27lands

[27lands]

If you care about stopping animal cruelty, share this link

[27lands]

Anyone got Mortasheen?

so I recently learnt that Mortasheen, (created by Jonathan Wojcik) has been released and is available now for anyone who supported this magnificent project 3 yrs ago. I wasn’t even aware this project existed 3 yrs ago.

I’m just wondering if anyone lucky enough to own the 0.1 digital edition of Mortasheen would like to share a copy of this most excellent and long-awaited RPG with a poor, impoverished baby such as myself? If not, that’s OK, I expect the public version will be available by the summer’s end; I was just wondering.

Bear in mind I am a minor and will cry if you are mean 2 me. 😁😁😁

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Taken by the Fascination rover using an on-board electron-microscope, this is the clearest image yet taken of life on Titan. This cryogenic moon of Saturn is so cold that lakes and seas of liquid methane have formed on its surface, while a thick haze of nitrogen compounds in its atmosphere obscures much of the surface. Life on this world operates on an entirely different biochemistry to life on Earth; using liquid methane in place of water. Instead of sunlight, autotrophs derive energy from heat; thriving in bodies of methane that have been warmed by “molten ice” rising up from Titan’s oceanic mantle. Though lethally frigid by our standards, these conditions are positively balmy to the Titanean microbes, which have now formed a complex ecosystem on this fantastic moon.

And, despite being made of entirely different building blocks, this ecosystem still operates on the same principles of life on Earth. Here a pair of amoebas gorge themselves on a cluster of single-celled autotrophs. If they meet, there will follow a brief exchange of genetic material; allowing both cells to eventually produce copies of their species to continue their line. And if, by some chance, the genetic material is corrupted, the resulting offspring may develop a trait that distinguishes them from the rest of their species; a trait that might favour their survival over others, and help them to pass this trait on to their own offspring. And so even on Titan, a world more alien perhaps than any world in the solar system, we see life abiding by the same laws of nutrition, reproduction and evolution that are seen on our own.

The embarrassingly late finale to my life in the solar system art series (sorry everyone!). Seeing as Titan was the least popular choice in the poll, I’ve reduced its resident aliens to the level of microbes; partly because life operating on a cryogenic biochemistry would develop much more slowly than at Earth-like temperatures, and partly due to lack of time! Have a good week!

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Reconstruction of areopteryx enigmatica, based on a fossil discovered in Giovanni crater on Mars by NASA’s inquiry rover.

[27lands]

720 million years ago, our solar system is a very different place. The Earth is a frozen wasteland; every continent covered in a layer of ice hundreds of metres thick. But on Venus…

In the tepid waters off the coast of the Aphrodite Terra, a colony of algae-towers releases clouds of spores into the water. Nourished by this sudden abundance of food, the gelatinous veneraspermids have tripled in number, and now swarm in the sunlit waters to feed.

Though simple and soft-bodied, lacking brains or blood, these are among the first multicellular organisms to evolve on Venus. Though the land is still lifeless, in the seas there is tremendous evolutionary potential; given another few tens of millions of years, life on Venus may rival that which exists on Earth at this time.

Alas, this chance will never come. Already the Venusian climate is warming, as the shutdown of vital geological processes causes carbon-dioxide to accumulate in the atmosphere, and as the runaway greenhouse effect takes hold, these virgin seas will boil away. The atmosphere will become unbreathable, temperatures rise beyond all hope of habitability, and by the time Earth has thawed, the planet Venus will be a hellish wasteland; all traces of its past potential lost to the ravages of time.

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I’ll work on artwork for all three choices over the next 7 days, and once everyone has voted, we can begin our journey through time and space!

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Deep beneath the frozen surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, at the bottom of the subsurface ocean, a pair of predatory Sidesteps closes in on a sickly grazing Radiolope abandoned by the rest of its’ flock. Weakened by the haematophagous parasites that have attached themselves to its body, the Radiolope’s chances seem slim.

Another revamped old picture, this time from February this year! Possibly the first in a series about alien life within our solar system.

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Based on an old sketch of mine from 2022. To the right is the original version!

By the light of the setting sun, a pair of carnivorous plants embrace in a lakeside park. Meanwhile their two year-old child seeks to play with a large herbivorous worm; the creature evidently refuses.

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“I’m telling you! It was like a kid’s Jack O’ Lantern! Glowing an’ all!”

“Jim, we’re 4 km below sea level; get real.”

Happy Halloween from the depths of the Mariana Trench!

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A while ago I tried to draw a Dalek as an organic, naturally-evolved creature, rather than the cyborg mutant squid-nazis that we now know them to be. I created… this.

[27lands]

Hard mode: top 10 spec projects that are at least 10 years old?

AAAAGH…

Okay, um…

1 After Man by Dougal Dixon

2 Man after Man by Dougal Dixon

3 All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet

4 the Future is Wild

5 Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

6 Expedition by Wayne Barlowe

7 the Snouters: the Form and Life of the Rhinogrades by Gerolf Steiner

8 Greenworld by Dougal Dixon

9 the New Dinosaurs by Dougal Dixon

10 the Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson

again, PLEEEEASE don’t rank these for whatever you need them for! But I will say that, though I have read all of these, Greenworld and Last and First Men I have only read bits of so far. Nevertheless, they are all brilliant and I hope you find them to your liking!

PS Expedition is particularly good, but it is also rather expensive to find these days. It is well worth the price though!

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Top 10 Internet spec evo projects go

1 Serina: a natural history of the world of birds https://sites.google.com/site/worldofserina/home

2 hamster’s paradise (here on tumblr!) https://www.tumblr.com/tribbetherium

3 the Speculative Dinosaur project (alas, only locatable on the speculative evolution fandom wiki) Projecthttps://speculativeevolution.fandom.com/wiki/Speculative_Dinosaur_Project

4 the birgworld project (also on tumblr!) https://iguanodont.tumblr.com

5 exobiotica (again! Can be found on tumblr!) https://exobiotica.tumblr.com

6 the sea of polinices (warning: you may die from bafflement) https://www.deviantart.com/doublejota

7 Snaiad: life on another world http://www.cmkosemen.com/snaiad_web/snduterus.html

8 the Birrin Project by Alex Ries https://abiogenesis.artstation.com/albums/738860

9 the realistic pokemon of RJ Palmer https://www.rj-palmer.com/realistic-pokemon

10 The project that you have yet to create! 😄😄😄

Please note that these are most DEFINITELY not ranked; I personally love them all, but you may rank them if you wish. (But only if you are a cold-hearted person with no soul).

…BUT if you twist my arm, I would say Serina, Hamster’s paradise and the birgworld project are the best for OCs and cool storylines on the level of individuals, whereas Snaiad and Birrin are more into generation-spanning, historical sagas. However, all have plenty of detail in regard to biology and evolutionary history.

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The Seraphim is an Angelic being originating from ancient Judaism. Whereas modern angels are depicted as beautiful, human creatures, Seraphim were altogether less pretty; being described as six-winged masses of eyeballs that flew around the Throne of God crying of “Holy! Holy! Holy!” Seen through the lens of speculative biology, it becomes clear that the Seraphim is an alien life form; inhabiting the upper atmospheric layers of a low-gravity planet. Like starfish and sea urchins, these creatures are radially symmetrical; with their eyes, limbs and other major organs all radiating outwards from a central orifice. Their bodies are covered in feather-like structures, giving them an almost avian appearance. They fly with an almost jellyfish-like motion through the clouds; descending only to browse on the leaves of their planet’s indigenous flora.

Seraphim are most often encountered in the breeding season, when their mating calls of Hooo-eee, Hooo-eee, can be heard over great distances.

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Photographed on the coast of Yorkshire. Though this species has only been known to emerge from hibernation after century-long intervals, it is hypothesised that warming climates could trigger a premature awakening. The recording of this specimen at this time is… troubling.

Experimenting with photoshop for some eerie one-shot worldbuilding, as befits this spooky time of year!

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An alien grazer sprints across the plains of its homeworld in the pursuit of food. Herbivores on this planet must be fast and agile to capture the equally swift “plants” which scuttle about in the undergrowth.

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A quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest; reinterpreted for a time when artificial intelligence and robotics threatens to create a more modern version of Caliban.