#but one crashed with a whole bunch of larvae in its shell

[ranticore]

Unreleased Setting Friday

ages ago i posted One picture of Limes, my alien character, on main without context. Limes comes from a sci-fi setting I was messing with for a while in early 2023/late 2022

They are photosynthetic "mimic" aliens who change shape from a base body plan over only a few generations to match the organisms around them - it was originally based off of that plant that "sees" its immediate neighbours and grows similar leaves to blend in :) limes was born in the Amazon to a small established group of its species that had mostly mimicked new world monkeys and margays

the panels on its back are photosynthetic. the body lacks bones and is operated by a hydrostatic system, with the tail in particular being straight and rodlike by default until warped by hydraulics into a prehensile structure.

These are really old designs now and the top image is actually the most recent hehe

Anyway there's a whole near-future story about the earth-born aliens and humans cooperating to fend off attacks from another faction of the same alien species who are raiding human technology for their power sources and essentially, basically, the entire setup is JUST to justify the presence of living aeroplanes :) as livestock guardian animals who accompany regular air freight and defend them from attacks. The story is about Limes, an engineer of the biomechs, working with a human biologist/behaviourist whose job is to train the livestock guardians to guard the freight.