the-voxel

[the-voxel]

Imagine your loved ones gathering together, singing songs in the night to invite even your long dead family to the service, placing your favorite things in your arms, and saying goodbye as they wrap you in cool, soft clay. Are you curled up like you're sleeping, your burial stone forming like an egg? Do they rest your head on the fluff of your tail and then make the stone form like a ring? Did you leave a request for you burial stone to be a special shape?

Voxel death practices

I was well on my way to being asleep for 15 hours straight when i was Possessed by a Vision

According to voxel religious beliefs, if an animal eats your body it also eats your soul, right? Your body is the anchor that holds you in place so your ancestors can come back and fetch you and take you to the afterlife.

And they live on a water planet.

Between those two things burial isn't the easiest option. Being buried makes your body harder to find for your ancestors, but also it is a pain to dig in a flooded area.

And sending a body out to drift on a boat is also a big no because a scavenger might eat it.

And cremation is probably only going to be an option in specific places.

So what on earth do they do with the bodies?????

Clay.

Clay is probably a plentiful resource. So part of the funeral will be for those attending to all take part in encasing the body in clay. The resulting shape will differ based on region, but most places will be using this method. Then they can bake the clay pod (probably with vents to release the gas from the body so it doesn't explode during this process) and when it's good and solid like a rock they take it to a designated burial ground.

Ideally a burial area will have soft ground so that over the years the pods will sink into the dirt, this keeps the space needed for the dead fairly small and reusable.

Along the oceans pods may be boated out and lowered into the depths of the sea, in mountainous areas they may not even need to use pods at all, in industrialized cities they may do something more creative. So to say, this may differ in the variations of culture around the world, but i had to write down this idea before i forgot.

Pods can be engraved, sculpted, painted, and all manner of decorated to keep it personal.

what would your voxel's burial pod look like?

[the-voxel]

Voxel death practices

I was well on my way to being asleep for 15 hours straight when i was Possessed by a Vision

According to voxel religious beliefs, if an animal eats your body it also eats your soul, right? Your body is the anchor that holds you in place so your ancestors can come back and fetch you and take you to the afterlife.

And they live on a water planet.

Between those two things burial isn't the easiest option. Being buried makes your body harder to find for your ancestors, but also it is a pain to dig in a flooded area.

And sending a body out to drift on a boat is also a big no because a scavenger might eat it.

And cremation is probably only going to be an option in specific places.

So what on earth do they do with the bodies?????

Clay.

Clay is probably a plentiful resource. So part of the funeral will be for those attending to all take part in encasing the body in clay. The resulting shape will differ based on region, but most places will be using this method. Then they can bake the clay pod (probably with vents to release the gas from the body so it doesn't explode during this process) and when it's good and solid like a rock they take it to a designated burial ground.

Ideally a burial area will have soft ground so that over the years the pods will sink into the dirt, this keeps the space needed for the dead fairly small and reusable.

Along the oceans pods may be boated out and lowered into the depths of the sea, in mountainous areas they may not even need to use pods at all, in industrialized cities they may do something more creative. So to say, this may differ in the variations of culture around the world, but i had to write down this idea before i forgot.

Pods can be engraved, sculpted, painted, and all manner of decorated to keep it personal.

what would your voxel's burial pod look like?

[the-voxel]

Voxel death practices

I was well on my way to being asleep for 15 hours straight when i was Possessed by a Vision

According to voxel religious beliefs, if an animal eats your body it also eats your soul, right? Your body is the anchor that holds you in place so your ancestors can come back and fetch you and take you to the afterlife.

And they live on a water planet.

Between those two things burial isn't the easiest option. Being buried makes your body harder to find for your ancestors, but also it is a pain to dig in a flooded area.

And sending a body out to drift on a boat is also a big no because a scavenger might eat it.

And cremation is probably only going to be an option in specific places.

So what on earth do they do with the bodies?????

Clay.

Clay is probably a plentiful resource. So part of the funeral will be for those attending to all take part in encasing the body in clay. The resulting shape will differ based on region, but most places will be using this method. Then they can bake the clay pod (probably with vents to release the gas from the body so it doesn't explode during this process) and when it's good and solid like a rock they take it to a designated burial ground.

Ideally a burial area will have soft ground so that over the years the pods will sink into the dirt, this keeps the space needed for the dead fairly small and reusable.

Along the oceans pods may be boated out and lowered into the depths of the sea, in mountainous areas they may not even need to use pods at all, in industrialized cities they may do something more creative. So to say, this may differ in the variations of culture around the world, but i had to write down this idea before i forgot.

Pods can be engraved, sculpted, painted, and all manner of decorated to keep it personal.

what would your voxel's burial pod look like?

[the-voxel]

stripe color emotions explained

now, voxel striped are not mood rings, but the pigments in their striped areas DO change structure slightly to reveal a lot about how they feel in a given moment.

for example

A voxel with orange stripes will have a gradient that looks something like this. When they are having negative emotions, they will have darker colors, positive lighter. If the emotion is calm, less saturated, exited, then more saturated.

You can "read" their emotions by putting together an idea of where each emotion will fall.

this method can be applied to all stripe colors! (below is an incomplete example of possible stripe colors)

now you are equipped to avoid a social blunder with your voxel friends!

[the-voxel]

Heavily temped to learn how to use Unreal Engine so I can make Vox a real explorable planet. If for nothing else, for my own sanity because idk any other way to make a satisfying interactive map

[the-voxel]

The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

[the-voxel]

cities advanced enough to have radio probably are also advanced enough to have live descriptors of performance events for blind audiences. It isn't too much of a leap to do the same over the radio.

So it would sound less like old human radio shows, and more like audiobook readings.

do they have memes

XD gonna be honest I didn't expect this one.

They do not have anything like the internet. In fact, they do not have any form on long range communication. (some areas *may* have short range radio)

So they would not have memes in the same format as us, but they do have jokes about popular things. (Think Shakespeare style memes: where you'll say or draw something popular and funny. So a performance meme???? idk.)

But, I *have* MADE a meme about a voxel!

This is inspired by a scene from Liithal's fic.

[the-voxel]

do they have memes

XD gonna be honest I didn't expect this one.

They do not have anything like the internet. In fact, they do not have any form on long range communication. (some areas *may* have short range radio)

So they would not have memes in the same format as us, but they do have jokes about popular things. (Think Shakespeare style memes: where you'll say or draw something popular and funny. So a performance meme???? idk.)

But, I *have* MADE a meme about a voxel!

This is inspired by a scene from Liithal's fic.

[the-voxel]

I am working on it officially! Fair warning: I am not a linguist. So like, my ability to develop a language is shaky. Now i gotta parse through all of my writing and track down all the words I have made up so far.

if I made a dictionary for the voxel, would y'all be interested?

[the-voxel]

Masterpost

Hi! This blog is dedicated to lorebuilding my original species! Here is a quick guide to navigate!

Quick overview (old post, may contain outdated info)

Customs (coming soon!)

google doc developing their language (constantly updating)

The Journal (series of journal entries written by a human who crash landed on Vox. Includes scientific sketches)

Tag guide under cut

About the voxel Uncategorized fun facts

Voxel architecture this covers how they build their houses, cities, roads, etc.

Voxel tech This is about their technology, which is super all over the place tbh.

Voxel cuisine Any info on their food, such as what kinds of plants they eat or recipes they cook

Voxel Literature Notes about what kind of writing they do, or even actual stories they may tell.

Voxel art Notes about their art, including performance, music, and more traditional art forms.

Voxel disability Discussions about how disability is handled in this world, and what conditions are even disabling to a voxel, and to what degree.

Voxel biology Talk about their biological functions and anatomy

Voxel Religion Talks about their religious structure and beliefs.

Voxel sociology Social rules, customs, even some culture tidbits.

Voxel language Discussions about their language, Voxeltok. You can scroll through to see me work out the rules i put into the doc.

Voxel animals The fauna of Vox

[the-voxel]

if I made a dictionary for the voxel, would y'all be interested?

[the-voxel]

do animals on Vox have scientific names? how does/would the scientific name for voxel themselves be different, if at all?

ha hah! I get to talk about linguistics!

So voxel language doesn't have nouns! They use compound adjectives as the names for things. It's part of why their names are descriptors of their personality.

Like their most widespread predator, the ivol, it's name means evil.

The word for their planet, Vox = my/our home. They may also call their own town Vox, so when space explorers found their planet they told the explorers their planet was Vox. Grammatically only a voxel should call it that, but by the time they breached the language barrier it was a bit too late to fix the mixup.

Voxel = self, plural. Again, grammatically, any species could call their own group "voxel" when speaking this language.

Scientific names tend to already function this way. They are literally just latin/greek adjectives we use to be fancy. On Vox, the common name functions as the scientific one. And since the names are descriptive, regional names tend to be the same as each other or very similar.

[the-voxel]

mmmm i gotta draw these other creatures now, but in the meantime i do have a closeup of a dog!

(this is how Liithal got her name btw)

Do the Voxel have a concept of zoos/aquariums/places you go to look at wild animals safely, or is it like "we have wild animals at home *points at local wildlife*"

They do not keep wild animals to look at, no. Their nature is thriving enough for two things: They don't need conservation efforts as the natural habitats are still intact, and being eaten by the nature is still very much an issue.

If they wanna see a wild animal, they can just chill at a guard post along the wall. OR they can go on an excursion. Their spears are electrically powered, so they can put on rubber pants covers and if a wild animal gets too close they just electrify the surface of the water to chase it away.

They DO have domestic animals though! Mostly work animals, but they have a couple pet beasts.

[the-voxel]

Hell yeah!

Okay I don't have an isolated picture, so I'll tell you about all of these! (everything is drawn to scale)

Top left: A feline which is the primary predator of voxel across a significant portion of the world. It's called an ivol, and shares the ability to communicate how it feels through stripe pigmentation. Its name is synonymous with evil.

Bottom left: This is the reason they have energy domes over their towns and cities. It's a flying predator who hunts in wide open spaces such as prairies. It will either pick off sick prey, swoop and catch things in its talons on a flyby, or use its long neck and sharp beak to spear prey from down in the water.

Top middle: This is a species of deer which lives mostly in the forest. Voxel have not domesticated it yet, but they *do* like to raise them from fawns and keep them around as an early warning system to natural disaster and predators.

Top right: This is a beast mount, essentially a horse. (i may bring it down to a normal number of legs??) This is that they use to plow their fields, ride, and pull their carts and boats. This one IS domesticated.

Bottom right: This is a dog(?). It isn't normally a big problem, but they frequently try to pick of voxlings, and they may hunt in packs and try to take out adults. Now, it is entirely possible to tame and domesticate them, but voxel won't do that for a predator :/

There are also a few birds they keep as pets, some species of fish they have a relationship with, something similar to a rabbit, and much to their dismay they have small felines who hang around and eat pests from their food stores and try to be friendly. You are not encouraged to engage in the tiny evil creatures who eat flesh and try to endear you with big loving eyes.

Do the Voxel have a concept of zoos/aquariums/places you go to look at wild animals safely, or is it like "we have wild animals at home *points at local wildlife*"

They do not keep wild animals to look at, no. Their nature is thriving enough for two things: They don't need conservation efforts as the natural habitats are still intact, and being eaten by the nature is still very much an issue.

If they wanna see a wild animal, they can just chill at a guard post along the wall. OR they can go on an excursion. Their spears are electrically powered, so they can put on rubber pants covers and if a wild animal gets too close they just electrify the surface of the water to chase it away.

They DO have domestic animals though! Mostly work animals, but they have a couple pet beasts.

[the-voxel]

Do the Voxel have a concept of zoos/aquariums/places you go to look at wild animals safely, or is it like "we have wild animals at home *points at local wildlife*"

They do not keep wild animals to look at, no. Their nature is thriving enough for two things: They don't need conservation efforts as the natural habitats are still intact, and being eaten by the nature is still very much an issue.

If they wanna see a wild animal, they can just chill at a guard post along the wall. OR they can go on an excursion. Their spears are electrically powered, so they can put on rubber pants covers and if a wild animal gets too close they just electrify the surface of the water to chase it away.

They DO have domestic animals though! Mostly work animals, but they have a couple pet beasts.

[the-voxel]

Does the "don't kill living things" belief also apply to droids/AI/mechanical constructs that are sentient but inorganic?

That is a good question. That is the kind of question that would create a religious schism, good job. I might have to right in a religious schism over this for when they integrate into the rest of the galaxy lol.

Basically, some of them will insist machines don't have a soul, and so they aren't alive to kill. After all, the soul is stored in the body, and their body is made of metal and was crafted. On the side of this argument they may say "If my descendant killed a droid i would still come collect their soul when they died"

On the other side, you'd have people who believe that in absence of being made of flesh and needing to eat, anyone that is sentient enough to choose their own name is alive and should not be killed.

[the-voxel]

Do they have colourblindness? How do sight impairments affect their ability to communicate and navigate a society where so much is conveyed through body language and stripes?

Yes! Thank you! I love getting questions about what may be disabling in this society.

Voxel in general can see a slightly wider range of colors than humans, and are more perceptive to color differences.

In ye olde days, a color blind child may have been heavily reprimanded as just not paying attention, or have been accused of disregarding other people's feelings. And anyone who was blind enough not to be able to see the cues of other voxel would have been treated as helpless.

As the medical field progressed and society gained a better understanding of disability, accommodations grew. In many places it became common practice to verbally indicate your tone to your visually impaired friends.