BoiWab

Inspired by the cross-section work of an urchin by Alex Ries and my own dissections/notes as a biology student. I tried to design a very believable creature, but I realize now that I forgot to explain how they deal with nitrogenous waste (lets just say they compress it into regular excretions like birds do even though they are not under any kind of water stress given their habitat). (idk man they're an alien).

One of the sessile animals in CasUnk is said to contain large heavy metal crystals, so I decided that the shade crawler also uses these in its skeleton instead of calcium. This is reflected in the Plumbosses grouping (idk some high level phyla its aliens so linnaeus's system falls apart anyways)

It makes extensive use of hydrostatics and has no conventional muscle (in-game it never drops food, only its exoskeleton). They also usually EXPLODE into orange blood when killed so I figured them having the anatomy of a fuckin fruit gusher would explain that.

I tried to do some subtle worldbuildy things based on what I know of the CasUnk lore at this point, but I haven't found most of the lore docs in-game and haven't read the wiki. Expies are called EXGS (EXperimental GunSawian) in the document since "experiment" is confusing for a scientific doc and "expie" is too affectionate for the humans of the setting. Also I THINK they were called gunsawians as a blanket term in Orsoniks previous game gunsaw.

So basically Zoey (my character, lizard) didn't know about Grey's (my boyfriend's character, moth) whole Spinward Syndicate terrorist cell affiliation (he has kinda been an uploaded mickey 17 AC6 621 arasaka soulkiller style merc with a clandestine PMC [GorLex Maruaders] for a realllllly long time). Like not only is he with the syndicate, but with the part that is responsible for the infamous blood-red suited nuclear terrorists. She found out about it during a wedding.

She and Grey were supposed to go together to attend the wedding between their mutual acquaintance/respected Head of Security and his combat android wife, but Zoey thawed from cryosleep in her nice traditional solarian red suit completely alone. She was glowering for the whole preparation ceremony because Grey was just mysteriously absent. Worse, among the many groups outside of her company's wheelhouse that were flying in to attend was a rival corporate wetwork team. They claimed total non-aggression, and the overall parent company wasn't a technical rival of them, so they were permitted access under careful supervision. She sat on the pews and just stared at the mercs for half of the vows before growing uneasy with the one who had moth wings.

She kept it together through reception, smiles, idle talk, wine. Corporate bought the groom a custom-fitted security hardsuit for personal use. Zoey checked the distal electrical conduits within the most remote parts of the asteroid station, working quietly with the tools and skills that had never abandoned her. She found someone's stash of canned steak and 13 era wine and ate it on a plastic chair, surrounded by the invasive crabs that grew out of one parthenogenic atmosian pet a few years back. The crystals in the asteroid's walls reminded her of the caverns of Europa. She could appreciate their beauty a lot more when there weren't mudraptors prying open her friend's JIMSuit.

She eventually rotates back to the service area of the station, watching the HOS share drinks with all sorts of old soldiers and odd friends. She kept her eyes on the moth, the others in his band called him operative Keeper. He didn't look like Grey, the scales on the wings didn't match and his voice was scrambled by some corny anonymizer mask. His mannerisms were upsettingly familiar tough. Loud, crude, spontaneous, spending half of his time wallowing on the floor for a practical joke. He roughhoused with the other mercs in a way you'd expect a bunch of idiots given power armor and alcohol would. Grey acts like that.

The mercs occupy the arcade, pulling machines from the walls and overloading punching games, treating it no worse than the crew to be fair. The moth is in a corner playing tetris. Zoey slowly weaves her way nearer to him to watch. He addressees her curtly and keeps his helmet pointed towards the screen. She watches with crossed arms. As he plays on, people filter out of the cramped arcade. The two stay, they're invested, the game's been going for 30 minutes at this point. She had watched grey play this many times before. This moth made the same mistakes he did, swore the same way in response. He messes with the filters on his mask so that he can see better. It doesn't help much, he loses a few minutes later. He turns to look at Zoey inside the hood of the cabinet, forgetting to reset his mask. She sees Grey's face. He sees her recognition. The only people left in the arcade are other mercs. She tries to read his compound eyes for any clue. It never worked. He shakes his head so slightly, a microscopic "dont". He resets the mask and leans out, falling back into character. She stays looking at the ruined tower on the screen. Its not safe to make a scene. The mercs, most of which were bored and waiting on grey to finish anyways, leave the arcade. Zoey sobs until the shift change shuttle is called.

Oh also at some point apparently some gungho security officer or maybe the captain killed one of the mercs, leading to the rest of them addressing the crowd at Evac and simultaneously activating their death acidifiers. So yeah uh Zoey then saw grey just fuckin disintegrate into a pile of organs. (He has been cloned many times since they got together so its not like he's really dead (he does have that cortical stack too so he gets frequent memory backups)) but still its horrifying. People swarm the remains of the mercs, trying to steal their brains so they can be implanted into MMI's and interrogated or borged. Zoey grabs greys and hides in the dark corner of the shuttle's atmospherics manifold. She takes out the gunmetal blue artificial atlas and axis attached to the stem. The lights are still blinking. Its horrible, but she's been told to do this if anything ever happened to him. The rest of the fatty matter was useless and she didn't hesitate to vent it to space. She sat curled and alone in a gravseat, clutching the tiny pieces of metal that held her husbands entire mind. He betrayed her, lied for years, why? She could throw him out the airlock. She could toss the stack into a supermatter shard and convert its atoms into quarks and pure energy. She could kill his memory of this day. He was defenseless. He was wordless. He was hiding in this puck of plastatitanium and positronic matricies. The gees of the FTL nearly flung her from her seat. The pipes hissed and the power grid groaned. She couldn't bring herself to hurt him. She began to doubt that she even had the power to do so. He could have uploaded today's memories to the servers already. She wished she could erase hers.

So basically the confrontation in the drawing-

is something that happens a few weeks later. She finally wants to talk to him about everything that went down that day and this is the response she gets. My bf and I are still planning how we want to write it lmao but it will occur soon....