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Raptors would have been really silly, this is my scientific opinion

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welcome to the cenozoic fucko

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This video showcases my Blender model of the planet that the Scud aliens call home, the fourth and final world I've mapped out for @jayrockin's "Runaway to the Stars" project. A *lot* of maps were created in service of this final render, and also in service of presenting the special qualities of this planet. I intend to show you as many of these as I can under the cut, and also in subsequent posts focusing on some of the more interstitial, ancillary maps and figures that played a part in producing the primary maps you'll see in this main post.

Before I show the first maps I made for this project, what you see below are the satellite-style maps for the Equinoxes and Solstices, in order of (Northern) Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, the latter serving as the texture for the Blender object you saw in the video.

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With that matter covered, our next focus is this project's foundation: Geology. While I didn't spin as elaborate a tectonic history for this planet as I did for the Ayrum commission, I did work out as much detail as I could for the more recent geological activity, to set the stage for the elevation data - including a narrower focus on the coastal shallows that host the Scud populations.

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Once I could move on to climate, my first step was finding this planet's relative Insolation, which I managed thanks to @reversedumbrella's code and coaching. With an obliquity of only 16 degrees, this planet's yearly maximum Insolation levels stick close to the equator, compared to pole-to-pole oscillation we see on Earth

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Having a rough sense of where heat would concentrate seasonally and how the landmasses would deflect water in light of the planet's retrograde spin, I was able to set down the bi-annual ocean currents (Northern Summer above and Northern Winter below), then the monthly water temperatures pushed around by said currents, and finally -after factoring in many other considerations- the monthly land temperatures as well (combined in the second gif)

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Next came the seasonal air pressure maps and subsequent wind patterns (my first time creating those from scratch), which later factored into the precipitation maps. The incredible temperatures at the largest continent's interior make a desert of most of it, and the other interiors are fairly dry too, but all that heat on the equatorial ocean generates a *lot* of evaporation which ends up coming down elsewhere.

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With temperatures and precipitation mapped out for each month, I was able to find how the accumulation and melt of ice and snow played out, too. Given such a hot equator it's surprising to see freezing temperatures hold out in some places, but low obliquity and high elevation shield what areas they can, it seems.

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All this monthly data was then painstakingly combined and compared and plugged into equations to produce maps of discrete climate zones, using both the Köppen (left) and Trewartha (right) classification systems. The higher latitudes see some overlap with Earth's conditions, but the Tropics...

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I never really finished the map I wanted to make with my own loosely customized classification system, but I *did* get as far as this breakdown of the areas that sometimes surpass 56.7 degrees Celsius, Earth's record for highest surface temperature ever directly measured. And as you can see, that earthly record is broken by a *significant* fraction of this planet's surface, and far exceeded by the equatorial continent's deep interior

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The final phase of this project dealt with creating satellite maps of this planet's surface (which you saw at the top of this post), which started with a map of dry and submerged substrate, then a density map of the vegetation that sits atop it, then the colors of that vegetation under annual average conditions (demonstrating how they would appear in-person, rather than the area's appearance from orbit), and finally plant colors under seasonal conditions (same conceit as previous). In concert with the seasonal ice and snow maps, it was the four maps in the last sequence which were overlaid on the Substrate map, using the plant density map as raster masks, to produce the final Satellite-Style maps.

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This planet's sophonts being a marine species, it was then worth focusing on the conditions underwater, which included monthly seafloor temperatures (first gif), annual discharge of sediment from rivers (magenta in the 2nd gif), and seasonal upwelling of nutrients from deeper water (blue in the 2nd gif).

The creation of all my maps seen in this post was possible thanks to Photopea, which has been my go-to for several years now. The resolution kinda got crunched when I uploaded these here, so when I share them on Reddit later I'll add those links under this. These have also already been posted on Twitter, which you can see here if you like. Thanks for scrolling all the way down here!

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Making a new on from scratch and it's turning out good.

RIP to my old paint 3D model that apparently was never properly archived.

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the police won't help me

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RIP to my old paint 3D model that apparently was never properly archived.

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Are there albino birgies?

A complete lack of pigmentation does sometimes occur in Birgs, yes!

Sentiments on complete albinism vary by culture; in kakroum clans, a pure white Birg is thought to occur when a cold draft allows a winter spirit to infect a larva. With a snow-ghost in their blood, they attract other spirits and may be agents of misfortune. Southern clans view them in a more positive light, embracing them as born interpreters of weather omens carried on the wind.

Heartland Twowi find them somewhat less uncanny, as large white patches are already a common phenotype in the region. Folk wisdom based on a centuries old practice of fate reading in spots would suggest that they are blank slates, their futures uncertain because the gods didn’t bother to mark them at all.

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Coloured version of raptor folk

Critique is always appreciated! <3

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antlion playing the trumpet

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Assuredly, Albeit

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A snippet taken from the hypothetical dirtball groupchat.

I would have to assume it is mostly taken up by long protracted arguments between Cheevwut and Ohwitiil.

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It's almost 3 am i can't remember so many projects namees (and much of spec bio stuff i like is just earth many years from now so idk if it counts)

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This blog is mostly a repository for the art and lore I make for my various worldbuilding projects.

Also occasionally fandom art.

I also reblog stuff I think looks cool. Mostly spec evo stuff.

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I’ve barely drawn lately, but I have been thinking about different populations of snamels.

They have been space faring for Millennia, different colonies have varied looks from a combination of genetic drift and genetic modification to suit different words (or to make themselves look like rainbow sherbet)

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a smallish redesign of one of my sophonts, the Striders (mostly just decluttering the whole thing)

they hunt in large groups, preying on starfish-like herbivores

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Some head busts of my spec evo species showcasing coat color variation between regions.

Created circa. December 2022, I've been working on and off do develop both their design and lore.

The best way I can verbally describe them is sort of as marsupial... Raptor... Things. (Marsuraptors?)

More lore posts to follow...