Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
I'm down with the deadline. I'm done with the deadline; I'm ready to vote.
Well, I might edit my entry when ideas come to me in the meantime.
Good few entries so far. Me likes.
- So, I'll have some bone-heads, a pinch of frog people, a bird people - make that with extra bird people - hyena-mongoose people...
- Dad, dad, don't forget the robots!
- Yes, I know, I haven't forgotten. Mmm, magic-driven robot people, sexy people, humans and orcs.
- Yes, okay, sir, anything else?
- That's it for the moment. We'll come back if there is anything else.
- If you'll just take a seat, we'll take your Fantasy population to your table. It'll be ready by the end of the week.
ol bofosh wrote:I'm down with the deadline. I'm done with the deadline; I'm ready to vote.
Well, I might edit my entry when ideas come to me in the meantime.
Good few entries so far. Me likes.
- So, I'll have some bone-heads, a pinch of frog people, a bird people - make that with extra bird people - hyena-mongoose people...
- Dad, dad, don't forget the robots!
- Yes, I know, I haven't forgotten. Mmm, magic-driven robot people, sexy people, humans and orcs.
- Yes, okay, sir, anything else?
- That's it for the moment. We'll come back if there is anything else.
- If you'll just take a seat, we'll take your Fantasy population to your table. It'll be ready by the end of the week.
What about my conspecies?
ʾAšol ḵavad pulqam ʾifbižen lav ʾifšimeḻ lit maseḡrad lav lit n͛ubad. ʾUpulasim ṗal sa-panžun lav sa-ḥadṇ lav ṗal šarmaḵeš lit ʾaẏṭ waẏyadanun wižqanam.
- Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- So, I'll have some bone-heads, a pinch of frog people, a bird people - make that with extra bird people - hyena-mongoose people...
- Dad, dad, don't forget the robots!
- Yes, I know, I haven't forgotten. Mmm, magic-driven robot people, sexy people, humans and orcs.
- Yes, okay, sir, anything else?
- That's it for the moment. We'll come back if there is anything else.
- If you'll just take a seat, we'll take your Fantasy population to your table. It'll be ready by the end of the week.
My conspecies has incredibly high pain tolerance, and pain threshold, as well as some cold and heat resistance, but apparently they catch on fire more easily.
If magic is allowed my conpeople would have either:
A) ability to shape-shift
Or
B) ability to melt into shadows
ʾAšol ḵavad pulqam ʾifbižen lav ʾifšimeḻ lit maseḡrad lav lit n͛ubad. ʾUpulasim ṗal sa-panžun lav sa-ḥadṇ lav ṗal šarmaḵeš lit ʾaẏṭ waẏyadanun wižqanam.
- Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Here’s a species. Let’s call them ‘nightpeople’.
As you might have guessed, they’re a nocturnal hominid species.
Original habitat, population distribution.
It is pretty obvious that their ancestral habitat were deserts and semi-arid areas, as they show many adaptations to these environments. Their population expanded out of their ancestral deserts, and are now found in a wide range of climates.
They still prefer remote areas, such as hot or cold desert, steppes and mountains, although they thrive in hilly or mountainous areas in mediterranean or subtropical climates. (That is indeed where the highest population density are found).
Physical description
Nightpeople are shorter than humans - their average height being around 1.2 m, though some may be as short as 1m or as tall as 1.5m. Their hair is short, and often sand-colored - in addition to head and facial hair, they also have hairy hands and feet. Their skin looks dry, even leathery - they rarely perspire.
They have unusually large and mobile ears - used in their primeval habitat to regulate body heat - and have a slender build. Their primeval strategy was to ambush their prey, and they’re noted for their stealth, and for being excellent sprinters.
Nightpeople have large, lemur-like eyes, with nictitating membranes, and possess excellent night vision. They also have better hearing than humans.
As another adaptation to arid climates, they acquire water through their food, and can carry on for very long periods without drinking at all; they can undergo longer period of starvation than ordinary humans.
They tend to gorge themselves with food and drink, though, when both are available in large quantities.
Assorted notes on behaviour
They have a strong preference for hideouts, subterranean homes or otherwise hard to reach places; this, combined to their stealth, and the fact that they’re rarely active during the day, can make it difficult for humans to spot nightpeople when they don’t want to be seen - and as it turns out, they have a strong preference for remaining hidden.
They're more sociable and playful than humans. Their behaviour, even in old age, is often characterized as childlike by other species.
They're a bit more peaceful than other beings: wars of agression are heard of, but relatively rare. On the other hand, nightpeople can get extremely agressive when they feel threatened and can have short tempers in this respect,
They're not particularly suited at conventional warfare, though, lacking in brute strength and discipline. Nightpeople will never mount an invasion, although they're excellent at guerilla warfare.
Magic and the supernatural
People’s first sighting of a nightperson usually consists in spotting large, bright eyes at night when they’re least expected; for this reason, they’re usually mistaken for supernatural beings.
This is mostly undeserved, as they’re not particularly agressive, and seldom attack other species (well, unless they feel they've been provoked.) but they’re not above exploiting this evil reputation to their advantage.
Humans (and other species) often believe that they can appear or disappear at will, and performs unnatural feats of speed and stealth. This might be due, in part, to magical abilities, but is mostly due to entirely natural abilities.
Assorted notes on reproduction
As in humans, pregnancy is nine months long. Menstrual cycles are longer than in humans, and highly variable in length (originally, they were dictated by seasons and food availability). For this reason, they're not as fertile than humans, and have fewer children. They favor a K reproductive strategy, even more than humans do.
There is little sexual dimorphisms: males and females can't be differentiated easily by outsiders.
Much like, say, lions and tigers, they're technically interfertile with humans. However, unions are extremely rare, due to the differences and behaviour (not to mention the fact that members of each species find the other extremely ugly), and the offspring is sterile (if viable at all).
EDIT: expanded the description a bit, as the old one was short and sloppy and full of typos.
Last edited by Ars Lande on Thu Feb 06, 2014 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm entering unknown territory: amphibimorph languages will probably be defined by very complex systems of tone and phonation, which more than makes up for any lack of articulation ability (fat clumsy tongue, small teeth and stiff lips, if that gives any clues). I can imagine humans hiring amphibimorphs to talk about the weather or the process of paint drying in their own language, simply because it's "nice music". Whistling languages might give me some pointers too.
Exact details are being worked out. If not, I'll just use human phonetics as an "equivalent" and leave the rest to the imagination. I don't know if or how it'll be useful in later stages, but it's fun to work out.
If the final vote ends up with four or five radically different species (say, sentient reptiles next to sentient dolphins), how are they going to be explained? Will there be intermediate forms added in? Will they have a common ancestor? If it's a tongue-in-cheek fantasy setting it probably doesn't matter, but is that what it is?
In any case, the Sexies obviously have a lot of potential.
"I'm sorry, when you have all As in every class in every semester, it's not easy to treat the idea that your views are fundamentally incoherent as a serious proposition."
Oh yeah, I was going to work on this this afternoon. Oh well, screw it. I'll leave this round (unless Zompist is nice and will extend the deadline to Monday)
Hydroeccentricity wrote:If the final vote ends up with four or five radically different species (say, sentient reptiles next to sentient dolphins), how are they going to be explained? Will there be intermediate forms added in? Will they have a common ancestor? If it's a tongue-in-cheek fantasy setting it probably doesn't matter, but is that what it is?
I think a few of us have mentioned or alluded to evolution.
Or we could make something parallel to what's really happening...
"In the beginning Lord Zomp called the Divinities together to forge a new world. He said 'Create new land masses, and they shall be arranged in size according to those we deem best.' And there were land masses, and they were voted on, and Zomp saw it and he thought it good.
"On the second week he said 'Create new species with which we shall populate this world of ours.' And so the divinities went forth and created new species, and later they'll choose which ones will disapear into oblivion, and which ones shall rule the world..."
And so on and so forth.
As a god of this world you can call me.... well, Ol Bofosh (or Treegod, for the English translation).
KathAveara wrote:Oh yeah, I was going to work on this this afternoon. Oh well, screw it. I'll leave this round (unless Zompist is nice and will extend the deadline to Monday)
Why not a quick paragraph?
Or even a phrase: "Humans but sexy" seems to work.
Edit: I'm realising that tones and voice quality will probably be more fundamental to amphibilangs than vowels and consonants. In which case the orthgraphic tradition will probably mean that tones get a letter and that vowels and consonants appear as diacritics!
As for multiple species, well, the environment evidently favored intelligence because... well, we only have one planet to go on so we don't know how other planets may... or could be an alien ship crash-landed just as...
Example of a last-minute species (because it's better to inventerise than agonise):
The Woffs
So called because of the sounds they makes when speaking. It's gruff and "barky". They are roughly 4-5' in height and covered in hair. Their faces are mostly hair, with two big dark eyes protruding out. They are mainly vegetarian, but aren't below a tiny bit of omnivorous-ness when short of food. They have three genders: male, female and "carriers". The first two genders are not easy to tell apart (they tell each other apart by smell), but the third tend to stand taller and has redder hair, whereas the others are browner. One has male gametes, the other female gametes and the third carries the baby to term. They originate in colder climes. They have a bony structure that protrudes from their brows, used in defense. They also have very powerful kicks. They have plate-like hooves. Magically they can control the temperature around them. The more woffs there are the more this area can expand, amplified by their collective power.
I've already got a species, so don't count that as anything. It's just what I can do in ten minutes (or less, I wasn't counting).
I've had an idea for a species like this for a while, so I think I'll offer them for the CCC game.
Appearance
They are similar to humans, but whereas we are descended from a species of ape, they are descended from a species of monkey. They are smaller (maximum hieght c. five feet), have powerful arms and shoulders, and tails. Hair varies a good deal by race, sex and climate, from being as naked as humans to being as thickly coated as an arctic fox. They always have hair on the scalp and the tail. Their faces are often very colourful indeed, with racial variation. They may be 1) Pure bright red. 2) Pure bright blue. 3) Pure black 4) Have one or more of those colours on the nostril 5) or the eyebrows 6) or the lips 7) or the cheekbones or any combination of these.
Senses
As primates they have trichomatic colour vision, similar to humans. Their hearing is like ours (good) and so is their smell (poor). As fruit eaters they have a sweet tooth. The one major difference is their sense of balance, which is much better. Their semicircular canals are similar in structure to ours but better supplied with nerves. An untrained Munkee can run along a tightrope without training.
Habits
They evolved for forest living and still prefer to live in wooded country, although they have also been very successful colonising mountain areas. They avoided plains and grasslands in their aboriginal state. That changed when they domesticated draught animals and learnt to build and weave ropes. Their first structures could be described as imitation trees: tall posts stuck in the ground with platforms attached. They have nearly as much stamina as humans, but find walking on their hind legs for several hours tiring (because their bodies are more top-heavy), and they cannot run as fast as us, because their ankles are more flexible than ours, designed for climbing rather than running.
So they arrange to brachiate whenever they can. A Munkee "road" in treeless country may or may not be paved. What it will have is a series of posts like telegraph poles, with arms or ropes to catch hold of. You will often see a Munkee swinging along, carrying a bag in his or her feet.
Their other machines are also adapted for the Munkee body. A Munkee bike, for example, will be pedalled with the hands and steered with the feet.
The Sexies are generally assumed to be distantly related to orthohumans. They are tall and svelt, averaging around 190cm for males and 178 for females. They show a high degree of sexual dimorphism in body size, body hair coverage, and facial features. Externally, their most distinguishing feature is heterogeneous patterns of melanocytes, giving each individual a pattern of light and dark across their body. These can be dappled splotches or stripes, or sometimes other shapes. The patterns change as the individual ages, and they are partially hereditary, so they are useful signals for social position within a community, as well as sexual signals. Internally, the Sexies are even more distinct from humans. The hormones that regulate body fat, hair growth, skin coloration, and other features are in turn regulated by pheromones. These pheromones are related to levels of arousal and cycles of ovulation. This allows individual communities of Sexies to have "local styles" of body, based on cultural ideas of attractiveness. Sexies who live in proximity to other sentient species may "borrow" body shapes from them, becoming irresistible to their neighbors. Intermarriage between communities can introduce entirely new body types to a village and start a paroxysm of mating. Mating habits among the Sexies are by no means as free as they are among Earth's Bonobos, but sex is a tremendously important part of Sexy society. Pair bonds between adults usually require regular coitus. This may be related to the biological effects of coitus on the central nervous system. Hormones secreted by the genitals of both sexes have been observed to have strong anti-depressive effects, and can be habit forming. The need for constant sex has even made it difficult to differentiate labor along sex lines, with all male or all female work groups being quite rare.
"I'm sorry, when you have all As in every class in every semester, it's not easy to treat the idea that your views are fundamentally incoherent as a serious proposition."
Description: The Batti resemble large bats, and are typically roughly 3 feet/90cm tall when fully grown, with a roughly 8 foot/240cm wingspan. They have fur colors ranging from gray to black, along with occasional browns, with various patterns in the fur serving to distinguish individuals of the species. They can fly, but they typically need a short distance to run before they are able to get up off the ground; alternatively they can jump off of a ledge and use gravity to build up the speed necessary to remain airborne. They have 6 limbs, the back two serve as legs, while the front two are the wings, while the middle set are used to actually grab and manipulate objects. The Batti are strictly carnivorous, and typically hunt birds or small land animals/fish, catching them using claws/talons on their feet. Unlike bats, they are active during the day. Male and female Batti look mostly alike, aside from UV coloring on parts of their fur, making it hard for members of another species to tell them apart unless they are also sensitive to UV light. The Batti lay eggs, usually 2 at a time.
Senses: The Batti are tetrachromats, and can see into the UV range, additionally their vision is a lot sharper than human vision, more like the vision of birds of prey. Hearing is better than humans and their ears and rotate to detect just which direction a sound has come from, however they do not echolocate. Smell is relatively weak, similar to humans. Their sense of touch is quite sensitive and they can use their hair to detect air currents even when they aren't flying.
Magic: They only have limited use of magic, and each individual has roughly an equal amount, at least once they are around 10 (Earth) years or so old. This magic allows them to breath when oxygen is scarce and also keeps them at a normal body temperature, allowing them to fly even at high altitudes for long periods of time. It also is somewhat effective at allowing them to stay underwater, but they do need to come up for air after around 10 to 20 minutes or so, depending on how active they are.
Linguistics: Their ability to speak is mostly similar to humans aside from the increase in pitch due to their smaller size, but they are unable to pronounce dental and alveolar consonants due to the positions of their teeth, these sounds instead coming across as post-alveolar or alveolo-palatal type consonants. Labio-dental consonants are also typically replaced by bilabials.
Climate: They originated in warm, mostly open areas, but can live in most climates due to both their fur and their heat retaining magic abilities, but they typically stay away from icy regions due to a relative lack of easy prey. Additionally, mountainous and forested regions are normally avoided for similar reason, though in this case it is because the terrain makes it harder to hunt animals on the ground. However, they do prefer the edges of forested areas next to open areas.
Behavior: The Batti are quite curious and typically playful, even as adults, more so than humans. They generally don't fight, instead preferring to fly away, but if necessary, they will fight, typically by throwing things from the air at their enemies (based on pre-civilization lack of technology). They typically live in tree branches, normally an extended family will take over a large tree, or a part of a cave if no trees are available/the nearby trees are already occupied. This can be generalized as a desire for living in higher places, where other, possibly dangerous animals can't easily reach them. They are also somewhat more social than humans, and normally group together into an extended family, with individuals (both males and females) flying over to a neighboring family to look for someone to mate with. Individuals normally don't mate with just a single partner (though pairs are relatively common at first before they find additional suitable individuals), but join up into small groups of 3 to 5 individuals or mixed gender, where they all mate with each other, but don't mate with those outside the small group. Individual groups normally stay with the extended family of one of the members, but will likely fly off to start a new family if the current family is getting too large. (exactly what is considered too large depends on culture, available space, and available food.) Additionally, these mating groups allows the Batti to take turns hunting in groups, leaving one or possibly two individuals behind to watch the eggs/kids.
(Take things in the behavior section as more of an average, these can vary somewhat between different cultures, but make sure that they don't go too far off. Also, the housing and fighting parts are based off of pre-civilization Batti, these can easily change once they form a civilization, though some traits will likely remain, like the desire to have house off of the ground.)
Last edited by Lyhoko Leaci on Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Zain pazitovcor, sio? Sio, tovcor.
You can't read that, right? Yes, it says that.
Shinali Sishi wrote:"Have I spoken unclearly? I meant electric catfish not electric onions."
The magic practiced by the ancestral Cynocephali (and their descendants, if magic is species-specific) is relatively simple, consisting mostly of divination and "good luck charms." In both cases, magic, like most other elements of primitive Cynocephalus life, is oriented around hunting, and its power stems from some intangible vital force found in living things, particularly the prey animals that Cynocephali rely on for sustenance.
They are practitioners of haruspicy, the art of divining the shape of future events by examining the entrails of a freshly-slaughtered animal. In lean times, they can also practice various forms of divination using the bones left over from successful past hunts, but these carry only the barest residue of the power contained in a living beast, and the results they produce tend to be unreliable and limited to gaining a sympathetic impression about the general location of the herd from whence the slaughtered animal came.
The "good luck charms" made by the Cynocephali generally consist of talismans made from bone, tooth, hair, and sinew taken from a freshly slain animal. The animal is selected based on the particular strengths or talents it possesses, such as swiftness, endurance, or keen senses. The resulting talisman then enhances these abilities in the owner, though the effects are fairly subtle; enough to give them an edge, but not to make them a superhero.
The process of creating a talisman requires specialized knowledge and resources, and they gradually lose their potency over time, so they're in relatively short supply and considered valuable treasures rather than commonplace tools.
zompist wrote:I'm going to extend the deadline to Saturday; I don't want to lose too much forward momentum.
As a reminder, try to leave out the anthropology-- everything cultural. Your species should be suitable for multiple cultures.
I'm a little baffled by that distinction, I have to say. 'Cultural' information is fundamental to biology. Try adequately describing a lion or a hyaena or a colonial ant without including 'anything cultural'...
To be honest, this feels like the same approach you've taken with continents and with magic systems: "bung it all together, there don't have to be reasons or connections". I have to say, I find this sort of piecemeal approach quite off-putting.
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
zompist wrote:As a reminder, try to leave out the anthropology-- everything cultural. Your species should be suitable for multiple cultures.
I'm a little baffled by that distinction, I have to say. 'Cultural' information is fundamental to biology. Try adequately describing a lion or a hyaena or a colonial ant without including 'anything cultural'...
I'd suggest looking not at lions (who do have culture but not very much) but at humans. Do humans live in villages, in caves, in temporary camps, or in cities? Are they run by shamans, kings, elections, or no one at all? Do they eat mostly meat or mostly grain? Does their religion focus on worship, vision quests, sacrifice, or what? None of these things is biologically determined, as each of these possibilities is attested.
Of course there's overlap, but I also don't think this is rocket science. Ideally, leave things open for people to develop multiple cultures. (Though some things that are variable for us might be universal for another species-- e.g. a carnivore sapient can't healthily adapt to a vegetarian diet.)
or any combination of these.
