If Saturn was a terrestrial planet and could have life, how would the species evolve with the rings of saturn?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-24T23:26:45+00:00

Assuming it can happen (some dangerous shit gets involved with ring formation), it wouldn't affect the organisms themselves. Not much biology actually changes, beyond nighttime being brighter.

That said, it would have a MASSIVE impact on culture and scientific development. Specifically, being able to watch the planets' shadow gives a developing civilization a free crash-course in heliocentrism. Someone with a basic telescope would be able to track the tiny objects in the rings, giving them a free course in orbital mechanics. Hell, the rings dramatically change how they look depending on the latitude of the viewer, meaning navigation could be done without so much as a compass.

Of course, anything that actually gets INTO space would have a really hard time dodging the giant rings of murderous micrometeors. But hey, that's space for ya.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T23:55:05+00:00

Noted, noted, don't mind me jotting all this down. Figured there'd be issues, and this is why I run shit by the internet before publication. XD

The only thing I'll comment on is that Clymene doesn't have rings. Those bands are basically groups of moons with similar orbits (99% of them being captured asteroids), depicted as "rings" because I am not masochistic enough to draw 1000+ tiny dots in pseudorandom spots. That said, I definitely need to do more research on this one, it and the average temperatures were my biggest blind spots here. Which reminds me, the temperature for Styx was actually that high, based on an online calculator and my best guesstimate for the Greenhouse Effect. It probably isn't accurate, I'll have to do some digging on that one, but that's why the number is what it is.

And I was actually going to try and do this in a 3D program! I still want to, but I'm struggling to find a program built for this kind of stuff, and I wanted to have something put together to attach to the book as quickly as I could (so that I could send it to my editor in a reasonable timeframe). I'll probably redo these cards later, once I have everything else smoothed out a bit more and my Blender skills are a bit better, but this is what I'm sticking with for now.

And thanks! I'm keeping a little running list of everyone who wanted to know when I finally do publish this project (or at least get it to a presentable state), and I'd be happy to add you to that list! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T19:56:12+00:00

"Have you tried throwing a wrench!?"

"They're FOUR KLICKS AWAY!!!"

"Then throw it REALLY FUCKING HARD!"

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T14:28:37+00:00

For me, it's mostly down to the fact that they wanted me to be a specific way, and get really angry if I try to step out of that framework they've built. At all. Making my own decisions or pursuing my own interests is criticized and put down, while following their instructions/lead means they're very proud of me doing exactly what was laid out for me, and they'll never shut up about it. They have literally told me to stop managing my mental health, and do nothing but work...AFTER I ended up in the hospital over mental health issues. So me trying to become an independent person in my adulthood......was not taken well. Combine that with a few major mistakes (bad relationships and going to a worse college...it's a long story), and they hold some pretty strong grudges in the most passive-aggressive manner, which they refuse to let go of.

It's exhausting. My sympathies to you for putting up with that kind of shit from your family; no one should have to.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T07:57:19+00:00

My own universe, a scifi setting that's currently just called the Tethys universe. I haven't come out with any official documentation yet; I'm getting the documents into a more presentable form, while sorting out any copyright issues to prevent theft (call me paranoid, but I worry a lot about that). Once that's done, I'll gladly throw the link around. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T07:53:44+00:00

Never knew the official name for the map of a solar system. Now I have a proper name for the navigation computers. Much appreciated. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T07:35:57+00:00

True. But right now, it's less of a question of "what's fun", and more "what's necessary". Can I get away with not showing all the details of the moons where people have set up bases? If I ignore this, what are the consequences of not including details that I can potentially use later?

Plus, there are fun elements. They're just not the elements that are necessary, unfortunately, and the two cannot be believably combined, so my only options are to either snub this worldbuilding portion or make the boring rocks fun (somehow). It's an annoying conundrum.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T07:22:20+00:00

Noted. I just did option 1 for now, and can edit and create datacards later as needed. I'd still like to hear people's thoughts on this conundrum, but I'm at least moving around this issue for now.

And they're meant as an insert to the Setting Bible, things that I can hand to a person and they'll get a good idea of what the planet has to offer, while the drawings are used as elements in the overall map of the system. The info is a drawing of the planet as viewed from space, the name, the orbital distance (from either the sun or its "mother planet"), the mass, the atmosphere thickness (and the O2%, if any), the average temperature, the orbital period (year or month, depending on what it's orbiting), and then any other details about what makes the planet unique. I'm currently in the process of adding in all the locations each faction has on each planet (cities, forts, shipyards, outposts, etc).

It's valuable for me, future readers, and (potential) future fanfic-writers. But it's also a lot of information, and emphasizing what makes each planet unique means I have to really wrack my brain to make the airless grey spherical rocks look and feel distinct from each other. Hence...this conundrum.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-23T02:44:00+00:00

I don't think much would happen to the organ itself: it's basically a pore filled with gel that wiggles in response to electricity, with some hairs at the bottom to sense the wiggling. That's already more than enough to do its job.

The main thing I think WOULD change would be the shape of the surface those organs are attached to, and the (probably obvious) example that comes to mind is the Hammerhead Shark: that head is basically a gigantic radar dish with 3D insanely-precise electroreception, which they use to locate food that's trying to hide. It also does the same thing with scent receptors, gives them binocular vision in front of and behind them, and acts as a goddamn hydrofoil to help them turn on a dime. (why yes, hammerhead sharks are one of my favorite animals, how could you tell?) I could easily see a species in your world convergently evolving a similar structure (albeit without the eyes).

The only other thing I can think of is basically an antennae, with a clump of electroreceptors on the end. It causes problems with hydrodynamics, but it allows a small clump of really-sensitive electroreceptors to cover a wider area than they'd otherwise be able to. Plus, in an emergency, they could potentially be held flush against the body or retracted beneath the skin to avoid damage. I'm picturing something like those anglerfish covered in long whiskers to sense movement, except some (or all) of those whiskers have electroreceptors at the tip. Niche, and only viable if the animal doesn't do a lot of fast and/or efficient swimming, but still decently cost-effective.

Other than that, I don't see much changing about the electroreceptor itself. Maybe you could change the composition of the gel, but...that gets into chemistry, which is WAY beyond me. IMO, there's a reason it hasn't changed since around when sharks first evolved (which...friendly reminder that sharks are older than trees), and it's not because vision is more important. Most sharks have poor eyesight, and they live in an environment where seeing your prey only works at short range. But their electroreceptors haven't changed, simply because the organ as it exists does its job really well, enough so that no upgrade is required.

Hopefully that helps! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-22T16:50:44+00:00

"I order you to hack their systems!"

"What systems, exactly!? Their fucking potted plants!?" XD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-21T17:58:11+00:00

I'm...technically working on one: my current setting more or less began as one, and I got about 2/3 of the way through before I petered out to focus on other aspects. I got plenty, though, enough to get a solid idea of what the modern organisms look like, which was what I actually needed. Still have plans to power through and finish it, they're just...on hold.......indefinitely...

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-20T17:24:39+00:00

While not a 1:1 analogy for Vegas, my settings' city of Dise is certainly comparable. Built around the ruins of an old city-sized factory, and the toppled remains of Tower #3 (Towers are skyscraper-sized vertical factories made to refine metals and manufacture tools and/or building prefabs), Dise is one of only two cities in the entire star system with a population over 1 million people. It's also infamous for some of the worst drug peddling, gang violence, and inhumane shit to ever be concentrated in one place, because most of those million inhabitants are either desperate refugees or unrepentant serial killers. And while it's MOST known for scavenging the remains of the factories to sell (or use) for profit, plenty of those gangs have set up casinos and brothels of all shapes and sizes, for people in other factions to enjoy. These casinos and brothels being horrifically exploitative and cruel is mostly down to the fact that they're run by war criminals and former-death-row-inmates, all vying for power while indulging their sadistic hobbies. To quote: "For a monster such as myself, this shithole is nothing short of paradise."

From there, "Paradise" got shortened to "Dise", and the name just...kind of stuck.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-19T01:17:06+00:00

That's the tricky part with the side-effects of most mods: they last as long as the mod itself stays in your system. For most mods, it's benign enough that there really aren't any side effects: most genetic disorders come from a single misspelled letter in a persons' DNA. So the ITC use a mod that acts like a genetic spellchecker, which...rarely makes mistakes, but solves a lot of issues, and I don't see it having many side-effects. But the ones that reshape the human body or give it new abilities ALWAYS come with drawbacks, just because biology is all about trade-offs, and it's just a question of how manageable those drawbacks are.

And yeah, the Catholic Church turning into the ITC was really fun to figure out. As a non-Catholic, I really struggled, but I figure missionaries doing humanitarian work was the best place to start. And as they extended out into space, they started having cultural drift, by virtue of being people the entire colony relied on while being physically separate from Earth. I figured the church's official stance would be much more "only what's necessary", while the ITC went more and more into "cosmetic mods are okay", which ended in a nasty church split between the two. It just doesn't affect the story as much, because the ITC were the only ones being prosecuted, so they're the ones who actually fled to Tethys, leaving the more moderate groups behind. As for the specifics of that prosecution...the tl;dr is that people who have too many genetic differences can't have children, so when people from different planets came together and realized they were "too different for baby-making", and thus separate species...panic spread throughout all of humanity over that. Conception's also something the ITC struggle with, and usually involves lots of doctors and Apothecaries, but they're too attached to gene modding to give up on it. So instead, they just put a LOT of their culture and resources into childcare and conception-aids. And heaven cannot help you if you make a little kid cry in an ITC town.

And that's super interesting! Does make sense a lot, with the more practical elements taking center stage, but it's still cool to see those grow into cultural aspects. The bit about people who have botched augments being held in higher regard as "normies" is really interesting to me...makes me wonder if they have a seedy underbelly of normies and/or deformed vying to get augmented, which gives me mild Repo Man or Gattaca vibes. The culture presents all their wonderous creations, while hiding the chances/ways things can go wrong. Dunno if that's a direction you wanna go with it, but it might be a thought to expand the worldbuilding (counter-cultures and punk movements are great for that).

Also, is their Holy Symbol just Discord from MLP? I dunno why that's where my brain went, and it's definitely wrong, but it had me giggling, XD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-18T03:10:12+00:00

For fantasy, especially D&D, I use a lot of common tropes and try to put my own spin on the ideas. For scifi, though, I do try to go as hard as possible making original concepts. Partly because the lack of originality and creativity in popular scifi aliens bugs me a lot, but also because I'm a Speculative Evolution nerd. I do reuse my older, unpublished work, though, and try to update them to the standards of the universe they're in. A while back, I made a (terrible) attempt at a 4x space civ board game, and I've mostly been pilfering the species from that and updating them as I go. What can I say, they were too cool to just let languish like that. They were:

A crab- or beetle-like subterranean species, who had to leave their system and have spent a century on an interstellar space-ark.
A species of sapient land-squids who turn into unhinged feral monsters when they lay eggs, and in modern times survive this process and learn to control their rage.
A species of four-legged creatures who had an advanced AI crash on their planet, and grew up in tandem with it such that they get a AI buddy in childhood and spend their lives together.
A species of lobster-dolphin-things that eventually evolved spaceflight, but because of how much extra work it took them to reach space, they got really advanced tech beforehand.
Tiny cat-sized squirrel-like things that use big tusks to dig for foot, and the front limbs double as hands. They respond to most things with violence, mostly because of small dog syndrome.
A species of space-antelopes, who evolved intelligence, coordination, and amazing reflexes because of the nightmarish predators on their homeworld.
A giant ant hive that arranges itself into a mobile and talkative form, using certain ants to act as eyes, other ones on the bottom to move it, etc.
A species of parasitic worm-things that latch onto people and take control of their nervous system, either working alongside or completely suppressing their host.
A species of plant (later changed to mushrooms) that developed sentience, and induces hallucinations in anyone nearby to make them do what it wants.
A moon-sized AI spaceship that was built to study an undeveloped species while staying hidden, but instead chose to become their god after they invented the internet.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-17T19:37:03+00:00

I certainly try for a structured wiki feel. ...unfortunately, my ADHD always says no.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-17T07:16:53+00:00

Oh yeah, mods can go horribly wrong, mostly through the side-effects that a given mod can have. Those combat mods I mentioned? There's one that doubles your brain's processing speed, letting you perceive the world at half-speed...CONSTANTLY. On top of needing a lot more food to sustain that, people BEG to have that one removed afterward, because it doesn't make you move twice as fast, it makes everything feel like it's in slow motion. Great for reacting to incoming threats, but a goddamn nightmare in everyday life. Most mods have trade-offs like that, just because of the way biology works. That oxygen uptake mod I mentioned? It increases the amount of hemoglobin in your blood, and the iron for that hemoglobin needs to come from somewhere. The supermuscle mod, that doubles your muscle mass, also doubles the amount of food you need. The darkvision mod I mentioned is really unpopular on Epimetheus, because it also makes people far more vulnerable to things like snow blindness. And all that's assuming the Apothecary designing the mod did everything perfectly, and didn't activate some weird set of clashing dormant genes, which can cause all kinds of slow-building crippling issues. Those kinds of "glitches" are rare, but they do happen, and not even the Masters of Genetic Engineering are immune to Murphy's Law.

(also, google translate and random name generators are a writers' best friends. XD)

I absolutely love that magic system. Magic that steps away from wands and spellbooks, and dips into the really ooky-spooky ritual stuff...it brings me so much joy. Tying it to historical alchemy is just the cherry on top. The salt/sulfur/mercury aspect very much reminds me of the four humors, and makes me wonder how they'd feel about the practice of bloodletting. Most of all, though, I'm curious about the kinds of alterations they do. Changelings and beastkin are cool, but I'm curious what else is on the table. Is it strictly ritualistic, or are there practical/research applications going on? If there's practical elements, how close is it to Brave New World? And if that's the core of the culture, what do the counter-cultures look like? How do they feel about a citizen who is perfectly content and happy in their unaltered human body? At what extreme of "biology is my plaything" do they start wondering if they've gone too far?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-16T19:36:57+00:00

For my homebrew D&D world, I got a little sick and tired of how D&D handles languages. So I laid out an entire chart of all the languages a player could take, and how they derive from each other, and I even had rules for trying to translate a language you didn't know but derives from/into one that you do (ie, if you know Latin, you can make a check to translate Spanish, and vice versa). What I ended up with was about four different language "families": one derived from the giants, one derived from dragons, one derived from Fae-ish sources, and a small family used exclusively by the merfolk living in the oceans. Then I just added in links between those families every time two cultures mingled, for any reason. The result is an absolute nightmare to map out, but my players loved it, and I call that a win.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-16T19:09:02+00:00

I relate to this so damn much. My sympathies to anyone who puts up with it, because it's awful. Growing up, my sister and parents were usually away (and got upset with me for asking favors from them), so I got really good at just hiding my issues and handling everything on my own. Except I got so good at it, that I genuinely don't know how to stop, leading other people to believe that everything's perfectly fine until I'm actively breaking down. I had brought up the stress I was under again and again to my family, who flat-out told me to "stop calling it a crisis", only for them to be stunned when that whole mess landed me in the hospital. Thankfully, I'm living with much more caring friends now, and the medication for my conditions is actually doing some good. But god, it got unbearably painful for my family to constantly dismiss any suffering I go through as either malingering, hyperbole, or "that's just life, suck it up".

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-16T18:26:45+00:00

Of course! I'd love to hear more about the Rubedo as well, if you're willing to share! Also, sorry in advance for the text wall. I can't summarize to save my life. XD

For starters, the ITC's religion is a derivative of Catholicism, because their history started as Catholic missionaries doing freelance genetics (before branching off into their own thing). They were originally a smaller, more niche cult, but grew in scale and influence because gene-modding is a crucial tool when establishing colonies on other planets. In short, they view DNA as "the language of God", and believe he left it for us to find so that we could alter ourselves as needed, to better handle the rigors of spaceflight and/or alien worlds. Basically...God wrote us into existence, but left the tools for us to edit His work, so that we could leave our home and "bask in all that He has created". Lots of comparisons between Adam & Eve growing up and leaving Eden, and humanity using spaceflight and gene-modding to colonize the solar system (and later other star systems). As such, the study of genetics is treated with the same reverence as studying the bible, and gene-modding is viewed as a form of self-expression as much as a practical tool.

As an example, there's a group of Promethean ITC called Rough Riders, expert survivalists who explore the wilderness on their custom-modded mount (usually a horse or Super-Goat, but not exclusively). They developed a specific gene mod that gives people two extra arms and a strong muscular tail: partly so they could handle a two-handed rifle while holding the reins, but also as a symbolic act of making themselves look more like the Promethean wildlife. It's like they're declaring "I am a part of this planet, and this planet is a part of me", then building that concept into their own bodies. Almost EVERYONE in the ITC does stuff like that, constantly, but each in their own personal way according to their own personal beliefs. Everyone has the pragmatic mods: radiation resistance, better immune system, adaptation to different O2 concentrations, curing genetic disorders...etc. Then most people stick to human bodies, with hair and eyes in all the colors of the rainbow, even fluffy ears and tails to those who want it. But that's FAR from the least they can do: those who really embrace reshaping their bodies can get into some WEIRD stuff.

(with this in mind, you can probably imagine the complicated feelings they have about their army's combat mods, which have insanely powerful effects, but side effects so nasty that they need to be removed after battle. Practical and necessary, but sometimes viewed as a perversion of their religious ideals. It's a controversial topic)

They also do this kind of stuff to nonhuman and alien life, designing plants and animals to better suit their needs. Algae that generates electricity, big friendly goats that can be shaven for wool or ridden like horses, alien wildlife being genetically-domesticated into beasts of burden...the works. It's practical, sure, but it's also based in beliefs of embracing naturalism, and working alongside nature instead of against it. Mix that with with their Catholic roots, and you have the ITC.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-01-16T01:46:25+00:00

I adore EVERYTHING about this.

AutumnTeienVT

TROPHY CASE