Worldbuilding

I wrote this last year to express my frustration at not being able to express my world visually. I have very vivid pictures in my head of things like indoor spaces, pieces of furniture, computers, vehicles, etc, but I can never draw them to my satisfaction.

The process of making art is relaxing for me. I love putting on a video in the background and just putting marks on a digital canvas until something vaguely resembles what I'm imagining. I love the process of going from blank slate to realized idea. But there's only so much I can do.

Anyway, here's an angsty rant thinly disguised as a story.

---

Ron sat in an overstuffed armchair hunched over an iPad, stylus in hand. The tablet's screen cast a feeble bluish-white glow over the rough popcorn ceiling of his darkened living room. The midnight silence was punctuated by the quiet ticks of a cheap wall clock, one that Ron had little use for. It was just a white circle on the wall as far as he was concerned.

The front door quietly opened and closed.

"You're not asleep," Lodestar growled, looking at the shifting glow coming from the tablet. He slipped the wallet from around his foreleg and tossed it onto the table next to the door, then flopped belly up on the loveseat opposite Ron's chair.

"Yeah," said Ron.

"What's that thing you're holding? A pen?" Lodestar asked, waving a paw at Ron's stylus.

"You might as well call it that," said Ron. "It's a drawing stylus." He offered it to Lodestar to examine. He sniffed the stylus and brushed it against his whiskers, then attempted to grip it between his writing claw and inner thumb the way he saw Ron using it.

"...For making visual art?" he asked, awkwardly tracing around the pads of his open paw with the stylus.

"Yes," said Ron, turning the iPad to face Lodestar.

The yinrih cocked his head and fluttered his bandpass membranes, trying to tune his eyes to a frequency range that matched the screen's output. "Is that supposed to be one of us? It's pretty good." Lodestar scented the air and immediately noticed a shift in Ron's emotions.

"But it looks nothing like a yinrih," Ron sighed. "Do you know how frustrating it is to be a blind member of an overwhelmingly visual species?"

Lodestar stared in silence at the random pattern of ridges on the ceiling.

"I have so many ideas in my head, ideas I want to bring to life, but my eyes get in the way."

"Have you tried an art form that's less visual? You said that statue in the library was made by a blind sculptor. It looks amazing."

"Yeah, sculpting... with expensive supplies and a big studio. Digital art has the lowest barrier to entry and its out of my reach. Sure I'll get better, but I'll never get good."

"If you enjoy making it, does it matter if it's good?"

"But I want to enjoy making art that's also worth looking at."

"I'm not blind," said Lodestar, "and blind yinrih don't have it as bad as you do. Our nose and ears and paws get just as much use as our eyes, so losing vision isn't as much of a problem. All this to say I'm afraid I can't sympathize. But I'll be here for you for as long as you need me to be, bad art or good art. I hope that counts for something."

"It does," said Ron, rising to his feet and stretching. "that means a lot."

I'm stuck between Reddit's platform decay and Lemmy's... Lemmy-ness. Sigh. This community is pretty good though.

This is the original overview of the Lonely Galaxy (not yet named so) that I posted to the worldbuilding subreddit. A lot has changed or grown in the years since. The biggest is probably the yinrih's body plan. They're still depicted as bipedal here. The taboo regarding eating in public (shamelessly ripped from an episode of Star Trek TNG) was hard to develop, so I dropped it.

As a bit of IRL backstory, the Lonely Galaxy started out as a maladaptive daydream in reaction to an extremely stressful time in my life. In addition to the certification exam mentioned in the original post, which I never did pass even after five more attempts plus two more on a different track, I was dealing with a family member in the hospital with sepsis, as well as coming to terms with the aging of my then retired, now late, guide dog. Since I couldn't handle the real world, I made my own that made sense to me.

---

I’ve been hyperfocusing on this all week, but I’m supposed to be studying for a very expensive certification exam, so I was hoping I could finally put this out of my mind by sharing it. It isn’t part of a larger project or story, and likely never will be. I suck at drawing, writing, pretty much anything “creative”. just the product of idle daydreaming when I should be studying. So I present for your consideration, the Monkey Fox! This was basically born out of me pondering the Fermi Paradox, and also feeling kind of lonely. I also wanted to play with some of the typical First Contact tropes, so instead of our rationalist heroes fighting off religious fanatics trying to blow them up (see Contact) it’s the religious people desperately looking for aliens. I also think the idea of space Mormons is kind of funny in an endearing way. The aliens, while much further along on the tech tree, so to speak, aren’t part of a galaxy spanning multi-species civilization that humans haven’t found yet. They’re all alone, crying out into the void just like us. I originally conceived of them as more dog like to signify their status as Man’s new best friend, an intelligence that isn’t our own that can walk through the hardships of life alongside us. It’s not organized; it’s just a bunch of ideas.

Anatomy: They’re about 4 feet high on average, with bodies covered in fur save for the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. They have two arms and two legs, as well as a tail. The hands, feet, and tail are prehensile, and the feet look like slightly larger hands. Speaking of hands, they have six digits, with an arrangement like humans’ but with an extra thumb on the other side of the hand. One of the digits on each hand contains an ink sac, with the claw being modified into a sort of pen nib. So they have a natural writing utensil. The torso and limbs are proportioned like a human’s (hence “monkey”). The head looks vulpine (hence “fox”) with a muzzle, rhinarium (wet nose), and erect, triangular, well-furred ears.

Yinrih are the sort of small, furry critter that triggers a human’s nurturing instincts. After all, they look like a cross between a fox, a red panda, and a lemur. The only physical feature that mars this otherwise adorable image is the eyes. They’re black, as in no pupil, iris, or sclera, and there’s no reflection whatsoever. This appearance is due to the structure of the surface of the eye, which consists of millions of nanoantennas that couple with the ambient electromagnetic radiation the same way a radio antenna does. The result looks disquietingly like they have empty eye sockets.

Natural History: Before “asking ‘why’”, which is their term for achieving sapience, they were social tree-dwelling carnivorous animals living in large “family” groups, though see below for why “family” is in quotes. The natural pen finger was used to mark territory. They grouped together for protection from larger predators and to make reproduction easier, but they hunted alone and did not share their kills. Kits were expected to hunt as soon as they were weaned. This food strategy will have a huge impact on their culture later. They began asking “why” around the same time as modern humans, so around a hundred thousand years. However, they reached level II on the Kardashev scale (consuming 100% of their sun’s output) around the time we discovered agriculture. The secret to their rapid development lies in the fact that they didn’t invent written language, they evolved it. They’ve been able to preserve information between generations for as long as they’ve been speaking. This is in sharp contrast to humans, who only invented writing around 5000 years ago.

Reproduction: If you could come up with a procreation method that you could explain to a class of kindergarteners without blushing, this would probably come close. Monkey Foxes are monotremes (well, they evolved convergently into monotreme-like creatures). The females lay eggs and sweat milk from the palms of their hands to feed kits, hence the common oath “by the palms that nursed me!” The males also ley “eggs”. Technically they’re spermatophores, but they’re still called “eggs”. Female eggs have yolk sacs while male spermatophores do not. The males do not produce milk. Both genders have a cloaca and lack external sex organs. Upon reaching sexual maturity, members of the den will start laying eggs, and females will produce milk, all on a regular nesting schedule. When breeding season comes around, sexually mature den members put their eggs and spermatophores into a central nest. A protective membrane forms over the clutch and forms a sort of external womb. The eggshells dissolve, and the combined genetic material from all the contributing parents mixes into a soup, which is then used to form zygotes which eventually grow into a litter of kits. The kits feed off the yolk sacs from the female eggs while in utero. The number of kits in a litter depends on the number of contributing parents.

There’s no intercourse, and Monkey Foxes completely lack a sex drive. This means that human concepts revolving around reproduction like courtship, marriage, or the concept of having a mother and a father that you can point to as your progenitors don’t really compute for Monkey Foxes. Kits are raised by the grownup den members together. The phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” is literal in their case. Uninformed humans often mistake the Monkey Foxes’ lack of “Eros”, as C.S. Lewis would term it, to mean they’re cold and emotionless, or that they’re somehow an entire race of uptight prudes. The fact that most Monkey Foxes interacting with humans are missionaries only reinforces this misconception. You can no more praise a Monkey Fox for his chastity than you can accuse a bald man of having red hair or measure the temperature of the vacuum of space.

Monkey Foxes do know what “love” is, in the sense of “willing the good of the beloved” and they are more than capable of forming friendships and acting selflessly for the sake of others. They do, of course, have their own cultural taboos and disordered appetites, and unfortunately some of those taboos intersect with human customs that we would find not only normal, but necessary.

Customs: Because Monkey Foxes lack the concept of modesty, and because they have fur, clothing is optional. Any clothing that is worn is utilitarian, like hats for shade or raincoats to keep dry. Monkey Foxes living and working on earth will wear clothes to better fit in with humans. We humans say a lot with what we wear, after all. When on their native world, the more communicative function of clothing is filled by perfumes. Their stronger sense of smell means they can detect individual volatile compounds that combine to make up a single odor. So, where a human police officer would wear a uniform and a badge to let others know what he’s doing and who he is, a Monkey Fox police officer would have a particular scent that communicated the same. Luckily for us what a Monky Fox thinks smells good largely overlaps with what a human thinks smells good, so nobody’s strolling around smelling like a broken gas line.

The big “hangup” in Monkey Fox culture surrounds eating. Because their ancestors hunted and ate alone, they have a strong resource guarding instinct, and altercations around food can and do lead to serious injuries. Eating in public is shockingly taboo for Monkey Foxes, though that’s not to say there aren’t people who do it anyway. Normally, Monkey Foxes eat once every week or two, and enter a state of torpor for about 24 to 48 hours immediately after, which functions like sleep for humans. Monkey Foxes do not sleep in between meals. The food itself is bland, not unlike hard tack or, as technology progressed, a dietetically engineered flavorless nutrient paste. Drinking publicly is fine, although it’s also rather plain, with the only elaboration being the addition of alcohol for relaxation or caffeine for stimulation. Most Monkey Fox faiths have strict restrictions surrounding eating, not unlike how sex is seen in human culture. Even talking about your feeding habits is the sort of delicate conversation reserved for medical professionals and religious confessors.

This eating issue is a huge cultural barrier when Monkey Foxes first meet humans. Humans, as I’m sure you know, have a ton of social and religious traditions around food. Sacred hospitality is a very common human custom and naturally the first go-to for a human to make a guest feel welcome is to offer them something to eat.

First Contact: The dominant faith in Monkey Fox culture is called the Bright Way. The Bright Way can be traced back to nearly the beginning of Monkey Fox history, which again, is around 100 thousand years. It’s had its ups and downs, taking turns as persecutor and victim, with plenty of peaceful tolerance (in the sense of putting up with something you disagree with for the sake of social harmony) in between. Apologists will put forward, half-jokingly, that surest proof of the Bright Way’s divine mandate is that it’s managed to survive so long despite the profound stupidity of its leaders. However, around the time of First Contact, much of Monkey Fox society has secularized, and most who self-identify as believers are merely culturally attached rather than practicing members. The central tenant of this faith is that Monkey Foxes are to be apostles to the rest of the universe. “Go and spread your light to the stars, and ye shall become brighter yourselves.” is a common scriptural quotation.

Religious doctrine requires that there be other sapient species out there, but much like humanity’s attempts at finding aliens, the Monkey Foxes have had no luck thus far, even though they discovered radio while we humans were still squatting in a ditch poking berries up our noses. Being confronted with the Fermi Paradox is a big reason why The Bright Way has lost relevance. There’s not much point in preaching to the blind infinity, after all.

Monkey Foxes who claim to have encountered aliens are the same sort of people who on earth would claim to see Mother Theresa in a cinnamon bun, and they’re dismissed off hand even by the otherwise devout. That’s not to say the faithful haven’t made serious, intellectually rigorous efforts to find ETs. This pursuit occupies a similar cultural position as missionaries do on Earth. They’d been sending probes, launching manned vessels, and otherwise screaming into the void for longer than we humans could possibly imagine, and they were only greeted with empty, pitiless indifference.

A typical Monkey Fox missionary journey went like this: build a pod about as big as The Titan, except hopefully less implodey, stick a dude inside, put them into hypersleep, and yeet the pod in the general direction of a star system with a planet in the habitable zone. If the onboard AI doesn’t pick up artificially generated radio signals after orbiting the planet for a while, begin the long journey back home. If, however, the computer detects artificial radio signals, the ship pulls the intrepid explorer out of hypersleep, whereupon he or she would put on their best ironed white dress shirt and tie (or cultural equivalent) grab their Good Book, and get ready to go door to door spreading the good news.

Of course, even at the relativistic speeds achievable by current Monkey Fox technology, these round trips take hundreds of years at a minimum. This might seem unmanageable, but Monkey Foxes regularly live at least 600 earth years, and don’t age at all in hypersleep. Certain ground crew members would also be popsicled in parallel with their missionary charges in order to preserve institutional continuity. Also keep in mind that, to a species whose cultural memory extends back to the dawn of their very existence as a sapient race, it really isn’t that long at all. They also have some tricks up their nonexistent sleeves for preventing “generation gap” from developing between the long absent traveller and the folks at home.

While it’s called “hypersleep” it’s really more of a way to halt metabolism while keeping the brain active and connected to the Monkey Fox version of the Matrix, which they call the Data Plane. While they haven’t figured out how to send matter faster than light, instant information transfer is possible thanks to The Underlay, a kind of subspace that allows superluminal communication. Interstellar vessels are equipped with an Underlay tunnel endpoint, with a corresponding endpoint located back home. Missionaries are able to interact with mission control and their loved ones back home via the Data Plane, sort of like a Clarke’s Third Law version of Zoom. Having said that, interstellar missionaries probably won’t ever see their loved-ones in the flesh again, so it is customary to hold a living funeral for friends who are preparing to venture into the infinite unknown.

Language: Monkey Foxes and humans have very different vocal tracts, and cannot directly produce one-another’s speech sounds. Any “loanwords” from one language to another, are thus more properly seen as onomatopoeia attempting to mimic the other creature’s speech sounds. Monkey Fox vocal articulation happens mostly in the chest, throat, and nostrils, with the mouth, tongue, and teeth barely involved at all. To a human, Monkey Fox speech sounds, rather adorably, like a dreaming dog, so lots of quiet growling, yipping, and breathing through the nose. It’s also frustratingly quiet by human standards. The best approximation of a Monkey Foxe’s word for their own species is yinrih, which, again, sounds more like a pair of quiet yips ending on a sharp nasal exhalation. Rather unhelpfully, the word translates roughly as “of the earth” or “from the ground” or in other words “earthling”, go figure.

As far as how we sound to the Yinrih, we’re basically constantly screaming. If you’re an American, you’re probably used to this reaction anyway. It is possible for us to understand what the other is saying, although the yinrih are most comfortable when we’re talking just above a whisper, and we have to be in a pretty quiet environment to hear what they’re saying. Eventually humans and Yinrih develop a lingua franca sign language to communicate directly. Their body plan and ours is similar enough for this to work.

Yinrih aren’t terribly strong compared to a human. An unarmed human could easily kill an unarmed Yinrih. However, it’s a good thing to remember that Yinrih civilization as a whole reached level II on the Kardashev scale around the same time humans discovered agriculture. While they’re not quite “sufficiently advanced aliens”, some of there tech flirts with Clarke’s Third Law, like the aforementioned underlay tunnel endpoints.

While the Yinrih are much further along technologically than us, the fact that they’ve been able to write since they became sapient means they’ve missed out on a lot of very hard lessons that we humans have had to learn. Since we spread out across the globe millennia before inventing written communication, we’ve had to “rediscover” our fellow humans. When we think about contacting alien intelligences, we often pattern the experience after these historical instances. Yinrih culture never sundered completely after the dawn of their species, so they’re far more homogenous as a result. One could compare the full spectrum of Yinrih culture to that of the Romance-speaking areas of the former Roman Empire. Sure there are different languages and cultures, but they’re all pretty recognizably related. There’s no Yinrih equivalent to the Basque people or Native American groups. This lack of experience with culture shock means that the Yinrih have a much harder time meeting humans than we have meeting them. In spite of all that, the Yinrih are eager to get to know us better.

Even though first contact is established for religious reasons, the missionaries have made it clear that “conversion by the sword” is strictly off the table. The long history of The Bright Way means that believers have had plenty of experience as both persecutor and persecuted, and they don’t want to repeat that cycle. Nevertheless, they are not indifferentists, and will happily debate those whose views differ from theirs. They may not change their mind, but they’ll at least change the subject. Unfortunately there are other Yinrih factions besides the Bright Way, and they’re not as eager to engage in peaceful cultural exchange.

The biggest of these less than friendly factions are the Partisans. Historians differ on why exactly they formed. Some say they were a hardline religious sect, others say they were anticlerical iconoclasts. Most likely it’s a little of column A, a little of column B. If you think that’s impossible, you’ve never heard of the horseshoe effect. The Partisans occupy a large swath of territory on the fringes of the Yinrih’s home star system.

From the perspective of the outside universe, the planet Hestia experienced a brief solar eclipse only a few standard UCC years ago. From the perspective of those on the surface, thousands of years in darkness passed due a time dilation effect by the interaction between primordial crystals on the planet and moon.

A CYCOL military force that had been landed to harass the human colony was cut off. They developed a method to reproduce without a nodesphere, and their culture changed over the long timespan. Tranq is a distant descendant of the original CYCOL in the planet. Like all CYCOL, its brain is still entirely organic, but it doesn't have a humanoid mechanical body that its distant ancestors had.

Tranq is shown here deep inside the ruins of the human colony, evading the attention of the post-human offshoot species that now haunts the old buildings.

From what I remember, most (all?) of the heat in the atmosphere, or at least in the troposphere, comes from the ground, with convection carrying heat into the upper atmosphere.

Looking at my temperature graph from my weather station in my backyard, overnight the temp dropped about 1 Freedom Unit per hour. So at the absolute quickest, and assuming an average surface temperature of 60 F when the sun vanishes, here's what I have

Atmospheric gas	melting point (F)	hours until gas begins condensing	days until gas begins condensing
water	32	28	1.166666667
CO2	-70	130	5.416666667
argon	-307	367	15.29166667
N2	-346	406	16.91666667
O2	-361	421	17.54166667

This is likely way too fast, as I believe the colder you are, the less heat you lose. Also, melting/boiling points depend on the surrounding pressure, which will get effected by the other gases precipitating. 70 below isn't unheard of, and the coldest temp ever reached was -128 in Antarctica.

What do you think. IDK I'm le tired.

As the regulars here are no doubt aware, the whole hook of my Lonely Galaxy project is that our first contact is also the aliens' first contact. I've spent over a year picking away at the actual story of how the yinrih first met humans, but could never figure out how to finish it.

Most of what follows is going to be scrapped, as I'm trying to rewrite this to incorporate the backstories of each of the missionaries to make them more fleshed out as characters while also explaining why finding humans is so important to them. The actual worldbuilding content is likely going to remain the same, and hopefully be elaborated, so for the sake of giving this community some content I figured I'd post it despite it being a draft. Then again, I consider every story a draft, as I'm not a writer and have no intention of publishing this.

Each section of the story takes place from a different character's POV. As usual when I'm not feeling lazy, alien speech is given in Italian quotes.

---

The golden rays of the westering sun soak into my fur, and I feel the warm sand under my palms erode as gentle waves lap at my paws.

«How long have I been standing here?» I wonder.

A whisper responds, «It doesn't matter. There is no before, no after. There is only now.»

«Where is this place again?» I think to myself.

«It doesn't matter. There is no elsewhere. There is only here.» says the voice again.

«Now what was my name again?» I ask myself.

«It doesn't matter. There is no one else to call you by name. There is only you, there has only ever been you, there will only ever be you, forever blissful in this little world of mine.»

A panic rises in my gut. «Shut up, damn it all! My name is Ringlight! I was hatched on Pilgrims' Rest to four... no, six sires and dams. Their names are... are...» I grasp futilely at distant memories, from another life... someone else's life.

«Are you alright?» another voice drags me out of the abyss. I snap my head around to face its source and am met with a snowy visage. I hastily glance behind me, following her paw prints back to a bonfire crackling in the sand just out of reach of the waves, the rising smoke partially obscuring a stand of trees further away.

She smells worried. «You were starting to dissociate again.»

«Dissociate?» I try to reorient my mind, focusing on her whiskers twitching with concern. «Who are you?» I ask, «You look familiar.»

«He started fading again, didn't he?» another yinrih, ruddy-pelted and black-eared, trots up to us from beside the fire.

«Come on, buddy, what's my name?» he presses.

«S-Steadfast Friend,» I mutter hesitantly.

«Good, and the big guy over there?» He points his muzzle at a massive male lounging in a tree behind the fire, his blue-gray fur blending with the smoke.

«Lodestar,» I say, a bit more confidently.

«And this scrawn-job next to you?» He says, playfully gesturing at the diminutive white-furred female who pulled me out of my haze.

«I can't help being the runt of my litter!» she retorts, but stops to await my answer.

«Iris.»

«What about ol' big-ears? What's her name?» He indicates another female walking along the beach toward the group. Her red pelage matches my interrogator's, but her ears aren't black like his.

«Sunshine.»

«Excellent, and where are we, really?» says the redpelt, tracing an arc with his muzzle indicating our surroundings.

I sit on my haunches and tug at my ear with a rear paw, trying to drag a long-forgotten memory out of the depths. «We're... We're on Sweetwater? wait... no!» I bark, causing Iris to jump. «This isn't real! We're not standing on a beach on Sweetwater. My body is floating in an amnion aboard a womb ship, hurtling through the interstellar void at relativistic speed. Every external stimulus entering my nervous system is the result of a simulacrum generated by a computer, all to prevent me from going mad from the lack of sensory input.»

«He's back!» my questioner barks toward the tree. Lodestar hops down and pads up to us. An odor of relief meets my nose ahead of his approach.

«We just finished singing vespers,» Iris says, tossing her muzzle behind her at the liturgical bonfire. «I could smell your panic. This is the second time today that you've started to dissociate. You should really be singing the liturgies with us. It helps keep your mind anchored in reality.»

«I wish I could, but--»

She interrupts. «If you can't pray, then just listen. Be present.» She pauses to choose her next words. «If we don't make contact you'll have another week of suspension, subjectively speaking, to go before we get back to Focus, and we've got to keep you with us.»

«When we don't make contact, you mean,» I think to myself, my pessimism getting the better of me.

She backs up to face the four of us. «We all hear the voice,» she says, «and we've all been trained on how to combat it. I have faith in every one of you. We've all passed the suspension screenings, yes even you, Ringlight. I never misrepresented you to my superiors.»

«Wait,» I look around. «There was someone else, right? He has black fur. Stormlight, where's Stormlight.»

«He went to check the ship's comms. We should be arriving... soon-ish,» says Sunshine. «Well, a few years realtime, anyway.» Just as she finishes, Stormlight's avatar coalesces into existence, shuddering slightly as his time perception contracts to match our own.

Every muzzle in the group whips around to face him. The melange of emotion wafting off of him overpowers everything else, the smokey wood, warm sand, and salty sea spray are utterly eclipsed by the aroma of elation and trepidation.

«I-- you-- It's-- OK, OK, OK,» he babbles, frantically lashing his tail in a «follow me» gesture. The beach flickers away like an extinguished flame. The warm yielding sand under my palms is replaced by what feels like cold metal. A neon purple grid stretches to infinity around us, embedded in an inky void. A teal-colored hue washes over Iris's candid pelt, emitted from an invisible light source overhead, turning the fur of the two redpelts to a muddy brown. Stormlight is barely visible, the black fur on his back highlighted with a turquoise sheen.

We've been ripped out of our contracted time perception into realtime, from a simulation of a golden beach on Sweetwater to the spartan realm of the Dewfall's operating system environment.

By now the rest of us have begun to stink of excitement as well. Stormlight wordlessly executes a command gesture with his tail, causing a sphere of coruscating white brilliancy to materialize before us, an output interface from the womb ship's realspace radio receiver.

At first only white noise meets our ears, the incorporeal light sphere flickering randomly to match the chaos fed through the ship's antenna array into the signal processor. The exact same scene has played out countless times over the millennia for an uncountable number of missionaries, and for every single one of them, nothing ever emerged from the noise but the random perturbations permeating the blind uncaring cosmos. And yet...

Something faint, barely discernible over the rushing static, begins tickling my ears. A pure tone, sounding jerky and random at first, materializes into a pounding cadence...

dah-di-dah-dit dah-dah-di-dah. Dah-di-dah-dit dah-dah-di-dah. Dah-di-dah-dit dah-dah-di-dah.

A SIGNAL!

---

Iris plunges the metal poker into the liturgical bonfire as Lodestar concludes the final hymn, and another vespers comes to a close. Ringlight is off by himself as usual, staring into the offing as Focus hangs low over the water. I wish he'd at least be with us during liturgy.

I guess he just doesn't have it in him anymore. Makes me ache a little inside. He used to be so devout. His faith was what kept the shadows at bay. Me and him, we both struggle with depression. I think that's why we got along so well as pups. I think he has it harder than me though. People get to know me and can see why I have a hole in my soul. All but two of my sires and dams dead, and the rest of my litter mates stillborn. «Of course YOU have a reason to be sad, but him? His childermoot and litter mates love him, and he doesn't want for anything. Why is he so glum all the time? Why doesn't he just cheer up?» They just don't get it...

I look over at Iris and give her a quick ear flick to let her know I'm popping out of the simulacrum to check the Dewfall's comms. I don't have to leave, strictly speaking, but our nervous systems are slowed by a factor of 7600 while in sim. Decades go by back home while mere hours pass for us lounging on this ersatz beach on pseudo-Sweetwater. It's much easier to react to stuff in realtime.

Just before the sim melts away I catch a whiff of panic coming from Ringlight. Is he dissociating again? That'd be the second time today, well, subjectively speaking. That's why I wish he'd at least be with us for the liturgies. This is the whole reason the mission planners were so cagey about letting him come with us. Yeah he passed the suspension screenings, but you're not in sim for 250 years realtime for those. You're not exposed to the Voice for that long. If he can't pray, if he can't meditate, if he can't sing the liturgies, he's that much more vulnerable to the Voice. Iris swore up and down that she could keep him anchored. She's managed it so far, but it has to be exhausting to puppysit him like this. Void, it's exhausting for ME just watching.

Admittedly that's the other reason I duck out of the sim. The Voice isn't so strong in the operating system. Never goes away completely, but even Ringlight could brush it off out here. Of course hanging out in the OS environment for 250 years WILL drive you nuts, which is why the simulacrum exists in the first place. You need sensory input to stave off the insanity, but that sensory input is what causes the Voice.

The last thing I see is Iris bounding over to the waves where Ringlight is silently panicking, then my whole reality pops like a soap bubble. I fight a wave of nausea as the chemical cocktail my physical body is pickled in alters to return my time perception to normal. Part of me wishes we could just hang out here. There's something about the OS environment. Maybe it's the air, well, I'm calling it air, anyway. It's not hot, it's not cold, it's not too humid or too dry. It's just... there. I know it's because the amnion isn't stimulating my thermoreceptors, and I know I'd go bonkers eventually, but compared to that humid beach, it's a relief.

I gather myself after the queasiness passes. The neon magenta grid floor expands endlessly around me, receding into the black infinity. My whiskers and the wet part of my nose catch the cyan light streaming down from above. I always look up expecting to see a turquoise sun shining down on me, but there's nothing there but blackness. Sometimes I wonder why the OS looks like it does. Someone designed it like this. Why the grid? Why this specific color of lighting? Why do I like it so much? It's a particular aesthetic I can't put my paw on, but it scratches a very specific itch in my farspeaker brain.

I gesture with my tail to pull up the latest messages received through the ansible network. It's only been a few hours as far as my brain is concerned but years worth of missives from back home flood the featureless black around me.

«New High Hearthkeeper takes charge of the Eternal Hearth,» reads a headline from eleven years ago.

«Good riddance,» I grunt out loud to nobody. Whoever we got has to be better than that witch who tried to suppress the missionaries again. I still blame her for causing Ringlight to lapse. She was awfully chummy with the Partisans, too...

I catch myself fuming again. Why do I even look at the news? It's never anything good, and it's certainly not anything I can do anything about. Light willing we'll be among other sophonts soon anyway and I can just forget about Focus.

Sophonts---that's right! How far along are we? I swish my tail, banishing the miserable headlines swarming around me like angry insects. We should have entered the star system by now. A star chart ripples into view, showing the Dewfall's course relative to our destination exoplanet. It's a little blue marble, the third planet out from its star, nestled perfectly in the habitable zone. Long range surveys from Focus detected a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere at perfect pressure. Gravity is a bit higher than on Yih, but nothing yinrih can't handle. Oh, and liquid water, absolutely everywhere. Nearly three quarters of the world's surface is covered in it.

We've crossed the orbit of the fourth planet. By the time I jump back in sim to tell the others about what I've found, we'll be in orbit around our destination. My tail twitches as I hesitate. Do I check the realspace radio? I feel that particular flavor of dread you get when you know you have to do something, but refuse to do it because you know you won't like what you find. One hundred millennia---that's how long we yinrih have been searching for intelligent life among the stars, bone not of our bone, flesh not of our flesh, but souls like unto our own. I feel like this is the moment of truth, but can't bring myself to patch in the radio.

I flop down onto the floor. The nice thing about being in the OS while everyone else is in sim is that I can dawdle as long as I want, and they'll just think I was gone for a fraction of a second. I could just stare out into the magenta horizon for however many months we've got to go before arriving. Of course, it only takes a few days to lose your mind out here, Voice not required. I could last longer if the others were with me, but the OS wasn't designed to be lived in.

I roll over onto my back and stare up into the invisible cyan sun, thumping my tail on the virtual floor. I'm doing everything I can to avoid that blasted radio. I've---We've all been dreading this day since we climbed into our amnions aboard the Dewfall. Deep down, we know we won't find anything. Nobody's ever found anything. None of our long range surveys, none of our missions have ever come across so much as a microbe. We've been howling into the cosmos all this time, searching for other minds like ours, but in the end we'll always be utterly alone.

We'll limp back to Focus, our Sires and dams gone and our litter mates and friends ancient and gray-muzzled. This 24-day vacation will have cost us five hundred years. Lacrimal fluid starts dripping from my lips, the red liquid vanishing into the black fur of my cheeks. I lost all but two of my parents and the rest of my litter before I even knew them. Now I've thrown away what time I had left with my surviving sire and dam.

Maybe Ringlight is right after all. Maybe it's all nonsense. Comforting and beautiful, but nonsense all the same. An illusory bulwark against the inevitable existential dread that comes with understanding our mortality and our insignificant place in the universe, the curse of sapience.

Welp, let's get this over with. I rise to my paws. I dig my claws into the unyielding digital ground and tense up as though preparing to be struck. Eyes scrunched closed, ears pinned back, head lowered, I hastily perform the tail gesture to summon the output interface for the radio.

The high pitched whistle of a heterodyne grates at my ears. «Just internal noise,» I think, but then the tone abruptly stops. Then it comes back again, then stops again. «Something's wrong with the digital signal processor,» I growl aloud. The sound continues.

Slowly, a rhythm emerges, and I start tapping my left writing claw in time with the beat.

long, short, long, short, pause, long, long, short, long.

«It's a pattern...»

«NO!» I bark, «It's a SIGNAL!»

I jab my tail in the air. The pulsating white sphere representing the radio output unfurls into a spectrum waterfall. The signal I've been hearing flows down the display.

dash, dot, dash, dot, pause, dash, dash, dot, dash. I increase the frequency domain to survey more of the spectrum. Dozens of these narrow-bandwidth signals cascade down the waterfall on either side of the first.

I input more gestures, sliding the frequency oscillator hither and thither across the spectrum. Different types of signals flit across the display, none as narrow as that first beeping cadence. Signals of all types, amplitude, frequency, and phase modulated signals, both discrete and continuous. Some of these are surely modulated speech. I tune to a particularly strong AM signal, tail quivering in anticipation. What do these sophonts sound like?

🎵_Roráte caéli désuper, et núbes plúant jústum_🎵

Singing... words? They can put words to a melody! Hisses, hushes, pops, trilling growls, loose and flowing sonorous sounds all caress my ears like a cool breeze on a hot day. There are more kinds of sounds in that one snatch of song than in every yinrih language combined. I have no idea what the words mean. It could be a drunken ballad for all I care. Right now it sounds as beautiful as a hymn to the Uncreated Light.

I drift into an ecstasy, my earlier doubts forgotten. I swim in a shimmering sea of invisible light dancing to the chorus of a hundred thousand inaudible voices. My mind floats in this alien noosphere for hours uncounted.

I come out of my reverie. How long have I been standing here? My paw pads ache and my joints are stiff. I notice my muzzle, chest, and forelegs are soaked in red tears, and a crimson puddle has collected around my forepaws. I stretch my legs and flex my digits, listening to another heavenly transmission from our new friends.

"AT THE TONE, THE TIME IS: TWELVE HOURS, THIRTY THREE MINUTES, COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME---" *BEEEEEEEEEEP*

I heave a contented sigh. «Music to my ears...»

---

We stand in silent awe for a moment. Sunshine is quietly weeping as the beeping continues. It seems to strain against the noise, a lonely soul crying out for someone, anyone, to respond. Dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. dah di dah dit, dah dah dih dah. dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. Dah di dit, dit.

Stormlight flicks his tail, tuning the radio to a random frequency. For a moment the static resolves into an alien voice before fading back into the noise.

"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats--"

«Is that language? It's... beautiful,» Sunshine says between deep shuddering breaths. «I don't know what those words mean, but I'm sure it's profound.»

I walk up to Ringlight and thump him across his piebald back with my tail. «How are you holding up?»

He coughs. «What, Lodestar? If you're going to ask me what I believe in now that we've found other sophonts--»

«Actually I wanted to see how you're fairing after your near dissociation earlier. Stormlight popped back in sim and gave us the news before I could ask.»

«I'm alright.» He smells like he wants to say something else but swallows his words.

«You think you've been a burden,» I say. «And you're not wrong. Iris had to drag you back from the brink of total dissociation four times.»

«Five times,» he corrects.

«Five times,» I continue. «But You're our friend, and bearing each other's burdens is what friends are for.»

Iris taps her claws on the ground to get our attention. «Alright, everyone. Before we can land we need to introduce ourselves to our new friends, and before we can do that, we need to figure out how to communicate with them.» She turns to Stormlight. «What have you gleamed from their radio comms?»

«Most of the signals are coming from the planet's surface. Looking back through the receiver logs there were a pawful of faint sources scattered around the solar system, a few on their moon and the fourth planet, and some very faint transmissions from just outside the system. Everything beyond their planet's low orbit seems to be an uncrewed drone. Most of the signals are digital, but there's still plenty of analog traffic.»

Iris tugs at her ear. «And we know from the lack of biosignatures on any of the other planets that nothing has been terraformed.»

She turns to Steadfast Friend. «How about you, soldier?»

«Uh-uh, if you're going to talk to me like I'm still in the military you gotta use my call sign.»

«But it's disgusting.»

He narrows his eyes and pins his ears back. «I'm waiting, my dame.»

«P-puke Paws,» she nearly gags, «What do the visuals say?»

He chuckles and looks back at Ringlight. «I ever tell you how I got that name?»

«Yes yes yes.» Iris flicks her tail to shush him. «Please, just tell us what you're getting from the vid feeds.»

Puke Paws pulls up a vid screen floating in mid-air. With each flick of his tail the screen flips between the video sensors dotted around the Dewfall's exterior. «We're just past their moon.» An airless crater-pocked sphere appears onscreen.

«That's no moon,» Sunshine objects. «It's way to big to be a moon of a planet this size.»

«Well lucky them, I guess,» he flicks his ears back. «Lots of real estate once they get around to terraforming it.»

«I can't even imagine the tides,» says Sunshine.

Steadfast Friend flicks his tail again, and the image changes. «This is their largest artificial satellite.»

«It's all solar panels,» says Sunshine. «Solar panels bolted to a bunch of tubes.»

«But they're pressurized tubes,» says Steadfast Friend, «at least according to the sensors. That means they've got spacers. All in all I'd say they're about where we were... 95 thousand years ago.»

Iris turns back to Stormlight. «How do you think we should make ourselves known?»

the farspeaker begins pacing excitedly. «Lucky for you I know the history of our order.» He makes another tail gesture to bring up the radio again, tuned to a rhythmic beeping signal similar to the first one we heard. «Before we broke through Yih's atmosphere, when the research monks were first dipping their paws into unpowered flight, they quickly discovered that they needed a deeper understanding of the wind and weather.»

«What does this have to do with communicating with alien sophonts?» Sunshine asks, somewhat annoyed that Stormlight isn't getting to the point. Iris gives her a stern look and motions for Stormlight to continue.

Stormlight resumes his history lesson, positively stinking with joy that his obscure interests are proving useful. «In order to understand what the weather will be in the future, you need to get the big picture. It's not enough to know what the weather is around you, you need to know what's going on upwind, downwind, all over. But learning that a squall is headed your way is only useful before the storm hits.

«The obvious solution in an era before satellites, that is, is to have every research monastery make a note of the weather conditions in their area at the same time and send the reports to a central location to be marked on a map. Well, at that time we couldn't send a message faster than it could be carried, so the monks set to work on solving the problem of transmitting information beyond line of sight in real time.

«There were some marginal successes with signal towers, where people would stand on top of tall structures and relay tail signals to one another, but that still required line of sight, and even though it was faster than carrying a letter, it still took hours to send a message a meaningful distance.

«Plenty of attempts had been made to use an electric current to carry a message, and some of them even worked, but every one of them proved too complex to build and maintain. Multiple wires, fault-prone receiving equipment, stuff like that. That's where Saint Redclaw came in, the founder of the farspeakers. What most people don't know about him was he wasn't even a monk. He was a groundskeeper working at a monastery who took an interest in some of their research.

«He tinkered with batteries and switches and wires in his free time. Sometimes he'd present his handywork to the monks, who would dismiss them as crude toys made by the idle paws of a simpleton. But the hearthkeeper knew better. She understood that the simplest solution is usually the best one, and encouraged Redclaw to continue. Eventually, he hit upon a setup that not only worked, but was practical and cheap to implement. A battery to induce a potential in a wire, a switch to make or break the circuit, and a sounder that clicked when a current was present, simple and easy.»

Sunshine interjects again. «If it was so easy to just use one wire and a switch than why didn't the monks try that first?»

«I'm glad you asked. All you can do with one wire is turn a signal on and off. Either a current is present or it isn't. The monks couldn't figure out how to turn that into information.» He taps the ground with a paw and a small lamp appears attached to a switch. He places his forepaw on the switch, turning the light on. «It's all in the rhythm,» he says as he starts tapping the switch in time with the radio signal. dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. «Redclaw figured out that you could encode meaning in the cadence of the ons and offs of the switch.

«To the monks' credit, they took him more seriously after he presented his method of encoding meaning. They wasted no time erecting telegraph lines.» He reverently touches his belly to the ground. «The body of the noosphere was born.»

«And you think that's what that signal is?» I ask.

He tilts his muzzle up. «Yup. And listen to this.» He increases the volume of the radio. «Like I said, the signal is either on or off. I can pick up on two length distinctions: short,» he gives the switch a quick tap, and the light flashes briefly, «and long.» He presses the switch again, lingering for about half a heartbeat before releasing it again. «Just assign meanings to different patterns of shorts and longs, and you've got yourself a signaling system.» He continues tapping his paw in time with the radio.

«But there's more,» he continues. «While you were in sim I spent hours listening to these signals. Notice how perfectly timed these segments are, with no variation or hesitation? They're probably artificially generated. But,» he flicks his tail a few times before landing on another signal. «Hear the difference?» At first it sounds the same as the last one, but I start to notice subtle imperfections in timing. «Much more sloppy, clearly produced by a person and not a machine.»

Iris's ears perk up. «So you think you can contact one of the sophonts operating this... thing... manually?»

«Yes, my dame,» he says, his scent growing more serious. «By now you've probably noticed that each of these exchanges begins with a set preamble.» He tunes to another signal, which repeats the now familiar cadence. Dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. Dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. Dah di dit, dit--

«So I figure I can spit that back at them.»

Iris smells incredulous. «I'm not sure that's going to work.»

«We're already in orbit,» says Stormlight. «I guarantee they'll find us sooner rather than later and come to their own conclusions about who we are. We need to show our belly first,» He rears up and pats himself on the abdomen as though greeting a stranger.

«Fine,» Iris sighs. «I don't have a better idea. I'll send the good news back to Focus as soon as you've made a successful exchange.»

Without hesitation, Stormlight flicks his tail. The lamp vanishes but the switch remains, now connected by a cable to the shimmering white sphere representing the ship's radio.

«Alright,» he takes a few deep breaths. His initial enthusiasm falters and I can smell him trying to work up the courage to begin. «paw goes down, carrier turns on, paw goes up, carrier turns off.» He starts tapping the switch, repeating the now familiar sequence Dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah. After each salvo of dits and dahs, he pauses to listen for a response.

After a few moments of alternating between sending and listening, a response emerges from the noise.

"QRZ? QRZ? DE K5BOBTX"

An odor of pure panic fills the space around Stormlight. He's jumped in the murky water and gotten bit for it. He just repeats the same sequence again.

"UR CALL?"

«Just keep him talking, and I'll locate the source of the signal,» says Puke Paws.

Stormlight repeats the refrain again, and the sophont responds with more impenetrable beeping.

"U NEW HAM? IF UR USING CW DECODER, NAME BOB BOB QTH ERICKSON, TX ERICKSON, TX RIG HR IC 705. CONGRATS ON GETTING UR LICENSE BUT PSE LEARN HOW TO MAKE CW QSO. GOD BLESS 73 DE K5BOBTX SK"

The sophont ends the exchange with two rapid beeps. Utterly defeated, Stormlight halfheartedly taps the switch with his paw, echoing the same two beeps back.

«What was that? You didn't understand a bit of that, did you?» Sunshine barks.

«I'd like to see you do better, big ears,» he growls back.

I place myself between the two of them. «Calm down. Are you two going to be bickering in front of our new friends?»

Iris interrupts. «I've sent the proclamation of good news back home. Lightray should be reading it about now.» She walks over to Sunshine.

«Gentle healer, we thy patients put our very lives in thy care as we are yeaned like new kits.» A caerulium aspergillium materializes in the coils of Iris's tail, and she sprinkles Sunshine's face with blessed milk. «Oh, before you go,» Iris looks at Stormlight. «May you not depart in anger.»

The two dip their heads apologetically. «Be safe,» says Stormlight. «We're counting on you to get us safely out of suspension after we land.»

Sunshine looks down at her forepaws. «I'm going to miss my fur.»

«May the Light illuminate your way, Sunshine.» Iris motions for her to get going, and Sunshine's avatar blinks out of existence.

---

I'm floating down the main axis, letting the air current push me along. I'm feeling every one of my four hundred years. My left knee crunches each time I grasp a paw cable to push myself forward. I've only got four limbs, and my rear paws have had to pull a lot more weight, literally, compared to someone with his tail intact. I count my blessings that nobody can see how gray my muzzle has become thanks to my white fur.

It's been 250 years since I last saw Iris and the other missionaries, but those lucky lickers haven't aged a day. I'm so old my pups have pups of their own.

As if on cue, a knot of sires and dams floats by, a gaggle of pups in their train. I notice one of my own sons amongst the adults. «Hi, son!» I chuff.

He breaks away from the group and floats over. Two small pups are clinging to his back. A little boy is peering over his sire's shoulder at me, Blissfully licking at a juice pouch. His sister is playfully repelling off of my son's back and reeling herself in again with her tail wrapped around his waist. «Hi, dad-- oof!» his greeting is cut short as the girl kicks away from him and jerks to a halt as her tail goes taught. «Kids,» He thumps them gently with his tail, «this is one of my sires. Say hello to Mr. Lightray.»

«Hello, mister.» The boy has decided that poking the red bubble of sugar water floating at the center of the pouch is far more fun than drinking it.

«Where's your tail?» the girl yips.

«Don't be rude,» her father hisses.

«It's OK, son. You were just as inquisitive when you were her age.

«When I was a little kit, I got sick and my tail started moving on its own. A healer had to chop it off so it wouldn't cause trouble.»

The girl's eyes widen and she curls her own tail tight against her back. «Papa,» she whines, «will that happen to me?»

«Don't worry, dear.

«Say, why don't you tell Mr. Lightray what you've been up to?» he says, trying to steer the conversation away from caudal amputation.

«I've been playing with a star lantern,» she mumbles.

«She's been playing liturgy at home with some of her toys,» he clarifies.

«A little hearthkeeper, are you?» She tilts her muzzle up but hides behind her father, squeezing her tail even tighter against her back trying not to catch my taillessness.

The boy has progressed from poking the pouch with his writing claw to clapping the pouch between his forepaws, letting little red beads of juice fly out for him to snap up with his jaws.

«She can't wait to become an acolyte, only six more years.» My son wraps his tail around hers to comfort her. «She'd love to know what you've been up to.

«Mr. Lightray is the Dewfall's mission controller.»

«For real?» She emerges from behind her father, her ears pinned back and her eyes wide with excitement.

«What's that like, Mr. Lightray?»

«Let's see--I make sure I can still talk to the folks aboard the Dewfall, and I keep the ship headed in the right direction. I make sure the missionaries are safe and snug in their amnions, and sometimes I have to tell one of them to pilot a micro mech and fix something that breaks.»

«Are they there yet?» asks the girl. «I hope they find starfolk.»

«So do I,» I say, wishing I could hope like her.

As we've been talking, the boy has steadily been slapping the juice pouch between his paws harder and harder. After one last almighty smack, a great blob of crimson stickiness flies out and slimes the white fur of my chest.

The boy smells embarrassed. «Sorry, mister,» he growls.

I laugh. «Don't worry about it, little guy. I'm not doing anything important today. Just drink your juice instead of playing with it next time.

My son looks down the axis. His childermoot has floated out of sight. «We'd better get going or we'll be late for liturgy.»

«Bye, Mr. Lightray,» the two pups bark in unison. My son kicks off from the paw cable he was clinging to and the three of them go flying down the axis toward the lighthouse.

I turn and enter a tiny room behind a security door. How far have the missionaries fallen since the second golden age. There was a time when entire buildings were dedicated to full-time control teams, and here I am, a single unpaid volunteer holed up in a converted maintenance closet. With the ansible in the corner I can stretch my front legs out to either side and touch the walls. The room doesn't even have a light source. I have to make due with the thermal glow of the ansible's heat sinks.

I turn to a small safe bolted to the wall. I scrawl a key pattern onto the ink pad with my writing claw. The safe takes about half a heartbeat to confirm the pattern, absorb the ink, and verify my ink's biosignature. A subtle haptic pulse informs me that the door is unlocked. I look inside. Yup, the tailstone is still there, where it's been for the last two hundred fifty years.

I open a small access door on the ansible. The link lights on the primary underlay tunnel interface card are blinking away. There's a hot spare card below it, waiting to take over should the primary go offline.

I pull a pair of HUD specs out of my wallet and rest them on my muzzle, then connect them to a magnetic port on the ansible with an interface cable. The underlay tunnel between the Dewfall and Wayfarers' haven is air-gapped. We learned our lesson after Lichlord Firefly's apostasy not to connect womb ships directly to the wider network.

I relax my body and float in the middle of the room as the ansible fetches the logs from the womb ship. I examine the various sacramentals tied to the wall: a thurible made of blue caerulium metal, with bells up and down the chain. Beside it are two clear packets containing briquettes of incense, one white and the other gray. The packet of gray incense has been opened; most of the briquettes are gone. The white incense remains untouched.

Part of my job as mission controller is to issue the proclamation of good news that we've found bone not of our bone and flesh not of our flesh. But that's not going to happen. In the hundred millennia we've been looking for life all we've found is barren rock after barren rock. If they do make contact, I use the white incense. If not, I use the gray incense. Either way I'm not looking forward to swinging that thurible. You're supposed to wrap the chain around the tail, and elegantly sweep the tail back and forth as you move. That's not an option for me, so I have to make due with frantickly kicking my hind leg.

The logs are loaded, and I start flicking through automated message after automated message. I've already seen the leasemind pegging some radio emissions it thinks aren't random, but that's hardly reliable. I have to wait for confirmation from Iris. I scroll past a few dozen more log entries until I get a notification that one of the Dewfall's crew has sent me a message. I sigh and grab a coal of gray incense from the bag and roll it around in my paw as I prepare to read it.

---

It's one of my earliest memories, from a time when one recall's not so much what is heard and smelled and seen on the outside, but what is felt on the inside. Comfort, love, and safety--that's what I felt as I buried my snout into the fluff between my sire's shoulders, feeling the slow expansion and contraction of his ribs as he breathes and the gentle rumbles of his voice as he voices the responses to the liturgy. My sire's musk surrounds me, along with the musty smell of old bones and the faintest whiff of ozone from the star hearth, the unique scent of the lighthouse, a smell that says «you may be infinitesimal in scale, but you are infinitely loved.»

But this contentment is not to last. I feel a sharp tug on my tail. I'm sharing my sire's back with one of my litter mates. She's jealous of my spot and seeks to usurp it. I wrinkle my muzzle at her. An angry hiss barely has time to escape my throat when my sire thumps us both with his tail. «You two behave,» he whispers. He curls his tail around my midsection and lifts me off of his back. «You two are getting too old to be on my back anyway.» My sister sticks her tongue out at me and claws her way up to where I was lying, then snuggles into my sire's fur. Her victory is fleeting. He likewise pries her off his back and places her a good tailslength away from me on his other side next to one of our other parents.

As a consolation prize my sire coils his tail around my own as I reach down with my paws to grasp the tail bar fixed to the bulkhead. Now bereft of my warm snuggle spot, I turn my attention to the ancient hearthkeeper floating near the sanctuary. She's giving a sermon, the exact contents of which I cannot recall, but something along the lines of «Again and again we ply the yawning gulf between stars, seeking bone not of our bone and flesh not of our flesh. Again and again we return as alone as when we left. Yet may we not become discouraged. The Uncreated Light has promised us that we share this dear little Creation with other little ones, and we need only be patient and keep looking.»

As the hearthkeeper speaks, I can make out the acolyte behind the sheer sanctuary vail, preparing the star hearth for exposition. Slowly, I become aware of something swelling up from beyond the curtain separating the nave of the lighthouse from the colony's main axis. A low rumble? A dull rumor? I don't know how to describe it. Perhaps my subconscious mind is picking up on some minute ripple in the air. The acolyte notices it almost as soon as I do. She looks up from whatever little rite she's performing. Her ears perk up and she scents the air, her whiskers twitching.

The smell hits us before the sound. Gossamer strands of white smoke creep through the curtain, accompanied by the spiced aroma of white incense blown in by the axial air current. Hushed whispers flit back and forth among the members of our childermoot. Whispers grow to murmurs that spread throughout the rest of the congregation, and murmurs swell to excited yips and growls. The acolyte has slipped out from behind the sanctuary vail and is now staring at the entrance. The multitool she had used to adjust some parameter on the hearth floats away lazily, utterly forgotten.

The hearthkeeper, perhaps going a bit deaf and anosmic after seven centuries, is the last to catch on. She continues preaching as the acolyte approaches her and politely pokes the back of her ear, then gestures with her muzzle toward the entrance. By now the din from outside has crescendo to eclipse the congregation's chatter.

Just as the hearthkeeper collects herself and focuses on the entrance, the curtain is torn away from the clips holding it to the frame and a crowd spills into the back of the nave. There, at the head of the throng, is the same middle-aged white-furred tailless fellow we saw on our way to the liturgy, his chest stained as with martyr's blood. White smoke is billowing from a thurible tied around his rear leg, bouncing around wildly as he awkwardly kicks as though trying to dislodge a nipping forest flyer from his ankle. Somehow his voice manages to rise above the clamor.

To this day I have yet to hear anything like it. Nothing I can say can describe it adequately. Pure joy condensed into an utterance, that's the best I can do, but it's still not enough. His voice bursts out in rhythmic barks, each syllable a hammer blow to shatter the great heresy.

«Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!

For we are alone no more!

We have found them at last!

Bone not of our bone!

Flesh not of our flesh!

Again, I say, Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!_»

This may or may not be incorporated into a future story, but nonetheless I think it's a good bit of worldbuilding. "Nanosun" is a placeholder. I'm looking for something more Anglish.

---

Pilgrims' Rest was known as the oasis of the Outer Belt, the last dwarf planet with a working nanosun, a tiny artificial star orbiting the planet, providing not only enough light and heat to give us a perpetual spring, but a protective magnetosphere to keep our atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind from our distant natural sun.

It stood as a monument to ancient Claravian engineering, as well as ancient Claravian greed. There were once dozens of these colossal orbital fusion reactors dotted across the Outer Belt, making the dwarf planets on the frontier of interstellar space far more hospitable than they are today. The Sunwrights, the ancient clerics of the Bright Way that built and maintained these nanosuns, imposed onerous tithes on their client worlds. They were quick to deprive them of heat and light when they couldn't pay.

The other nanosuns were destroyed during the War of Dissolution, most by the Partisans, militant secularists who wanted to extirpate the Bright Way entirely, the rest by the Preservationists, the ones fighting to maintain the Bright Way's economic grip on the entire star system, and who, when defeat was all but certain, set about destroying as much of their infrastructure as possible in a petty dying tantrum.

This sun alone survived the war, defended against both sides by the Pious Dissolutionists, a small but determined group of religious traditionalists fighting to return the soul the Bright Way after thirty three millennia squandered in the name of greed.

The sun continued protecting our little planet for nearly thirty three millennia more, maintained by a succession of clerics who upheld this greatest expression of a hearthkeeper's duity to provide physical and spiritual light and warmth to all around her.

I've always had an odd relationship with "hard" magic systems, that is systems that seem to be... well systematic, stuff you could analyze and explain almost like a hard science.

On the one hand, as a creator it's really fun to think of different rules and how those rules interact or how they can be worked around and manipulated.

On the other hand, as a consumer of media I never liked overly explained magic systems because they cease to feel magical. I like the feeling of unknowability about magic as a concept, like we're chimps setting off a nuclear explosion. We see it, we feel its effects, but nothing on earth could make us understand how or why it is what it is because it involves forces far beyond our ken.

Have been planning a Dark Sun style campaign, but recently we have done an adventure set in a desert so I want to add some variety.

The known world is a vast archipelago, tall volcanic islands are the only sanctuary from a vast brackish ocean. The land is dying, the sea is hypersaline - slack, windless, drained of love and life by the merciless Sorcerer Kings that plough the world of it's magic.

Small ships still ferry weary passengers between the attols, searching for the scarce amounts of drinkable water. The great warships are, of course, owned by the Oligarchs - powered by magical engines that can cross the flat water in a few hours.

The common folk such as you must charter tiny barges pulled by a pair of ...

Dictator-class Command Ship

The Dictator-class command ship is a unique and powerful vessel designed to serve as the flagship of the Diarcesian Mundana Forces naval fleet. Its trimaran hull design allows for greater stability and maneuverability, while its advanced technology and materials stakes its claim as one of the most formidable warships in the world.

The construction of each ship involves a complex process that utilizes cutting-edge materials such as carbon fiber composites and titanium alloys. The nature of these materials provides exceptional strength, durability, and resistance to damage from enemy attacks or harsh environmental conditions.

During trials, each new Dictator-class undergoes rigorous testing to ensure that all systems are functioning properly before being commissioned into active service. However, despite their advanced technology and superior construction quality compared with other classes in use by neighboring kingdoms' navies like Sesbia's Oceania-class and their steel alloy-based material, flaws may arise. For example, during operations, especially if battle damages are sustained, immediate repairs should be done once possible otherwise casualties will increase exponentially at sea battles between fleets since this class has no ability against heavy gun salvos.

This flaw was demonstrated with perhaps the worst Dictator (ship) in Diarcesia's history. The DNS Tyrannus, which was involved in the Cutting of Kaisura during the opening stages of the North Ikuyo seccession crisis, suffered significant heavy gun damage from the secessionists who commandeered Gegonota cae Logica and also employed drones. The impact of this event brought shame and embarrassment to the Diarcesian Navy, as well as political consequences for those responsible for overseeing the ship's design and construction.

Mervin, Monarch Diarcesian

Diarcesia's worst dictator was Mervin, who ruled from 1857 to 1872. He was infamous for his brutal and oppressive rule, which led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. His impact on Diarcesia was devastating, as he instilled fear and paranoia in the population while enriching himself at their expense in the form of expansionist wars in the name of spreading his Diarcesian Ideal (summarized as all the countries in the known world self-governing with the benevolent guidance and protection of the Diarcesian monarchy). His downfall started with his pyrrhic victory in the Siege of Puerto Rabo. The casualties incurred in that operation, in addition to the near-constant warfare for the greater part of the past century, pushed the war-weary Diarcesians to a tipping point.

In 1872, one of the largest protests in Arcesius's history occurred demanding the Monarch to appear before them in person and address their grievances. Flanked by all of triarchs and separated from the protesters by soldiers, Monarch Diarcesian Mervin exited the Domus Arigotus. Instead of negotiating with the protesters, Mervin ordered the soldiers to have them dispersed by any means. Once the soldiers started shooting, two of the triarchs turned against Mervin and a 2 versus 2 fistfight started. This concluded when Triarchess Grere, an experienced pugilist, landed an uppercut on Mervin. Mervin toppled down the steps leading to the Domus's entrance to his death. With Mervin dead and the other two triarchs barely conscious, Grere ordered the soldiers to cease fire and offered an olive branch to the Arcesian protesters. This lead to more democratic reforms that included the end of expansionist wars, many of the less-willing diereses—mostly overseas and a few in the mainland—seceding without incident, and converting the Fifth to Ninth nonarchs to elective positions.

One of the iconic moments of this event is the protesters' mock salute of Mervin over his corpse.

The planet Neu Valais was a command hub for the human colonial militia during the war. As human territories were lost to the Cyborg Collective, FTL travel paths to the planet opened up and a CYCOL nodesphere, a massive command ship took a position over the planet. In a desperate attempt to destroy it, and experimental one shot cannon on the ground fired. It hit and damaged but did not destroy the nodesphere.

The fight in orbit and on the ground was brutal, with CYCOL attacks creating holes in air defenses to land ground troops to further destroy the air defenses and command centers.

Corporate military forces which had been assigned to protect corporate material on loan to the colonial forces and to protect VIPs were ordered to pull out. The corporations saw the fight as a loss.

The corporate forces eventually pulled completely off the surface and CYCOL focused on assaulting the deeply entrenched colonial military command centers.

But that all happened back in '73 and the war ended not soon after that.

Everyone knows the ending of the war, so I won't retell it. The surface of Neu Valais an urban wasteland, the nodesphere above it derelict. Some crazies out there looking for scraps. Even some CYCOL out there that were never quite right after they lost the nodesphere.

Nowadays, VB-Sierra is the planet that's the big last hub for humans heading out past the stable areas. The corporations even made nice with the Arweli, which rubs some people the wrong way given how the war went, but I guess it's easier to forgive frogs than tin heads.

But profit potential is enough to keep the peace, more or less. VB-Sierra's infrastructure is growing every year. Which is amazing for a planet with mutomorph infestation.

When the Universal Corporate Council reorganized in '75, the Prosperity Church gained a primary seat as a recognized corporate power.

By then, there was a lot of religion going around.

But '75 into '76 was a lot of rumbling in the corporate controlled spaces. The colonies had collapsed during the war, leading to their populations flooding into corporate space. Many of them had been put to work, but it was clearly an unsustainable situation. Some groups of displaced colonists had gone on a one way trip to earth, but the results of those trips was yet unknown. Many other colonists, especially military veterans or those with special expertise looked to go back out into the old warzone, what was now thought of as a frontier to make profits in salvaging valuables or surveying for the rebuilding of colonies.

What is out in the frontier are a great deal of unknown unknowns. Teams that head out into the frontier are not just seeing what has become of human colonies, but venturing into what used to be Arweli or CYCOL territory and seeing things never before seen by humans.

The Universal Corporate Council, UCC, was a collective entity representing the interests of the major corporations. Before the war it was powerful but balanced by the combined powers of the colonies. After the war, it is the only central human political entity remaining. At least aside from possibly earth, but no one really knows what it is like anymore.

The UCC wants to expand its tendrils into the frontier by directly controlling the new colonies that will be rebuilt. Of course now that there is little external opposition, the infighting among UCC members and executives is in full swing.

Sketch idea for a small colony ship. The idea is the ship enters the atmosphere, discards its detachable heat shield (which lands a reasonable distance away with a controlled parachute fall, so its material can be recovered later). The ship lands and the ring on it becomes a premade perimeter wall. The variable arms holding the rest of the ship adjust and lower until the bottom of the center is on the ground. Heavy cargo and prefabs get moved out. On top, the large space engines detach and are briefly piloted as independent vehicles, and landed next to the colony to be repurposed. The flight pad on top of the structure is extended and supported with an additional strut. This initial colony is a little cramped, but a good foundation that is built to be secure, able to support air traffic, and able to support basic agriculture. I'm picturing it being several families worth of people.

---

Just something that came to me last night while trying to think up unique ships and tech.

Bought Aseprite during the Steam sale and decided to do some Lonely Galaxy pixel "art". I'm by no means an artist though.

This picture shows a yinrih using a pair of HUD specs, which serve as a visual output device for a portable computer. Being quadrupeds, they can't dedicate a limb to operating a device. The input is handled by a paw keyer that's held in one of the forepaws while knuckle walking. Yinrih usually walk on the palms like a baboon or lemur, but can knuckle walk for short periods while holding a small object.

HUD specs are designed to friction fit snugly but comfortably on the muzzle without touching the whiskers.

The bandpass membranes shown in the image serve to narrow the bandwidth of incoming light. There are four pairs of these membranes, usually colored silver, gold (both shown in the image), blue, and red. They appear specular, like mirrored sunglasses. Yinrih who want to affect "puppy dog eyes" around humans will close their gold bandpass membranes and open their primary eyelids wide. Their real eyes are actually pitch black, which many humans find unnerving.

Here's the planet Hearthside. It's tidally locked. The arid day side is called the Nightless Desert. There's a green belt around the terminator and a night side which I haven't really developed.

This doesn't have any in-universe relevance, but it is very relevant to the project as a whole. My elderly dog passed a few days ago. She was the inspiration for a lot of the yinrih's characteristics, including their longevity. This project was partially a way to work through my sadness as she aged and the knowledge that she had much less time ahead of her than behind.

I wrote this story about a relatively young 150 year old yinrih fretting over his aging human friend. It's by far my weakest attempt at a story, but was very therapeutic for me to write.

What are some interesting ailments you've invented? Probably with spoilers for the grosser details.

I have a couple. The first is my take on vampires.

Vampirism

Vampirism in Ortharen is caused by a parasite called Esor crorum, commonly known as dracula (singular draculum). They spread through contact with blood and can infect most animals.

Dracula stop you from producing red blood cells but allows you to use blood you ingest, so if you don't drink the blood of unafflicted creatures you'll suffocate without a way to move oxygen around your body. Most blood will work for most vampires, but blood of your species and a compatible blood type works best.

This condition also stops you producing melanin and makes you more sensitive to bright lights, but that's less important than the blood thing.

Vampires are very resilient to other diseases because dracula will ruthlessly attack any other bugs you might catch. But not stuff you already had when you became a vampire, probably because it recognizes those as part of your body.

A living vampire can kill their dracula by eating lots of alliums with other immune boosting foods, but they still won't be able to produce new red blood cells and they'll need regular transfusions or they'll suffocate and die.

Then there's one about eyes.

Snolpirsi

This one is mostly like a common cold, but if you leave your eyes open for too long they'll crust over. If that happens and then you blink, they'll shatter and you'll go blind. You can usually recover from this with eye drops, but most people prefer to avoid having to deal with that and wear blindfolds to make sure their eyes stay shut.

Snolpirsi is common enough that plenty of people learn tactile writing systems so they have something to do while they wait to feel better.

The idea for this one comes from how i thought blinking worked when i was little. I don't remember why i thought that could happen.

I'm especially curious in the case of fantasy settings. I'm admittedly not super well read in the genre, I know about the Ways from the Wheel of Time series[^1] , and I'm sure D&D has its fair share of fast travel mechanics.

Anyway, in my case I use mass routers. Rather than a dry lore dump here's a slightly less dry lore dump in story form!

spoiler

He glanced nadirward through the observation window at the green and blue surface of the planet. A river, coruscating in Focus's rays, wound through the verdant jungle passing below. It was THE river, the measure to which all other rivers were compared. It was so old that it didn't even have a name. Every other river on Yih, and every watercourse wrought on other celestial bodies by pioneers in the intervening millennia, was, after peeling away one hundred thousand years of sound changes and semantic drift, named after this river.

But he had seen this sight countless times, and it failed to put his mind at ease. He spun the metal prayer ring on his writing claw, feeling each of the twelve teeth pass under the pad of his outer thumb. The ring had belonged to one of his sires, who had often handed the shiny trinket to him to amuse himself with when he was barely a pup. It had been years since he had prayed it, not until this morning just before being shriven. It had been years since he was last shriven, too. He'd be the first to say he wasn't the most pious Wayfarer, but there was a real possibility, however infinitesimal, that today his life would come to a messy end, and he wanted to have a clean conscience if it came to that.

He turned to face the cause of his anxiety. Attached to a bulkhead opposite the window was a cylindrical machine barely larger than a suspension capsule, with a bore just large enough to fit a single yinrih, and maybe a satchel if the yinrih in question was particularly svelte. He floated over and looked through the bore. It was like he was staring down the business end of a railgun.

«You're going to be fine, Hearthfire.» He tried to reassure himself. «Nothing's going to happen. We did gross upon gross of tests. Equator to pole, Low orbit to surface, surface to moon, even interplanetary hops, all the way from Hearthside to Moonlitter. Inert object tests, live tests, and all the tree-dwellers we sent came out perfect.»

«Except Moonbeam.» nagged a tiny voice in the back of his brain.

«Poor Moonbeam. I know you're not supposed to name them. Makes it harder when... That happens.» The little tree-dweller went in fine, but the impulse buffer on the egress router failed as she dropped back into realspace on the surface, retaining all the momentum from the ingress router in orbit. In the span of a temporal quantum she ceased to be biology and turned into physics, ending up impacting the opposite wall at 20 times the speed of sound. The barrier was built to take it, but her poor body wasn't. She ended up a maroon smear on the wall.

«Time to get strapped in.» said a sandy-furred engineer floating next to the mass router.

He took a deep breath and floated into the bore, slipping his forelegs into the harness, then his hind legs, then his tail, and finally his head.

A voice came through the earpiece around his left ear. «Hearthfire, this is Morningstar. Everything's up and up down here.» It was the same cleric that had given him absolution this morning. «Just for review, you're being routed through an intermediate router on the surface before egressing at the antipodes. The impulse buffer is good on both the intermediate and the egress, in case a packet gets dropped along the way.»

«Ingress and egress buffers are synced.» Said the sandy-furred engineer.

«Acolyte, begin the countdown. May The Light illuminate your way, Hearthfire.» Said Morningstar.

«Twelve...» The sandy-furred engineer began solemnly sounding off the numbers.

«Eleven...» In a matter of seconds, a thin sheath of realspace containing Hearthfire's body would be shunted into the Underlay.

«Ten...» This realspace bubble would be encapsulated into billions of discrete packets.

«Nine...» From the perspective of a hypothetical observer embedded in the Underlay, these packets would appear discontiguous, and could take separate paths to reach the same destination.

«Eight...» But from the perspective of an observer contained within one of these packets, the entire space would still be contiguous.

«Seven...» Blood would still flow, and nerve impulses would still travel uninterrupted.

«Six...» Or they would if the traversal through the Underlay weren't instantaneous.

«Five...» Hearthfire's stream of consciousness would not be broken.

«Four...» There would be no ontological question that what emerged from the egress router was the same Hearthfire that entered the ingress router.

«Three...» These packets would hop instantaneously through an intermediate router directly below at the surface.

«Two...» This router would, in mere nanoseconds, direct the flow of packets to an egress router at the antipodes.

«One...» The egress router would absorb all the momentum that Hearthfire had while in orbit before shunting him back into realspace. Should the intermediate router drop a single packet, the whole flow containing Hearthfire's mass would be shunted harmlessly back into realspace at that router, provided it, too, absorbed his momentum correctly.

«Zero.» Hearthfire felt a tingling sensation, as though his whole body had fallen asleep. The feeling lasted but a fraction of a second, then he felt the weight of his body pulling him down. He had made it. In less than the blink of an eye, he had gone from a space station in low orbit over Yih to a lab on the surface on the opposite side of the planet. Hearthfire was the first yinrih to traverse a mass router network, and he had done it without a hitch.

This was going to change everything.

[^1]: fun fact: the Ways inspired the Nether from Minecraft insofar as one step in one dimension is multiplied in the overworld

Got any interesting funerary rites in your setting?

Yinrih do not bury their dead. They usually dissolve the soft tissue and put the bones on display, usually in a lighthouse (house of worship) or other publicly important location such as a school, government building, library, etc.

Some professions or religious communities have unique traditions on top of this. Research monks use their dead in impact and ballistic testing. Claravian orders of healers use their bodies for teaching medicine to novice healers.

Since healers traditionally shed their fur for hygiene purposes, they are unique among yinrih in that they wear clothes when not working in order to retain heat and block sun exposure. Old and venerable healers who have retired, regrown their fur, and died, will have their pelts made into a hame, a ceremonial cloak given to other healers as a badge of honor.

The practice of displaying the bones of the dead causes a cross-cultural misunderstanding after the yinrih are given a bunch of human cadavers to study. The yinrih healers want to do right by their new human friends by showing their remains proper respect, which they do by building a library to hold all the new medical knowledge gained by studying those cadavers, and encrust the facade with the skulls of said cadavers. Needless to say, a tower of human skulls is not what most humans expect to see when they visit the house of friendship.

Incidentally, I based this practice on ossuary chapels such as the Capuchin crypt, and only much later realized that the yinrih are space doggos what build stuff outta bones.

Yinrih don't use nukes, as they never bothered to weaponize them before discovering how to yeet things at significant fractions of the speed of light.

I've mentioned retribution fields before, which are force fields that absorb the kinetic energy of projectiles and then fire that energy back at the attacker. They were invented to counter...

...Quasiluminal munitions (Commonthroat gkg rDFrlmqrLPq or more often known by the military slang term gkrdfg, a clipped and reduced form of the above) are projectiles that travel at relativistic speeds and whose destructive power comes solely from their kinetic energy rather than a incendiary or nuclear payload.

Force projectors are used at shorter ranges. As the name implies they project force at a distance. As weapons you mostly see them on paw gauntlets as part of powered armor. By thrusting the palm forward a force extends outward beyond the reach of the attacker's foreleg, sort of a long-distance punch. They have scalong issues though. they convert surrounding oxygen to ozone, and can't be operated in atmosphere beyond a certain size for reasons I have yet to figure out.

Since yinrih are quadrupeds they can't practically use human guns. Modern soldiers use back mounted drone capsules that hover nearby and fire at enemies, similar to the Option power-up from Gradius. Older firearms are saddle-mounted and sit on the back and have a tail-actuated trigger.

Original question by @mo_lave@reddthat.com

Original question by @mo_lave@reddthat.com

This is a steadtree fruit along with a drinking bowl filled with steadtree fruit juice. The fruit has a bluish-purple skin with a vivid violet sheen, and its flesh is an extremely saturated shade of blue.

Steadtrees were the yinrih's primary shelter when they achieved sapience, and the fruit formed a significant part of their diet. It's highly symbolic across most yinrih cultures, especially within the Bright Way. The fruit is offered to guests after liturgies, regardless of creed, and the juice, usually fermented, is drunk during fasts, when Wayfarers are expected to abstain from solid foods.

Humans find it to be extremely sour, comparing a single bite to eating an entire bag of warhead candies.

This is a wind fruit. It is green with four fleshy lobes. It contains a sugar that is rapidly fermented by the yinrih's gut flora into alcohol. A single fruit is enough to get a yinrih drunk. Gas is a byproduct of the fermentation process, lending the fruit its name.

The fruits appearance and effects on the vulpithecine body have made it a frequent source of analogy. Politicians are frequent targets for such analogies due to duplicity (compared to the fruits many facets) lack of awareness or intelligence (alluding to the fruit's intoxicating effect) and tendency to make longwinded boring speeches (referring to the fruit's gassy byproduct).

This is a red fruit (Commonthroat qfBqg /huff, early falling weakening whine, huff, short low weak growl/). Like many words for fruits, the word qfBqg also doubles as the word for the corresponding color.

There are two species of tree that bear nearly identical fruits. One is a harmless treat designed to lure seed dispersers including yinrih and their tree dweller cousins. The other is fatally poisonous and mimics the appearance of the first species. The toxin is potent enough to kill even larger animals like yinrih in mere minutes. The animal dies before it can leave the vicinity of the tree, dropping to the ground so the tree can be nourished by its decomposing corpse.

Over time, the color red became associated with risk. Risk then morphed into bad luck, and that's why yinrih with red fur are considered unlucky.

According to the Bright Way, there is a symmetry between epistemology and cosmology. The realm of the Known is the set of all things that are known. This epistemological concept corresponds to the noosphere (AKA the mind sea), which is the sum total of a sapient species' thoughts, experiences, ideas, and communications, as well as their effect on the world.

The Realm of the Knowable corresponds to the physical universe. Things and events in this realm can (at least theoretically) be grasped by mortal minds, though certain things may be beyond the ken of a particular species on account of its neurology and sensory system, in the same way you probably couldn't explain nuclear physics to a chimp. The Bright Way seeks out other sophonts in part to fill hitherto unnoticed gaps in the yinrih's knowledge, and for the yinrih to offer the same in kind.

However, there are things that lay outside the Realm of the Knowable, beyond the grasp of any mortal mind, regardless of how it is organized. This is the Realm of the Unknowable, or the Empyrean. This is where the souls of the blessed dwell in the beatific vision of the Uncreated Light. Faith, to trust in the unseen, bridges the Realm of the Knowable and the Realm of the Unknowable. Heaven is thus conceived of as being "outside" and the physical universe as "inside".

Wayfarers refer to the Empyrean as cBqDFp the Great Outside, and to the physical universe as rjGJfdMr sMlr This dear little Creation.

Here is what First Contact looks like from an epistemological perspective, the noospheres of humanity and vulpithecinity uniting as one.

What precisely this union consists in is a matter of debate in Claravian circles. It could be as simple as forming friendships between individuals of either species, or it could be as concrete and straightforward as physically uniting the two species' respective Internets, as is held by the Farspeakers.

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Since I don't want to double post, here's a bonus lore dump:

The stargazer's prayer is a simple prayer taught to pups. It is, as you probably guess, said at night while gazing up into the stars. Below is an English translation.

I see the stars in dark of night
shining down with holy light.

keeping sophonts safe and warm
whatever be their shape and form.

When their eyes look to the sky
Do they see my star and I?

Do they chant this little verse,
O Maker of the universe?

One day soon before too long,
may we hear their joyful song.

May all our minds and all our might
reflect the Uncreated Light.

Author: @IndigoGollum@lemmy.world

First, a little background about my world. I like to think of it as an inside-out planet. A vast open space surrounded by earth on all sides, with a sun in the middle and everything interesting in the world on the inner surface. Much like Pryan from the Death Gate Cycle books, which inspired this shape.

The sun, Sore, is a while hole with a gravitational push. It generates light and heat, and stops the planet from collapsing in on itself.

Outside of the world is, as far as anyone knows, a lot of rock and not much else. But some time ago (no idea when, my notes aren't dated) i wondered, if this place is an inside-out planet, could there be other planets? I don't see why there couldn't be.

Means of travel between these planets would have to be pretty different from normal space travel. Basic movement requires that you either break up the ground in front of you and move it behind your ship, or somehow lower the pressure around your ship enough to liquify rock without melting it to (or and) your ship, and let it slide past you (if i'm not totally misunderstanding phase transitions).

You can't see through solid rock like you can through the vacuum of space, so you need snar (sonic navigation and ranging) to make sure you don't hit another ship or something like the bottom of an ocean.

Gravity would grow weaker as you get further from a planet, then stronger from a different direction as you approach another. You need to be able to rotate the ship so the cabin isn't suddenly upside-down, while keeping whatever digging implements are at the font of your ship facing the right way.

Ports for these ships would have to have snar beacons that ships could listen for, but these signals would have to be able to be heard over a long distance and not stop ships from hearing each other.

And of course, ships need to be able to move over land or in water, because the end and beginning of long trips won't be through solid stone.

While writing this, i wondered for the first time why people would bother. I'm sure the planets are quite far apart, and you can only safely move so fast when your awareness of the things around your ship is so limited. Imagine trying to drive around at race car speeds at night with weak headlights. Space stations, underground areas big enough to seem like they're above ground aside from the lack of sunlight, could exist, but you probably wouldn't want people drilling tunnels around such a place. I certainly wouldn't want to spend my life designing a small artificial world only to have the sky collapse on it and ruin everything. Trying to travel to another planet for the sake of finding other life sounds worthwhile to me, but i don't see any way to detect these other planets at great range. You'd have to set off it an arbitrary direction and hope you hit something good soon.

So while my world could have space travel (for the closest thing to outer space it has), i'm not sure it realistically should. Maybe a similarly "inside-out" universe could have travel between worlds, but i don't see it working for me.