#txentx

[parakaryote]

👽🛹

Another txentx doodle!

[Image description: A tiny pencil doodle of an emu-ish alien with spiky fur on their head riding a skateboard and smiling. The doodle is drawn on lined paper, and is only about two lines tall. End ID.]

[parakaryote]

Txentx skull doodle.

[Pasted image description: A pencil sketch of the skull of a txentx (alien species) in left-facing 3/4 view. It kind of looks like a generic mammal skull, but with no nostrils (the entire shape of the snout is bone). The teeth are small and sharp on the front and molars towards the back, with the lower jaw missing the frontmost teeth entirely. End ID.]

[parakaryote]

Eureka, like a flash of lightning

Pasted alt text:

[Image description: A digital drawing of Taigex, a txentx (emu-ish alien) with white-spotted purple fur and yellow eyes with rectangular pupils. She is leaning back with a joyous expression and sticking out her tongue, which is very long and splits into nine small tentacles at the tip. The tentacles are covered by a “glove” made up of a thin coating of dried purple slime. The background is a dark sky with a lightning bolt flashing through it. End ID.]

[parakaryote]

Major internal organs of a txentx.

Additional notes:

Only the left lung is shown.

The respiratory passages are basically X-shaped, with the “larynx” as their meeting point.

The “larynx” has a complex internal structure, allowing txentx to make sounds like the ones humans make with our tongues and lips.

The function of a liver is performed by a tight web of filaments that wind through the stomach and intestinal lining.

There is a sphincter at the very back of the mouth that opens to let the tongue through.

Because of the complexity of the lingual ganglion, the tongue sometimes reacts to stimuli seemingly on its own.

[parakaryote]

Skeletal anatomy of a txentx.

[parakaryote]

Foods of Tetet Valley

An assortment of foods mentioned in my WIP novella The Gift of Gloves. Everything is to scale, with the zetin being around the size of an apricot.

Txentx are omnivorous, but most cultures skew heavily herbivorous.

More explanation on Gexgean trees and “fruit” here.

Zetin: A “shelled fruit” with sweet, juicy flesh. Like all shelled fruits, it is eaten after it falls from the tree and cracks open on impact.

Zelzin: An uncommon soft-skinned fruit. Grows on a short species of tree. It has a subdued flavour, almost cantaloupe-like.

Sliced bark: Cut from trees and left to dry, upon which it becomes softer. This is the result of certain fibres in the bark degrading (Gexgean tree bark has a different structure from its Earth equivalent). Pleasantly savoury, a bit spicy on the inside surface.

Under-snow moss: A chemosynthetic psychrophilic organism. “Blooms” in winter, goes into cryptobiosis at temperatures above 3 C°. Tasteless with a spongy texture, so no one likes it. Only eaten if food stores are running low.

Leaves of various plants: The actual main food source. Txentx can digest cellulose-equivalent, but they prefer to eat softer, floppier leaves.

Dried meat: Reserved for special occasions. Dried by rubbing salt into it (the Valley has some caves with sizeable salt reserves) and leaving it out.

[parakaryote]

A couple of txentx sketches. 1. A txentx holding a “spear” / fauchard / glaive, the main type of weapon they use. The handle is made of wood, the blade is made of some type of rock that cleaves neatly and without too much force.

Just to be clear, their tongues can extend further than that. The person in the picture is just holding theirs straight.

2. An attempt to draw their mouth anatomy. I messed up the perspective / tooth order, but what I was trying to illustrate is that they have no teeth in front in order to let the tongue slide out.

[parakaryote]

A txentx (one of my many alien species) attempting to rein their planet’s equivalent of a horse. The bump on the back of the “horse”’s head is coated with an adhesive that sticks firmly to fur, but completely dissolves with the application of a special oil.

The two species are in the same biological order, but different families.

Land vertebrates on their planet evolved from a lobe-finned fish equivalent with only two fins, hence them only having two skeletal limbs. The dominant vertebrate clade, which these two belong to, evolved to manipulate objects with an extremely complex multi-pronged tentacle-tongue.

The things on their sides / chests are breathing openings, and the “tails” are insect-style abdomens holding some of the internal organs.

They have purple fur (including the “horse”, its fur is just really short and sleek) to blend in with the purple plants of their world. The skin underneath is usually yellow-green - the txentx here has bald feet.