raygungoth In reply to Zatnikotel [2021-01-10 19:54:56 +0000 UTC]

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raygungoth In reply to ValhaHazred [2020-07-26 23:06:35 +0000 UTC]

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-26 06:08:04 +0000 UTC]

I have a system for feets!

docs.google.com/document/d/1Hz…

Now all I got to do is write it out, tack on a system for the vehicles and EVA devices, and design some of those.

"Complexity" might not be right. Maybe "Training" or "Education"

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-18 03:35:10 +0000 UTC]

Well, at least I can say I tried.

orig00.deviantart.net/31dd/f/2…

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-18 04:18:37 +0000 UTC]

HAH, that's awesome!  : D

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-18 04:24:06 +0000 UTC]

Arthrodire placoderm, arthropod, and trilobite (for the silicate eyes/SeaView-type windows).

It is my belief that the conn tower is a copepod that lifts itself up straight when the sub surfaces, based on stiffening behaviors in arthropods when they're removed from the water. Of course there are barnacle symbiotes and the cavitation gills are modified ribs, and there are other creatures in the construction on the interior, along with inorganic components, not just from its original creators, but some stuff the scientists moved in when they decided to start living and working there (like the sticky notes on every console that explains what it do).

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-20 03:58:25 +0000 UTC]

WHOA, that's an awesome little bio tidbit there, extrapolated in such an epic way!  I can just imagine how impressive it would be to see the "mast" erect itself as the "sub" breaches the water's surface. 

Ohhh, so in this scenario the "vehicle" was discovered by contemporary (?) humans (??)....?

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-20 04:11:05 +0000 UTC]

Yes. It was in a dock facility that was ejected from the crust after being underground for a time, investigated as a sea anomaly and then contemporary scientists moved in, using the old systems to try to track down and locate the remains of this ancient civilization - perhaps some of the weirder lineages on Earth are leftover pieces of technology that have evolved back into food webs? Possibly built by the source of the biogenic carbon in Earth's zircon? A civilization that was around during the late Ediacaran or the Cambrian? That's a big target for Elder Things yay! So posthuman they don't even exist in the same universe anymore. It's possible the sub was even from the future, which is also the past, because once you're outside the universe or running on sideways time things get crazy.

www.pnas.org/content/112/47/14…

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-17 04:58:13 +0000 UTC]

Trying out orca and manta derivations with copepod parasites modified to serve as unfurling conn tower, cilia-lined turbine engines, and of course, highly modified air sacs to serve as interior, with other forms of inorganic metallurgy and energy storage so it can be driven around and have a moon pool that isn't a giant anus.

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-18 04:23:56 +0000 UTC]

You know, it seems like the parasitic Cymothoa "tongue-eating isopod" might come in handy for something.
awesomeocean.com/wp-content/up…

I was also thinking about an anglerfish sub in which the esca/lure becomes an umbilicus with a UAV or hardsuit at the tip.

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-18 04:33:18 +0000 UTC]

Well, I still need to put claws and stuff on the inside. Parasitic roof-hanging anglerfish or squid to serve as umbilicus?

And a moon pool claw for picking up ROVs and maybe biosuits/sea fleas to swim around in. Derived from frogfish-like hands or collapsing gill structures? More cephalopods?

I WANT MORE BARNACLES ON DECK TWO

Med bay is a nightmare. Cnidarians stuffed with painkillers and antivenoms, liberties taken with lobopods, big soft comb jelly beds, ray/shark-like structures attached to arthropod limbs for electrolytic scanning.

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-20 03:59:58 +0000 UTC]

It sounds like a dream come true!  This is what I want to see if I ever need gall bladder surgery. 

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raygungoth In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-18 03:34:50 +0000 UTC]

My attempto

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2017-10-16 22:18:19 +0000 UTC]

yessss

I labeled this image "Multi-Use Forward Navigators" so they can be called "muffins."

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2017-10-18 04:24:25 +0000 UTC]

Put legs on them and they become MUFFINtops!

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2015-11-25 10:19:50 +0000 UTC]

Oh, Japanese waters. You gave us this and the mandala puffer.

You, the arctic, and the Galapagos really need to get together and design a hatred squid that can control time.

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2015-11-30 04:58:26 +0000 UTC]

Okay, that mandala puffer really threw me for a loop!  Reminds me in equal measures of the carrier shell
cdn.supadupa.me/shop/851/image…
and that crackpot "kraken art" hypothesis:
io9.com/5848192/giant-prehisto…
(Time-controlling hatred squid indeed!)

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2015-11-30 09:18:07 +0000 UTC]

I love carrier snails, so much. My uncle has an entire shelf of his seashell collection devoted to them - next time I'm over there I've got to take pictures of the one with plastic junk all over it.

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raygungoth In reply to wonderfully-twisted [2014-09-25 18:20:36 +0000 UTC]

You're welcome! The brainbot is amayzang. I see you did a commission for Sludd - I know this person! Small werld.

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2014-09-20 05:21:30 +0000 UTC]

I did these but they're really poopy. I'll look later and start fresh with a new sheet. The Tapir Tribunal Temple in the lower right will probably be jazzed up a bit more and have MORE SPIKES AND HAIR

fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/201…

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thomastapir In reply to raygungoth [2014-09-22 05:07:47 +0000 UTC]

Aw, I think they look great!  I was reading them as more vegetable than animal, am I wrong about that?  Maybe I am, given the spikes and hair...I'm probably unfairly biased in this regard by Harry Harrison's Yilane cities:

www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/b/b8…

There's something creepy about the idea of a building with hair, actually...Spikes I can live with; hair pushes some buttons, gets me thinking of teratoma.  Hm, reminds me of a story I read once, set in biotech-intensive near future.  The metaphysical systems of karma and transmigration of the soul were also well-understood and even regulated by this point...Story revolved around a kind of menage a trois reincarnation drama playing out between a married couple, their possessed baby, and a literal "living room" hosting the tortured soul of a homicide victim.  Very strange, John Shirley I believe...His stuff is always brutal and unsettling.

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raygungoth In reply to thomastapir [2014-09-22 17:27:13 +0000 UTC]

That sounds pretty cool!

Scharan buildings (and towns, by extension) are meant to be ecosystems, totally drawing on my experiences with the Eden series (ffffff i think the lizard rape really made the book series stay embedded in my tiny child mind, who keeps those books on the shelf in an elementary school while trying to get rid of Nineteen Eighty-Four?), as well as my continuous trips to the nearby beach, so, yeah, there's a lot of vegetable in there, and barnacles and, of course, inorganic deposits laid down by colonies to serve as support structures. My idea is that each building comprises its function as part of the infrastructure (a "power plant" is a huge green mass of algae and bacterial colonies that transport energy along vascular channels, and so on), and the people who live there are part of it - the buildings start to die if nobody is using them actively, and the idea of "wild" buildings that lost their need for the human components growing in the wilderness of some forgotten planet continues to tickle me.

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raygungoth In reply to AkumaRyoshi [2013-12-18 22:52:17 +0000 UTC]

Thanks!

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raygungoth In reply to TerranAbassador [2013-11-21 17:32:29 +0000 UTC]

Hooray! Thank you!

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raygungoth In reply to DrKaleidoscope [2013-10-26 05:11:55 +0000 UTC]

i keep trying to force other games to stay at knifepoint

but Shadowrun shows up, pretends to nos itself up

and demands I make a character and sit the fuck down

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raygungoth In reply to DrKaleidoscope [2013-10-05 05:32:54 +0000 UTC]

Let's see.

There's this: mr-author.deviantart.com/art/S…

And currently in use/evolution of cultural paths: mr-author.deviantart.com/art/A…

And this stuff: mr-author.deviantart.com/art/M…

If there's anything those bits don't cover, don't be afraid to ask specific questions!

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DrKaleidoscope In reply to raygungoth [2013-10-05 05:52:33 +0000 UTC]

as my heroes, Wayne and Garth would say-shwing!

I've added those three to my favs, and I'll be sure to check em out tomorrow when I'm not so completely stoned...

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raygungoth In reply to jack-tallow [2013-10-15 05:23:55 +0000 UTC]

Anyway, yeah, depends on the outsider. What sort of outsider are you thinking of?

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jack-tallow In reply to raygungoth [2013-10-15 05:45:40 +0000 UTC]

Also, sorry for the late response; dA decided not to show your first response in my messages :S

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jack-tallow In reply to raygungoth [2013-10-15 05:36:39 +0000 UTC]

Humans from earth, the Iokyu, and the nasty fellows responsible for the men in black.

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raygungoth In reply to jack-tallow [2013-10-21 23:51:03 +0000 UTC]

Iokyu are thankfully from the deep universe, so they're not too different. They naturalize to local mana because they're drawn to cultures like gravity. They can't escape, but they have latched on to some of the Outsider mana brought in by the parasite-things that occultists draw power from, so there's some mingling there, but they've only latched onto it because occultists like the sort of outer knowledge that Iokyu have.

Humans from Earth, if they don't have a soul when they arrive, immediately get one - their physical body is transformed into whatever shape their soul has. Most of the time this means nothing. For one of the characters in Sky Crossing it means becoming a spirit and for another it meant becoming a local. Since they also bring mana with them in the form of their own ideas and cultural references, they get sort of a head start in the magic department. There are actually a few small cults out there in the wilds dedicated to Earth religions, since all it takes to get a response from something is apply mana to it and get the attention of a spirit close enough - as a note, Maintainer-beings and Destroyer-beings created by the Mother of All Things sometimes respond to Christian mana and Death often responds to most other mana, because it's such a universal being, and also the most human of the concepts, also because she wears a lot of white.

MiBs/strange men/suit beings/Friends/The Man are like Sky People in that they can go back and forth between some worlds. The place they came from collapsed and no longer has any cultural information. They try to spur culture into outpacing itself, creating monolithic brands that can then congeal into non-cultured, static societies. After the mana no longer has any meaning, just a grey, featureless melange, they move on to the next world. They fly in iron birds and have weapons that resemble silver snakes that spray lightning. They got it from the previous world they lived on, and Aesca's response to them has been to sic humans on them who've had their souls fused with the Kings'/dragon's racial memory network, which allows them to put bits of Dreamlands into physical reality. The strange men have no idea how to fight back against other than just outright killing Dreamers it yet.

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jack-tallow In reply to raygungoth [2013-11-07 06:54:43 +0000 UTC]

Bitchin.  Which reminds me, any updates on Sky Crossing?  Been eager to read it.

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raygungoth In reply to jack-tallow [2013-11-15 03:45:20 +0000 UTC]

pfffff send me a note with an e-mail and I'll send you the shitty pre-edit crap

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jack-tallow In reply to raygungoth [2013-11-21 09:09:32 +0000 UTC]

Just finished it.  It was pretty good despite the lack of polish.  I rather like Nonooshuh; he punches smart assed spirits and doesn't afraid of anything. 

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raygungoth In reply to jack-tallow [2013-11-21 17:07:32 +0000 UTC]

Nonooshuh was slated to originally be a one-off character with no major role, but the instant he started up his speakers I knew he was going to become the god-king of magicians.

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