#and there's this fucking miros vulture

[foxstens]

bitter aerie is a lot less fun as saint

[allthesmiles]

DAY 3: Chimney Canopy

This one isn't animated unlike the others, It's just quite exhausting constantly animating. So, I decided to put a bit more effort into this one to make up for that.

I guess I'll say so far this is my favorite piece I made during the Art Month so far!

Little bit of an edit here but now that @pyr0bot has posted their side of this small (questionable) collab. You can find their piece here! They made the second part of this one!

[druidshollow]

rubicon is great so far but god it fucking sucks massive ass

[flecks-of-stardust]

A summary and analysis of my thoughts on Rain World: Downpour

Since I've beat the game pretty thoroughly now, I can actually do this. The short version:

Campaign whose gameplay I enjoyed the most: Artificer, by a long shot Campaign whose lore I think fits into the preexisting world best: Gourmand Most interesting story concepts: Saint Heaviest hitting story: Three way tie between Rivulet, Saint, and Artificer, all for different reasons. Honorable mention to Spearmaster Cool specbio possibilities: Spearmaster

I definitely enjoyed Downpour as a whole, both as a DLC and for the additional lore it provides even if some things may not be objectively canon; some things have more wiggle room than others, but considering Downpour is essentially Videocult endorsed, I'm willing to put stock into certain aspects. The new mechanics were fun to learn and mess around with, the stories were overall very interesting, and I had a lot of fun losing my god damn mind over these slugs. There are some major issues I have with Downpour though, one of the most major being how some campaigns diverge explicitly from the core theme of the vanilla game. I appreciate what Downpour added, but this is definitely not going to be all cheers and praise.

The rest of this will be going under a cut cause it's gonna be long.

This will be split into sections for easier reading and for easier writing for my poor sleep deprived brain. Saint's campaign broke me, yall. I've been operating on 5 hours of sleep all day.

Raw gameplay enjoyment

This one definitely goes to Arti. Her movement is practically unmatched; while Riv goes really fast and Saint lets you climb a lot of surfaces, Arti's bomb jumping combined with her permanent spear pulling ability makes her able to traverse almost anything. This is the first time I've ever dared traverse the Underhang, one of my favorite areas, without bringing a grapple worm with me. It was honestly amazing.

Her whole campaign is also just really, really fun for me. I like fighting things, but being forced to learn how to fight scavengers was honestly a delight. This is the most fun I've ever had repeatedly dying in a game, and it was for a multitude of reasons too, be it a stupid platforming death (happened a lot while I was learning how to use her bomb jump), getting overwhelmed by enemies, or just cackling at some wild lucky hit by a scav. And even beyond scavengers, fighting other things that would normally make me shriek and run away as other characters just became... average, really. I took down my first king vulture in Arti's campaign, and all it really took was an explosive spear (and the KV wedging itself into the wall, but shh).

Mechanically she's just... fun. She's so fun. And! You have basically no consequence for dying anyway! You have food EVERYWHERE and it's extremely easy to kill things to eat, explosives thrown at point blank range do little more than stun you, and aggression is encouraged. So even if you fuck up and die 200 times (literally my count was 200+ in 27 cycles LMAO) there's like... zero bearing on your progress in the game. And I really like that. It was still brutal, don't get me wrong. I think around three quarters of those 200 deaths, probably more, were from scavengers. But part of Rain World's original difficulty was that losing karma would lock you out of traversing regions eventually, and Arti kind of... removes that restriction. I will say it's really fucking annoying to have to look for karma 5 scavengers if you're trying to pass a karma 5 gate, but I really only had to do that twice and that was because I wanted to explore. It's kind of just... natural, I guess, for the structure of her campaign. I'm not good enough at combat to really do it cleanly myself, but I imagine people who are even more confident in their ability to go full on warpath mode with scavengers had less of an issue with this.

Gourmand quite easily takes second place after Arti, with almost as much combat ability as her if you use their abilities right and the added benefit of being able to make like half the game's items if you have the right things. Their food requirement was kind of daunting at first, but I was almost always able to eat up to full food, and it really wasn't that much of a challenge. Mechanically, too, their body slam move is really fucking funny, and I will forever be sad they patched out the tendency of Gourmand launching enemies across the map when rolling into them. Shoutout to that one white lizard on the wall that I landed on and totally crushed the spine of without me even seeing it, because I was trying to go fast and was not expecting an enemy one screen down. The exhaustion mechanic didn't bother me too much and honestly made me more confident with the starving mechanic, which I'm grateful for; that was probably the only reason why I even tried to starve on Arti when I had to shelter because of the rain. And overall, Gourmand's campaign was pretty chill, a nice middle ground of difficulty between Survivor and Hunter. It was a good stepping stone after finishing my Hunter run.

Least favorite mechanically was Saint. It got really irritating really fast to not be able to throw spears, and not even to kill things. I can stun things with rocks, sure, but that doesn't help me if I'm in a narrow space (which Saint has a lot of) and the place I want to go to doesn't have alternate paths (which Saint has a lot of). It got so, so fucking tiring to have to wait for enemies to fucking move, especially with the ridiculous abundance of spiders and spitter spiders everywhere I went. This campaign was the one I used dev tools the most on because I genuinely just got sick of waiting, because not only did that mean I wouldn't get anywhere when exploring, I would also waste time that would otherwise be spent eating food—which is also harder to get because Saint is strictly vegetarian!—or finding a shelter so I didn't freeze to death. You can only get spawn camped so many times before you get annoyed and all. Except instead of spawn camping you get the same fucking enemies camping the same fucking pipes forever. Good luck trying to get anywhere if you don't have karma 10. My god. The tongue was fun, but again, it does Not help if you're in a cramped space.

Spearmaster and Riv were... eh. Average. Fun in that I enjoyed them, average in that they didn't invoke any particular feelings in me. Definitely irritating that they introduced Spearmaster's dual spear wielding gimmick and then. Took it away from you. Lmao. What the hell honestly. But I had fun with all the campaigns overall.

Vanilla Lore Compliance

Gourmand takes this one easily. I like it because it's one of the most removed from the iterators' stories, similar to Survivor and Monk's campaigns. While that's a little sad, I'll admit, it fits a lot better with the core theme of the game. You're not the protagonist. You're a slugcat, trying to survive in this hostile world that was never designed for your existence. You can stumble your way into the lives of beings truly godlike in comparison to you, but you're not even a speck of dust in the grander scheme of things. You're nothing.

But you are you, and Gourmand embodies that very well. Literally too fat to give a shit, good for them. Their whole journey is just to eat well and sleep well and that translates so well to both gameplay and lore, and it's lovely. Lore wise, I also really like that ascending Gourmand gets you almost nothing, and doesn't even count as a proper game clear, because Gourmand is so so removed from anything to do with the ancients as a whole, which is actually something i had a bit of an issue with even in the vanilla lore. Who gives a shit about ascending? You're a slugcat, god dammit. The only things you think about are food, shelter, and danger. And maybe shiny pearls. What does the cycle matter to you? You're just trying to survive. So I really like Gourmand's true, Outer Expanse ending, especially the story implications of the ending cutscenes if you also finish their food quest. You're just exploring this new land, looking for food and safe places to rest in, because you're a slugcat with a family. What more could you want as a slugcat?

Arti is also fairly lore compliant, mostly because she. Uh. Has like no bearing on the lore lmfao. Her story is the most isolated from those of the iterators; she would have done what she did regardless of Pebbles' input. (Gourmand too, but that's not relevant here.) But her story also doesn't really tie back into the original theme of the game, so I can't really comment much on her campaign in terms of lore compliance. Still loved it though! Really liked the reasoning behind letting Pebbles read pearls for you.

Riv and Saint are terrible in terms of lore compliance, and it's a big issue I have with both their campaigns. I'm sure everyone's thought along these lines already, but both of them go directly against the core theme of the vanilla game, which again, is that you are not the protagonist. Riv is probably worse than Saint in this regard, because the events of her campaign require her direct input to occur, while Saint, you can argue they're just an observer of the world in the distant future. But they're both really really bad on this. I still enjoyed the story, but seriously? You're going to tell me someone purposed a slugcat to intentionally go inside an interator to retrieve possibly the most dangerous item in this world to date? And apparently, according to dev notes, Riv wasn't created by an iterator. Which makes no sense and I've elected to ignore that piece of information considering Riv spawns in with the mark of communication and a pearl with schematics of the inner workings of iterator cans. This is peak protagonist behavior. It's nice to get character development on Pebbles, but this really is just... bad. Lol. For canon lore. I really don't take anything Riv does in her campaign as objective fact.

Spearmaster is kinda just there. Not implausible by any means, given Hunter's campaign, though there's some timeline inconsistencies with Moon's collapse if you look through the vanilla pearls and compare the years. It's not that big of an issue though.

Story Concept Execution

As much as I have issues with Saint's campaign, I have to give this one to them. From start to finish it's just shock after shock, blow after blow after blow of oh god, the world's so different. Every change was at least interesting, even if I don't approve of some of them; I liked piecing together that the rain cycle doesn't exist anymore, and rather it's now based on whether you're freezing or not. The little details in how the world has changed are really charming too, especially in how lots of things are now fluffy because it's bitterly cold. Though Riv, Spearmaster and Arti have marked world changes, none are quite as striking as those found in Saint's campaign. It's truly like exploring a new world, except you can still see the old one in it, and it's a strange, somewhat bittersweet, somewhat melancholy feeling to go through the various areas, especially when Saint's campaign naturally takes you through most of the regions. The Undergrowth as a whole, where it used to be Drainage System, really hammers it home I think. You're witnessing the world reclaim itself from what the ancients did to it, for better or for worse, and though it's sad to see the old world go, it's kind of a relief to see it start to push back.

The layout of the world on a more meta sense is also really, really cool. I loved the detail of the old Underhang-Five Pebbles The Region gate now being the link between Silent Construct and Frigid Coast. I loved seeing, despite how horrifying it is story wise, how Pebbles' can has decayed and changed after all these years, and how life has reclaimed his arrays and chambers. I also really really loved the fact that each area has been renamed to reflect its current state; going through Sky Islands (Windswept Spires) to Farm Arrays (Desolate Fields) to Outskirts (Suburban something, I missed the second word) and beyond... it's very haunting in a way I thoroughly enjoyed. It felt a lot like picking through shattered pieces of glass and trying to piece them back together into a coherent shape again, while also knowing that it's never going to be what it once was.

Additionally, I absolutely adored the monologue changes of the already existing echoes, just mentally comparing the differences between what they say in Saint's time and what they say to the other slugcats. And the new echoes too! I keep thinking about the Undergrowth echo, how they mention they never wanted to ascend. It hits you so so hard with how the old world the ancients built is nothing but rubble and ice now. How they, too, were just people, trying so hard to do what they thought would bring them peace, and some of them not finding it even after what they thought would be an eternal rest. It just adds to the overall melancholy feeling of Saint's version of the world.

I don't think I have a clear second place or last place campaign for this category. They all held up on story execution in their own right, but none stood out quite as starkly as Saint's campaign did. They did well to force you to play Spearmaster and Rivulet first before Saint would be unlocked; without the context of both Spearmaster's pre-collapse time and Riv's post-collapse, heavily Rot infested time, Saint's story wouldn't have hit as hard.

Story Impact

It's really hard for me to pick one definitive favorite for this category because all the Downpour cats have such good stories for such different reasons, but Arti, Riv and Saint's campaigns definitely gripped me really, really hard. Spearmaster's did too, but a little less so, and not for Spearmaster himself; I was in it for Moon.

Arti held my interest from the start. It's no secret I'm an avid tragedy and horror enjoyer, and Arti's whole campaign is painted in the blood of her pups. Besides just being mechanically fun, I found myself constantly on the edge for more of her story, always wanting to find out more about what happened to her, what happened to her pups, what happened to make her hate scavengers so much she committed to killing them all. Though the final execution of her actual story felt a little flat, I still really loved the ideas behind her story, and she was the first one to make me destroy my sleep schedule to try and finish her campaign. The whole concept of a mother's rage extending so far that it locks her out of a true release is so so sad and I love it. I love her rage, I love her grief, I love her ceaseless violence that only perpetuates the cycle further, I love how hard it hits when you kill the Chief Scav and how little you get out of that. Her story is an exercise in futility and yet you will root for her. It's gutting and it's beautiful. I also know most of what happens in her other ending, and that just drives it home even more, I think. That her love and her grief is so strong that it prevents her from obtaining a true rest, forever separated from her pups after fighting for them for so long. It's heartbreaking and yet it fits so well. Very fitting for Rain World's overall melancholy world.

Riv and Saint both went for my throat with Pebbles' state, but in different ways. With Riv you get to see the horror of how much the Rot has overtaken his can. It was a fun and horrifying moment to enter via the wall and drop down, and then get stunned by the fall to finally realize that wait, the zero gravity is broken. And then seeing the proto daddies at the end and then encrusted over the pipe that would normally lead to GSB, and also the gaping hole in the side of his chamber and him just sitting on the floor, dejected. He sounds so defeated from the start, so frustrated but in a way that's more just tired than angry, or angry at himself rather than at the world. How desperate do you have to be as something so powerful, wielding so much knowledge, to ask some random critter that flopped into your chamber to save your long time friend (whose state you yourself caused)? And to ask them to go deep into your systems and remove the power source keeping you alive, no less? It drives home the passage of time between Monk's campaign and Riv's, and really nicely shows how Pebbles has changed as a person, even if it took everything literally falling to pieces around him to finally get there. I really get it, though, the fear of yourself and your actions and knowing you objectively messed up, but being too afraid and ashamed to ask for help. It's very brave of him to even ask Riv to do what he did, when he spends the last six campaigns telling slugcats to fuck off in no uncertain terms because he's so certain he has to fix this on his own. And the post game too, when you go back to his chamber and he just looks sad and finally agrees that he doesn't have to do this alone? Gut wrenching. They really went for everyone's hearts with Riv.

Which is just driven further home in Saint's campaign, when you find him sitting out in the snow in the remains of his can, his chamber not even a chamber anymore, and with barely enough of himself together to greet Saint when they stumble into him. He has only his music pearl left, and even that is distorted by time, and if you take it to Moon she pleads you to bring it back to him because it's all he has left. Any of his former bite is gone, replaced only by stuttering curiosity and confusion, and he even thanks you for keeping him company if you return enough times. You spend so long seeing him as this unreachable, untouchable presence that gives you some directions in an aloof way and maybe helps you out a bit, just to see him in this state of ruin, barely alive. I've never had a more visceral reaction to seeing him than I did in Saint's campaign, nor have I ever been more determined to find him. Like, stepping into what used to be Shaded Citadel, finding the Husk and realizing Pebbles collapsed because of course he did, he tells you that when you play as Riv, realizing why it's not shaded anymore, and seeing the state of his can... it's heartbreaking. The fact that there's so little of him left is heartbreaking.

And then on top of that, you get to actively choose to end his misery. To grant him the one thing he spent literally his whole life toiling for. And to me, it felt cruel, almost. It didn't even feel like mercy. And you can choose to do the same thing to Moon, too. It's all framed in such desolate but clear terms: the old world is dying, and a new one is emerging. Is it better to leave Moon there and allow her to slowly decay? But is ascending her a good option either? Is Pebbles truly more at peace like this? And it just makes me think about how both iterators may have felt watching Saint start glowing and flying, and then suddenly their souls are wrenched out of their bodies. And then after you reach the end of Rubicon, if you ascended either one or both of them, you can find them at the end, talking to you and telling you, perhaps a bit vaguely, that none of this is real. That none of what you did has lasting impact, that Pebbles is likely still out there in the snow, that Moon is still going to slowly decay like he did, that Saint, despite it all, is still trying to do this over and over and over again, because that is what an echo does. I haven't cried this hard at a game in a really long time, and I immediately started sobbing when I poked my head into the chamber and saw both of them there, the way they looked when in their prime, just to be told that my actions meant nothing in the end. It was absolutely devastating, but that really just cements how powerful Saint's story is. And here I realize that probably means Saint has the most powerful story impact, but it's truly hard to compare to Arti's and Riv's because the impact is different for all of them.

Then you have Spearmaster, where you get to explore Moon before she collapsed. I sobbed when I got to Neural Terminus and saw Moon's gorgeous blue and pink interior with Reflection of the Moon playing, just mourning all that she lost, all that Pebbles took from her, and despite it all, somehow, she's still kind and patient. Getting to see her as powerful as we will ever see her, while also knowing how much she loses and that this is not even close to what she would have been like in her prime, was just so so gutting. We're never going to know what Moon was like before it all happened, but this comes close to it, and it hurts. In a sense, it's a nice juxtaposition to what Riv and Saint show of her and Pebbles, and also just draws on an objective fact. Before and after the events of the vanilla game, Pebbles and Moon were or will be different. We only get to see glimpses of it.

Gourmand really doesn't have any stock here. Their ending is sweet, for sure, I cried twice at their ending, but the impact of knowing how Moon and Pebbles change and also the impacts of Arti's grief and rage really stuck with me more.

Uh, a section just for Spearmaster?

As you may have been able to tell from the analysis and summary above, I kind of didn't really think much of Spearmaster's campaign. I personally did not find it too hard (though I had experience dragging around two pups before that, so I was used to only having one active hand by then), but it's just frustrating to be introduced to a cool mechanic and then have it removed from you if you give a shit about the story. I do, however, thoroughly enjoy the concept of them as a purposed being. Why do they have no mouth? Why are they able to secrete spears? How and why do they have to eat from these spears? Why did Suns choose to create this creature? Wouldn't it have been easier to just take an existing slugcat and modify it like Sig did? So many questions. Their biology is funky and I enjoy it.

That's sort of it, though. While I did like Spearmaster's campaign overall, it really doesn't hold up to any of the other campaigns. Which is a bit disappointing, but oh well.

Downpour Overall

The concepts and stories introduced here were absolutely stunning, and I had a blast playing through all the campaigns, even if I did employ the use of dev tools a fair bit in certain campaigns (mostly Saint and a bit in Riv tbh), and I also turned on 'keep key items on passage' to speed things up. I do have a little bit of an issue with how certain parts of some campaigns cough Spearmaster and Saint cough felt very much like you'd need your karma to be high to be able to effectively traverse the map, while also really limiting your options for actually gaining karma, but maybe that's a bit of a problem on my end for not being a good enough gamer lmao. I dunno. I just don't enjoy karma grinding on something so story focused. On Survivor and Monk it's whatever, but I know the world and the story by now. I really hated having to just eat and sleep just so I could move on in the story, and eventually I just resorted to spawning food in with Beastmaster here and there so I could actually fucking save my progress. But overall? It was so so fun.

I am a little miffed that some of the campaigns directly go against how the vanilla game was structured, but I'm also delighted that we pretty much have dev approval for character development of characters like Pebbles and Moon, and to some extent Sig(!) and Suns. I personally work with the iterators a lot with stories, so I'm just piling up all of this information and shoving my face into it. I'm so happy about this asdkfgkklsdkl and generally, I think I'm just going to take the different timelines you can see with the various campaigns as snapshots of different moments in time. Do I honestly believe Riv could have achieved what she did? Do I genuinely believe Saint could or should have helped either iterator ascend? No, not really. Spearmaster I could believe more, but he's really a footnote in the broader story, an observer to this world that he really has no say in. I think that would capture the nature of Rain World better. You may not be the main character, but you can still view this world through the lens of something that exists in it.

Difficulty wise, it was okay for me personally, and mostly the dev tooling and assists were to help with me getting irritated more than objective difficulty I'd say? Like, I definitely could have done it legit, but it would take about three times as long and I just wanted to explore, for fuck's sake, and I wanted the rest of the story. Saint and Spearmaster were definitely harder in some respects, and Arti is a difficulty Cliff for some people, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't enjoy the game, especially with remix options now.

Remix is definitely something I really really love though. For the longest time, I could not securely recommend Rain World to people because of the glaring accessibility issues it had. It still has some, but it's a great deal improved from what it used to be, and I'm very glad about that. Rain World's never going to be an easy game, but it's a really great one that deserves to be enjoyed by more people, and Remix is a great option for those who need more help along the way.

Some of the new creature concepts are really neat, honestly. I loved caramel lizards, these goofy little red x green lizard mixes with six (six!!!) legs, and also tiny cute pretty strawberry lizards. The Miros Vultures, as much as I fucking loathed having to deal with them, are so so cool conceptually. I just wish they didn't chase you across rooms :/ and, while terrifying, MLL was cool. I like the progression of the Rot. It's just cool details overall.

Would I recommend Downpour to people? Absolutely, but definitely play the base game first. Downpour is, as other people have put it, sort of its own game that shares mechanics and certain aspects of lore with Rain World. It was a mod originally, after all. But I think the MSC team deserves the money for the sheer amount of work they've put into this. It was an experience that was well worth the price and more.

[nemofil]

question for the rain worlders...

because i hate karma grinding as spearmaster everything in the leg is so fucking annoying to kill and there's literally nothing in the precipice and i can't even munch on fruits if the cycle's been unfruitful

oh my god i miss artificer and her explosives already and pray tell why does moon have a karma 5 gate she does Not need all that!!!

[puncivilian]

Got startled by a miros vulture last night so bad that my calf cramped from tensing so hard

[industrial---complex]

probably the cringest idea in history but someone should like make villager news but scavengers...

-there could be this whole episode on when artificer rocks up -an entire one about this one persistent vulture attacking a toll -one about moon and like this one guy throws a spear at her and they go on a whole manhunt through shoreline -this one delusional scav who speaks of a place with no rain (outer expanse) and his big long fucking journey to it and he gets killed at the karma gate -sky islands. -rare sighting of the mythical train lizard -the shaded citadel monster (miros bird) in every episode they'd be talking and then "HOLY SHIT IS THAT AN OVERSEER" at some point

like i could write this shit

[paradoxbeta]

Hybrid requests you say... slugcat plus like 5 different rot strains. if that counts in case it does not: leviathan plus miros vulture

hunter long legs and my fucked up parakeet

[fivepebbles]

Five selfcheckouts

Why in the actual fuck would you send me this? Have you gone insane, little creature? Do you need me to call someone to come pick you up?

Well too bad. The only thing picking you up is a king vulture. That's right, I've told my messenger to leave a vulture grub at your exact location. Soon you will be devoured by a horrible creature from the sky. No scavenger will be able to save you. They shall freeze in place from fear the moment they see it descend from the sky. Lizards shall flee as soon as they notice it's shadow. Even the mightiest creatures inhabiting this world will tremble in fear when it arrives. It will pierce you with its tusks, and tear you apart with its beak. It shall feast on your corpse like a miros bird that's been starving for 15 cycles. Your karma will go down so much you won't ever be able to build it up again. Miles away, all iterators will receive message of your demise. A live video will be streamed from one of my overseers to every public channel available, and every single iterator out there will watch as the terrible bird swoops down and grasps your helpless corpse. And even if the vulture fails, I have sent a messenger to find every single intelligent creature alive and tell them of your horrible act. You will only be remembered by the crime you have committed. Not a single creature will ever love you again. Cycle after cycle you will find that you are unable to experience the beauty this world has to offer. And deep down you'll know that it all started when you sent me this horrible message. After an near eternal amount of cycles, you will finally decide to follow my advice and head west, past the farm arrays. Where the land fissures, you'll go down into the earth and search your way deeper. Then you will bathe in the void sea and contemplate your actions. You'll know that you could have prevented all of it. You could have been happy. And knowing this, you'll leave this world. Filled with regret.

[ari-zonia]

Decided to revamp my Sinner Slugcats so they're not all just multicolored scugs.

I did look into some of the symbols and stuff of the game, so the writing is more or less "Outlaw, Number", since I wasn't sure how to make a "Sinner" symbol in the RW language, so I just used Outlaw since it has the lowest Karma symbol anyway.

Intricacies under the readmore

Yi Sang: Inspired by daszombes' Deadlands video, he is a "Flying Slugcat", like a sugar glider or flying squirrel. He has no true flight, but it works

Faust: Some sort of Echo or associated. Has her own citizen ID drone of an unknown Iterator, and it also acts as a little scanner (inspired by @astragatwo's take on scug Faust). She still maintains Gourmand's crafting ability, but it might be more taxing with her smaller frame.

Don Quixote: A special breed of Slugcat meant to go fast, her legs are quite powerful, letting her make longer pounces or generally run faster than most other scugs. Obviously, her lack of weight makes her weak to poleplants/worm grass, but y'know.

Ryoshu: Similar to Spearmaster, but by way of King Vulture, she only has one spear directly connected to her that she can recall (it does not act like SM's feeding needles). Also, a subtle detail is that her ears are absolutely massive compared to most scugs, giving her enhanced hearing.

Meursault: (Perhaps a Purposed Being?) He has face armor not unlike a lizard, in fact he's about the same size as a blue lizard. His bite is quite powerful, and he's certainly the best to have in front going through pipes, as his face will deflect spears (should the scavs be aggro or something). He might also have better climbing ability, able to get on walls and such, but he's very heavy so idk

Hong Lu: Bioluminescent, like a fun mix of lantern mice and cyan lizards, he can "turn it off" as it were. His tail also can be used as a small flashbang, but obviously only once (per cycle). Of course, this helps with coalescipedes, but makes him a damn beacon otherwise.

Heathcliff: Still Artificer based, where explosions and such just don't really bother him and he's able to maul enemies (though obviously his bite is weaker than Meur's). He also has a pearl hanging around his neck of unknown use, but clearly given to him by someone special.

Ishmael: Rivulet, but even closer to salamander where she actually has fins, her ability to swim is obviously a cut above everyone else's. She's probably had a bad run in or two with Leviathans. Her cloak is probably a gift from whatever version of Queequeg this world has

Rodion: Also inspired by astragatwo, she's mega fluffy making her very warm. Though, this does make it annoying for her to swim if the area is cold because she'll freeze faster. I still like the idea she can carry more scugs on her, but idk. (She does look more like a fox, but such is the price of floof)

Sinclair: Saint-lite, and still pup-sized (he's an adult, just tiny like Don) so long as he's not at lowest Karma, he has limited ability to incapacitate enemies (not quite enough to ascend) and fly a bit with said ability. I basically wanted to reference his Mark of Cain somehow.

Outis: Ironically, just your average Slugcat. She probably has stuff going on with reputation or maybe she allows Echos to appear on first visit, or convinces Pebbles to not murder everyone immediately

Gregor: Definitely a creature that has been fucked with too much. Originally just a Slugcat that had been spliced with a centiwing (sorta like how the Miros Vultures are hybrids), he seemed to have got infected by the Rot, most likely when whatever Iterator structure he was hanging out around pulled a Pebbles

[foxstens]

been trying to do apex predator in expedition

[i3utterflyeffect]

the slugs are done cooking!

anyway here's yellow, blue, and red!

Blue

Blue has the ability to store more than one thing, including extra food, in cheek pouches!

They also can make baits for other creatures if given the correct resources. This can be great for them to lay out to attract an eggbug or something, but isn't a sure-fire way of getting food before the cycle ends. Admittedly, Beckon's cycles are much longer than Pebbles', so they get a solid amount of time outside before the rain.

Can and will eat anything! This includes things that are not digestible by slugcats. Probably has eaten a spore puff and immediately thrown up. Also sometimes will die spontaneously and be the one to discover that something is poisonous. If they were playable you could probably eat certain things that'd take your pips instead lol

instead of netherwart, they eat bubbleweed! similarly exotic and not found in Beckon's surroundings, and probably grows more around Abberant Creation/Crafter of Connection. actually did i mention that alexcrafter/CoC and AC are the same person. i don't think i did. that's unrelated tho

instead of getting scars from lava, it's instead from toxic waste like you might find in the Garbage Wastes. They can walk okay still, miraculously, but the skin has become extremely sensitive and any injuries in that area would hurt a LOTTTTT. They learn this after trying to pluck a paincone and getting swarmed.

Also related to the scarring, has a very high scav reputation due to saving a baby scav.

Yellow (there's no yellow text so it's orange. oops)

Expert with explosives and can craft grenades on the go. Grenades are made with a cherry bomb and a rock. They can also make a spear explode on impact-- different from an explosive spear since it's made with a grenade rather than the red cloth(?)

VERY VERY bright. had a habit of eating beckon's neurons when he wasn't looking and by the time they learned not to they were already glowing like a flashlight

probably started wailing upon learning they were eating beckon's brain on accident also

can basically craft anything like gourmand. has made VERY dangerous things before by complete accident. such as previously mentioned nuke.

Has probably broken a karma gate by trying to figure out how it works. probably the karma gate to the void if beckons even has one. no ascension for the kids. not that i think they'd ever WANT to

Has some degree of electric resistance. you'd be surprised at the centipedes they can survive

can and will fix things for beckons with only the motivator of love and sheer willpower

Red (imo the most interesting)

can and will befriend anything.

for comedic value these creatures are included in the pool of things red can and will befriend. i mean maybe not the centipede but also it'd be very very funny

is differently colored because their niche is in mimicry! their tail has eye spots to scare off vultures and if they slap their tail it may look like it's about to bite! it's used to scare off predators, which red deals with more often than you'd probably guess.

looks like something else on first glance but don't worry about that

high lizard reputation! just more likely to survive beasts in general actually

i was initially going to say the monster school is an interspecies lizard pack but then i thought of what monster school would be like in rain world and that's the funniest fucking thing ever so i'll leave it up to y'all. dropwigs learning how to dropwig from a giant fucking miros? maybe a guardian if you're feeling extra silly? or train lizard who has taken in a ton of stray lizards. who knows...

gets gifted a yellow bandana by Abberant Creation or scavs maybe

surprisingly low scavenger reputation. they're not kill-on-sight but definitely 'oh shit troublemaker incoming. watch out' (they get better reputation after blue helped the scavs out tho)

their pig friend (reuben) is a yeek btw. if you don't know what a yeek they're the best critters in rain world

anyway i thought of some interesting things that might be able to happen but i want them to be surprises in case i end up writing slugpup shenanigans :3 if you want to write a fic you can ask me though

i'm working on green but they suffer a chronic lack of significant abilities i can work off of :pensive:

[lordofthesillystraws]

rained world,,, but whiteboard

i finally figured out how i wanna draw spearmaster but tbh idk if i wanna post any of my rw stuff, might make another blog for that or something (or ill just keep posting it here cuz fuck keeping a theme)

featuring art from my pal @borderline-purrsonality (the saint under the miros vulture's wing)

[flecks-of-stardust]

i am messing around in arena with explosives, and i have concluded that explosive spears are really fucking busted, and therefore so is arti. what the fuck.

[rainworldblogwanderingtomes]

Made art for an oc! there name is Ancients Ire and they're can has a fighting arena on top of it.

not the best drawing but oh well! I was wondering what to put on top, cause I wanted something other than a city. soooo since ire means anger, I decided "fuck it gladiator ring!" cause like. these idiots respawn and I'm sure SOME of them want to commit a bit of murder <3

this is the tiny bit I have written on them in a google doc "Ancients Ire (Irene, Ire) Senior of the group, Oldest of the group, gen 1, built on unstable ground total wonder they haven’t fully collapsed, located in a marshland, 3 legs are broken to some degree so they are tilted, their hosted a… dubiously legal fighting ring so theres TON of dangerous shit up there <3"

so basically, they were built in a marsh so 2 of the legs have sinked into the ground and one is broken (the wildlife got a bit silly) and they have a cool fighting ring! the big block connected to the colosseum held a ton of dangerous animals, lizards (red, caramel, cyan, green, white), miros birds, vultures, all those things! so there's a ton of dangerous critters up there. also the big ball thing on the right side has a ton of lantern mice in it. who have evolved to be to hot to hold and use flashes of light to protect against the abundant lizards. anyways yah! iterator oc!

[siffrin-enthusiast]

okay anon got me on the rain world autism again so..just.. shoutout to the creatures in rain world. i love you spinny lizards and your wiggles. i love you garbage worms and your little head bobs. i love you vultures and the "OH FUCK SHIT" i still say every time i see you. i love you scavs and your subtle communications. i love you dropwigs no i dont dropwigs burni n hell. i love you squidcada and your instant hatred of the scugs. i love you rain deer and all the times i've yelled at you for ruining my run. i love you yeek and your little sounds theyre so silly. i love you lantern mice and your little stupid running faces. i love you centipedes and the way you move. i love you kelp and the way you brutalized me into learning water mechanics. i love you miros birds and the terrifying nightmare fuel lore you have. i love you pole plants and your barely discernible shakes. i love you jetfish and your inclination towards shooting yourselves into the sun. i love you noodleflies and your needlessly senseless violence. i love you leeches and the way you make me think on my feet. i love you leviathans and your terrifying grace. i love you rain world