Brakken - Blog Posts
All three of the founding species of my setting together with their initial concept sketches and their current final art. The veem changed the most as i felt that too many of the aliens I've drawn so far were too mammalian like. I've got two more alien I'd like to add but I'm still working working on coming up with a better design for them.
"They seemed very tired and lacked the desire to move this cycle. Today, this one felt no desire to feed themselves. The rest of the colony is in the same state. My friends, the brakken, are falling very ill and we do not yet know why" - Starmaker , They Who Drinks Deeply of the Clear Waters
The Imsee and their first encounter with BWD, or Brakken Wasting Disease.
The Brakken are unique uplift case in locale space as unlike other sophonts as when the Imsee came across the Brakken weren't originally sapient but were close to it. They were the Imsee's first attempt at genetically engineering an entire alien species and while for the most part the process was a success it did come at a cost.
Brakken wasting disease is the result of the slow breakdown of their cellular structure that first starts in the nervous system and spreads through out the body. The mechanisms of the disease isn't entirely understood as there isn't a viral agent but appears to spread through pheromones and results in the incomplete formation of many important proteins and metabolic enzymes. Its a very slow disease that is difficult to detect and often times when it is, its already too late.
It's first appearance among the brakken completely took the Imsee off guard and nearly whipped out the brakken species, but in modern times, while they still lack the technology to cure it they've significantly increased the lifespans of those who have it and their quality of life.
Work in progress illustration,
I'm slowly working on trying to get better at drawing backgrounds and i want to get in the practice of making more illustrations. There's a little story here, which i wont talk to much here other than its not a particularly happy one.
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.
Slight redesign of the brakken, working on making another info-graph for space-encyclopedia but a few bits I'll share now, unlike a few other sophont species, the Brakken weren't originally a space fairing species in-fact they weren't even sapient. A few centuries prior they were genetically modified by the Imsee and uplifted further by them. So compared to other species in locale space, their societal history is incredibly short. They may look a bit like cats, but their social structure is similar to eusocial insects.
A bit more on the Imsee
Slowly working on developing some aliens for a extra-firm scifi setting. These guys are the brakken (wip name). They were uplifted by another alien race and evolved from a species which originally had radial symmetry. I took some inspiration for their colors from manuls.