#mallian

So! I've had these guys for years now. Mid to late-2022 was when I came up with them, shortly after Season 3 aired. 99 Ships was a HUGEEE inspiration in particular, and sparked the flame that would lead to me still creating and refining these guys to this day, in January 2026. Back then I had no idea what the Silvercops plot would turn into but clearly I was tuned in to something.

First of all, the First Lineup, from 8/2022. Notes will come after:

NOTES!

YES, Percy has a pupa here. There are a scant few pieces of art that have this. His current lore stays the same as new lore: a rich shlorpian who escaped a team, but in his original lore he took the pupa they'd already stolen, with him. I found myself gravitating away from my team even *having* a pupa, so this was phased out very early on.

Percy was kind of hard to find a niche for once I went all-in on Aran, especially once Willow came into the picture. Percy sat on the shelf for a little before I wove him back into the story by being friends with Aran, and having his own life outside the family. I am considering giving Percy a human girlfriend. He's definitely the most adapted-to-Earth of all of them, and communicates the easiest with humans.

Ben was originally going to be genderfluid. This lives on in some pieces clear into 2024, when I still was putting him in dresses and such. This is largely non-canon now. Ben is firmly he/him, and identifies as gay. Anything gender non-conforming he wears is because he's a shlorpian and simply doesn't care, but his outfits lean functional and masc now.

They are all different colors because I was greedy. That's it. I got so high on the rush of coloring shlorpians that I didn't actually consider the fact teams tend to be adult-replicant pairs.

Dominy was the first I made. You can tell because he is purple, my favorite color. He also is the one I was the MOST sure of a name for. It came to me in a half-awake state, like a vision to a prophet.

Ben's name was a placeholder, which I apparently am a fan of using. I have a homestuck oc with an ex named Ben. Funny to learn about in hindsight that I have a name I use for "guy I don't know what else to name"

Yazmina's name is a derivative of my main Guild Wars 2 character, Yazmei, but I didn't want it to be 1:1.

Yaz was the last of the main group to be developed, but one of the ones I am happiest with.

Mallian's name was going to be Miriam, but I didn't want a "too human" name (look how long I stuck with that, lol) but would eventually use this name in some way for Mal and Max's mother, Mirian.

Dom was originally meant to be a chemist who was at odds with Mallian in a fun rivalry inspired by the fact my college's chemistry and biology department would rib each other. This one is a little random, but he was supposed to be shrunk by about half by a failed experiment, but I scrapped it due to not being able to make him look like an actual adult. This eventually led to the space trucker-turned-dad that Dom is present-day.

All of my shlorpians in very late 2022 to early 2023 had both claws and dewclaws! I would later add this to be a vesper-only thing. This is one of the only pieces that actually showcases this:

Max and Aran were made literally a few days later, their first appearance is also in 8/2022, if you knew me around then you probably remember them popping up:

Aran has the MOST change about him. Of what I can remember of his original lore: he had a tail because he was an experiment, he was four colors because he was on a shlorpian team, he was a pupa expert, his team was abducted by Silvercops as inspired by 99 Ships.

Silvercops had me in a chokehold. I swear. 2022 me was CONVINCED for SURE that they were doing Bad Things to shlorpians. Of course, Aran and Max were exaggerations of what they might do, but needless to say the season 6 finale was very satisfying to me when I've been so into this idea for the Silvercops for years.

I put zero thought into his graft placement. I will freely admit this and have admitted it before. I was running driven by vibes. Apparently his original design had a *different-colored eye* as well. Which clearly didn't make it far at all.

I've said it before, so this isn't really unknown, but my bf has dictated everything about Max. I just make the guy real. You can probably tell given Max is ex-military and I don't really do that with my ocs.

Aran and Max's story is about finding hope and life again despite going through the fires of hell. These are two characters who could have, and by all rights should be allowed to, end up curling in on themselves and hate the world. But instead they get to be in a family and find love with each other and the rest as a whole.

During a rewatch of season 1, the line where Korvo says shlorpians will "overheat and die" as their bodies are not accustomed to stress stuck with me, and I worried if Aran could be able to survive being subject to what I was subjecting him to. I started thinking and we got-

THE VESPER SHLORPIANS YAY. I designed them with a harsh environment in mind and making a much more durable subspecies than a traditional shlorpian. They originated from a failed terraforming event and had to adapt to their environment which is a hot, humid jungle planet. HOWEVER as I type this and told bf, we had the realization that they could totally be the "original" shlorpian species to start with. We will see if this becomes old lore, too.....

Anyway, this means that Aran technically predates the species that I created for him to be part of. This surprises a lot of people!

I was at a pizza place when I got the idea for Aran, inspired by the idea you could graft plants, and I was seated looking at buildings that were smushed together and looked patchwork

I have several more ideas for experiment shlorpians. I want to make one with four arms. That idea happened at the same time the idea for Aran happened but hasn't bore fruit yet.

Max's original art erroneously doesn't have his robotic arm. Bf told me about it. I forgot.

Max had an Awful Time with the Silvercops. I don't talk about it much, but he was basically running on empty, constantly strung out on caffeine, any other stimulant he could get so his mind wouldn't get quiet enough to start screaming at him again. I am not playing around when I say that he was in a total hell for an unknown amount of time forced to work for the Silvercops and study shlorpian biology.

In old lore Max was the one who did the grafting surgery on Aran. We decided it'd be better if Max were introduced later, so my Silvercops OC Halcyon existed to do that.

Halcyon is probably dead! She didn't agree with the Silvercops, and truly joined the force to do good. You know they don't like that.

Here's a song that the bf has assigned to Max. Bf owns Max, so I'll let it be canon:

Max originally lost his arm at some point in his adult life. We never figured out how before we decided he was born without the arm. The reason Emery and Oliver exist as characters and weren't really revisited were because they were part of this scrapped plot where they provided Max his arm:

Nowadays I imagine Em is a spaceport mechanic running her own shop with Oliver and they have some Secret Third Thing going on.

The song that inspired Emery to be created:

Max and Em would probably have had a close platonic relationship where he would return to her for help and advice. All scrapped!

Oliver is named after previously-mentioned Homestuck OC

Maxxian was named while me and the bf were in the car and decided that he was gonna be Mallian's twin. Bf also named Aran.

Baby Willow has existed since 2022!

Aran carried Willow via a pregnancy. In my lore, shlorpians typically don't have a pregnancy, instead producing seeds, but vesper shlorpians are adapted to harsh environments and grow a single seed inside of themselves. They can best be described as roughly ovoviviparous, although they are parasitic.

The first pic of her is one that surprisingly holds up even now as one I would present to someone along my other art:

(I'm still not sure what sauce I put into this in November '22. I'd love to replicate it.)

Time to drop some Hector fun facts:

Hector is an albino shlorpian, and I am not quite sure why I made him.

His eyes being light blue is a nod to the lack of pigment in albinism, where the blood color shows through. The spots are that color because it looked nice.

He is, I am not lying, named after a pet my hunter character in World of Warcraft tamed in 2009. It is an albino crocodile named Hector.

I revamped him in 2025, deciding to give him extra eyes and make him more emaciated. I don't know if shlorpians photosynthesize, but albino plants are either extremely weak or fail to thrive.

There is a whole backstory involving Ben that I have not really posted about. His dad, Zebar, was a freelancing muscle-for-hire in Shlorp's underbelly, hanging around a lot of less-than-legal things. Smugglers, etc. He had a large network of associates and friends who all helped babysit kid Ben.

A tailor made some clothes for Ben.

Ben was illegal. Zebar made a replicant entirely on accident when he threw aside a half torn off arm into his apartment when he arrived home. It grew a feral little baby which is why Ben was a runt until much later.

Ben's love for animals started young, when one of his dad's friends, an exotic animals smuggler, would show off their wares to him.

Ben spent a lot of time with tons of criminals without even knowing it. And he grew up being the bestest good boy.

As Ben grew, he experienced a lot of issues relating to body dysmorphia as he no longer had his dad to share the experience of having gigantism.

Ben's dad, Zebar, was inspired by a character named Zeb in Margaret Atwood's MadAddam trilogy.