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Show your Works In Progress! (For the Beta Timeline)

Since the descriptions for each of these are 99% complete, and my descriptions tend to be long, I've provided only very brief descriptions for each one so they don't dominate the thread. If desired, though, I could add the descriptions.

Heavy Metal Ovipine:

An Ovipine which ekes out an existence in areas with soils high in heavy metals.

Merlinhat (or Cryospire? Haven't decided on the name)

A very large nonvascular flora, which manages to get so large due to its environment having no competition for its niches. Lives high in the mountains. Has a glassy lattice and prickly growths.

Here are sketches for some planned Drylicad descendants, planned for various Ovi habitats. I plan for them to be large shrubs or small trees. They mostly live in arid and semi-arid places, while the Mournking lives in the mountains. One, however, has a very widespread distribution, and it might be my wildcard for that time period. I tried multiple variations on their body plans of a notched trunk. I plan for some to have purplish, purplish brownish, or brown trunks.The Drylicad had "mostly lost photosynthesis in this bottom region [of the trunk]", and now, I plan for the ones on the upper right and lower right and possibly the one on the upper left to regain photosynthesis in those areas, to some degree. The one in the middle on the top already has complete art, though I can't find it at this time.

I think I'll make the prickly-notched one on the lower-right a descendant of the one on the upper right, since its notches and leaves are so unusual it wouldn't be plausible as a direct descendant.

They were mostly inspired by by cycads and bromeliads.

A Shootstems descendant. A short-lived, cool-season ephemeral that lives along streams. Unlike most Shootstems, it actually does poorly in hot weather.

An arboreal Skinback descendant, so tenacious in catching prey and voracious it can eat to obesity where food is plentiful.

The creatures in both those posts are definitely cool. I like the skinback descendant. Maybe the shootstems descendant should be a genus group too? I like all the drylicads, we need more "horizontal" diversification with a single species splitting into lots of different, but similar, uniquely adapted descendants. This is something that I myself want to do, if my colored drawings looked good.

Veinnach. Preview of its first two paragraphs:
"Its above-ground tissue resembles very thin, sickly, translucent reddish skin. A pattern of veins, with vein-like roots visible underneath it.

It forms notable aboveground growths on large hunks of decaying floral matter, chiefly crystalflora trunks, and occasionally the hard tissues of dead Binucleozoan fauna. Where there aren't large chunks of decaying floral matter, it may make only a small reddish "skin" thin as film, with no venation patterns, or no aboveground growths at all."

Less developed images:

Gelatinous Caonach (encountered technical difficulties in Blender)

These are two of an absurd number of direct descendants of the Wright Caonach. There's about 7 that are decently planned out, and several more that exist as fragmentary ideas.

Indeed, I'm considering trying to make some of the 7 decently-planned descendants grand-descendants of the Wright Caonach instead, because 7 is so enormous, and unlike, say, splitting from the Red Smoolk so much in the Mason Barren Wasteland, there are a lot more options within many of their habitats, including genus group options. Counting grand-descendants and great-grand descendants, there's at least 15 Caonach species.

Much later, once the planned area in Beta has a well-developed forest ecology and lots of tree and large fauna options, I plan to make the following landmark: Lethe Forest, a seemingly cursed forest of madness. Here's a preview from the first paragraph:

"The unique geology of Lethe Forest makes its soil, groundwater, and many organisms especially high in selenium and arsenic. Brainier organisms from un-adapted populations who live there for years gradually experience impaired intelligence, and become easier to catch and kill. Some organisms, often those without predators, eventually behave so erratically as to appear to go mad." It's really spooky but intended to be very plausible. Un-adapted organisms going mad is not its only "dark secret" (or oddity).

I have a Litustar descendant that gained manganese-based spiky defense but I forgot how to post images over the years lol

Not a work in progress, but I'm looking around groups like the notbacks and arthrotheres trying to figure out how they could be diversified for the next generation.

QUOTE (SpeedTowel @ Sep 5 2021, 10:22 PM)

I have a Litustar descendant that gained manganese-based spiky defense but I forgot how to post images over the years lol

I upload images to Imgur and then copy one of the links provided and post it here. However, other people may use Discord.

These pen sketches were uploaded to my computer at about January 4, 2021, though likely made months before. They're from the same sketch page as the Purple Wude, which is why the lineart is similar.



These were originally designed as Snoodcish descendants, although I might change their ancestors later. I had to re-write part of the "Barracuda" (Barrasnooda) description framework as the ecosystem changed with the addition of the Lurkroufos genus group.

Here's a snippet:
"Avoids competition with various Lurkroufos by swimming in the water column, while Lurkroufos tend to live at or near the bottom. In contrast to the Squish, it still migrates, if not very far. Its shoals are smaller than the Squish’s. It specializes in pelagic species."

For the "Octopus-catfish" (name pending), it has small-scale migrations and lives in swamps, hiding in wait in shadowy places. It has taste receptors all over its body. It stabs particularly large prey and savors its blood.

Things are about to get fuzzy.

Kinda surprised by the lack of comments. Anyway, I'm also working on several other stinzers. I don't think I posted them on the old wip thread, but they include a willosaur-like apex predator, a mesopredator with a very long middle foreclaw, and an herbivore so ugly I had to commission someone to draw it after giving up on trying to draw it myself.

It's so fuzzy...I like the shading.

----



This is so "cursed" I had to re-draw it four times.

Description Draft:
The Hideous
Ancestor: Kugard
(Tall and conspicuous.)
(Vascularized skin on its neck appears to be melting.)
Diet: Herbivore (some kind of turkey-like diet)

(Eats leaves?)

(Consistently referred to as “the Hideous”.

By default, it will run away in an awkward-looking gait. It tends to escape would-be predators by power-walking backwards, and can roll its eyes back while walking backwards.

If cornered or pressed, such as by a pursuing predator or one that has gotten too close, it will become bolder. Though it might seem well-equipped for a bite or stab from its tusks, when it comes to fighting, it will simply get on its hind legs and backhand a foe with its foreleg.As a foe approaches, it will raise its foreleg threateningly while cackling, as if taunting a foe to come closer and get smacked. Hideouses tend to make obnoxious chuckling noises while backhanding fauna. It occasionally backhands fauna to unconsciousness, chuckling all the time, and then continues backhanding the fauna's unconscious body long past the point of practicality. A fauna backhanded to death is very distinctive: it will have a blown-open face, near the eyes, exactly the size of a Hideous backhand, for the Hideous always attacks the same location in an unconscious target.

Its mating display is, by human tastes, obnoxious beyond measure: it cackles while making strange expressions.

The eyespots on its eardrums make it appear to have six eyes, sometimes confusing predators trying to attack it by surprise. The imitation eyes are laughably crude, but nonetheless improve its survival chances, and so have persisted.

The exceedingly ugly fauna has one saving grace: its susceptibility to a genetic deformity which makes it less ugly. It disrupts blue pigmentation, causing a washed-out, bluish gray color not so hideously clashing against mauve and dark purple. While this looks unhealthy for a male displaying, and ensures he has no chance of mating, it has no effect on females, who don't need blue coloration anyway. Therefore, the gene persists through carrier females.


A vining Violetpalm descendant.

and now for the possibly least pronounceable fauna name.... goes to the Yarpynhyn.

Click to expand

actually pronounced yar-pin-heen

@Coolsteph The Hideous does happen to look pretty similar to my own idea for the kugard lineage, particularly regarding a hint of bipedalism and extended heels... hopefully they won't compete too bad.

Pictured: a rough sketch of a primitive 'megakugard' I envisioned a while ago

Also, one question: by what mechanism does The Hideous "cackle"? What does it sound like?