Union Station Pg - Blog Posts

Flora of the Vreem Home World

Flora on the vreem home world is more closely related to fauna, as the two share the same phyla. This is because, the origins of multicellular photosynthesis is fundamentally different than earth's.

Unlike on earth where eukaryotic photosynthesis evolved via symbiosis with cyanobacteria this process never occurred on their home world. Instead their version of photosynthesis developed later as a type of membrane bound protein structure in the earliest ancestor of both their flora and fauna phyla. As a result the flora across the vreem home world is more closely related to their animal life than those on earth.

Here's a collection of different flora-fauna your might come across on the vreem home world. Most flora use a red photosynthetic pigment in their foliage, but other pigments such blue-green and even gold are also found across the world and are typically more common among aquatic species. Each species is listed with an earthling name along side its Onomatopoeia derived from Khllk, a commonly spoken vreem language.

Singing Suitors "Hornfoots"

Evolved from a worm like ancestor, their leaves are modified gills filled with the red photo-sensitive pigment used in their process of photosynthesis. They get their name in khllk due to the rattle like "seed pots" which when blown in the wind produces a sound similar to a "Vreem" chirp. They are colloquially called hornfoots by humans, as their root structures are made of heavily ossified tissue baring a resemblance to horns. Water is drawn from the soil through capillary action similar to trees on earth. Hornfoots are a relatively primitive group of floral type fauna as they retain a central cavity, mouth, and two simple compound eyes. They protect their fills by pulling them inwards into their central cavity.

Sticky Vines Predatory flora are common across their homeworld. Sticky Vines, typically hang from the stocks / branches of other flora and use their two sticky oral arms to snag flying pray. While their too small to be considered a threat to the vreem, their oral arms are difficult to spot in the red jungles they grow in, and as a result they often present a collision hazard below the canopy

Barnacle Snakes Are a related species to sticky vines, whoever they retain more of their ancestral form. They typically grow rooted to a larger structure, a rock face or another large flora species. They share a similar gill structure like hornfoots, but theirs are sticky. They're predominately air filter feeders, surviving mostly on spores and small bugs. Unlike hornfoots they have a complete gut.

Land Corals Red Cups, Anemone Grass and Blood Leafs are three flora species which are from colonial clade. They individual flora which are comprised of smaller specialized clones which function together as a single organisms. This tends to give them a more "plant-like" appearance, similar to other colonial animals like corals on earth.

Pneumopods This group of animals tend to occupy the "insect / bug" niches like those of arthropods of earth They're very small organisms no larger than a human fingernail. However their biology share more in common with echinoderms (starfish / sea urchins) than insects. They have an endoskeleton comprised of plates as a row of tube feet for locomotion. These two have photosynthetic spiney membranes. The species on the right are gliders and feeds on the hemolymph of other flora.

Just a chill lichenite lounging around. Decided to draw a full body lichenite to get an idea of what their suits look like. Underneath it all lichenites look like regular humans but have slits across their body which allows their suits to intravenously connect to their bodies.

The suit itself is grown rather than manufactured and tends to look like a nest of bandage wraps in its immature form. Young lichenites are placed within them soon after birth as they can't survive on their homeworld without it.

Another thing the Imsee do, full body bio-sculpting.

The Imsee throughout their history have experimented a lot with genetically modifying their own species. In fact, they have some of the best gene-modding technology around. . Full body genetic reconfiguration is broadly accepted among the Imsee and there are two morphs which are the most common among their population. 

Yehenne, Shadow Wanders 

The Yehenne is an imsee modified for a purely aquatic lifestyle. They are similar in appearance to earth's whales, particularly the sperm whale and are capable of diving to incredibly deep depths. Their echolocation is much stronger than other Imsee

Yihinee, Sky Children

Sky children are imsee which modified themselves for terrestrial living and flight capability. The Imsee clade evolved from an avian ancestry and once this was discovered their species was dedicated to unlocking the power of flight ever since. Yihinee morphs are common among the map makers of the Ways of Water.

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.

The Dram

A slight redesign of one of an older design, in color this time. These are the Dram, a mammal-like sophonts from an very earth like planet. On the left is a female and the right a male. They're the closets your going to get to a "humanoid" alien in the known galaxy.

Some bits on Biology

I call them mammal like but their not like placental mammals, they're really more akin to marsupials and monotremes in that young are hatched very underdeveloped and are nurtured in a pouch. While not depicted accurately here male dram are considerably larger than their female counterparts, and are around 2x times their size on average. They're feathers are display features which are used to express mood, and in mate selection. Oh and they're also venomous, they've got two fangs in their mandibles which in ancient times they'd use on their prey. They're aren't exactly immune to their own venom, but they are resistant to it.

The average global temperature on the dram home-world is considerably cooler than earth is while they are capable of regulating their own body temperature they do terribly in temps greater than 80 degrees fahrenheit, and often find room temp uncomfortable. When working in environments of other sophonts they tend to wear refrigerated chill suits.

Some bits on Culture

Dram family structures are similar to lions, so polygamy is the norm and their societies tend to be matriarchal. Their home-world is currently in its glacial maximum stage of their ice age so the northern hemisphere is largely covered in permanent ice sheets. Due to over industrialization by nations in the south their planet is unfortunately dealing with gradual global warming. The effects of which were much more intense and immediate due to their planets larger axial tilt than that of earth, so as you can imagine they're dealing with a lot of issues as a result. They were contacted by aliens , ~20 years ago and interacting with the wider galaxy has only added to their list of political and socio-economic problems.

In terms of tech, they're a little more advanced in some aspects and behind in others but they've got a comparable tech level to 21th century humans. (so us right now!) And they've already made crewed missions to other neighboring planets in their star system.

I really like the idea of the sort of role reversal, where instead of humans getting contacted by aliens its the other way around. Like I can imagine the dram equivalent of SETI discovering human ship or message and all the shenanigans that would cause. Would be a cool story i think.

Imsee Dancer

Imsee don't usually wear clothes most of the time, (its a hassle in the water) but when they do, its for the holidays. Dresses with long ribbons and bells are popular. Much like dolphins Imsee are adept at aquatic acrobatics and the bands and ribbons are designed to produce memorizing matters when twirled and spun.

Mix that in with some nifty anti-grav technology and you've got quite dazzling the display of dancers jumping from floating pools of waters.

Going to start designing some better clothes for my aliens.

Just a lot of sketching as of lately, its the holiday break and I'm soo not motivated to do anything substantial.

reworking an older alien design for the Dram, the old design looked to much like a griffon without wings, and i wanted them to look more alien but keep the original vibe.

And a portrait of a Lichenite, adding to my list of gene modded humans. Despite their appearance they aren't modified much, they're actually wearing an environmental suite made from a genetically engineered species of lichen that's grafted to the body (it not really removable). The horns are not a standard thing, their suits come from different cultivated species.

Imsee Cuisine!

Imsee are opportunistic obligate carnivores so most of their diet consists primarily of meat and animal fats.  

Imsee lack taste, literally. During their evolutionary development  they lost the ability to taste all flavors except for salty and as a result imsee cuisine generally tends to emphasize, appearance, smell, and texture. Much of their food is very aromatic or pungent and is not always appealing to other sophonts. 

Imsee were kinda late to the whole using fire to cook things, mostly due to the difficulties of maintaining a fire pit close to their preferred living areas, i.e close to the water, and that their main appendages used to manipulate their environment sits on their face. Cooking gets a little dicey if you’ve got to put your face right up to an open flame. So cooking with a flame was not something that was done on a regular basis and was relegated to special occasions. Instead Imsee utilized either acid or parasite-cooking. Acid cooking works on a similar principle as ceviche, raw meat is soaked in a mild acid to clean it and to denature protein. Acids were typically derived from plants. In some instance food could be “cooked” in the harvested stomachs of other animals. Fire worms are small 6 limb vertebrates which spit acid as a form of self defense against predators and are a common source for acid in many imsee cultures. 

Now for parasite cooking:

Imsee are usually filled with parasites which they get from the food they eat. This isn’t particularly a problem for them as a healthy Imsee can live a long and happy life as they have a pretty strong immune system and advanced medical technology. Parasites are pretty prevalent among aquatic life on their home world and some are prone to breaking down their host tissues when they begin to proliferate making meat that is easier to break down and digest. They also provide a lot of intriguing texture that the imsee palette tends to like.  Early imsee farmers would purposely infect their animals specifically for that type of meat. Due to ethical concerns modern imsee no longer use live hosts for this but instead lab grown organ meat  instead. 

While fire stoves are pretty much non-existent in most Imsee households, they do utilize chemically heating pads. Sorta like a hot patch but gets hot enough to simmer water. Most heat pads can be reused multiple times but generally lose strength with subsequent use. 

Alright, I've sorta only talked about humans a little bit in my world-building project union-station (working name considering changing it) but earthlings are kinda rare in space, mostly because they don't travel or migrate much. Most humans you'll see wondering the known galaxy are their genetically modified descendants. (I've taken to calling them colonists). Chimeras, are one such group. They're from a tropical world called Amazon (named after the then long gone amazon rainforest). Life on amazon had a higher degree of biological compatibility than on other alien planets, and a unique domain of life which was capable of modifying their own genome by integrating the genes of other organism. So when the first human colonists came to amazon, they opted to splice their genetics with some of the fauna there.

Genetically chimeras are a bit more biologically unstable than other old era colonists in that they're prone to some rather interesting mutations with the most common being the duplication of organs and other body parts. This amazonian is sporting an extra set of arms, which is a fairly common mutation among the population.

Decided to do a slight redesign of my greylings i posted a long while back i want to do a big post on all of the "genetically modified humans" (i.e my excuse for humanoid aliens, as while I prefer non-humanoid aliens i still like the classic humanoid ones too) in my setting, I've been looking at a lot of fashion as of lately and was enamored by the work of balmain fall 2022, This outfit is fairly conventional but i really want clothing styles in union station to really weird and out there.

Inspiration was pretty much from these outfits

I'm going to try and find away to shoehorn these dresses in there some where, especially the one on the right

Some more world-building notes, still experimenting with line-art, thinking of doing my line art traditionally in the future. Anyway some notes on early Imsee writing implements.

As a species with long lifespans, the imsee have incredibly detailed and extensive memory retention. So for a very long time, most of their knowledge was retained through oral tradition. However as settlements grew in size and social life more complex, they realized they needed a method of information storage. As an amphibious species, where water is a key aspect of everyday life, mediums like paper or ink simply weren’t an option for them. Instead Imsee's early writing utilized wax. Early wax tablets were derived from animal fat, which were then poured into a dish and hardened. Text is scrapped onto the surface using a needle. If the author wanted the text to be permanent a layer of resin was applied to its surface and placed into storage.

Thinking of some ideas for what a vreem language might look like. I figured since they have crab claws they would have a hard time using cylindrical writing tools so i came up with a stamp like pen instead. This is an example of Khlhk and is one of many vreem languages in my setting. It uses a vertical script of lines and dots and is an agglutination heavy language, so an entire sentence or phrase is also a single word.

Also an example of some graffiti with a stylized version of the script.

Finally finished this, some constructs

I refer to sapient/sentient machines in my setting as constructs partially because the term AI is really broad and can apply to a lot of different type of synthetic forms of life/existences. So to keep it simple all constructs are AI but not all AIs are constructs.

These two are some typical designs among CSG/Human (left) and Brakken (right) constructs. The first is a mobile assistant, a type of specialist construct that is meant to go places where an AI network can't while the other is a Brakken mother unit. The majority of human civilization is governed by the CSG, central service grid a vast AI network that manages all aspects of human civilization. They've governed earth and its many colonies for a very long time and most people under their care life relatively safe, post-scarcity lives. All the CSG has historically had problems with control and governing overreach.

The brakken are eusocial aliens who have a queen. The queens primary role is to produce new members for the colony, provide generation knowledge, and support colony cohesion via the psychoactive pheromones she produces. When the queen dies, a whole is left in the colony and in some instances another queen is unable to take her place. Sometimes colonies can reject the queen. Mother units are essentially bio computers which take on the role of a queen of a colony when needed.

thinking more about my alien dolphin/whales

I'm thinking that Imsee evolved from an avian ancestor, something similar between a bat and pterodactyl that then transitioned to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. (which at least to me explains their body plan) So in a way a Imsee are weird penguins that just so happen to look like dolphins. Also, they are born with coat of fur which later sheds off during adolescence, and a bit like seals/otters they have to be taught how to swim by the adults.

I've also decided that the Imsee "species" is actually made up of three different closely related squid-whale species that can all reproduce with each other. Fig. A are River Imsee they have slender bodies and longer mandibles, B. Coastal Imsee, they're the most common and historically had the largest population on their homeworld, and C. are lake Imsee, they have stockier bodies and were typically found more inland than their river counterparts and were rarer too.

In modern times, Imsee are fairly homogeneous, due to a centuries of intermingling. So as a whole, they phenotypically vary a lot.

Now there is another species which are also Imsee, D. Deep Children. These are genetically modified Imsee who are adapted to a purely aquatic lifestyle. Imsee pretty have the best biotech around, and so deep children are created from adults who undergo a sort of metamorphasis via a pool of nanobots, called the Pond of Change. Its sort of a risky procedure (mostly because it heavily modifies the brain) and has a lot of ritual involved so its not something that's done casually. Deep children are a bit like biological super computers, anything that requires a lot of math and consideration, its usually a deep child that's figuring it out.

A little more about the Qoati, early ideas really.

Qoati Replicants

The Qoati are my precursor species of aliens that once had a civilization across the galaxy. (really the only species known of that had a civilization that large). They have some bizarre technology, many of which defies our understanding of physics. These are essentially robots, created by the Qoati, millions of years ago to manage Interspace (an artificial alternate dimension) and part of their strange appearance is because, they can freely move between interspace and normal space. Some replicants are actually 6th dimensional constructs that can only exists across both interspace and normal space

As to what their made off, well that's anyone guess. But its definitely not matter that's for sure.

Design wise, I want Qoati tech to look ambiguous, almost as if your looking at something recognizable but also not really. Is this a living thing, or a statue?, what am i even looking at, kind of vibes.

Mercurions, aka cyborgs

In my setting Union Station, humans have been in space for more than a millennium and as such have culturally diverged a lot from their terran ancestors. The history of the mercurions is kinda complex. For one, they aren't actually from mercury despite the name, they instead originate from the colony-ship Mercurion which was created as part of the New Horizon Initiative by the governing bodies of the sol system. The goal was to set humanity among the stars, but the Mercurion never arrived at its intended destination, and instead ended up 100 light-years off course in an unknown and hostile star system. Early, FTL at the time, was very risky.

Multiple catastrophe's aboard the mercurion caused the handful of survivors to turn to reproductive cloning and later cybernetics to survive.

As a culture, their society is highly stratified as a result of the Merilink system, a state-enforced caste system managed by a super computer (to be clear not a sentient AI). The initial idea behind Merilink, was to create a meritocracy, were all mercurions were born at the same level of citizenship / rights and could elevate their status based on merit, which usually ended up meaning either wealth or "labor productivity". As expected, it resulted in a deeply rooted system of inequality.

A long history of warfare, imperialism, and xenophobia has essentially left mercurion society fairly isolated from the rest of the interstellar community until fairly recently. There's a movement amoung them to reduce or even remove the merilink system although whether or not it'll actually happen is still up up in their air.

I still have a lot more to put out for these guy's I'm just really bad at getting it out of my head and onto paper

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.

alright, finally finished the vreem page. Just a little side note, smart-plants aren't actually plants in the traditional plants. They have more in common with animals and fungi physiology wise than they to to most terrestrial earth plants. So they have a rudimentary nervous system. I'll get around to drawing them eventually once i get a better idea of what the vreem homeworld is like.

Decided to do a bit of painting practice, tried a different technique, not sure how i feel about it, the colors are kinda dull.

Been a little busy lately and and didn't have much time for art as of recently, but I've come up with another group of colonists. I don't have a name for them yet, but their essentially humans / alien hybrids who have a genetic trait which causes the duplication of certain organs or skeletal structure. This one is sporting an additional set of eyes. Just a quick bit of line art.

"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.

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.

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.

A rough sketch of the Dram, another alien species from my worldbuilding project. I wanted another group of aliens which can be considered the closet to humans in terms of biology and body plan. They're built a bit like bears, but are comfortable walking on either four or two legs. They're sort of the new comers to the setting as they haven't spent much time in space and are supposed to have a sort of modern tech aesthetic.

Although I'm not sure if i should make them even more alien in appearance with out moving to far away from the "like-bipedal-humanoid-alien-but-also-not-really" vibe they have at the moment.

A slight update from my old sketch, I wasn't particularly happy about the head. A little too mammalian but i wanted to maintain a a few recognizable bits from the old design. Out of all of my alien designs they've changed the most from their initial concept sketches.

Another sketch WIP

Still have more aliens to draw, this one is for the Vreem. A diminutive species of alien only slightly larger than a mouse. They have an interesting symbiotic relationship with a species of plants collectively called the Tyreem. The plants are not sapient themselves, but they they are able to pass as intelligent very well, at least to the Vreem and have evolutionary co-opted vreem intelligence into cultivate themselves. Its an idea I'm still in the process of work-shopping but in the meantime I've been redesigning these guys

Sketch WIP

Imsee Recorder with adopted child

I've been thinking a little bit how the Imsee relate to their intelligent constructs. I'm a bit hesitant to call them robots since I think its a very human-centric term that probably doesn't translate well to other sophonts. The idea of the mechanical servant, just wasn't really prevalent among their kind and they had more of a tendency to view technology as either tools or direct extensions of themselves. Mix that in with their propensity to cybernetics and you essentially have a species who finds the concept of an intelligent machine kind of absurd.

So why do they have sapient robots anyway? , you may ask. Well Imsee have incredibly long and well detailed memories and due to the nature of their language can communicate amongst their kind much quicker and in far greater detail than humans. And so, for a long time, most information was retained though oral traditions and the death of a storyteller or a record keeper was a pretty big deal. For the Imsee, intelligent machines were not workers but instead a unique way retain life past death. Its kind of a soma situation, recorders retain the memories of Imsee who've pasted on, and are seen as an aspect of the individual which created them.

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.

Yet another species from my extra-firm sci-fi setting.

These are the Qoati an now-extinct species of sophonts who used to hold a rather large civilization across most of locale space, and were highly technologically advanced. Biologically they are colonial organisms, similar to siphonophores and are comprised of multiple smaller semi-independent organisms called zooids all of which are held together in a shell/skeleton made out of a material structurally similar to dried balsa wood. While the exact location of their homeworld is unknown, they did have a preference for high gravity terrestrial worlds.

Qoati drivers, are specialized zooid which have senses, such as eyes that help to navigate the colony, but they aren't the actual brains of the qoati. Those are instead a collection of worm-like zooids which act as the main cognitive group of the colony. In truth the Qoati sense of self is rather fluid, as while they do have a central brain, they also technically think with their entire body, and can share their zooids with other members of their species.

I had an idea, of a sort of mecha / vehicle that my race of aliens the Imsee might use. Sort of their version of a chicken walker. I'm still figuring out what their tech looks like, but i want it to look very organic.