the-archivist-raven

[the-archivist-raven]

An alien species (speculative evolution) I'm working on that was posted on Patreon earlier... They are a highly religious society. They often wear eccentric clothes, following dull dark colors as a base but very decorated, they also use black body paint but mostly for special events.

(march 2022)

[the-archivist-raven]

6 flying saucebacks filling 1 submission slot on Sagan 4 Alpha

[the-archivist-raven]

Big flying bugs

[the-archivist-raven]

Genetically modified spider gecko. Made via a massive genome iteration machine. Thousands of organisms are created by the random configurations of genes resulting in millions of failures. But some survive anyway

[the-archivist-raven]

Fanart of the 1993 lego dragon

[the-archivist-raven]

Drew the Googgs (spec bio species belonging to @ kat7), because I think they are pretty cool

[the-archivist-raven]

Angry alien guy

[the-archivist-raven]

Question regarding your thought process when it came to the ryerunners did you begging thinking "oh it would be interesting if a creature that's a mostly benign annoyance to the larrow happened to be a nightmare for humans to deal with" or did you realize that after the design was done? Or was it something in between, where you realized how dangerous they would be to humans halfway through designing them and decided to push that angle more?

neither really, both ideas came about separately - the wheat world stuff (including the ryerunners as a dangerous predator of humans) pre-dates the larrow, and before i decided to recontextualize the larrow as part of that I was already of the mindset that they, being little sparrow sized insect-y things, fell into a much different niche than humans with different perspectives on what constituted a frightening animal (ryerunners aren't the only discrepancy there by a long shot)

[the-archivist-raven]

Assorted sketches of the ryerunner, an ostrich-sized herbivore that lives on the wheat-covered planet Alicanto. Its frilled eyestalks fold over its head, forming a sort of natural balaclava that shields its eyes and upper nostrils in the strong winds. When extended, the underside is a bright, iridescent white; the sudden flash of a ryerunner's frill can be disorientating to practically anything with eyes in the dull sepia landscape.

Though they, as obligate herbivores, have little interest in eating other animals, ryerunners engage in a particularly gruesome form of kleptoparasitism: using their long front claw, they will cleanly "dissect" other plant-eating animals for their stomach contents (and another other occasional treats, such as gestating eggs or large internal parasites). By seeking out this partially digested food, they are able to add significant variation to their diet and include vegetation they would otherwise not be able to access. Attacks on carnivores are rarer, though still not especially uncommon. Herds of ryerunner will sometimes curiously follow animals, nutritional value or no, for up to several hours - both at ground level and by climbing to the surface of the wheat to stalk from above - before killing and carefully "dismantling" said animal as a group, a play behavior that reinforces social bonds and strengthens valuable hunting skills.

[the-archivist-raven]

tweaking the design of these guys a bit. They're a tiny, solitary, sapient alien that evolved to survive in an endless windstorm. I initially imagined them as sea dwelling, but I think they might work well with a setting I've been tossing around, a little planet dominated by oceans of wheat

[the-archivist-raven]

idk how into the dw audios you are but I saw your silurian redesign and I would love to see if you have a take on c'rizz/the eutermesans :3

yeah i've been messing with a design for him for a long time but haven't yet found anything i like. its weirdly been kind of hard to hit a medium between the fact that he's an alien from a different dimension and that he's pointedly meant to look like just a normal humanoid guy; I always want to come up with stuff that feels like it slots into the same narrative niche as the original and there's something about the way they characterize him that holds me back from designing anything too anatomically radical, idk.

some of the sketches i have around

[the-archivist-raven]

i know why this is less common but i kind of wish more spec bio adjacent worldbuilding was less about the ways a species' society was built around their natural behaviors and more about how it failed to accommodate them

[the-archivist-raven]

been picking at the design of the vvyrms again. they're "dragons" that formerly inhabited the earth before natural disaster forced the whole species (all 1000 individuals) to flee to space and end up in the interstellar equivalent of a neglected, due-to-be-demolished housing project. A lot of their anatomy is sort of arbitrary and nonfunctional in universe for... reasons

[the-archivist-raven]

Bonnnesss

1) Karragul “horns” are actually dual crests for honking. They are mostly air and fat.

2) Inland Karraguls transition from bipeds to quadrupeds during puberty. Many of their wristbones fuse, and the hands in general become more robust.

[the-archivist-raven]

can you draw a ghost shrimp? (I lowk forgot if that exist or not I have just remembered I think I had one)

transparent king

[the-archivist-raven]

[the-archivist-raven]