drathahdrabbles

[drathahdrabbles]

Things to worldbuild when bored

Keep in mind, this is worldbuilding as for fun, none of these are essentials, what's essential all depends on what you plan to use your worldbuilding alongside

The everyday diet

Seasonal clothing

Common phobias/fears

What children do in their freetime

The sounds of the everyday

More blue collar jobs!

Children's toys

Desserts

Biome Variants

Species anatomical workings

Disorders

Common Illnesses

Popular hobbies

Beauty Standards

Snacks

Rare physical features

World Wonders

Intercultural aspects of life

Law enforcement

Military weapons vs. common weapons

Religious rituals

New mother/parent culture

Superstitions

Funeral/Death rituals

Household pets

Agricultural animals

Games (virtual, sporty, ttrpg, and board)

[drathahdrabbles]

GASP

Staring directly at these. I need to charge my iPad and draw these. Might just hit a random number generator to decide which ones to draw but omg I am staring directly at these.

Alien Pose Prompts

I was thinking about how it can be difficult to figure out our own creatures' anatomies because there are no direct references to draw from, and how I tend to draw my aliens in the same poses, and boom, this happened. Prompts to practice and push the limits of your alien's anatomy :) Aimed at sophonts, but a lot of them can apply to non-sapient beasties too.

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Sleeping lightly or having a nap

Sleeping deeply after an exhausting day

Scratching an itch in a hard-to-reach place

Carrying an infant

Carrying another grown individual

Holding a piece of food

Sipping a liquid

Reaching for something high up

Making themselves as small as possible

Freezeframe of moving at topspeed

Relaxed, half resting position e.g. sitting or lounging

Inspecting a novel object

Cleaning themselves

Being cleaned by another individual

Fighting without weapons

Preparing to fight with a weapon

Showing casual affection displayed with any kind of loved one; family, friend, partner, etc.

Showing intense affection reserved for a specific kind of loved one

Yawning/stretching mouthparts to their full extent

Gripping a branch or high surface, trying not to fall off

Tripping or slipping on a wet surface

Actively balancing e.g. crossing a tightrope

Suddenly noticing something near them and getting spooked

Engaged in conversation

Treating an injury

For meat eaters: in the middle of a hunt For others: foraging and collecting food

Preparing food for a meal

Tending to a crop

Using a tool

Shaking or brushing something off their body

In a state they don��t usually live in e.g. aquatic being on land, terrestrial being in water

Putting on clothing or accessories

Getting a body modification e.g. tattoo, piercings

Using fine motor control to craft something

Trying to block out unpleasant stimuli e.g. covering ears, closing off nostrils

Reacting to an unpleasant stimulus

Loading cargo for transport

Working on building construction

Riding a vehicle or pack creature

Squeezing into a small space

[drathahdrabbles]

It’s been a minute since i drew for the drathah

I’ve written stuff but I haven’t properly drawn anything, and that feels like a crime so i decided to fix that

Started off with some doodles and then decided to turn one of them into the Drathah and Geckcat versions of some of my friend @anukfilli ‘s characters, Xavier and Biscuit!

Anuk sent me the ref for Drathah!Xavier ages ago, like 8 months ages ago, and i finally got around to drawing him.

I wanna do a drathah comic but i have to decide what about.

#drathah #thardahk #spec bio #speculative biology #artists on tumblr #character art #oc art #my art #artwork #digital art #art

[drathahdrabbles]

What if I entirely redid all my Drathah designs to just be snake colors haha jkjk

Unless

are those pictures of Bush vipers real????? they're the most adorable thing I've ever seen

Yes! The first picture of them on the pencil is of babies (a lot of zoos will take pictures of new baby bush vipers on a pencil for scale, they're so tiny!) and the adults will usually stay under about 2 feet long. And variable bush vipers especially come in so many colors!

Bush vipers are often green, but they can also be black, red, yellow, brown, grey, and even this purple-ish color.

This is now a bush viper appreciation post!

#probably not gonna actually do it but maybe I'll take this into the idea box for future designs

[drathahdrabbles]

Anyone who asks a question is likely to get several paragraphs of information back

This is a threat but also I'm practically on my knees begging people to ask me about my silly little aliens

Hello please reblog this if you're okay with people sending you random asks to get to know you better

[drathahdrabbles]

I'd love some writing friends!!! And just more friends and mutuals on Tumblr in general!

I mostly write about my own stories.

This blog is specifically about the Drathah and Thardahk, but I've also got a couple roleplay groups that I write about on my blog GalesGremlinGrotto.

But I'm always looking for motivation to write about my stories!!!! :D

Hey writblrs - I’m looking for more active writblr friends specifically who play silly little writing tag games! My notifs have been barren the last month, and tag games really help keep me on track when my motivation is sagging at the end of the day (must write seven lines because random online person tagged me!)

I only write fanfiction, so you don’t need to actually read anything I write, just need friends to play games with!

#writblrs #writeblr #creative writing #writers #writing #my writing

[drathahdrabbles]

I'd love for Thardahk to be turned into a sort of mockumentary, 2D animated series, where it's more like 45 minutes to an hour for each episode, there's just fewer of them, but it tells stories of various characters. Switching between shots of a modern historian, them narrating over shots of things, and the characters that are the focus of the episode living through the events described.

Like, scientist character is on screen in front of an old building, telling us some factoids about it and its importance, fade to a shot of the same building in the past, newer and cleaner and kept together, as the scientist narrates for a minute or so, and then the scene continues on, showing things that are Rather Obviously not a recreation, but the actual events and words that happened at the time.

I'd also love to see it become a comic and video game.

I'd really love to develop the Drath language fully, so that I could publish a version of the comic/include an option in the game,

Where it's fully written in Drath. Cause I think that'd be an absolute blast.

NEW WRITELR POLL JUST DROPPED:

Please reblog as I want to get as many results as I can :D. Thank you!

Please read the options carefully before you choose them as well!

Please feel free to add anything in the tags!

#writing #writeblr #media #thardahk lore #thardahk #drath #drathah #drathah lore

[drathahdrabbles]

I haven't like, developed this creature at all, but I was thinking about mail, and how the letters and packages might be delivered in my fantasy/low technology/environmentally conscious sciences world, and I thought of the pony express (and now I also thinking about pigeons)

But basically it'd be a large, hexapedal cat-like carnivore. Like an alien fantasy cheetah, that sprints at high speeds and, if you're persistent, kind and a little bit lucky, can be tamed and ridden. I imagine it's definitely an exotic pet, one that's not gonna be truly domesticated for another couple thousands of years or so (Drathah live to 300) and maybe this "cheetah express" similarly doesn't last very long, but it brings these creatures into a spot of niche use for speed and timeliness, especially with the development of some modern, environment sensitive medicines.

But also I was thinking of making them vampires :) More specifically blood eaters. Usually fed on cow horses, due to a comparable size, a moscheetah (mosquito + cheetah) could feed on a cowhorse and leave it largely unharmed, but they bite Drathah sometimes, cause they're also a good sized meal, and that's where the struggles with taming them comes from. They're food motivated and wild and so if they don't like you they'll turn you into a caprisun.

But visually/design wise I'll be basing it sort of on the earth equivalent creatures, with Drathah evolutionary ancestor notes, and also maybe some inspiration from the blue people avatar and Stranger Things' Demogorgon.

I'm having fun making threatening large animals for Thardahk. Will need to spend more time later making smaller creatures to fill out the food chain but for now I'm having fun with my big babies.

little check-in for creators and worldbuilders!

if you see this and have the energy, what's the most interesting thing people can have as a pet in your wips?

feel free to use this as an excuse to infodump :>

#thardahk #drathah #worldbuilding #writeblr #speculative fiction #spec bio #speculative writing #speculative biology #thardahk lore #drathah lore

[drathahdrabbles]

Ooooooooooooooh

I am looking at this so hard

I've been thinking about how the Drathah see and what colors the Drathah see but just translating our words for colors is boring what if I shake up their perception and shake up their colors and their names and associations for them oooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

I am staring directly at this and trying to perform osmosis on it

Palindromes have a bunch of different words for colors, each based on the colors of their surroundings. For example, the "color of water" is usually blue, and the "color of soil" is usually brown. However, each biome often has unique species and terrain which confuses things.

For example, this saltpan palindrome and tundra palindrome have two different words for red. The saltpan palindrome calls red "the color of water" because pools in the saltpan are filled with red microbes. The tundra palindrome calls red "the color of ash leaves" because the groundcover in their territory turns red when reacting with ash from a volcanic eruption. Tundra palindromes don't have a specific word for "water color" but they'd probably describe water as the color of a leaf who has reacted with acidic substances. (The tundra is one big pH indicator. I should draw it sometime...)

Palindrome ecotypes mostly have their own languages, but are easily translated. It just gets confusing when you two are both talking about something being the color of dirt, but one of you means orange while the other means grey.

Most of them have six colors: dark, light, "person colored", "leaf colored", "soil colored" and "water colored". Palindromes from regions where "plants" regularly change colors often have two "leaf colored" words, and some have more or less depending on what their surroundings are.

#speculative biology #worldbuilding #drathahinspirationbox

[drathahdrabbles]

Wait no I can edit it and delete it sick

It's over in the grotto where it's supposed to be now

I did it again I forgot to check the blog before I posted ugh

And I'm on mobile so I can't edit it wheeeee

Hi my name is Gale I'm bad at Tumblr have another peak into the kind of stuff I reblog over at @galesgremlingrotto

[drathahdrabbles]

I did it again I forgot to check the blog before I posted ugh

And I'm on mobile so I can't edit it wheeeee

Hi my name is Gale I'm bad at Tumblr have another peak into the kind of stuff I reblog over at @galesgremlingrotto

[drathahdrabbles]

Okay time for the Ihehshk and Pen lore I promised

I recently posted that my asks are open and that I'll be answering them with illustrated answers! In that post I shared an image featuring a Drathah character and a human character that I haven't shared before! So that's what this post is about! Those two and their lore and also their refs. For some context, there exist in my mind Two Time Points, from which various stories on Thardahk take place around. The one I visit more frequently, and from which I reference more of the events and story lines of Drathah history and individual character events, takes place in the year 1148 on Thardahk. It's the first point I thought of, the one I think about more often, the one during which more of my characters and stories take place around. For the Drathah it's a rather unassuming year, but a lot of things happen just before and just after. It's sort of the equivalent to 2019/2020 for us. Technically in the past, but a lot of shit happens so it doesn't feel like it, and during that time we had no clue what was headed our way. The other point in time is 1219, which is where Ihehshk and Penjani come in. 1219 is sort of Thardahk's sci-fi space age. Thardahk years are weird, so even though all the other characters are "only 70 years older" one Thardahk year is THREE human years, so actually over 200 human years have passed. (This is just reminding me I haven't talked about the Thardahk calender/times for things on here yet...) Earth and the human race are also highly advanced. I originally said earth was 500 years in the future, but I might change that to be less. Faster then light travel, planetary colonization, genetic modification, other advanced sciences and medicines, as well as a completely different political landscape. I haven't worked out all of the bits and world building for this time of the Drathah story, because as I mentioned it's pretty secondary to everything else. I like sci-fi but I struggle to write it. 1219 is sort of my fun playground compared to 1148's more serious story writing. It's for me to consider how humans might interact with the Drathah, and vice versa. It's for fun silly space stories.

But in order to explore these fun silly space stories, I need characters through which to explore them and tell them! And so Ihehshk and Pen were created! Ihehshk are both Astronaut/Scientist/Social ambassador folks! They're part of a human and drathah program, where various kinds of folks from both species hang out as essentially roommates, and teach each other about their languages, cultures, science and technology. They're sorta coworkers sorta roommates, but they are genuinely friends! Pen really likes talking about human cultures, and learning about Drathah fashion and holidays. Ihehshk really likes talking about history and learning about Earth's animals and human technology. Also yes, their height difference in the asks post is accurate. Pen is 5'10" (177.8cm), and Ihehshk is 7'10" (238.76cm). I'm realizing now, several hours later, that I forgot Pen's mole and piercings in the asks post.... sigh It always has to be AFTER you've posted it that you notice the obvious and easily avoidable mistake right???

Please ignore almost all of the numbers on Ihehshk's reference. Those numbers are no longer cannon. The day and month of their birthday is still correct, but not the year. (Thardahk has 17 months. I promise I'll share the calendar publicly eventually......)

Also here's a fullbody so your can see all of Ihehshk's patterns. 100% sfw and not even rude. The Drathah have way looser modesty customs and also no visible physical differences between sexes, and they're furry, like your dog, so yeah, sometimes if the weather's nice and they're just loungin about they don't wear clothes. Casual events might call for shorts. I forget if I've posted about this on here already.

So yeah!!! Those are my newest weirdos! If you're interested in learning more about them or the world they live in pop a question in my ask box! :D I'd love to draw them answering it!

#drathah #thardahk #spec bio #speculative biology #speculative fiction #speculative writing #drathah lore #artists on tumblr #speculative evolution #ihehshk #penjani maina #oc art #character art #digital art #art #artwork #my art #illustration #oc character #oc #ocs #my ocs #original character #drawing #own character #character development #character design

[drathahdrabbles]

Ask Spec Bio Questions Get Spec Bio Answers

Asks have been open, I just haven't talked about them! So I'm gonna now! And introduce some new characters and lore and fun interactions all at once because I don't know what the concept of pacing is.

I'm now doing Illustrated Answers for Asks regarding the Drathah and Thardahk! Wanna know something about the world? Ask and yee shall receive! (Though depending on what it is the answer I give you may be Made Up On The Spot, or just while I'm working on drawing the answer for it.)

The above characters are Ihehshk and Pen! I'll be sharing a lore post for them in a minute! Most of the asks will be answered by them, from their year on the timeline, but some asks may better fit older characters from previous art and posts, which is technically Drathah History. Tbh these asks are outside of canon and time. I can do whatever I want with them.

Rules for Asks: - Please be polite and patient! I'm working a lot while I try to save up for college, and I have the Neurospicy, so it might take me a couple days, but I promise I'm thinking about it and working on it! - You can ask about heavier/adult topics, but PLEASE be tactful and considerate about it! I'm not going to answer asks that are just gross, and I will be approaching these as safely as possible and tagging the hell out of them. I have no qualms about reporting or blocking people. - If you're asking a specific character a question, please state who you're asking, if you don't know their name, you can absolutely describe them, who knows, maybe I'll get a kick out of your description. - Abusing Anon will get Anon privileges revoked. Don't do it. Don't be an asshole. - You're also free to ask me, (Gale, the creator) questions if you want!

#I posted this on the wrong blog first #I am such a tumblr failure #drathah #thardahk #spec bio #speculative biology #speculative fiction #speculative writing #drathah lore #artists on tumblr #speculative evolution #oc art #character art #digital art #art #artwork #my art #illustration #galegabsgobs #fiction #spec fic #my writing #creative writing #writers #writing #writers on tumblr #spec evo #ihehshk #penjani maina #drathah world building

[drathahdrabbles]

My confusion on what kind of evolutionary advantage these would have provided and my absolute glee at how absurd some of these are, are fighting for dominance in my brain and I think the only logical solution is to save them for Thardahk sea creatures.

[drathahdrabbles]

Another for the box

Every day the urge to make Drathah folk songs sits in my head and every day my complete and utter lack of any musical skill other then singing what is already written keeps it chained down to the back of my skull

But also traditional Drathah processing and fabrics and paper and construction wheeeeeeee

'Wool waulking is a traditional Scottish process of finishing and strengthening newly woven woolen fabrics. It is a significant social and cultural activity, often carried out by women in the Highlands of Scotland. The Gaelic songs that are sung during waulking have a distinctive rhythmic pattern that aids in synchronising the work.'

(Video and text via Inverness Outlanders)

#drathahinspirationbox

[drathahdrabbles]

Gentle shuffles this into the inspiration for world building box

I was working with an item today that just utterly flabbergasted a part of me (the other was deeply frustrated with the catalogue record AS SOMEONE APPARENTLY THOUGHT IT WAS PRINTED ON SILK, coming back to that in a minute) … but ANYWAYS … said item is a replica of a medieval manuscript prayer book THAT IS ENTIRELY WOVEN out of grey and black silk … WOVEN … text, images, intricate grey scale, WOVEN … NOT PRINTED …

And it’s flabbergasting because it’s from 1888, Jacquard machine, IT USED PUNCH CARDS to weave these intricate pages … something like 400 weft per near square inch … IT looks like a page of textured paper, but it’s not, it’s entirely SILK … F*CK …

Anyways …

[drathahdrabbles]