Tag: hydra

New version of “Tough as Blades” short story

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Some time ago I took to the short story I posted here years ago and edited it rather significantly, using the knowledge I’d gained from having an editor go over Slubes. Although it’s not entirely something new for this month, there are new scenes, including one that show how Master Hydra met Crawmaster, and all the old scenes have been thoroughly edited to be much better. “Tough as Blades“, the story whose title was the result of me forgetting that the actual phrase is tough as nails and that nails and blades don’t really have all that much in common??

One more month of 2016. On January 1st, Wandering Fortunes begins. A new world. New characters. New species. New nonsense. New beach ball. Around mid-December (the 16th or a few days after) I’m going to post some information to start diving into the new setting and everything of Wandering Fortunes. We saw Mintop over two books. Now we’ll see two planets over one book.

Of course, if you want to see this story start half a month early, you can become a patron over at Patreon!

ART (or at least some facsimile of it): Thyvae

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

I said I maybe might! Doodled up in about I don’t actually know how long but it couldn’t have been more than 10 or 20 minutes, maybe 30, the simplest-looking species from the CCC on Mintop, the thyvae. The original inspiration was hydras. You know, from nature.

thyvae

These doodles are by no means meant to be a final word on how these things look. I just like having stuff to actually post for once.

Species Profile: Thyvae

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Today’s topic is something somewhat based on the hydra of reality. Then it turned into a cucumber. Wait, what?

And don’t forget, I will be posting the short story “Tough as Blades” later today!

Quoted from the species appendix in Slubes:

“Thyvae are a species that look a bit like rectangular cucumbers: their bodies are entirely green and have six sides (including a square top and bottom), with the edges being rounded. Their heads are cubes, with the torso rectangular cuboids. Their arms and legs are black and as thin and flexible as cooked spaghetti noodles. Thyvae have a very patriarchal society where the males have traditionally had all the power and the females very little say, though this has changed in modern times. Their average lifespan is about 50 years.”

Physical Characteristics

The outward appearance of the thyvae, as quoted from my personal encyclopedia: “Thyvae are about the same height as slubes. They look a bit like cubic cucumbers; their bodies are entirely green and have six sides (including the top and bottom), with the edges being rounded. The head is nearly indistinguishable from the body, the neck being nothing more than a short, smoothed groove between the head and body. Thyvae have two small eyes and a small mouth; their arms and legs are thin as spaghetti noodles with the same flexibility as cooked noodles. Despite being so thin, they do have a strong grip.”

Thyvae have a lifespan of about 50 years, with maturity coming in just 10 years. In the distant past thyvae would breed asexually, splitting a new thyvae from their body over a short period of time, but as time went on they split into male and female sexes and began to reproduce sexually. They still have the ability to reproduce asexually, though, but it is more difficult now, taking a year to complete it and leaving both the parent and the offspring with about half of their full life left.

History and Culture

Thyvae have a particularly hierarchical society, one governed strongly by powerful authority figures, as well as the aspirations of becoming those authority figures. Due to this, many thyvae have roles of leadership on Interp, but mostly the males. Thyvae also have a rather patriarchal society, although in recent years more female thyvae have been pushing for more rights and equality. This has also led to some attempting a return to asexual reproduction.

No matter what side they’re on, though, most thyvae seem like big jerks, though they’re usually just looking out for themselves, and the authority figure culture stems less from following authority and more from becoming it.