!!!

i have a lot of Thoughts about these guys because i am physically incapable of drawing a character without coming up with a bunch of lore for them- maybe i ll make another post with all my sketches of them (it s like half my sketchbook at this point) and tell you all my headcanons and worldbuilding that i pulled out of literally nowhere but for now here s some disjointed thoughts:

- generally i kind of tried to make their colors match the area they re in. though sometimes i just added stuff cuz i thought it looked cool

- chimney echo is my favorite echo so i designed them first and as such they ended up with the worst design. oops- i still love you chimney echo

- the details on these guys are sometimes meaningful and sometimes random shit i added lol, i m not very good at coming up with very detailed things

- yes some of them (most of them-) have bird legs and some of them have paws. i have Headcanons about the ancients. also in my head (and based on the karma paintings) they re covered in bandages and clothes are optional so. i tried to have fun with their clothes. yes some of them don t have pants. such is life

- they also have tails because I SAY SO

- farm arrays echo has no idea why they re here

- droplets has a fuckton of pearls because they deserve it

- oh yeah also i like to think (based on the fact that there s just random shit written on most of the white pearls) that these guys just carried pearls around to write down whatever they needed or with whatever information they needed to have on hand. i also had fun with hanging pearls off of them

- wall echo is Tall and Scary and he Scares me

- for the guys that i imagine would have lived after the iterators were built, i also drew their citizen drones because.. i always forget to draw sofanthiel and. justice for sofanthiel

- metropolis echo and bitter aerie echo have weapons because i like to think the anicents fought eachother, like for sport- metropolis echo because she s artificer in ancient form and bitter aerie echo because they re basically just a challenge and their dialogue is just "oh you actually got here, good job". idk it made sense in my head

- yes bitter aerie echo has a harpoon. that was my friends idea actually

- yes metropolis echo s drone is sofanthiel. i think it s funny. i told you she s just arti in ancient form to me

- 8 spots on a blind eye was born with really bad sight in one eye but they tell everyone they lost it in battle because that s cooler

- rhinestones beneath shattered glass is an insane cat lady and we love them

- yes some of them are related, yes the funny colored pieces of cloth have meaning, i WILL NOT get into it now

- pebble for scale <3 (i have my reasons to believe the ancients were giagantic. mostly the fact that their city is IMPOSSIBLE to get around without double jumps (see my post from 2 days ago) but also i just think it s cool. and really funny. i have no idea how they get through pipes)

She was meant to be designed like her alt. Design, as a manta ray but slowly she turned more jellyfish-esque. Maybe I'll turn the draft into another iterator sometime.

Her structure is partially submerged underwater. Drown was built over a large water source. During construction, of which she was almost completed, perhaps due to an error, the legs of the structure collapsed. It caused her entire super-structure, her city and inhabitants above to plunge into the deep sea below. Those who survived were relocated to another city, and while attempts to rebuild/save her were discussed, no plans were ever detailed.

Some part of her still remains above water. She's still alive and does not rain as frequently as most iterators. Because parts of her are underwater, it does a decent job keeping most of her functions from overheating. However there are periods of time where she shuts off activity in some of her chambers to prevent from boiling the water around her. The area in her region is mostly foggy on account that her structure is not above the clouds, and while she may not always rain, she will produce some mist.

Drown is a veryyy late 1st gen iterator. Construction started maybe in early-mid 1st gen iterator era, but was dragged back and prolonged for various reasons (her location above/in water was inconvenient to build upon, for a time there were talks about relocating her entirely. Alongside the fact she started construction around the same time as Starless who was drafted upon ambitious goals and lofty expectations, and held more priority to completion). There had been great plans for her too, but the project was perhaps too big for the time it started in. Around when she collapsed (her almost completion) it would have already been around the mid 3rd gen era(around 30+ years or so).

Due to such a prolonged period of construction, there is definitely an amalgamation of old and new tech mashed within her. Which could explain why some things don't always function the way they're supposed to. The longer her construction dragged on, the less they cared about her... Even when her city was finally constructed, many of her inhabitants had moved in reluctantly. Her sight was already slightly impaired before her collapse but she never thought to ask for it to be repaired as that would just be another thing for them to throw into the melting pot, and she didn't need another reason to be scorned.

After her collapse, her vision is largely gone. She can perceive faint lights and shadows, but it mostly resembles that of heavy visual snow or static. Whaleshark scug brings her pearls and they accumulate in her can for a few cycles before she's able to start some of her functions again and read them.