#they do have a bit of that vibe to them but i'd lean more baboon-like now

[ranticore]

the whalers

This is the most 'modern' cast of characters on Siren, at a time when technology is equivalent to about the 1900s in Earth. Their ship is a cutting-edge coal-fired hydrofoil with a metal hull (i'll have to decide what type of metals are abundant & available to them but it is likely iron). A hydrofoil ship lifts physically out of the water using the underwater foils, which generate lift similar to a wing, vastly increasing the speed of the vessel. These foils are specifically designed to penetrate the denser layer of water which can more easily support the ship, and they can be raised and lowered at will. This ship is the Seerkaseer, the same callsign (Sierra Oscar Sierra) as the visor worn by its astronavigator, so that it can be tracked using the global telecommunications array.

They hunt giant siphos, which also propel themselves out of the water using the same hydrofoil principle (i was going through a hydrofoil phase last year when i designed these things...). The translucent shells are used to create a transparent glass-like material which has particular applications in pelagic villages, and the meat is eaten. But it's the hydrophobic oil produced by the tail glands, which reduces drag in flight, that commands the highest prices at the market. It's one of the most precious liquids on the planet, in fact.

When a giant sipho is sighted, the ship raises itself out of the water and gives chase. The crew uses a battery of harpoons and bow chasers to hook onto the creature, though it can take several shots to penetrate the shell. The ship can only fly above a certain speed, and this is achieved by propellers as well as its simple sails. When it makes a kill, it can sink back into the water and unfold a floating platform on which the entire body is butchered over the course of a few days (or weeks if it's a big one). Close to shore, the body might just be towed to a land-based processing facility, but the largest and most valuable siphos are only found in the unbroken sea, away from the ridges and mazes of land.

I named each of the crew and also made a few more guys which I didn't illustrate. I wanted to have a sort of slice of life story on board this ship. The main conflict lies in the kattakati (one of which is illustrated there, the lookout) presence on board the ship, as this would be rather rare at the time. I'll make a big post later (I need to draw updated art, I don't like the old art I did) but essentially a kattakati is, legally and culturally speaking, a single person with two bodies. It's a quirk from the dry breaks area of the Eastern continent and almost unique to the zeta type of people, which have a very different history to all other lineages. Other people struggle to comprehend the kattakati and don't really Get It, but it is exactly what it sounds like - two people who enter a permanent pairbond such that they become one person, total and complete extensions of a single being. But I'll talk more about it later.

Being sooo honest here I was deeply, deeply inspired by reading the manga Drifting Dragons at the time lol it made me want to make a whaling crew story so badly, and given all the other whaling references in Siren as a whole it felt appropriate