#junksonas

I swear I’m going to get more writing and prompts cranked out for the new year! Trying to get myself pumped for it!

My not-so-secret guilty pleasure is the mega size differences and having situations like this pop up. A person with that much power showing control and restraint to such a high degree just makes my heart jump! The strength it takes to be patient and calm and listen where it’s easier to speak over is just so great. Moments like this happen with Click and the Junk Brothers on occasion - when she needs a break from fixing every automaton in town.

Celio doesn’t tend to like people much, he’s reserved and quiet, tends to be uncomfortable or even borderline aggressive in large crowds. One-on-one however, he’s calm and patient, still more likely to listen than speak, but that isn’t always a bad thing. 

JunkSona ID Cards - Blanks

AUTOMATON SAMPLE / About

BORROWER SAMPLE / About

JUNK GIANT SAMPLE / About

HUMAN SAMPLE / About

JUNKTOWN CANON

1.       The JunkVerse is an alternate Steampunk Earth set eons in the far-off future. The conditions are largely post-apocalyptic, but improving slowly as time passes. The original continents of Earth exist, but changes are acceptable – people would likely know where a place like Italy is for instance, but newly emerged continents and islands will have formed from the natural processes on Earth, as well as from human intervention, which opens up a realm of possibilities for character locales and transportation.

2.       The Cloudside is a new part of Earth inhabited by humans – it is a realm that can only be inhabited by those who have airships. It lifts humans above the pollution and cold of the ground world, at the price of being a risky existence where even a small technical malfunction can bring down a city of ships. The formerly rich and mechanically savvy are the ones who live up here. Junk Giants are usually too large to inhabit airships for any lengthy periods of time, and with most being opposed to leaving the ground, this is a place where you will almost never find a giant.  

3.       JunkTown proper exists in the mountainous regions of the north. The valley where the town exists is an enormous former open pit mine with buildings interspersed in the valley, flanking the descending carved pathways, and around the rim. The pit was originally used for the dumping of industrial scrap, and as a graveyard for decommissioned airships. Most of the trash was retrofitted into buildings by the robots that have called JunkTown home since they were dumped there. What couldn’t be used was slowly removed as the town grew. Some of the newer buildings were made with more traditional building processes, and will look more familiar than the ancient structures like the library, created from the hull of a massive ship. Many towns have popped up in similar manners across the junkyard strewn globe.

4.       Technology is advanced in a deranged and post-apocalyptic Steampunk/Junkpunk manner. Things are highly advanced but ground folk especially usually don’t bother to make things sleek and what we know as “modern.” The new is built from the scraps of the old – a phoenix rising from the ashes of an ancient trashed empire of humankind. Just not nearly as pretty.

5.       Scavengers roam the land in a very dystopian, Mad Max sort of style, but much more practical. Caravans of vehicles are again put together from the scraps of anything that can be found, so the potential for vehicular homes is practically endless.

6.       A myriad of new diseases plagues the groundworld and cloudside alike. The most feared is known as the Cocytus Virus, which causes a hemorrhagic fever more aggressive than Ebola. This virus is incredibly rare, but when an outbreak hits, very few survive aside from robots, and the disease resistant Junk Giants who rarely experience the disease as more than a mild flu. Kind Junk Giants may give supportive care to humans and even borrowers – with enough intensive treatment, some may pull through the disease. Usually though, this disease leaves ghost towns in its wake.

7.       The climate on this eons older earth tends to be extreme. Temperate zones are rare, and when storms hit, it can button down a town for weeks to months at a time. Scavengers have come up with many ways to make weather resistant vehicles to keep up their travels as they pass through the awful weather, and the abundance of underground tunnels and caverns allows for weather-proof travel within towns.  

8.       Junkverse animals are intelligent and hardy to have survived the extreme conditions on earth. Like the sentient populations, they have evolved in many different ways to survive, from being hardy and small to being huge and tank-like. Regardless, many are fearsome. Domesticated animals and livestock are rarer than in ages past, but still seen around the globe.

9.       Agriculture is no longer carried out on an industrial scale, and Junk Giants are the predominant farming class, with borrowers coming in second. Humans have rarely been so patient as to figure out the nuances of growing crops in the new extreme climate, but there are some who have stuck it out. High tunnel greenhouses are especially useful for growing crops, and are the most common way to identify a farm.  

10.   Clean water is not easy to find, so water purification is a priority for many towns, and often the driving force of travel for organic species. Desalination of ocean water is a common way of attaining potable water, as are creative filtration devices. Where there is a town, you will usually find water, and water purification will be a major factor of that town’s economy unless it is primarily inhabited by non-organics like robots.  

Borrowers, the little people who dash around in the walls, have long existed in the Junkverse – they have been a part of myth and legend for centuries, spurring human stories about fairies and tiny magical beings bearing good fortune. Borrowers aren’t quite as spritely and majestic as legends say, but meeting one outside a hidden encampment is certainly a lucky occurrence. More recently though, humans have begun to see the clever small folk as a breed of pest.

These tiny humanoids thrived when humans began to take to the skies during the apocalyptic great wars and the skyship rapture. With their long-time rivals for space and resources largely gone, and one of their biggest threats removed, borrower populations boomed throughout the planet earth. Easily taking advantage of the leftovers discarded from sky ships by wasteful humans.

You will almost never see a borrower town right out in the open, however. These tiny people continue their traditions of secrecy, some even still living in the remaining homes of bigger folk. Borrower settlements are often found hidden underground in tunnel systems, suspended high in treetops away from predators, or up in the high alpine regions where bigger life is scarce. These resourceful little ones can build, tame animals, and do anything the bigger folks can, just at a comparatively smaller scale. Some borrowers have even evolved to take on some slightly animalistic features to help them survive in their environments. The little people are ever-adaptive and resourceful, and they will never give up without a fight.

 Common Physical Traits:

Tend to be around 4-6 inches in height, though some variance can be present depending on environmental needs.

Hearty, but not invincible by any means. Borrowers can take a hit, surviving blows that would be comparatively fatal if scaled up to larger species. Their robust bodies can only take so much, however, and their small scale makes it easy to be accidentally crushed, eaten by predators, etc. None of which are survivable by any means.

Borrowers are comparatively faster and can jump higher than their bigger rivals – if a human was reduced to borrower proportions, they would never be able to achieve the natural physique of these evolutionarily adapted foragers.

Some lines of borrowers have developed features to survive their environments – tails, larger ears, finely tuned olfactory senses: they adapt to survive. They are still majorly humanoid though – upright, bipedal, opposable thumbs, hair instead of fur, etc.

Just to keep it fresh without clogging your dashboards with a long post, here is a reminder that the Introductions Contest is still on! Entries are due on December 18th, the most creative OC will win a custom $50 commission from @kelly-scribes!

Borrower Sample ID Cards - Kelly “Clickspring” Clock, Brook Jackson Hyde, Saqui Burbek, and Cio Vulcan

ABOUT BORROWERS

JUNKTOWN CANON

Junk Giant Sample ID Cards - The Featherson Brothers, AKA The Junk Brothers

ABOUT JUNK GIANTS

JUNKTOWN CANON

Characters (c) @kelly-scribes / @tinyscribes

The state of humanity has been greatly changed over the centuries, even though humans as a species have not. Three distinct factions have formed across the globe, with unique lifestyles emerging from each. The most widespread faction is made up of those who retreated from the earth during the skyship rapture – called Skyship Crews, or “Cloudsiders” as ground bound folk call them. These were the humans either rich or innovative enough to create skyships for near constant hovering when the world was falling apart. With their ships shading the sky across the globe, these humans have formed flying cities, constantly casting off refuse and pollution to the world below. These folks are blissfully unaware of the damage their ships cause, and are usually more focused on living in luxury, taking care of themselves, making bigger, better ships, and getting what they want than anything else. They are much like the stuffy Rococo royalty of ages past, with exceptions present.

Scavengers are the second faction, and one of the more populous groups of humans on the groundworld. Usually these scrappy nomadic humans travel in caravans, pillaging anything they can get their hands on to trade for rations, tools, anything they think is worth their time. Many are not above thievery. Scavenger humans roam the wastelands in dangerous conditions, and are often wounded to the point of needing robotic enhancements or prosthetic limbs.

Finally, there are groundworld humans who remain peaceful farmers and as close to what we know today as “normal” citizens. These people are very rare, but in some cases, determined humans have stuck out the disaster and disease and managed to survive in cooperative bunkers, farms, or even tiny towns.

 Common Physical Traits:

Height can range between 4 and 7 feet for adults

Scavengers and Farmers tend to be heartier than Cloudsiders

Some have developed extensive disease and radiation resistance

Great survivalists and pursuit predators