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Abandoned Submission [Species] Agarthans

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Please put text or prose after major headers

History
TEXT/PROSE
Agartha


Physiology
TEXT/PROSE
Subspecies
 
I'm looking at it and I don't understand what I'm looking at since normally I go straight to "Physiology" to figure out what things look like. What do they look like, again?
 
Added 'However, they can be colloqially called a “were-species”, given their ability to diverge from a mostly-human form to one of beasthood fairly easy, each appearance possibly ressembling another similar species or not' to physiology.

Essentially, think werewolf, werebear, werecrocodile etc. They can go a little bit hybrid between their forms also with practice. They can never become fully "human" and always retain some attributes. The most common is to have a mouth of teeth fully composed of canines.

I think my wiki writing technique has gotten about 1000% better since I wrote these up a year ago -_-

Edit: They almost never go to their uhm.. 'least specialised' form given the whole thing with Agarthans is war. Having your natural weapons always ready and living with them 24/7 is the best way to survive. They aren't gonna be running around with pinky-white easily cut flesh all the time.
 
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I was looking at this species article and it says:

All appear when non-transformed as human with animal aspects to them. They can transform to become a primal hybrid of themselves and their mix of animal aspects.
Click to expand...

This seems to fly in the face of the Creating A Species guidelines, which say:

1531086086720.webp

It kind of sounds like they just look like Nekovalkyrja or anthros, which we already have in the setting, and/or that they're just humans who can magically shapeshift.

Can you elaborate on this and address my concerns somehow?
 
I never want them to be like "humans" to be honest, this is a carry over from a request a few people made who have since left the site.

The idea was that they would never, ever be in this 'almost human' form unless mating, sleeping or perhaps for purposes of fitting into smaller spaces. That and I believe fitting into power armor was one, which they shouldn't really need to be honest given there's so few of them around nobody would design any and they should be biologically OK to face down a bullet or two. Also, people suggested tying Anthros into this at some point for backstory, which I can't say I agree with.

The entire idea behind their species is natural evolution towards warfare from an indiscernable amount of time of civil war, it simply doesn't make sense for them to wander about in a significantly weaker form just waiting for someone to pounce on them. 98% of their time would be spent in their optimised form, it's like giving humans the option to walk around without their skin if that makes sense, it just makes them weaker with no upsides.

I can remove this for sure, perhaps just giving them the ability to lessen their most adapted forms from whatever the hell they might be (potenially quadrapetal, stingers, wings) into something vaguely humanoid, just so they can actually fit into doorways and things.
 
If you think it would make more sense to remove the shapeshifting and keep them in their "were-" form all the time that would address my concerns. Is that something you would be willing to do, and/or that you could do easily?
 
Why not just have them reverse-were? This is something that isn't a very common trait; they could naturally be rough or non-humanoid and "humanize" for short periods?

Dunno much apart from that how else to provide input that might help here.
 
I can't remove their on the fly genetic adaptation as a whole, given it is the main way they utilise themselves in combat and adapt to situations in the moment, the main boon of millenia of war, at least not without major changes. Think of it more like mutation than some sort of magical shapeshifting twilight style. It's painful, there's lots of cracked bones and it goes wrong with a fairly high number of cases, leading to insanity and death. That's the main reason they don't risk reducing their optimisation unless there's a damn good reason to.

I can, however, remove their explicit ability to become anything even resembling a humanoid form by this odd race-wide memory of what a humanoid is (which I think I will actually do regardless, it doesn't really make sense). Make it from "oh here's a batlike person now they become a huge bat monster" to "here's a huge bat monster, which can become marginally less terrifying but is still a bat monster"

To be honest, they've never seen a humanoid race (maybe bar the Pookas, which are muroidea not humanoid) so they would have no reason to prefer that sort of bipedal form in the slightest. Especially not some squishy pink thing, yuck. Their entire social structure is based around who has the biggest fangs, so to speak.

----

I would vastly prefer Legix's idea, that's essentially what I've been gunning for. You're not a humanoid that becomes a monster, you're literally a monster that maybe reduces those qualities for very short amounts of time very rarely. Even then, you might screw it up and become a Fomorian (mentioned in the faction article as a non-playable enemy species which are essentially cronenburg cthulu things which are insane and have no logical thought). Most logical Agarthans would never risk it unless they really had to, such as being captured (honestly they'd rather be executed for the reputation of their clan) or such like. They might do it for diplomatic reasons though, it might ease tensions to not sign a treaty with a huge wolf thing on the other side of the table.
 
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Okay, sounds good. Let me know when it's ready for the next look.
 
Hello! Let's see if this submission meets the requirements for inclusion in Star Army's lore...

[ X ] 1. The destination URL should be a page in the appropriate namespace and titled lower_case_with_underscores
[ ] 2. The article is in the appropriate format and article template
[ X ] 3. The article follows our wiki style guidelines, including: No forced line breaks, text after each section header, etc.
[ X ] 4. The article is easily read and free of errors in spelling and grammar
[ X ] 5. Links to other wiki articles are present as appropriate
[ ] 6. The article fits into the Star Army universe's space opera theme and technology levels
[ X ] 7. Images in the article are hosted on Star Army's wiki and sourced responsibly (contact Wes privately if there's a concern)
[ X ] 8. The article is original and doesn't contain copy-pasted content from other articles.
[ X ] 9. The article complies with Star Army's rules in terms of damage ratings, speed limits, etc.
[ ] 10. The Faction Manager(s), if applicable, have posted approval for this article in this thread.

Here's some fixes this article still needs:

1. I added a fix-me emoji where you need some text, and moved things around to match the template.
2. We need the official Legix say-so here.
3. Pretty much every problem with this article comes down to "seeds of the spirit aren't approved" The rest seems ok, but the were-stuff needs the seeds of the spirit stuff to be nailed down, and approving the seeds of the spirit may require a bit of an overhaul. You should focus on that first.

When these fixes are made, please post a reply here so I can re-check the article. Thank you!
 
RPG-D RPGfix
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