Aquarian Dawn: Aquarians

This is an expanded version of my brief description of the Aquarians from the Aquarian Dawn setting primer.

Aquarians are androgynous humanoids, slightly smaller on average than humans, mesomorphic but with strong core and oblique muscles, and a thin layer of dense, fat-like cells just under (or less commonly, over) their skin. They have varying skin colors and patterns, generally tropical blues and greens with gold or red spots or stripes. Their heads are topped with a semi-translucent whitish filament, which they can also sprout from other regions of their body to form silk clothing-like protection. The filament can be injected with digestive enzymes or reproductive materials. 

Aquarians utilize photosynthesis, but in most climates require nearly as much food relative to their size as humans. They are omnivores but lean towards vegetarianism. They can reproduce both sexually and parthenogenically. Their brains consist of three highly redundant lobes, each taking on a slightly different personality, and the lobes sample information and generate neural activation patterns competitively, to bootstrap learning. While biological sex exists in a manner similar to humans, they have little sexual dimorphism. On the other hand, gender is continuous and triangular, based on the average contribution of each lobe to that individual's behavior, but these distinctions are often too subtle for non-aquarians, and generally not important to aquarian society.

Procedural and semantic memories are passed during reproduction. Episodic memories are also passed, but are generally scrambled and dream-like, except in cases of parthenogenesis where the offspring is a full clone. Offspring reach full physical/sexual maturity within 2 years and given the way memory is passed, can survive independently from that point on. However, they require large quantities of food and remain child-like in personality up to around 7 years old. They have short lifespans, averaging around 50 years under ideal circumstances. Except when necessary, most only reproduce once or twice in their lives, often once in mid-life and once towards the end of their life, with a preference towards parthenogenesis, generally only engaging in sexual reproduction once every few generations.

Aquarians are egalitarian and socialist, lacking an innate sense of or desire for hierarchy and power. They fall naturally into suitable roles, take a functional detachment towards interpersonal conflict, and even in cases where executive leadership is necessary or efficient, these roles are seen as necessary burdens rather than privileges.

Aquarian biology is inefficient, and aquarian society interdependent. They struggle in isolation or under conditions of extreme physiological adversity. However, as a society they are far greater than the sum of their parts, and the individual aquarian benefits from their society in a way that makes them often seem superior to their human counterparts. Humans and the other intelligent species find them threatening, not just because they are the only species that seems to be thriving, but also because their society and psychology is seen as a threat to the powers that be, and because they have no qualms with stating these facts plainly. They are not arrogant or malicious, and can engage in social politics, politeness, or other niceties when necessary, but generally don't see the value in doing so, arguing, perhaps rightly, that the other species would be better off doing likewise.

30 Day Challenge: Day 30! "Traditional Fantasy", But...

Last 5 minute challenge! I'm glad I saw this all the way through. I've got several more Aquarian Dawn posts lined up for a game that will hopefully be happening this weekend or next weekend at the latest, another appreciation post in the works, and then I'm going to make a list of all the 30 day challenge posts I want to build on and see how far I can take that. Maybe one day I'll do another table too (remember when I was complaining about how all I ever post are tables...).

So this 5 minute challenge, in-line with Aquarian Dawn, is going to be about traditional fantasy settings with a twist.

• There are no humans
• The humans are actually part of a gritty, near-future sci-fi exploration / colonization team
• The humans are actually part of a utopian, future starfleet that believes in peace, stranded on the world indefinitely
• Orcs, the bio-engineered or bred race of warrior elves, have been accepted back into elven society. Inequality and social tensions still exist, but progress is being made.
• Some (but not all) monsters and magic-users actually have the X-gene
• A race of technologically advanced aliens have begun to colonize the world
• Xenomorphs or a similar species have landed on the world and are breeding rapidly

Dang, this was harder than I anticipated (a lot of these are recycled ideas :( ). Not a terrible list, but I think there are a lot more interesting things I could have done. Anyway this has clearly been on my mind lately, so I'll keep thinking about it. Also, am I imagining this, or did I already do one like this? I didn't go back to check, but now I'm thinking maybe I did...

So that's it for the 30 Day Challenge! I'll try to post once or twice a week again with normal posts, or work on larger-scale, more ambitious projects again like tables and stuff. This was a fun way to get me thinking creatively again, but I do think it hampered my ability to do more ambitious things a bit, so I'm ready to scale up.

On an unrelated note, I finally started playing around with textgenrnn again, one of the neural networks that Janelle uses, so if anyone has or knows of a large dataset related to tabletop that I could do some fun stuff with (besides the ones she already has on her github), let me know! I don't reddit much anymore but I think I saw some people doing a neural network bestiary, would love to do something like that but I don't know what their dataset is and haven't had a chance to find one.

30 Day Challenge: Day 29 Superhero Fantasy Species

I know I've already done one like this, but this one is a little more specific. For this one, I'll take superheroes and outline a fantasy species with roughly their appearance, powers, or other features.

• Grimmlins: Brash and boisterous rock-men who came from the stars
• Spiderlings: Humanoid spider-men known for their poor humor, poor luck, and sense of responsibility
• Changelings: Green men with psionic and shape-shifting abilities, with an unfortunate aversion to fire
• Collosi: Large humanoids with metallic skin, known primarily for being simple and good-natured
• Blue-Beasts: Humanoids with vaguely ape-like and feline-like features, and blue (or sometimes gray) fur. In addition to their physical prowess, they are also incredibly bright. However, while generally pleasant and well-meaning, they sometimes lack social grace
• Cyclopses: Surprisingly slim for their size, at least until adulthood. They are most recognizable for their ruby-quartz eyes which can project force beams

This is another one I'd like to come back to (when this series is done I'm gonna have to go back and mark all the ones I want to come back to...). It would be easy to make a large table of all of these and I could see it being a good setting randomizer.

30 Day Challenge: Day 28 Community Building

I recently started reading Numenera Destiny, and so far I'm impressed. It's probably not surprising that I like the Numenera setting, I've said many times before how much I like Cypher System, and I know MCG has taken a lot of heat (deserved or not) for Invisible Suns, but I think Destiny is one of the most interesting tabletop books I've read in a long time outside of OSR.

The purpose of the book is to add lore, advice, and mechanics for community building. It's one of those ideas that seems so simple and obvious that I was surprised I hadn't seen much like it and that it's not more of a thing in tabletop. I don't have much experience with Dwarf Fortress, but I think something like a cross between Numenera Destiny and Dwarf Fortress would crush it in the OSR scene.

Anyway, I haven't actually played it, but even having just read it, I can tell there are certain mechanics that I'm not 100% on board with- it seems like something that would need some revising down the line, but on the whole it's a decent framework. The main features are that it adds a resource that gets used exclusively for building "magical" structures, adds some mechanics for dealing with communities and community actions, and adds special abilities that relate to the new resource, community mechanics, crafting, etc.

I've already played a fair bit of Numenera, so as intrigued as I am, I probably won't get around to this for some time, but I'm considering adding a stripped-down version of this into my upcoming Aquarian Dawn game (more on that in a separate post soon). So for my five minute challenge today, I'm going to spitball some ideas for community building campaigns.

• A short campaign where the players know they are on the verge of a major invasion. Over the course of some finite amount of time, they must build defenses, organize the community (seven samurai style), and scout the environment. Additionally, they have reason to believe there's a traitor among them...
• The party overthrew an evil lord, but now someone must manage the fiefdom. The lord was cruel and short-sighted, but the land is rich and tactically well-suited. The cruel lord was a cog in a larger, corrupt kingdom, with all the same problems at a larger scale. Under competent leadership, this fiefdom could take control of the whole kingdom...
• An eccentric architect has undecipherable schematics for a new world wonder. The architect has undeniably proven their skills, but this wonder requires certain resources money can't buy. The whole project is a long-shot, but he claims it will change the world. He can't afford to pay, he's fully invested in the wonder, but if he succeeds, those who helped him will go down in history...

30 Day Challenge: Day 27 Dungeons

I'm going to try doing some quick concepts for dungeons. I'm not sure how much inspiration I have for this, I generally prefer objects and creatures over locations and spaces, but we'll see what I can come up with.

The dungeon is...

• a mimic
• a virtual reality / astral dreamscape
• made of candy; gingerbread, candycanes, gumdrops, frosting, etc.
• bigger on the inside
• bigger on the outside
• made of panels that break after you step off of them. There are only so many valid routes to the exit, hope you don't make a mistake...
• composed of circular hallways, or rings, ordered by danger and theme (that build off of each other, like the levels of hell, or some other thematic system).
• on the back of a massive beast, and so the positioning and environment are all relative to the beast itself. (alternatively, strung between several massive beasts).

Ok, actually I think that turned out pretty good!

30 Day Challenge: Day 25-26 Potions

Was too tired yesterday, so two today! I'm glad that this 30-day challenge has kept me creating (almost) every day, even if just a little bit, but I am glad it's wrapping up so I don't feel beholden to this format. Hopefully these challenges will give me a lot of material to work with for the future.

First I'm going to do potions. I'm going to try doing it in a bit more of a semiurge format, but with only 5 minutes we'll see how far I get:

NOTE: Rather than do a separate list for day 26, I decided to spend 5 more minutes on this one

The color of the potion is:

• red
• green
• blue
• indigo
• violet
• white
• black
• translucent
• pink
• brown

and:

• metallic
• cloudy
• crisp
• sparkling
• bubbling
• glowing 
• dirty

It smells like:

• a nostalgic memory
• a toxic spill
• regret
• a memory you wanted to forget
• something you've always wanted
• something you didn't know you wanted
• something you didn't know you never wanted

When you drink it:

• You experience time as a narrow window (~6 seconds or less) rather than as a moment
• You gain hyper-proprioception and the ability to consciously control autonomic processes
• Another version of yourself from the multiverse goes into toxic shock as you gain their strength
• You go into toxic shock and another version of yourself from the multiverse gains your strength
• Your gut becomes a wormhole to the Macromicrobiome dimension, like the astral plane for gut microbiomes. Your gut is directly connected to everyone else who has drank this potion, and you gain gut-related "psychic" powers.
• Your molecules disperse throughout the multiverse (or just universe) but still operate cohesively
• Your mind dissolves into super-heavy cosmic sludge, like a dense ooze, that falls until it collapses against something sufficiently heavy, or is contained in an adamantine, orichalcum, or some other sufficiently strong frame.

30 Day Challenge: Day 24 Hybrid Species

Going to try to break my streak of failing to do this on the weekend and actually do this today. Starting to adjust to scaling back on caffeine. Had a tea in the afternoon yesterday but that was it, today a cafe du monde in the morning and maybe I'll have a tea later but that's it. So I was watching an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine last night and it was a Jadzia Dax-focused episode, and I was thinking about the Parasite challenge that went around a while back, and the Lattimors from Numenera which I've always thought were cool, so this'll be an attempt at some species that are a merger of other species.

• Everyone knows that spells are alive, and sometimes become conscious. What is less well known is that sometimes a conscious spell merges with the spellcaster, weaving its magical essence into the physical body and metaphysical mind. The final being is no longer the spellcaster nor the spell.
• On rare occasions, an undead will accidentally regrow a soul. Maybe the soul hadn't fully died off upon undeath, or maybe it's a soul cancer. In any case, it can happen. Sometimes too, a soul finds its way back to its undead body. Sometimes, an old soul and a new soul meet. Usually this leads to violent astralogical conflict that leads to the collapse of both souls. On extremely rare occasions, the two souls reconcile, and the being is returned to life, but now as an entirely new soul.

Well, I only came up with two, but I think they're pretty good. The latter is a concept I've played with on this blog before, but I think the former is new for me, and I think could be expanded in some cool ways.