#corru.observer

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OK, spoilers and rambling below.

Corru is scratching the itch that Morrowind and Pathologic did for my favorite kind of worldbuilding/storytelling, which is dropping you into an unfamiliar environment with zero context and forcing you to learn as you go. I like how it’s strengthened by what it leaves to imagination, and also I just think an ecosystem made of buggy parasites is neat. ergo, I try my hand at drawing a zuzucri, a kind of body-snatching parasite-predator.

I did a wikipedia crawl on arthropod taxonomy to try to push myself out of my usual design instincts. I referenced Balhuticaris, Cambropachycope, Gnathophausia zoea, club-tailed dragonflies, and trilobite beetles. Did it work? I don’t think so, but I had fun, and she looks like something I could make in spore, so that’s just as well.

Along the way my zuzucri gained lore, so, here you go.

Mouzu is the Vel that the zuzucri is wearing as a mask. She worked on the Okizika as a runner, which is where she got got by the zuzucri.  

Vaskez is the Jut with the funny horns. They also worked on the Okizika, and probably did dangerous surface structure maintenance for a while before that.  

I think Mouzu’s zuzucri is a runt and has partially unformed camouflage, or was never taught how to cloak herself properly, so she has a hard time finding prey through conventional methods and has to turn towards stranger forms of trickery.  

Despite working on the Okizika together, Vaskez didn’t meet Mouzu until after she was parasitized by the zuzucri. She was quickly found out during the call to prayer, because the zuzucri didn’t know the words of the Okidoia and Mouzu was too afraid to volunteer them. Incidentally, this is also when Vaskez died and became a Qou. Neither of them really like to talk about it.  

Most people credit this event with Vaskez’s sudden departure from surface maintenance and newfound interest in studying zuzucri.  

Vaskez and Mouzu have an unspoken understanding that they won’t be repeating what happened at the Okizika, and Mouzu’s zuzucri is more than content to barter food for information and friendship. Vaskez uses her “insider” knowledge to help with research in the zuzucri-mask initiative.  

Despite this, Vaskez and Mouzu are mutually disinterested in putting her zuzucri under the mask. Mouzu has integrated strongly with the zuzucri and feels like shutting her out would be like shutting part of herself off. It’s hard to say how Vaskez really feels, but the justification he gives to his colleagues is that the zuzucri is more valuable without a mask, because she’s readily reasoned with and more useful on the surface than in a damp, dark room somewhere.  

Nobody likes this arrangement, and the only reason Vaskez can keep doing it is because of the utility of her research, and because she masks her sympathy for Mouzu so well.