Howdy, I'm Aconite! This is my worldbuilding and spec bio blog, where I yap about my setting for the Little Bird.
The Little Bird is an exploratory and diplomatic vessel that was commissioned for a treaty between Enith, Teth Tias, and the newly discovered Umblans.
The guys above are the mechanical and medical teams, who you can learn more about in the 'oc:' tags on this post!
You can explore the setting and characters together through the tag 'Little bird worldbuilding'
I also have tags to separate the worldbuilding for individual planets in the setting; Greetings from Enith, Zoronxiecore, Cool Skies and Warm Earth, where is Teth Tias, and Atiske. Some of them are pretty empty, and they've all got some aesthetic inspiration(?) thrown in, but I'll be updating them as I figure out more lore.
Been a while! Life has been a bit too hectic to post online recently. Here’s some of the stuff I’ve made while I was gone.
Made a 3D sculpt of my speculative evolution sophont. Took about a month to complete. Every scale is hand-sculpted and then drawn over again for colour. There’s a lot I’d change if I were to touch it again, but I’ve drawn one too many dots to remain sane.
Aaaand some various sketches and 2D drawings. I’m still figuring out how to make their anatomy weirder. I’ll likely ramp up posting here since I have more free time but no promises, I’m a bit of a lurker on large social medias. Would love to answer asks or hang out in specbio spaces though!
(My commissions are also open during the summer, including 2D and 3D works like these. Please click this text & DM if interested!)
tfw you've known each other eighteen years but due to your species' reliance on touch-telepathy to communicate you are only now about to have your very first direct conversation with the love of your life #justbasicsolidvam-kothings
Body language notes under the readmore
Vam-ko is signalling a pretty intense case of 'please please please please talk to me i'm literally so nice'; all four ear batons are up and tilted towards Nar-it, his eyes are crazy big and also looking right at her. He has held out his hand patch to her to request the conversation (and therefore its implied he's accepted the responsibility if the conversation goes badly), and has exposed the hand patch not in use as well even though its only touching the ground.
To counteract this very direct focus he's keeping his head lower than Nar-it's and stretched his arm out very far to allow her to take his hand well away from his personal space. He has shuttered his lower eye set, a common calming signal which also softens his stare. He is slumped over and has his legs in an awkward position to get up from, signalling he can't lunge or attack her easily. He is also keeping his tail still, not even his short tail is moving ('short tail' is classed as the end half, wagging this is an interest signal which can be positive or negative. Lashing the long tail (the whole thing) is an aggression signal). he is also touching the 'thumbs' of one foot together, in a cute little 'crossed fingers' gesture.
all in all he's showing that's he incredibly investing in this contact but is also in control of himself and wants it to go well.
Nar-it also has wide eyes, so she is very interested in talking, but is not taking it as calmly as Vam-ko and is a lot warier. However, she is not wary of Vam-ko! All four of her eye are looking at him with no shuttering (sign of calmness) or narrowing (sign of wariness). Tilting her ears away is a counter to Vam-ko's focused ears, like saying 'bro wtf there are other things we might need to listen for pay attention', but she does have one baton on him. Her feet are half braced, but in a way that means if she did push off from her braced foot, she would end up springing away from Vam-ko, to tackle anything that tries to interrupt them. She is also keeping the claws on her talking hand very carefully away from him, showing that she is taking care with their conversation. She doesn't have as much control over her short tail as he does, it's twitching due to her over-stimulation at her split focus.
Bobole shown in natural patterns, with a kula and a sloman silhouette for reference.
The second most widespread domesticated predator the slomen have would be the rounder than round big-maw.
They come from temperate climates, where they roam the forests, eating animals of many sizes (usually based on pack size). Most often, they are seen in pairs (commonly of siblings), but this rule isn't unbreakable. Sometimes, packs reach over 6 members that stay together for a long period of time before they eventually separate into smaller groups. This adaptability might be why their domestication came quite naturally. From the bobole's point of view, slomen might have been great hunting buddies.
Bobole are intelligent hunters that rely on visualizing the path of their prey more than on communication between members. This makes them both adaptable and stubborn when working in bigger groups or with slomen. The usual strategy is for one individual to stay low, watching the target, while others chase it in the other's direction. The unmoving bobola waits for the moment the target is close enough to strike it. In case it fails, the one chasing will still be available on the other side to mayhaps save the hunt.
With smaller prey, they can be useful chasing the target for slomen too. But with their stubborn attitude toward their technique, it's more common for them to help keep the watch on prey and track it.
In an active hunt, the slomen direct the bigger prey to the usually-larger-breed bobola to deal the first hit, keeping the animal in grasp for a person to kill it with a weapon.
Some breeds are very territorial. For this, you will rarely see them in Ciwa, where you could consider them outlawed. Not because they could hurt a person, but because a kula could be at risk. The sacred feral population must live on.
Unlike a dog, bobolas are not as flexible to train. Little funny tricks are meant for a kula. These orbs are loyal and follow direction, but they take a lot of time to do their natural behaviors in ways most useful for people.
The easiest is for them to protect family members from threats, which is why many cultures have at least one devoted to the household kids and follow them on their mischievous journeys even when they sneak around the adults. Of course, one must establish what a threat is early on. Nobody wants an anxious bobola who bites their aunt.
In some regions, if you were to visit a village, chances are you would see them sitting by every third settlement, either sleeping or watching you. Sellers might even take them to the markets to keep thieves away.
Now, you might find these orbicular animals somewhat similar to the put-tut, but they are hardly related. Bobola are actually genetically closer to the 'slomland' bird than to slomen themselves. Just like with the raptorial shape before the mammal overtaking on earth, the upright biped is popular with convergent evolution. However, since vertebrates of the continent don't have true tails to balance them horizontally, most bipedal animals here keep their head high.
This creature has been pretty much designed for a looong time now, but I never got to actually rendering it.
Minus Diaf, of course, but these three are responsible for the major decisions on the Little Bird.
Hilariously, Narihl is the only one with real-world experience for the route tLB takes. T-132 is an excellent translator, but he’s fresh out of ‘college’. And Marish is an excellent navigator, but she never got into the Enithian end of the galaxy.
Individual character descriptions are under the cut :)
Likely the one with the most qualificable experience on board, Narihl is the storemaster of the Little Bird.
Narihl was born into the Lowlands Trade Management Association, and he was sorted into a Storemaster position as soon as he finished school. He worked on Enith for a bit over a decade. When the Lowlands Association bartered for pan-galactic support, Narihl was sent to work on a space station. He worked there for a few years, then was transferred to a ship.
Enith’s peace treaty with Teth Tias had Narihl’s work expand. He quickly found himself jumping from one ship to the next, eventually managing a system of storemasters that stretched from Lia to Zornxia.
Who actually recommended him to Diaf is largely a mystery, since Narihl knows entirely too many people.
T-132 is the translator for the Little Bird.
His batch was commissioned following Enith’s peace treaty with Teth Tias, with the explicit purpose of acting as translators and diplomats for Enithian representatives. They all studied Tias culture and linguistics for years, and many of them went on to accompany high ranking Enithian officials, including the Princes Acknowledged.
But, in the time that T-132 was studying, the Umblan planet was discovered. That planet offered up a joint research initiative to the Enithian and Tias governments. T-132 was assigned to the Little Bird, a station that he believes is absolutely beneath him.
Marish is a medical (and general) mystery, and the navigator for the Little Bird!
Seemingly popping into existence in the middle of a currently unexplored solar system, Marish has lived for potentially millions of years. She’s explored most of the area around Umblan space at sub-light speeds. Granted, she did spent most of the travel time hibernating.
Marish was first discovered by the wormhole setup ship manned by Enithians and Umblans. She then became a staple around any and all space stations, ships, and even small transports. The Umblans, new to space travel, were quick to correlate her with the largest members of their species, called islands. When they found that she could learn their language, they instead began to compare her to the Enithians.
She was included in the Umblan’s research initiative, and signed on to the Little Bird. The main problem is finding which rooms she can even fit into…
A polycule of nedal traveling in their home spaceship - scheduled to land on-planet in about an hour - strap on their leg braces. Cultures of sophants who are accustomed to space life in zero or microgravity often need to reinforce their limbs with mechanical braces to handle the gravity of terrestrial planets. This family is really into the stylish laces of their braces :)
End of the first update!! hope you enjoy it so far! as i've mentioned before for the time being, pareidolia will update every friday.
as you can see tbh this is less of a traditional webcomic format and more of a graphic novel situation. the prose is written the way it is kind of intentionally, you'll see how things proceed, hehe.
Hey yeah sorry I don’t have time to risk my life in the extradimensional radiation pit I have a discussion post due in 2 hours.
Fun fact/info update maybe canon?: She got the arms from the corporation her parents worked for since it was their fault the accident happened in the first place. It was mostly a half-assed charity stunt (the models they gave out are pretty barebones by their standards, minimal internal workings and detachable) the company only did because so many people were affected by it, including children/teens like Zoe (bad press…).It wasn’t free, of course, especially because they now have to deal the maintenance and are now tied to that company for parts and formula to prevent you from having complications.
They’re still dealing with the medical bills, which now mostly fall onto Devin since their parents are dead. Uh dead parents update lol their situation makes more sense to me that way->Zoe’s life getting fucked up timeline: living on the coast+mom is chronically ill, Devin becomes a Conduit so they have to move to Conduit housing, war escalates and they get evacuated to housing elsewhere, the accident happens+parents die+Zoe becomes a Conduit also, try to move to live with their grandparents since Devin is an adult now to allow mom to move back into normal person housing to get better treatment, get diverted by gov to the SEZ in a hotel for a bit during immigration/emigration crisis because they’re Conduits , get locked in the SEZ after border closure, Devin joins a dredger agency for the reduced price housing+tries to continue college+drops out to work full time, Zoe joins the same agency part time to pay for her own schooling and medical stuff (the arm debt was taken out of their family’s assets upon their death and then written off when that ran out, but there’s still the formula/medicines and fixing any breaks/wear or updating their size) . They’re financially ehhhhhhhhhhh ok since a lot of their parents’ debt was dismissed (at the expense of them not having a house or inheritance or anything, which is why they were trying to move) and they are both working and have help from their grandparents. Idk idk
The injury to her arms was complicated by infection and RUU, ending in amputation, and her legs were also affected. The arm docking bits were put in as part of the same surgery to take the meat arms off and patch it up. Current human culture views cybernetics as “better” than normal prosthetics due to the glorification of advanced tech/the old ways (They often have more functions and can look and act closer to the meat equivalent, and technology has re-progressed to the point where some people are taking off limbs on purpose to put them in (in the central cities/core of the DRSS where all the money and development is , but still). But a lot of the time it’s form/appearance first and being able to do a lot of things over being able to do one thing well, like a hook or claw could do.)
