Twocupsofsugar - TwoCupsofSugar
More Posts from Twocupsofsugar and Others
I usually don't reblog stuff to this blog but this feels relevant to my project and I'd like to share. The link is broken but if found a good website with excerpt from it : https://www.urticator.net/essay/0/19.html
look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,
If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.
Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.
What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.
Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.
Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.
Inktober 1
Forgotten Giant
colored and sketched in krita inked with staedtler fineliners
Another sophont I've been working on. I've been trying to design these guys for a while. They've had a lot of iterations figured it was time to post them here.
Anyway, here are the Ah'Chikiri, reptile like aliens from a dying world.
The Ah'Chikiri home-world is a little bit like mars, it orbits a red giant and the majority of their worlds oceans evaporated a long time ago. Water still exists on the surface, but its isolated to lakes and aquifers. Rain is rare and generally unpredictable.
Their civilization is actually quite old, and predates the Imsee, by thousands of years. They used to be an FLT-capable civilization as well but at some point in their history their interstellar civilization collapsed and only the populations isolated on their home-world survived. Most of what remains of their civilization prior to contact with aliens in the modern era are a bunch of city states warring over the remains of their ancient technology, what they call "Earth-Eaters", Many millennia old autonomous machines created to terraform their dying world.
The Ah'chikri reproduction system is somewhat unique in that they have androdioecy, so their two most commonly occurring sexes are males and hermaphrodites. The hermaphrodite sex is generally larger than their counterparts.
Ah'Chikiri eggs are hatched in water and can under go two forms of metamorphosis either into a nymph and develop into a type of tadpole where they later grow into juvenile Ah'Chikiri or into a barnacle form and become filter feeders, during this state they can produce more Ah'Chikiri larva through budding. So a single egg can reproduce a ton of Ah'Chikiri.
Young Ah'Chikiri don't really need their parents to survive, and will generally form small nomadic troops among themselves. I'm still working on their social structures as it varies a lot more by culture than it does with other sophonts.
an art trade for @gt-ridel they asked for an axolotl dragon and I immediately thought of olms, so an olm wizard.
Another page of space encyclopedia completed, this time the Brakken.
"The creation of the Brakken was a point of contention among the Imsee, as some argued that by intervening in the natural evolutionary process they were upsetting the consciousness within the cosmic intellect and that any knowledge gleamed from their work with the brakken is obscured and illegitimate. Eventually Imsee curiosity overrode any moral quandaries they may have had." - Sagan-V
I'm honestly sort of happy with how this one came out in the end, I've got a few more alien species I want to make introductory pages for, so I've got some cooking to do.
I'm slowly making a few characters for Union-Station. This is Francis, a CSG construct that works as an architect on the station and an unnamed Brakken that they're found of. Robot characters are still difficult for me to draw but I'm getting there.
