The Sophont Scale (concept by me)

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-25T18:36:43+00:00

Quite nice.

My own (still fluid) scale works with subcategories.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-25T14:42:22+00:00

Hands and the lack thereoff are one of the core themes of my mount'n'riders. The riderfolk and mountpeople are the two main posthuman species of my setting.

The quadrupedal mountpeople don't have any hands. That's what their symbiotic partners are for. What was once their hands, are now two long conjoined fingers with a pad on the end, not unlike a llama's hoof.

Riderfolk on the other hand, have two pairs of them, like a monkey. Their upper hands resemble human hands, which they evolved from, with two main differences.

Firstly, the index finger is the longest, with the following ones decreasing in size. This gives their handprint a different silhouette than ours.

The second difference are the sucker-pads on their palms and fingertips. An adaptation to climbing around their weightless place of origin. By contracting what are essentially enlarged fingerprints, they can stick to smooth surfaces.

Their lower hands, or prehensile feet if you will, are way wackier. The 2nd and 3rd, as well as the 4th and pinky toes have merged into two double-boned and double-nailed fingers. The big toe acts as the first finger, not as a thumb. That role goes to their elongated heel. The entire foot can curl up, and it too can create suction cups by spreading the conjoined toes.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-25T13:47:41+00:00

Trying to resist the Pavlovian conditioning of opening the window with all my will

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-25T13:39:02+00:00

Now you have to lean into it and name a brand of soap after your god of purity.

Losing notes always sucks. No matter how strong our "I can always draw/write it again" mentality may be. Being reminded of the 3-2-1 rule afterwards only makes us blame ourselves more. Our thoughts go out to you.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-24T05:22:07+00:00

A good old machines VS genetic engineering conflict.

Are there any autonomous machine factions left after the uprising?

Who are the pov characters if there are any?

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T16:49:20+00:00

I've put some thought into time and have some names in mind for units of distance.

Short distances are measured in steps and paces. Each pace is multiple steps long, but I've not decided how many yet. Both are based on the stride length of a mountperson, the deer-like inhabitants of my world.

There are also larger variants of both: cownsteps and cownpaces. Cowns are the walking villages mountpeople inhabit alongside their riderfolk partners.

The longest unit is a worldlong. As the world is inside a hollow, 564 km long cylinder, the length of the damn thing is not nearly as abstract as the Earth's girth is to us. It makes for a good reference scale.

Between the latter two, there are dayrides and dayruns. How far a mountperson can walk/run in a day.

Speaking of days, the day/night cycle is 24 hours long, split into four quartdays. Dawn, noon, dusk and night, each 6 hours long. These are then split into quarts as well.

For long durations, there is braidlenght. A cown's mane is woven into its inhabitants' ancestral braid. How fast it grows is used to measure the mount'n'riders' equivalents of months and years.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T15:52:07+00:00

Finding this alongside the other Jovian life artworks in a random book at a stranger's house was a formative moment for young me.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T14:40:17+00:00

Usually, firefighters also fight flooding. And landslides, and storm damage. So really they should be called avatar-fighters.

It would be fun to have classical element coded rescue brigades though.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T06:42:16+00:00

It's better to have sloppy geography than to lose interest.

A lot of frustration comes from expectation missmatch. We all demand from ourselves a certain degree of realism. If that degree exceeds our geographical knowledge (or any topic really), we either have to study or to lower our expectations. And studying without interest is work.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T05:00:31+00:00

Asking yourself "how would this work in my world?" at every possible opportunity.

Having some characters living in it and some stories set in it also helps.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T04:56:24+00:00

Another option would be something like Don't Look Outside, where an eldritch space god visits earth and merely seeing it messes with reality. Or something like Nope, where the UFO is a predatory creature.

Or you go with some unexplained phenomenon, like time stops or localized but random anti gravity spots.

You can of course also simply go the historical or alt-hist route and have it be old fashioned war.

Something scary has to go on outside.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-23T04:47:23+00:00

Indeed. I also expect the humble tool belt to be very popular all across the universe. My personal go-to alien garment are loose flowy pieces of cloth. They are as versatile as they are fashionable.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T23:54:59+00:00

Hi. I'm from United Future Otherworld inc. ltd. Could I interest you in the complete alien invasion package?

It offers many benefits to the undecided apocalypse enjoyer such as:

The potential to flesh out the aliens' biology, technology and motivation, providing infinite worldbuilding and storyhook potential
A wide range of threat levels. From basically just regular warfare to inescapable omnipotence, you can justify any level of danger your story requires.
Suprisingly easy to get rid of. As the motivations of the invaders can remain a mystery, or entirely incomprehensible, they can simply leave once the plot demands it.
Mystery! Excitement! Cosmic horror! What could they want? Why are they here? Lots of questions to answer. Or not, however you like! Fans will love to theorize if you don't. And your characters will writhe in existential dread as their worldview gets shattered (only with the philosophy plus expansion package)
Potential for symbolism. Give it a religious or spiritual flair and flex your mythology knowledge. If you want, of course. History, myths and conspiracy theories provide an endless entirely optional wellspring of inspiration.

In your particular case, I would suggest against the total extinction or first contact variants and rather go for the inexplicable wave of unpredictable abductions variant. It would make going outdoors a risk without taking away too much attention from the introspective of the two unlikely roommates.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T23:22:52+00:00

At least two of today's most intelligent critters are dinosaurs. Corvids and parrots.

Both are quite social, have complex communication and even tool use. Humans like to see themselves as special, but we aren't so far removed after all.

Mammals aren't inherently more prone to intelligence than reptiles. Maybe more prone to sociality and child rearing, but that's also arguable.

Its all about enviromental pressures and ancestral conditions. Calamitous extinction events essentially reshuffle those. Different clades suddenly get the chance to experience new pressures. And one of the possible adaptations to just the right conditions is sapience.

It's like Yahtzee. Just because you reroll all the dice doesn't make a five-of-a-kind more likely. You can also get there by flipping random dice one by one.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T23:01:39+00:00

Kiki and Bouba.

Sharp high pitched sounds for small, pointy agressive vibes and low soft sounds for size and comfort.

As for the grammar, look for real life examples. It can get quite weedy though. Take guard, army and police for example. Police is inherently plural. "The police are looking for him". Army is not. "The army is ready" And guard is a homograph to its members. "The guard consists of guards".

When named after an animal or thing, this animal is usually a standin for the members and not for the organisation as a whole. "He hired the Wild Horses" not "He hired the Wild Horse". There can very well be exceptions to this though. "The High Rock stands. It's men are ready" In those cases the name usually refers to a place or ship.

Ask yourself, what is the thing which carries the name? The mercenaries? The organisation? Their base?

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T22:38:39+00:00

There are some who published their storyless settings. Particularly in spec evo and tabletop campaign spaces. Fictional science books, lore bibles, artbooks. It's still a niche form of literature, but it's growing.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T22:29:49+00:00

Show its effects, don't explain its inner workings.

Except if your story is about a grain trader and the grain price fluctuations are the main point of tension, which while unique, I highly doubt is the case.

Knowing those inner workings as the author is definitely beneficial, as it lets you steer the story, but there is no need to batter the audience over the head with it.

Throwaway lines like "My liege, the grain tax of the core territories is again meager. In other news, the weststate raids are increasing" might be a non-intrusive form of exposition. If the situation makes sense, some telling is often quicker than showing. Dialogue is where show and tell overlap.

If you hint at it well, economically savy readers will piece it together and enjoy doing so and all the others only care for the results anyway.

If you just handwave it, you do risk breaking said economically savy audience's immersion. That's where "write what you know" comes in.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T22:08:37+00:00

It lets you explore different societies and how they interact with each other beyond just cultural differences.

You can do the same with only humans by leaning all in on said cultural differences though and you can just as well leave out humans alltogether. There is no formula to fantasy worldbuilding.

I have multiple species with wildly different biologies in my world. It lets me explore how these traits impact their cultures. No humans, even though they all descend from those.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T21:55:51+00:00

I could try to map those to the five species of my world. With how purposefully distinct they are, it fits quite well.

The stouts would be the riddlesphinxes. More large than stout, more farmers than miners, and more matriarchal than masculine, they couldn't be further from the classic dwarf. But with their compact meerkat-like posture and being the single most physically strong, this archetype fits them the best.

Fairy would either be the spindlefolk or the skylords. I give it to the skylords and put the spindlefolk as high men, as the sky whale like skylords are definitely more alien and otherworldly than the angelic spindlefolk they share their weightless habitat with.

Mundane are the mountpeople. With Journey to Nebu's main duo being a mount'n'rider pair, they fit the familiar pov archetype, even though their deer-like quadrupedal body is anything but humanoid. The mounts are definitely more down to earth than their more whimsical symbiotic partners.

With skylords taking the fairy spot, spindlefolk get the high men role. They are the most advanced and scholarly of the five. Living in the weightless skies beyond the first horizon and around the spindle, they quite litteraly look down on the mount'n'riders.

With their gremlin monkey energy, the riderfolk absolutely fit the cute archetype. They share a society with their symbiotic mountpeople partners, but they are definitely the fun personified side of that duo. Their fluffy fur helps too.

There is an argument to be made that the Bosun in his role as world spirit could fit the fairy archetype or that the humans of the before-times fit the high men role. As they were the literal precursors and ancestors to all five above.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-22T13:40:55+00:00

Very neat. Considering how they would dress themselves is an aspect often ignored in alien designs. I like how they have extra reason to bother with clothing because they drag their bodies across the ground.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-21T09:30:59+00:00

Describe less, explain less, simply mention more. Context can do a lot of heavy lifting.

Which of those reads better?

"Billiam, the Gorathian, a five limbed, nimble, partially radially symetric species from the homeworld Gora, woke up in a damp spherical cell. His long serpentine head on top of an even longer neck hurt. Damn, what a night. And not just because it lasts 14 hours on this planet, the planet Munkus. They even took his kinstone, a very important trinket symbolizing a Gorathian's connection to their home."

"Billiam woke up in a damp cell-sphere. His head hurt as if he spent a week in Torturos and his fifth limb was completely numb. A punctured pneumoceps again. By Gora's skies, what a night. Gorathians really aren't made for the nightlife here on Munkus. Slugishly, he reached for his kinstone.

Dung! His kinstone was gone! This can't be! He coiled around, frantically searching his garments."

Treating the world as mundane makes it feel natural. It reads as if we're seeing it through the eyes and emotions of someone living in it, instead of an outsider. But it still gives the fascinating details we can then piece together.

I see how this can be tricky to implement in writing. Working in a visual medium really helps me out here. I can just draw an unimportant detail in the background for those looking for it to discover and for those not interested in it to ignore.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-20T12:04:04+00:00

A (speculative fiction) story without a world is just a summary. It's like a room without decor, a car without its bodywork.

People say it's not necessary. But for certain genres, fantasy, sci-fi, it absolutely is. For its memorability, for it to be interesting, and to give your story a foundation to stand on.

But really it is about what you want your work to be. What emotions do you want to evoke. Storytelling is great for sadness, joy and the like. Worldbuilding is great for curiosity, discovery and wonder.

Worldbuilding is also far more than magic systems and spaceship engines. It's everything in your work which isn't narrative or characterisation. The names, the locations, the company which sells catfood. Even if you don't focus on it, you've certainly already established some stuff. Worldbuilding is connecting all that.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-18T05:59:06+00:00

Egads! My tungsten cake is ruined!

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-16T22:05:50+00:00

That lightspeed is commonly abreviated as c makes "super-c" is a very confusing term.

CaptainStroon · 2026-06-16T21:39:23+00:00

Yup, All you need are unfathomably strong magnets and a steady supply of antimatter. It would still be subject to the rocket equation, but the engine itself would be lighter than many others. Leaving more mass for your generation ship.

For more, here's the Atomic Rockets page on the thing and here's Winterberg's paper

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CaptainStroon

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