Jennywolf

My half of an art trademission for @theflyingpimphat all the way back in January. Depicting a scene in the 2nd issue of their sci-fi sctory A to Z. Their character Arqeez stumbling upon a Varufoi trader in the bowels of a space station community.

The trader's not here to sell him anything, but to simply show him the art of Scents. They relish in the story-provoking aromas of the trader's portfolio of Scent-laden Umi'Qui boxes. After all with enough skill, ambition, and especially but optionally a species-inherent keen sense of smell. The use of Scents can stand as it's own art form. Just as complex and philosophically provoking as painting for the eyes or music for the ears.

In other news for the first time in 6 years I got a new drawing tablet as a birthday gift! I wanted to wait until I posted this to make the announcement because I thought itd be cool and momentous. It feels really nice to use and really nice to finally draw with Tilt controls and change the brush size on the fly with a big physically built in dial.

They go as follows:

* Gardeners, titan descendants that evolved fur and split their trunk in two for better manipulation.

For their lore, I imagine them taking shelter in caves where they would find and begin farming fungi like some ants do since the droughts that accompany ice ages destroyed their crops. Gardening and farming would become important parts of their culture and their funeral rites would include the dead being used as fertilizer

* Merfolk, hand flapper descendants that became aquatic, seal-like posthumans

The only lore I have for them is that they became aquatic as a result of the aridification of their environment forcing them to spend more time in the water.

They are among the least fleshed out species

* Hivers, temptor descendants that survived the comet strike by scavenging and learning to ration food which helped them evolve sapience and become fully eusocial.

Hiver society is comprised of:

A queen, responsible for passing laws and producing more workers, soldiers and the like

several younger females that serve as advisors before becoming queens themselves once they reach a certain age and become sessile

drones aka reproductive males

workers and soldiers, sterile males tasked with gathering resources and defending the colony respectively

* Sprinters, strider descendants that survived by initially using their color changing abilities as a threat display, rappidly shifting between different colors to confuse and dissorient the killer chickens. As a response, the chickens evolved better camouflage to more easily ambush the striders, starting a predator-prey armsrace that resulted in both the chickens and the striders diversifying into many different lineages. The sprinters belong to a lineage that avoided predation by being too fast to catch, that evolved sapience thanks to their dexterous hands and social behaviour which allowed them to use tools and eventually drive their predators to extinction.

* Survivors (special thanks to u/AskGoverntale on reddit for the name and parts of their lore), prey descendants that became arborial, orangutang-like posthumans on the level of stone age humans. Their numbers would start dropping when the killerfolk migrated to their teritories since both species competed for the same resources and the killerfolk had the advantage of better social structures. Despite that, they manged to survive in some isolated pockets of forest and become cryptids in killerfolk society

Next up are the blindfolk and mantelope descendants, which I have made 2 descendants for each

* Molemen, blindfolk descendants that evolved burrowing adaptations (Before anyone says anything, I have already been informed that their claws are too long and thin to be good for digging), allowing them to escape being crushed by digging their own caves. For their culture, since they're completely blind, I imagine things like social status being determined by sound with bells being a common piece of jewlery.

They would eventually discover the surface which, to them, was like discovering an entirely new world, one that they would be hesitant to explore at first, with it being common practice for convicts to be exiled to there with the hopes of them dying there, which they not only survived but thrive and form their own civilizations there

* Spidermen, same as the previous idea except they became way more adapted for burrowing before starting to spend more time on the surface and evolving into spider-like creatures with legs derived from fingers

* Atavists, mantelope descendants that reevolved semidexterous hands due to an atavistic mutation that allowed them to keep their sapience and become the fastest advancing posthuman civilization thanks to all the knowledge they obtained from the qu

* Atavists (couldn't come up with a new name but the previous one works for this one too), mantelope descendants that lost their sapience like in the book before reevolving it later on

You might notice that I didn't make a bone crusher descendant and that is for several reasons.

The first is that their extinction makes no sense. It's not revealed why exactly they died out, just that they did while implying that it was caused by their scavenging lifestyle which makes no sense, nothing was stopping them from hunting or even domesticating and leaving the meat to ferment.

I record this not for glory, nor for the satisfaction of curiosity, but because silence has proven to be more dangerous than speech.

I was trained at Padua. I have opened men from throat to groin and watched the soul flee in steam & blood. I have amputated limbs without laudanum and stitched children by candlelight. I am not given to visions, nor peasant superstition. I believe in the body as a machine of flesh, governed by causes, not curses. What I encountered in [REDACTED] village obeyed laws, but not those of God or Galen

I. The First Patient:

They brought him before dawn, wrapped in a wool cloak stiff with something dark & tacky. The boy could not have weighed more than sixteen summers. Shepard, by the smell of lanolin and soil. He was alive when they set him on my table. Barely.

His skin had the pallor of rendered fat. Not the blue of suffocation, nor the yellow of fever, but something drained, emptied. His lips were pale as parchment. When I pressed my thumb into his forearm, his skin did not spring back. I took his pulse. It was there. Then gone. Then there again, as if undecided.

"Where was he found?" I asked.

"Near the lower pasture." His uncle said. "By the stream. He was walking home. Then he wasn't."

There was no blood on his clothes worth remarking upon. That troubled me at once. When I uncovered his legs, I found the wound. A single incision along the inner thigh, no longer than my little finger, placed with obscene precision over the course of the femoral artery. It was shallow, too shallow. No tearing. No inflammation. The edges were smooth, almost polished. And yet the boy lost more blood than a man struck by a saber. I picked the wound. I pressed. I prayed, thought, I do not often. Nothing availed.

He died without a sound, staring past me, pupils wide, as if watching something retreat.

II. Examination of the Body:

The priest objected to dissection. I overruled him.

By mid-morning the corpse had not stiffened. Rigor was delayed, incomplete. The body was cool to the touch, but not cold as death should make it. There was no odor or decay. Instead, a faint, vegetal scent, like crushed stems left too long in water.

Upon pending the thoracic cavity, I found the heart intact but altered. Its walls were thickened, darkened, heavy in hand. When struck gently with my probe, it rang, faintly, as if mineral began to replace flesh. The lungs were collapsed, unused. The blood remaining in the vessels was thick, sluggish, & inky dark. It did not clot.

The liver had been eaten. Not gnawed. Not torn. Consumed. Scooped hollow, as if liquefied and drawn away. The spleen likewise. The marrow cavities of the femur were pale and dry. This was no animal. No wolf drinks marrow. No man feeds so neatly.

I examined the wound margins beneath magnification. There were impressions, not of teeth as we understand them, but of plates, curved and opposing, leaving compression arcs rather than punctures. Iron residue stained the tissue. I wrote in the margin, without yet understanding why: "Guillotine." I Do not know why the word came to me, but felt like the best analog to compare with.

III. The Survivor:

Two nights later, a miller came screaming into town. He had been feeding his wheel when he saw it (his word, not mine) standing by the sluice gate. He swore it did not move until he acknowledged it. Then its eyes caught the lantern light and returned it, red and green, like a cat's. He struck it with a pole. It did not bleed. Instead, it released a smell so foul he retched and fell to his knees. While he lay there, it fed. Not upon him, but upon the carcass of a goat nearby, lapping blood from the stones with a tongue too long, too thin, moving with terrible delicacy. Then the creature withdrew, it looked at him again, and he said: "Doctor, I couldn't see myself anymore. In the water. I was there, but I wasn't." He has not slept since.

IV. Pattern Recognition:

By the end of the week, there were five dead. Always at night. Always drained. Always near damp soil, loam, or standing water. The wounds varied. Thigh, neck, abdomen, but each lay precisely over a major artery. No wasted motion. No frenzy. I mapped the sites, They formed a circle. At the center: an abandoned salt mine, long collapsed, now just a pit where villagers dumped refuse and dead animals. I sent men to burn it. They refused.

V. A Living Corpse:

On the sixth night, they brought me a woman who had "died" hours before. Her skin was cool. Her chest did not rise. I pronounced her gone. While I prepared my instruments, I saw movement beneath her skin. Not twitching. Flow. Along the course of her carotid artery, something rippled, cilia perhaps, or fine tendrils contracting in sequence. I place my ear to her chest. There was no breath. There was no heartbeat. And yet, she lived. Her eyes opened.

They did not see me. They scented me. I fled my own surgery.

VI. Hypothesis (Heresy):

I no longer believe this to be undeath. I believe it to be occupation. A colony. A parasite. A thing that enters through blood and mucosa, rewrites the body, and repurposes it. The heart becomes redundant. The lungs ornamental. The blood itself becomes both food and circulatory medium.

There are castes. I am certain of it now. The smaller ones hunt. The larger one (she, I think), waits. Coordinates. Feeds last. When I dreamed, I smelled her before I saw her.

VII. Final Observation:

I went to the mine. I should not have. There was movement in the dark, many bodies, but one presence. Vast. Swollen at the throat, distended with blood not her own. Smaller infected recoiled at her passage, pressing themselves into the soil.

When she turned her head, I felt it, not fear, but pressure, like a hand closing around my thoughts. I understood then that this was not an outbreak. It was a settlement.

VIII. Closing Statement:

I've witnessed the end of history, only to live long past it, enough to see it born anew.

I've seen the world at it's darkest hours, It's cruelest rulers. Only for the tide of time to bring new faces, new places, only for the tide of time to wash them away too.

I've seen it all, so many times I've grown numb to it all.

I have work to do. There's always work to do. All that's left is work to do.

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I don't normally do this, but I know a lot of people are biting their nails wondering how the conversation between Talita and Verengt is gonna go, so here's a WIP screenshot of a page from Chapter 11. Don't worry, I think they'll end up getting along just fine.

I redesigned the Ikleud And Ruuik one more time. Period. Because they never Really felt rIght to me. They never feLt relatable enough. I Felt like I tOOk it to the extreme with how aLien they felt. So I went back to the drawing board. And at last, they are more prominently humanoid :)t