guys arent active hunters but more so ravenous omnivores that'll eat anything; but dont think they arent cappable of taking down prey, as they are known to hunt down animals as large as cattle and moose. they and the rest of their family are speculated to be descendants of galliformes, and it's believed they may have came via the Mutational Ormeed Virus. they're a common mount in the region, and are prized for both their strength and loyalty.

also, dinosaurs and other paleofauna totally exist within the raygun AU. but only a cursed, inaccurate and outdated kind, because truthfully i dont think a paleo-accurate velociraptor would fit the vibe of REPO.

[cellulosaurus]

I’ve been exploring some ideas for a seedworld of mine recently