Ryu's lore and art dump. - Printable Version

Ammonia based biologies are an extremely novel idea, however, if you are going to use them, you need to be aware of the drawbacks and have to write accordingly. For example, they are extremely poor thermal regulators, having only 1/4th of its thermal control properties, and with basic movement or sustaining basic life by breakdown of energy storage molecules causing a gradual buildup of heat that would push ammonia out of its life sustaining range easily, meaning the Avali would very quickly overheat even on their native planet just by exerting themselves. They are extremely poor polar molecules, meaning that they would have extremely diminished and slow biologies making it a poor hypothetical substitute for sentient life. It would also make it immensely difficult to thermally regulate, meaning you would have to come up with an alternate method that doesn't rely on evaporative or radiative cooling. Any interaction with water would be hilariously hazardous to their biology, since interaction with water produces ammonium, an acidic substance which would wreak havoc on them, seeing as their primary solvent is basic in nature. Of note, ammonium is the result of biological waste processes in normal creatures, excreted raw in fish from their gills, or combined into urea or uric acid in other animals, as it's relative acidity is toxic to basic life proccesses. The Avali would drown from blood-filled lungs in any atmosphere with water vapor from having thousands of holes poked in their blood vessels. Ammonia also has the side effect of being immensely hostile to connective tissue, meaning that you could not rely on either keratin or collagen, two easy to make proteins, as they would break down and stiffen over time. This would make fur brittle and fall out, and leather would blacken and crack over time.

You need to understand that methane is an interesting gas to inhale, but this brings a host to a whole bunch of other issues, especially if the organism does not consume oxygen from the air, it is going to need to get it from its diet. Sentient life cannot exist PERIOD without oxygen as it is simply the best electron receptor around, keep this in mind. There are other methods to collect energy, but that would be extremely slow and would cause oxygen to be fatal to the resultant organism as oxygen tends to be favored in many chemical configurates as it is technically a corrosive gas, and would be extremely inefficient and slow, reducing the possibility of a sentient organism to nil, as sentience requires spare energy to exist. Relying on hydrogen as the main part of the "oxydation" will also cause massive problems, especially concerning reduction, and the basic obtainment of energy being tremendously throttled. Relying on the atmosphere to supply sixty percent of their energy is rediculous, as both all availible free energy would be used up before life ever entered the biofilm stage, and such a hypothetical situation would result in a massive bacterial bloom. The Goldilocks zone wasn't invented for fun, it was an accurate expectation, as life is inherently powered by a renewing source of energy, as in our case, the sun. If you wanted to create a hypothetical life form without sun, you would need to find an alternate source of energy. Geothermic energy is actually relatively possible, but you would need to provide a reason why life left the ocean. This would also cause tremendous infrastructure problems, as you cannot easily sanitize food, nor engage in basic industry. Either way, fire is what allowed protein to be easily broken down and not cause a massive caloric investment, contributing to sentience. You would need to come up with a reason how they managed to deal with their food.

Spoiler

With "toughened arteries" and a system under pressure constantly against the environment, how would their body handle the non-pressurized areas of their physiology? What about their interstitial fluid that has gasses dissolved in it and is constantly responsible for keeping cells alive and handling the immune system? How would that be introduced back into their veins after being forced out as part of hydrostatic pressure considering it would be amplified under pressure? This set-up would cause massive costs in energy just to return the body fluid to its proper place without causing edema and stressing out connective tissue. Simply pressurizing the organism from the skin down would be an elegant solution and would sidestep a huge portion of this problem. The big problem is, why is such a system needed? Do they come and go from places with intense pressure gradient differences?

I'm not sure what your intentions with their legs are, but you need to make it considerably more consistent. If you were to make that digitigrade stance so compressed, it would be poor for long purpose use and would consume massive amounts of energy to even walk. It would make it incredibly awkward to walk never mind running, with them needing to stick out their arms constantly to stabilize; it would give them a jerky gait especially since their head does not stick out to counterbalance with their tail. Examining how birds and emus walked would have easily pointed out that problem, which was incredibly visible in the Avali's walk cycle. If it was steeper it would make sense and would better function as an elastic spring to return basic energy costs. Their feathers are a large problem that you keep unintentionally making bigger: If you were to make them rigid, you would cause massive problems with limb rotations, agile movements, and visibility. Why the obsession with flying? The amount of energy and the weight alone they would have to overcome would make it extremely unfeasable even on high density planets. In your rush to add this detail, you didn't actually notice the Avali don't have true wings: they need to be attached directly at the base and form a triangle connecting to the lower part of their body with the feathers shortening as they reached the wingtip, a very simple exercise in aerodynamics. There is also a rather baffling issue of their wingdigit, one that I think even you noticed, making you rather antsy to draw it clearly. It's like you crossed a Deinonychus' arm and a Pterodactyl's wingdigits in a bizzare mashup. The way the digit articulates, without that much support would make it extremely easy to injure, and would provide no anchor points for ligaments or tendons to properly attach. How would they even move it? If their wrist is freely able to rotate independently from the wingdigit, you have a huge issue in how to even fit ligaments in there. Their teeth is also an issue, with constantly regrowing plates instead, and the way the teeth are arranged and shaped, would only make it easy to slice food, but not tear, grind, or break down fiber that would slow digestion and cost energy. With no specialized back teeth, their jaws could easily be injured if they encountered even a moderately hard object. Both carnivores and herbivores possess such specialized teeth for a reason. (one more thing. the way you shaped the avali's teeth yourself wouldn't even give them fangs. They would have very visible buckteeth instead. What's up doc?)

Speaking of birds, how the heck does their reproduction make sense? Not that I have a humongous issue with this, but if people are going to draw things, they are gonna draw them regardless of what you put down. Cloaca kissing simply won't work at that large of a scale, as it starts to have conception issues from twice the size of a chicken, up. With an organism of that size, reproductive material has a LOT more distance to travel and would cause immense conception difficulties. Its the reason why emus and ostriches have...important bits. They would have to mate hundreds of times before they would even be successful. Why was this method even considered? I don't care if they lay eggs and are later fertilized, or if they have tentacles (ugh), engage in complex sex methods with each other, or even do something utterly eldrich. Just...reconsider it at least. You don't even have to mention how they do it, you can just leave that blank. I believe you also need to reconsider hearing and how it would be used as a primary sense (not very well). The nerve impulse that would protect their sense of sound would have to be EXTREMELY fast since sound near instantaneous. At most it would protect them from long term damage from constant loud sounds but not instantaneous explosively loud sounds. It would not make much sense to use it as a primary sensory organ without supplemental help, because unless the atmosphere is just right and there are no obstacles, sound loves to interact with itself (on that note, please reconsider how you do their spoken language and its recordings!), and it attenuates very rapidly if you rely on background sound. It is a compression in a fluid, and you need to be aware of that. In a way this could be solved with echolocation, as that uses an extremely high frequency sound that is not as readily absorbed by objects, but, again, that poses more problems than it would solve. At it's current state, it would only be useful for depth perception.

Now the eyes, that is a big problem. Without a spherical shape, they would not even function as pinhole picture visualizers and would be extremely poor for seeing even a foot in front of you, only showing blurred smudges of color; spherical shapes in eyes were selected for because of the way how photon refraction works. Brings to question as to why they even have augmented reality, distracting as it is, for a hearing based race. The lack of lens is understandable, but without an iris, their eyes would be destroyed by even remotely strong sources of light, with blue light especially having a strong effect on destroying cone and rod function. Furthermore, their eyes wouldn't even appear black due to light scattering out of it at an extremely shallow angle especially without an iris to restrict it, and would appear to actually be more purple to dark purple in color. Lastly, without any advanced visual tracking capabilities, they wouldn't even be able to recognize facial expressions.

Spoiler

My ready dislike of the melee weapon designs aside, the Avali, for an apparently creative race, have a very nice sterile futuristic feel to their setpieces. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the tents. In attempt to make them belivable as possible, you cashed in a little too hard by attempting to invoke modern sensibilities in an allegedly futuristic civilization, a big sin in a sci-fi writer's world. This has caused some of the Avali's tech to seem outdated even by our standards. Where saying a flexible display screen would have sufficed, you instead specifically put down "LED" (hello flexible OLED screen!); where nano-materials would have sufficed, you insist on "nanotubes". Unfortunately, nanotubes are extremely like asbestos, sharing the same fibrous nature and resistance to degradation, causing skin lesions, respriratory issues, and cancer. Even attempting to mitigate the cancerous nature of carbon nano tubes would greatly reduce their versatility, which means that they would be limited to use in non-degradable plastic or other solid non-degrading materials or certain enclosed electronic applications, etc; meaning they could not be used or woven into fabrics as they would fray and release hazardous materials into the air, like lethal lint. On its own, carbon nanotubes aren't even that versatile; their true potential lies within composite materials. A side note though: if you were to make a fabric that could stay up in extremely low wind conditions, it would be more fragile than a soap bubble.

Their weapons are poorly conceived: the guns are neat, but railgun systems tend to require a ton of work and calibration to even be useable outside of space. They require a special loaded round just to even fire, not to mention the technology scales down poorly (heat, electical consumption and magnetic field control/suppresion, build up of waste material shed from sabots). Its unusable for handguns and rifles but wonderful for artillery and ship based systems. The swords aren't even swords, they are glorified knives; a sword without mass isn't even a sword in the first place. It would be extremely easy to deflect and redirect, and would have poor penetration power, even when sharp and ultrasonic powered. Ultrasonic has its fair share of issues as well: too low power on ultrasonic, it destroys the texture of the meat, making it unsuitable for use in consumption, or too high, and you risk fusing pockets of flesh together, causing the blood to pool in parts of the creature, making it rot exceptionally quick. Why would it even be considered as a use for hunting.? The exploding blades could use some rework. What happens if a creature twists with the blade partially embedded in it? A glass powered fragmentation grenade in your face would be the most likely outcome, so why not instead use a button? Boxcutter jokes aside, blades don't generally wear in that manner, so the way the blades repair themselves is wasteful as sin. Why are dedicated ground vehicles relatively rare among the Avali? Flying vehicles may have their place, but they again scale very poorly logistically, wasting excessive amounts of energy which could be spent on ground vehicles. There is a reason why ground craft are still relevant and why flying cars are a pipe dream. If their aircraft rely largely on easily-exchangeable turbines and rotors to provide lift in a variety of atmospheric situations, that is overengineering at the finest; why not have wheels (they don't even need to be air filled) or even treads? What about the logistics of constantly adjusting blades for each and every atmosphere? On an unrelated tangent, there seems to be a poor grasp of hard-suits. Unless they were full bodied, they would not protect against pressure deficiencies adequately: a big problem being that with the high blood flow to the feather area, and blood pinfeathers, would cause bubbles to develop quickly in their bloodstream. If only the head would be uncovered, the point of failure would actually be amplified and would multiply the already large pressure differences. Having a temperature controlled suit without being completely insulated would also be a humongous loss of energy and the resulting severe temperature differences would poison the organism.

There is a big problem lying in wait: implants. Piloting using your brain sounds neat, but using a controlled extention of senses rather than a computer would be extremely inefficient. Not to mention, their brain wouldn't even properly accept the input without causing them to have a massive grand-mal equivalent seizure. Keep in mind, brains intentionally throttle input to avoid overstimulation on organic based senses, no less. Planning an implant based society without putting this into consideration would make it seem very rediculous. Using wetware to run control tech rather than using extremely efficient quantuum or photon based computers which are meant for logical calculations, not factoring other alternate computational structures like memcomputers, is wasteful at best, mildly comparable to running a game off your motherboard display rather than a graphics card. Furthermore, an organic brain, which would have most of its thinking potential used up by simply keeping the body alive.The ships could use additional rework and a re-examination of existing spacecraft. Articulating parts are a point of failure in common aircraft, and a cardinal sin in spacecraft. Unless the ship can make it in and out without its wings working, like modern civilian transport aircraft in use, it would be a ticking time bomb. It is the entire reason why spacecraft have a very simplified profile and very geometrically uncomplicated.

Spoiler

Their social structure is confusing, to say the very least. For something that apparently relies on a pack based mentality, the structure they actually possess resembles nothing of the sort. A pack has strongly defined biological roles, that are interchangeable depending on environmental needs, and are loss tolerant and can accommodate "lone wolves". Whereas this one is loosely defined, loss intolerant, causes individuals to go insane and resembles a collective individual rather than a collection of persons. In fact, I would wager this resembles a bird flock more than it does an actual pack. Unfortunately there are some issues, namely with the fact that a loss-intolerant structure would make war or conflict extremely untenable and causing individuals to go insane rather than being unable to deal with loss would be extremely biologically non-advantageous. This would make hunting, an already huge gamble, an exceptionally high risk low reward endevour. Furthermore, in a pack based structure, how do they take partners? How do they select for ideal mates and rivals? If you were to ignore how sociology plays into breeding and made them breed indiscriminately, you would have a species that would quickly cull itself into extinction. Natural selection still plays a part in any society, regardless of their elevation from primitive species, and would continue on based on a combination of natural and artificial pressures that would continue to shape any species' identity. Keeping this in mind, planning a governing structure around these shortcomings would be a great deal of challenge.

One important thing to consider when you make a sapient species: when you create something with intelligence, you have to be aware as their intelligence grows so does their agency, the so called nature versus structure argument. Unless you are planning to make them relatively unintelligent as to facilitate a more organic social structure, their ability to make free choices and make informed decisions whether based on emotion or reason, would naturally cause a conflict with a strictly biological pack coordination. That isn't to say packs are impossible, you would simply have to provide a social and environmental justification that would allow it to persist after modernization. Please note, agency leads to better empathy and prediction of any actions an opposing party may make. Leading a bit into this, actually, is the fact that their communication is extremely ill defined: memes are a great deal more complicated and much more situational than would be used to define a society. You would still be missing customs, rituals, social groupings and societal divisions/exclusions, value assessment, and cultural touchstones. You need to be aware of what they covet and treasure, what they feel whether for good or bad plus any biases, what they do relative to their position in life, and their goals whether based on mastery or some kind of societal obligation. Taking this into account, you need to buckle down a little on what sociology actually entails. Examining social relation alone will help you figure out how to iron out the large inconsistencies within your lore, and better assign meaning to their social gestures, with the main example being the feather gifting. Consider why would they give one of their feathers: Is it because feathers take a long time to grow? Is it because they assign a spiritual meaning to it? Is it simply because of tradition that they carried over? Plan out what and why they do gestures similar to this example.