Road to Hope

[Jakob]

Make them grayish brown and this is almost identical to how I imagine them to be.

Some ethnic groups are. Ikun is about 70% blue though.

[Jakob]

Version alpha 1.2.0. I made some outlines of the mandible and zygomatic arch (which unlike humans kind of flairs out) and cranium. Relative to the human skull, the jaw and nose are shunted forward onto a snout and the cranium drops down into the free space, eliminating the need for a giant dome-like forehead like humans have (how they wear helmets and hats is still something I can only speculate on). I also made the teeth a little better. Not perfect but the best I can do with a pencil and paper and my hand.

But the main accomplishment was rejigging the brain so it isn't jutting into where the mandible (and throat!) should be. I think the brain may be a bit too conservative in this iteration, but I think digital tools are better to fix that.



I think this one is a she and the first one was a he. Idk why, it's just the vibe.

[Jakob]

Iteration Beta 1.1. You may throw popcorn now. I've tweaked the eye orientation and tooth placement, added the tongue, and clarified some of the facial bones.

[Jakob]

Beta 1.2. I moved the eye from the snout to the face (wtf was it doing there?!) clarified the cranial bones, and tried to fix the shitty perspective with the ears (pointing straight back from the center of the head?! wtf). oh and...more realistic pupil+iris size (I think?)

Still hate the ears and tongue. I'm shit at this.

[Jakob]

I actually made a post on this several months ago, but it was kind of slapdash, badly organized, and missing a lot of details on what the hell they actually eat in Ikun. And I was inspired by this post to do better (but am I gonna draw any of this? maybe, maybe not.). So anyway, the redux:

Kyanah are obligate carnivores, a fact which obviously influences their diet to a strong degree. Virtually all of their calories come from some form of meat, eggs, or other animal products; while some plant matter can be safely consumed, they derive little or no energy from it and would eventually starve if placed on a vegetarian diet for some reason. Thus plant-based foods are usually only added in small amounts to meat-based dishes for flavor or micro-nutrients (which could usually be gotten from meat as well). Depending on the region, animal products are around 87-98% of the average Kyanah's diet, depending on the region. Naturally, leafy greens are taboo in many cultures, including Ikun’s, and generally have an emetic effect.

In primitive times, Kyanah would obviously eat whatever fauna they could find that was native to the area. While their evolutionary niche is pursuit predation and pack hunting of large herbivores (100-1000 kg) and megafauna (>1000 kg), small (<10 kg) and medium-sized (10-100 kg) animals have traditionally been eaten all over the planet in areas with few or no endemic megafauna. Most cultures are not squeamish about eating virtually any part of the animal, and such parts as organs, eggs, and bone marrow are often actively liked, even by children.

The great North-South divide extends (and to some degree stems from) a difference in food choices, with Northern hemisphere cultures generally eating mainly warm-blooded straight-walkers, while Southern hemisphere cultures more commonly eat cold-blooded sprawl-walkers. However, virtually every other class of animal is at least occasionally eaten by some culture somewhere in the world. Wingbeasts--quadrupedal flying creatures whose membrane like wings fold up on the ground, allowing them to walk on all fours--and watermeat (most commonly neuz, resembling amphibious snakes and lepospondyls) have been caught by opportunistic peasants for thousands of years, and even in modern industrialized times, make their way into some dishes.
#Ikun Food

Ikun is a melting pot city-state with hundreds of specialty stores and restaurants selling food from all regions of the world--with varying degrees of authenticity--but has its own mainstream cuisine as well. More than 100 animal species can be found at these establishments, if you count specialty ethnic stores, though only a few are very common. There’s a common joke saying that Ikun has the highest biodiversity on the planet for this very reason.

In modern times, the proliferation of industrial farming has made fresh meat from the choice species widely available all over the world, and of course even before that, Kyanah brought their livestock with them to countless regions as they expanded across the planet. It’s thus unsurprising that the two most commonly consumed fauna in Ikun (and the rest of the northern hemisphere, as a matter of fact), nyrud and tyukrud, are not native to anywhere near Ikun. However, some of the native animals domesticated by the indigenous pre-historic populations of Ikun’s oasis, the onikagi and the nyonitakor, though these were considerably smaller (roughly sheep-sized and medium dog-sized respectively) than the 300 kilogram tyukrud or the 1.5 ton nyrud.

Kyanah don’t particularly like sugar or sweet foods in general, and don’t have the same biological, instinctive affinity for sugar sources that humans do. It seems that in general, affinity for sugar is, as on Earth, correlated with herbivory. Also, angiosperms don’t exist, and thus neither do fruits, so it’s very unlikely to find something sweet in nature in the first place. Thus the concept of a dessert is largely something that never evolved–things like eggs, brains, and organs are more seen as treats instead. It probably doesn’t help that some rather dangerous bacteria in rotting meat produce saccharin as a by-product. All in all, anything sweet would likely provoke very different neurological reactions than in humans.
Basics

Given that the Kyanah are obligate carnivores, a meal can be as simple as a nyrud or tyukrud or onikagi steak slathered in spices with a blood-based sauce to dip it in, making this a very basic and easy option, something that a pack would make after getting back from work and being tired. Or a whole nyrud rib can be shared by an entire pack, passing it around and taking turns biting out of it. That said, there is plenty of potential for things to get more complicated, at least to an extent. Many of these terms refer to general concepts that are made in many different ways with different ingredients, rather than one thing.
Handfuls

The nazuh (“handful”) is quite a common staple seen in both homes and restaurants all over Ikun. Many strips or chunks of any sort of meat and sauce can be wrapped up in thin slices of (usually hot) roast nyrud. This can be as simple as one meat and some basic black sauce shoved into a plain roast nyrud wrapping, or the wrapping can be made fancy and three or four animals put inside it. Usually other meats, often tyukrud or nyonitakor, are used inside, though nyrud is, ironically enough, a popular option. As the existence of the meta handful nazuhnaz goes to show–boiled chunks of nyrud eggs, hearts, and regular flesh with a nyrud blood sauce and seasoning derived from dried and powdered nyrud jerky.
Salads

Another staple, rudket, appears to be translated as “salad” though this translation may be rather dubious as there are no vegetables to be found; it's only inferred through the tendency to call human salads koni rudket hadag (roughly "rubbish salad"). The base is instead ground meat, though other ingredients used may include the eggs of various species, and even–in certain mixtures–tubers or fungi or immature spore pods. This isn’t really a sign of omnivory, even hypercarnivores occasionally eat things other than meat, but with the Kyanah, it’s more about taste and texture than any real nutritional value. Some of the common salads include the two-egg salad (cold, made from nyrud and tyukrud eggs), the zizgran salad (hot, made from ground onikagi and nyonitakor meats, and sometimes nyrud, though purists will insist that makes it something different, with trace garnish of shredded hehkdza tubers), and the Ronyr salad (cold, with nyrud and tyukrud meat and nyrud brains). Naturally these dishes often come with various sauces and are more concepts, not individual recipes.
Fancy stuff

The feast of generations (koni uzrud hakdor) is a bit fancier, but entails boiled onikagi eggs stuffed into an onikagi stomach, especially if that stomach belongs to the mother of the eggs, though that is mostly for the memes and technically, any onikagi stomach will do. The stomach of a tyukrud, a larger creature, can be stuffed with pretty much any meat, or even whole nyonitakors (at least hatchlings, or some of the smaller species that can be rat-sized) and shared by an entire pack. Dakenr, which refers to a brain drenched in egg whites and blood and baked whole, appears to be considered quite fancy as well–brains are in general seen as kind of a treat, and rather expensive seeing as most livestock have rather limited brain matter, but the demand for organs actually isn’t that much lower than normal flesh. The concept of sausages appears to have been coincidentally invented by the Kyanah as well, though it isn’t as common in Ikun as in some city-states.
##Condiments

Sauces and spices are in general quite common in Ikun food. These sauces can be based on blood, such as black sauce, with an aged nyrud blood base, or blue sauce, with tyukrud blood as the base. Akoryah sauce, from the city-state of Alkoryah, is popular in Ikun, being based on tyukrud egg yolks and fat plus spices, though the actual product sold in Ikun is heavily modified for Ikun palates and no Kyanah from Alkoryah would be caught dead putting it on anything. Many spices in Ikun tend to come from the boreal scrublands or Meatbucket region, but a few are native to the general Rktakian Kuardniet region. The biochemical mechanism that causes a spicy sensation appears to be quite different from mammals, with different active molecules. Capsaicin, in particular, has little or nothing to do with any of their spices, as will be seen later.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, even meat itself can be used as a condiment. Lower-grade meats are sometimes dried, powdered, and used as a condiment on other dishes. Wingbeast membranes–somewhere between bat and pterosaur wings–are most commonly used for this purpose.
##Snacks

Fried bits of wingbeast membrane–given a crunchy texture by said frying–flavored bone marrow, and jerky-like strips of dried and salted meat–the latter of which was once a key staple of peasants the world over (in the time between the agricultural and industrial revolutions, fresh meat would have been a luxury) but not so much in the modern era–are common snack items. Meat cubes, consisting of one or more ground meats stuck together with eggs and sticky sauce and shaped into a cube, and sometimes subsequently fried, can be eaten as either a snack or full meal, depending on their size, though these are more often a side, or a hatchling’s meal–the same with actual wingbeast meat and organs, and foods derived from it in general.
##Drinks

Notably, Kyanah require just 15-20% of the daily water intake of an equivalently sized human, and much of this can come from their food. They thus don’t need to drink standalone liquids very often, but still can and do, especially during hot weather or physical activity.

As Kyanah biochemistry uses water as a solvent, they do naturally drink water more than anything else. Packs with a lot of money are often water snobs who will pay a premium for water that was bottled in some particular city-state, usually one with historical or religious significance, or just one that has a particularly nice mineral profile--despite the fact that any mineral profile can be created synthetically, and the Water Distribution System tends to mix water from different regions anyway. Flavor packets are commonly used to enhance the flavor of water; these tend to be savory and gamey–sometimes created from meat juices–or even bitter, rather than sweet.

In addition to using blood as a sauce base, it’s quite common to just drink it straight up, especially nyrud blood. In Ikun, chilled nyrud blood is considered to be very refreshing. In colder regions, it can be conversely served hot with spices during the winter months. Sometimes things can be left to soak or be dipped in the blood: jerky strips, sliced bones with the marrow inside, or–as with Ikun-Kargan fusion, even a sausage of some sort. This may be the closest thing in their culture to juice, which most Kyanah probably wouldn’t like, and couldn’t even be produced due to a lack of spermatophytes.
Ethanol

It appears that ethanol has a fairly similar effect on Kyanah as on humans and alcoholic beverages have thus existed for thousands of years–as a very simple molecule, its effects would likely be similar for any species that are carbon-based, breathe oxygen, and drink water. However, the means of creating the Kyanahs' alcoholic drinks is quite different; it relies on strains of microbes unique to their planet that produce alcohol from amino acids rather than carbs or sugars. Naturally, this means that most such drinks are produced from "fermented" meat or blood. Roontkak, made from tyukrud blood, is the most popular alcoholic drink, both in Ikun and the broader world.

The Kyanah have also been able to replicate this process using plant-based proteins found in tubers, nuts, and fungi. This process was discovered a few thousand years after the meat-based alcohols and tends to produce a slightly weaker drink–3-4% alcohol is common–but it's rarer and harder to make, so tends to carry a connotation of culture and sophistication, while something like roontkak is seen as a lowbrow drink for the masses. Possibly somewhat analogous to beer in terms of its cultural role, though typically about 8-10% alcohol.

Common plant-derived alcoholic drinks include roontyeti, from the tubers of the tyeti plant, and roonherkdza, from the spore pods of the herkdza bush. These tend to have spread to Ikun's region of the world from the far north and far south, where suitable plants for making alcohol are more common. Either alcohol category can be distilled to create the Kyanah version of hard liquors, which are usually denoted by the suffix -tyot (roughly "strong" or "dominant" in this context), with alcohol typically in the 20-50% range.
##Drugs

Additionally, capsaicin is a psychoactive and moderately addictive drug to Kyanah, with a sizable chunk of the population smoking the dried and powdered skins of various endoskeleton plants that have evolved to use capsaicin to deter herbivores. It is quite toxic to many sprawl-walkers and basal taxa of straight-walkers, as it can damage the neurotransmitters of many life forms with one and two cored brains. However, it does not feel spicy to life forms on the Kyanah homeworld as they don’t have any ion channels from the TRP family seen in terrestrial animals; perception of spiciness instead comes through a family of sulfide ion channels that don’t even exist in Earth life. That being said, it clearly interacts with neurotransmitters in some way even in higher life forms like the Kyanah themselves, causing general alertness, euphoria, and arousal at low doses, and insomnia, lightheadedness, and hallucinations (“floating stars”) at high ones.

Smoking capsaicin is very widespread in Ikun, despite the very real risks of addiction, scarring the lung tissue, and potentially destroying the tracheal sieve with long term use. The general public is largely indifferent to the health risks, though advanced medicine up to and including growing new lungs may have something to do with this. Roughly 60-70% of Ikun’s adult population smokes at least occasionally, and doing so in public areas and workplaces is common and widely accepted; even some of the larger space stations have designated areas for it. For some reason, pipes appear to be more in fashion than rolls of paper.

In southern hemisphere cultures, it's more common to mix capsaicin-rich substances into a tea and get high that way, though this opens up its own can of worms. Such mixtures usually contain no more than 2% actual capsaicin; purified industrial-grade capsaicin is much stronger and more addictive and restricted by many governments, who believe that they degrade the productivity of citizens. Many individuals can hallucinate at high doses, especially with the high-purity mixtures.

As Ikun is in a seasonal plains biome, the beginning of the dry season is marked by large semi-annual fungal blooms that break down the dying vegetation from the wet season. Many packs can be seen making their way out of the crater to hunt for wild fungi. Given their diet, it’s no surprise that these Kyanah are generally not looking for edible fungi, but rather the other kind. A couple of psychoactive species have been introduced to the region, though neither are native.

There is no minimum age for substance use (nor any minimum age to do anything else, since adulthood is determined solely by separation from the birth-pack, regardless of the age) in most Kyanah societies, so it's up to the adults in a young Kyanah's birth-pack whether they can access these items. However, it's seen as perfectly normal in Ikun society for older children and adolescents to be given small amounts of alcohol or some of the milder capsaicin variants on festive occasions, to partake with the adults.
#Beyond Ikun

<Probably gonna fill this in later, idk how much detail I want to go into>
#Food Culture
##Utensils

Kyanah in most societies typically don't use personal utensils, instead simply taking food with their hands; at most they use ladles or tongs to take food from serving dishes. Rather than using their teeth or knives, they typically use their powerful neck muscles to rip away bite-sized chunks of whatever they are eating, as they evolved to do. In formal dining environments, eating gloves are used to keep their hands clean, but at home or in more casual venues, nobody really cares.

Kyanah also notably don’t sip fluids in the same manner as humans, due to their non-mammalian lips, instead using a lapping motion. Thus cups don’t really exist, instead being replaced by shallow drinking bowls. One may see bottles being used for efficient storage, but they are meant to pour their contents into a drinking bowl before consuming them.

Due to having such bulky tails that make up a nontrivial proportion of their body weight, sitting in human-like chairs never really caught on in most cultures. In Ikun, the norm is to recline on cushions or great cushions, somewhat akin to an ancient Roman triclinium while eating.
##Dining

The concept of eating with individuals who are not in their pack would be very strange and alien to most Kyanah. As discussed, they tend not to form emotional bonds across pack lines, and would thus have little reason to want to eat with outsiders. On the contrary, packs themselves always eat together, much as they do everything else together. The usual human trope of having important business meetings over a meal isn’t present here (though in some cultures, such meetings may take place in the context of two packs playing some competitive game or sport against each other, or in the southern hemisphere, mass-worship sessions). Simply put, when interactions with outsiders are generally transactional, if not outright adversarial, it’s perhaps best for a pack to avoid them entirely when they are weak and in need of sustenance. Most Kyanah won't absolutely refuse to eat if outsiders happen to incidentally be around (at least in Ikun–some Western Sector and Kuayen cultures would beg to differ), but all else being equal, most will prefer to have only the company of their own packs.

Nevertheless, institutions that humans would call restaurants and bars still exist, as many packs want good food without having to make it themselves, though the atmosphere is highly different. Usually there will be a bunch of stalls where diners can sit and eat while being walled off from other Kyanah while still providing a good view of the kitchen via a curtain or window so they can keep an eye on their food being prepared. Mid-range establishments will usually just have the food and drinks, and few other amenities, while higher end ones have more elaborate measures to draw in diners and justify their price points, from ornate cushions, aromatic sprays, and elaborate light displays all the way to live music, holographic movies, and other performances like reenactments of historic duels and combat challenges, which diners can either open their window to get a good look at or ignore and eat in peace. However, the rise of fast food establishments like DakDakDak (lit. FastFastFast) and drone deliveries after the Utopian Wars have done a number on the lie-down dining seen in Ikun and most developed city-states in general.

The one exception to the general dynamic at restaurants and bars would be those that cater to the packless; these are set up to encourage rather than discourage interaction, as their entire purpose is for young adult Kyanah who have recently separated from their birth-packs to find love for themselves. To this end, such establishments have elaborate sets of rituals and social rules to attract the attention of other individuals. But it’s not customary for already established packs to eat there or enter such spaces–and may be quite rude for them to do so unless they’re looking to import more packmates–and they tend to be a bit seedy anyway.
#General Notes on Taste

No doubt, few if any humans would appreciate Kyanah food, whether from Ikun or elsewhere. Even in the occupied city-states on Earth, few have even bothered to taste it. For instance, nazuh nyrud is a super common meal in Ikun, you see homemade variants, frozen ones, fast food ones, probably even fancy ones, but like the closest analog to human terms is like if you took some strips of steak, slathered them in some kind of spicy mayonnaise–perhaps the closest thing to Akoryah sauce, they are both made from egg yolks and (animal) oil–and wrapped it all in some huge thin slices of roast beef. And it would be some shade of dull blue to bluish brown when cooked depending on how well done it is.

And since vertebrates on their planet store calcium in their muscles, not their bones, using extremely saturated hyper-metalloproteins that also serve as structural tissue, most muscle tissue is probably pretty close to 1% metal by weight. And given that Kyanah jaws and bite force didn't become much weaker just because they learned to cook food--around 350-400 psi maximum versus 160 for humans--one can presumably deduce that it would be extremely tough and chewy even when cooked. Perhaps a consequence of the previous fact, or perhaps due to the planet being 1.4G. And the spices wouldn't even do anything to human TRP channels.

So, weird-looking in both composition and presentation, bland, metallic, and very chewy is ultimately how it would taste to the average human. And then the presence of 12 amino acids that don't exist in Earth life would be noticed by the human digestive system, and the food would make a spectacular exit in one direction or the other, with little or no gain in calories, assuming they didn't spit it out first.Kyanah are obligate carnivores, a fact which obviously influences their diet to a strong degree. Virtually all of their calories come from some form of meat, eggs, or other animal products; while some plant matter can be safely consumed, they derive little or no energy from it and would eventually starve if placed on a vegetarian diet for some reason. Thus plant-based foods are usually only added in small amounts to meat-based dishes for flavor or micro-nutrients (which could usually be gotten from meat as well). Depending on the region, animal products are around 87-98% of the average Kyanah's diet, depending on the region. Naturally, leafy greens are taboo in many cultures, including Ikun’s, and generally have an emetic effect.

[Jakob]

Internet Culture
Nodes
The technical structure of the Kyanah internets (there is not one global one) is discussed elsewhere, but it, combined with their general psychology and social structures, has massively changed how it functions on a day-to-day basis. The use of queries and query adapters mean that getting to whatever node happens to be most relevant for a particular purpose is more common than being a regular on a particular node. The general idea is for users to decide what they are looking for (or looking to post) at the moment and let query programs find the most optimal node rather than go to a specific node. Many Kyanah thus don’t even bother to memorize or otherwise take note of specific node paths (in human terms, URLs that lead to specific websites). If they want whatever content a node offers again in the future, they’ll be drawn to it again in due course. Though there are certainly exceptions to this sentiment.

A lot of this ties into how pack-centric and generally disinterested in bonding with anyone outside their packs Kyanah tend to be, to the point that even participating in what humans would call “social media” is, ironically enough, simply not perceived as a social activity. The term social media doesn’t even exist, with such spaces instead being called extremely multithreaded nodes. They can be considered online versions of story-threads (even if they are not always, or even usually, being used to tell a story) where participation is instead just building something that others also happen to be building, like taking a stone, stacking it on a pre-existing pile, and moving on.

Which is not at all to say that memes, trolling, shitposting, and inane garbage don’t exist, because they very much do in their own way. Large-scale coordinated acts to change the topic and theme of a particular node can also be quite annoying, because they may lead the parent to change the metadata to reflect the new composition, drawing in more packs querying to engage with the new topic, creating a nasty feedback loop, and many node operators can be quite strict to nip such trolling in the bud.

However, in Net Zone 1 (which Ikun is a part of), and several others, it tends to be bad netiquette to hang around the same node for a long time and edit it over and over, unless you happen to be the node operator, though in most cases it’s fine to return eventually, and when and how often depends a lot on the net zone and the individual node. You find the most relevant node for what you want to say, you say it, and the next time you want to say something, you find the most relevant node for that. Otherwise, others may spam demands for you to “get a node”, as in "stop hogging this node and go edit your own". Just to make things more confusing, "get a node" can also be a signal of unironic appreciation of a piece of content, as in "you should get your own node so you can put all your work in one place for others to find". In any case, nodes, even those that can be edited by the public like a human forum or wiki, are fundamentally not online communities, anything that humans would recognize as such is quite scarce on public internets.
Node Operators

As a result of all this, the online landscape is far more fragmented, even within individual net zones, than the modern human internet, without most traffic being funneled into a few ultra-popular nodes (or in human terms, sites). Content creators, even very influential and well-known ones, still exist in this landscape and can theoretically make a profession out of it; they are called node operators (getan was originally a slangy abbreviation, but over the decades has become widely accepted). In practice, this looks like somewhere between influencer and webmaster, in human terms. Some node operator packs freely attach their names and faces to their nodes and use them to broadcast their lives to the public for views, while others are more anonymous. Some use their nodes for information, news, entertainment, humor, creating an extremely multithreaded node that other packs who pass by can edit, maintaining a bridge node that mirrors important nodes from foreign net zones, or just doodling random shit online with little or no regard for who actually sees it (a good chunk of packs who own a node seem to just use it as some sort of online scrapbook and don’t do much else with it).

This is not to say that large companies don’t have their place. Not only can they often be found operating expensive, shallow-depth nodes close to a net zone’s root, but many large internet companies operate chains of many disparate nodes spread out across the tree to maximize revenue. Others operate node franchises, allowing other node operators to use their branding, node design, and code base for a fee and/or cut of the node profits.
Identities
You rarely find lone individual Kyanah on any net zone, unless, perhaps, they are packless–yet another consequence of pack atomicity. In every southern hemisphere net zone, and over half the northern ones, including Net Zone 1, it is customary for an entire pack to share a singular account, and when actually posting anything, don’t bother indicating which individual is responsible. It’s not like which pair of hands physically typed the words is generally considered relevant, after all. Since Kyanah packs aren’t hive minds, it’s thus quite possible for the same account to randomly change its writing style, interests, and even opinions and beliefs for no apparent reason. Though Kyanah netizens of course know what’s up and are unphased by such shifts.

A few net zones (3, 18, and 19), generally in cultures leaning heavily to the atomized side of the spectrum, like the Western Sector, have a less extreme solution where individuals do have distinct identities, but they also have two usernames, an individual one and a pack one, and accounts with the same pack username are closely tied together.

[funkervogt]

Flooding the Qattara Depression would have more consequences than that. Here's a good YouTube video, and the Comments are just as valuable:

[funkervogt]

If the Kyanah are really so smart, then they would link the Qattara Depression to the Mediterranean with underground tunnels rather than using nuclear weapons to blast open a surface canal, and they'd use some kind of advanced energy source to desalinate the water before it reached the Depression.

Also, why don't they also fill other below sea level basins across the world?
https://geology.com/below-sea-level/

[Jakob]

Flooding the Qattara Depression would have more consequences than that. Here's a good YouTube video, and the Comments are just as valuable:

I'm aware. They would presumably have some plan to desalinate incoming water in the long run. But that's a problem for years and decades down the line.

[Jakob]

If the Kyanah are really so smart, then they would link the Qattara Depression to the Mediterranean with underground tunnels rather than using nuclear weapons to blast open a surface canal, and they'd use some kind of advanced energy source to desalinate the water before it reached the Depression.

That would take years and thousands of workers.

Also, why don't they also fill other below sea level basins across the world?
https://geology.com/below-sea-level/

Because they don't control them. You should keep reading. One may as well ask why Russia doesn't build hydroelectric dams in America for extra electricity or the US isn't mining China's valuable rare Earth metals.

[funkervogt]

New postwar lore just dropped.

USA post-war

RED= Kyanah-controlled areas, including city-states under their direct rule: Lazegaz (formerly Las Vegas), Gehtek (lit. "spawn" in the video game sense, "beginning", formerly Lake Havasu City), and Hinikz (formerly Phoenix), now operating as independent but closely allied city states at the center of the Kyanah bloc. As well as Area 51, now a joint air base for these three city-states, and strategic roadways maintained by the Provisional Military Administration between city-states. As of 2041, 15 years after the cease-fire, there are around 33 thousand Kyanah living in the red areas, up from 15 thousand at the end of the war due to a strong egg quota intended to boost their precarious demographic position. The red areas are not Kyanah-exclusive; more than 70 thousand humans live in Gehtek, more than 500 thousand in Lazegaz, and more than 2 million in Thinikz.

YELLOW = the Kyanah Bloc, an area in very murky waters geopolitically. The Kyanah forces have far too limited numbers to actually occupy every city in this region, but do have the ability to keep US troops out. They thus "guarantee the independence" of cities in this region and "take responsibility for their military protection" in exchange for "political and economic alliance". They rarely meddle in their internal politics, but bar US troops from entering the region, and have imposed pressure on most of the cities not to re-militarize beyond SALW-class weapons and light armored vehicles. They seem to prefer negotiating with individual human cities whenever possible, rather than states, further muddying the waters as to what this region actually is politically. Especially as the actual human capitals of these three states aren't in the bloc, except Phoenix, which is now the Kyanah-controlled Hinikz.

Nevertheless, many are not too happy about this, and still see themselves as Americans (or Mexicans, in the southern tip--a small slice of mexico got drawn into the war as Kyanah forces had no real way of knowing in advance the existence of human nation states, let alone the exact location of their borders). The yellow and red are subject to heavy sanctions from nearly every UN member state, except, oddly enough, North Korea, and the US has dammed every river flowing into the bloc, including the Colorado River, crippling agriculture to try and economically crush the bloc and stoke the human populations into rebellion.

With the wartime civilian exodus from these regions, the Kyanah Bloc contains about 11-12 million humans, roughly half the prewar population. Many of the former residents now live in refugee camps in central and northern California as housing is gradually being built for them.

GRAY: American Demilitarized Zone. Buffer between the Kyanah bloc and US proper, currently with no civilian population, and now the most heavily fortified border on the planet. The area is filled with land mines and drones and vast webs of barbed wire, and has a massive US military presence on the outer side. Over the next 15 years, this presence will swell to 3 million troops. Kyanah forces are spread far thinner on the inner side, no more than a few thousand, but can immediately converge to stop any predicted invasion before it happens using tactical superposition tactics. Soldiers on both sides occasionally send derisive memes over the ADZ in balloons, having learnt each other's native languages for the sole purpose of doing so.

PURPLE: Joint Security Area Flagstaff. Abandoned by civilians during the war, now used as a site for negotiation between Kyanah bloc states and US diplomats, to prevent all out nuclear war. Here, Kyanah and US diplomats are just across the street from each other. The US has a 170 meter tall flagpole flying the largest US flag ever made on their side. On their own side, the Kyanah have built a 171 meter tall flagpole/reconnaissance tower to fly all three flags--Lazegaz, Gehtek, and Hinkz--but it remains bare, possibly due to textile rationing or--allegedly--disputes over which city-state's flag should fly on top.

Green: USA proper.

Blue: Mexico proper

Why would the Kyanah halt their conquest so close to the Sea of Cortez? It seems like a mistake to not seize a bit of coastline. Mexico's military would be completely unable to stop them.

Taking a page from your Qattara Depression idea, what if the Kyanah built pipelines through the area shown in your map to create lakes in depressed areas of land? One pipeline could connect the Sea of Cortez to the Salton Sea and refill the latter, and another could connect the Los Angeles coast to Death Valley. The Kyanah would embark upon these projects to make the area more verdant and able to support life. Maybe this would also be meant to show the humans still living there that they meant to help them.

[Jakob]

Why would the Kyanah halt their conquest so close to the Sea of Cortez? It seems like a mistake to not seize a bit of coastline. Mexico's military would be completely unable to stop them.

Not wanting to draw additional cities from the Mexican region into the war. It's not like they're magically aware that "Mexico" or any particular country exists as a construct, or where its borders lie. They think in terms of city-states, and happened to get involved in Tijuana and Mexicali, but without additional important human "city-states" nearby that would be worth allying with, why extend the military any further? They also haven't really "conquered" these areas in the sense you're imagining, as the map explains.

It would be unrealistic if they didn't make some mistakes, in any case, when blundering into an alien civilization with geopolitics that don't work normally from their perspective.

[Jakob]

Taking a page from your Qattara Depression idea, what if the Kyanah built pipelines through the area shown in your map to create lakes in depressed areas of land? One pipeline could connect the Sea of Cortez to the Salton Sea and refill the latter, and another could connect the Los Angeles coast to Death Valley. The Kyanah would embark upon these projects to make the area more verdant and able to support life. Maybe this would also be meant to show the humans still living there that they meant to help them.

I'm sure many packs in the civilian contingent of scientists and engineers are constantly approaching the Provisional Military Administrations in Gehtek or Lazegaz or Hinikz with such lofty ideas. But workers, raw materials, and money are all very short, especially with the sanctions. That being said...who says they haven't built pipelines? Those Strategic Roadways aren't just for cars....plenty of water is being imported from the desalination plants in the People's Republic of Los Angeles.

[Powers]

Weak question but why isn't there (a group of) Humans fight the "Kyanah yoke" to death? I overall imagine that the first decades must be all but peaceful on Earth even without reverse-engineering at all.

[Jakob]

Weak question but why isn't there (a group of) Humans fight the "Kyanah yoke" to death? I overall imagine that the first decades must be all but peaceful on Earth even without reverse-engineering at all.

There are definitely still rogue units out there fighting, like the Japanese WW2 soldiers who didn't surrender until the 70s. Especially in the No-Go Zone in Egypt. But Qattara and Cairo are heavily fortified, so they're mostly attacking convoys traveling between cities.

Definitely some people still fighting the good fight in Murica too. There are plenty of riots and terrorist attacks. But overall a lot of people, if they know they aren't going to be exterminated, would rather sit in a warm house with no one shooting at them and have Grubhub and Netflix. Or Tunqrud and Hrekna, since it's not like Grubhub and Netflix can operate inside the ADZ due to sanctions. Or whatever human competitors have been created in the People's Republic of Los Angeles.

[funkervogt]

Why don't the Kyanah build robots to fix their labor shortage?

[Jakob]

Why don't the Kyanah build robots to fix their labor shortage?

• They do, when economically, logistically, and technologically practical

• Why don't*we* build robots to eliinate all human labor? Hint: we cant yet. Same reasons apply. They are not very far beyond us and different technologies advance at different rates.

• Someone has to build the robots

• They got fucked by Project Hope being cancelled midway through. A lot of the expected personnel and equipment never arrived on Earth.

• Most importantly, this isn't some Isaac Arthur.-esque "arbitrarily far in the future setting". The plot does not work without actual warfighters on the field, and the presence of such warfighters has implications on the maximum level of technology available. I'm not going to hang a time period label onto it, because again, they are an alien civilization who develops technology with different methods and priorities, and they intentionally have some level of schizo tech.

• its not just a labor source. Theyre literally a minority in their own cities. Which has demograpgic implications

[Jakob]

I will re-do and expand the phylogeny of the Kyanah homeworld.

I did this months ago, but it was really just a random laundry list of a few hastily thought out species with little consideration on what they are and how they relate to each other. So I present the REDUX, starting with the straight-walkers. A phylogenetic tree of this class is here:



Straight-Walkers [~900 extant species]

Straight-Walkers evolved from earlier sprawl-walkers around 200 million years ago, with approximately 900 extant species remaining, as the ascension of modern Kyanah has eliminated 50 to 75 percent of species in this class due partly to overhunting, but mainly due to the unprecedented control and complete transformation of almost all large oases. Among the key factors differentiating them include legs that are tucked under the torso rather than jutting out to the side (hence the name), hard-shelled ovoid eggs, and full endothermy. Certain basal clades still maintain a pillar-erect stance or semi-sprawled stance, but most are fully erect.

Most orders also have feather-like structures that protrude from their scales, external ears, and a more complex nose with a rhinarium-like structure made from customized scales. Most species do exhibit parental (or in the case of Kyanahforms, pack-based) care of their young, but don’t produce milk, instead relying on a crop-like pouch to regurgitate partially digested food. One order is known to have re-adapted to an amphibious, oasis-bound lifestyle, but is extinct.

Additionally, their brains tend to have four cores attached to the neural stalk, though one family (the Kyanahforms) is known to have six. Otherwise, they carry over many characteristics from the sprawl-walkers. In size, they range from the 10 cm long tanrk, to the wild nyrud at 6 meters long and 2.5 tons. As with the sprawl-walkers, many of the creatures at the bottom of the range must compete with neuz and large reqtkin, putting a higher floor on their size than Earth mammals and reptiles. They can, however, survive in polar environments where winter temperatures are just a few degrees above freezing, better than most other classes.

Straight-walkers have tooth differentiation, but this is more primitive than mammals, with no more than two tooth types. They have evolved a synapsid-like skull and a syrinx capable of more complex vocalizations. It is this class that includes the Kyanah themselves. They have caused much headache to human taxonomists, who cannot make out if the Kyanah are supposed to be reptiles, mammals, or birds, or why any of this matters when their invasion has killed thousands of people. The current scientific consensus on Earth is that the Kyanah are most analogous to the non-mammalian synapsids of the Permian and Triassic.

Nyoninut [~300 species]

Nyoninut are the most common taxonomic order within straight-walkers, containing a third of all extant species. They are characterized by holding teeth that are evolved for cutting–though they still have no more than two tooth morphologies, as with all straight-walkers. These can be used for gnawing through roots or bones or tough carcasses and usually blunted, shovel-like claws. As with most straight-walkers, they have “pseudo-feathers” that grow out of their scales rather than being scales themselves.

A plurality of species burrow, or at least have partially buried nests for their eggs, but many live on the ground–especially the largest species–or in the branches of some of the larger structured plants. Most are not behaviorally social, and have relatively small heads and brains for straight-walkers, and are often but not always R-strategists. This order can be found almost from pole to pole in virtually all habitats except inside oases themselves (some inhabit shorelines, though many of these are endangered or extinct as the Kyanah themselves have urbanized most large oases) and the nigh-uninhabitable wet deserts.

In terms of size, Nyoninut species range from the 60 gram Tanrk, a burrowing, rather cylindrical omnivore feeding on tubers and reqtkin, to the 120 kilogram Nurukanak widespread in the seasonal plains in Nurez Planitia, a grazing herbivore. Nyoninut, like their sibling order Toroyinut have relatively reduced tails compared to the rest of the straight-walker class, and have adapted their skeletal structure and balance to compensate. These tails are still much more substantial than mammalian tails seen on Earth, representing a middle ground.

Nazekya [~250 species]

Nazekya are the second most common extant order of straight-walkers. They are characterized by having one pair of holding teeth being enlarged relative to the others (termed display teeth after their typical role within the Hetrudinut order, though some have practical use, or extend much more significantly to form small tusks–this is still only two-form tooth differentiation as they are just larger versions of the other holding teeth), though it is further split into two suborders based on whether this pair is on the upper or lower jaw. The remainder of the holding teeth are often but not always pointed and conical.

Many Nazekya species are ovivores and scavengers, while others are quite generalist. The upper display teeth families are usually omnivorous or carnivorous, but rarely hypercarnivorous, though there are a handful are ambush predators, mostly in the single-genus Qahtek family, predators that can reach roughly the size of mountain lions. The lower display teeth families lean more towards herbivorous or generalist niches. Many species are social and form herds or flocks or packs (in the general sense seen on Earth, not the Kyanahform sense). Plenty of smaller and medium-sized species have adapted to the mass urbanization of the oases with relative success and become widespread urban pests in many parts of the world. They are found in most of the northern hemisphere and many temperate and cooler parts of the south as well. Most species range between 1 and 200 kg.

Other notable taxa from this class include truntyorks, omnivorous creatures reaching 10-12kg in their domesticated form, that use their raccoon-like front paws to steal eggs, dig for burrowing reqtkin and small nyoninut, and climb structured plants in search of leaves and spore pods. They have been domesticated by the Kyanah to search out hidden pest nests and eat their eggs, though in modern times they are often just pets, or food, and are in the upper display teeth suborder.

There are also Onikagi, which are 120-150 kg generalist herbivores–though like most herbivores, still eating some reqtkin–in the lower display teeth suborder, whose display teeth have become tusk-like, reaching up to 15 cm. These are used not just for display, but for rooting and digging. They are actually native to the Zizgran Planitia and were (and still are) often eaten by the inhabitants, including Ikun, though the domesticated version is naturally larger, with diminished display teeth.

Onikyinut [~100 species]

Onikyinut, with 100 extant species, are currently the third most numerous straight-walker order. They are generally characterized by very minimal holding teeth–often six, four, or even zero depending on suborder–with a heavy emphasis on processing teeth. What holding teeth they do have are often flat and blunt, designed for raking in vegetation. Indeed, almost all are herbivorous. Their digestive systems are optimized for plant matter, particularly browsing behavior, with many having long necks (and long tails to match)--in relative terms; something like a giraffe would not handle the gravity very well–along with large and complex stomachs and robustly armored mouths suitable to eat the often silica-rich leaves and twigs of structured plants without getting cut.

Many onikyinut were common prey for early Kyanah and proto-Kyanah, especially those of the nyrud genus, which contains the largest extant species. The domestic nyrud, for instance, is nearly 6 meters long and 1.5 meters at the shoulder, with a weight of around 2 tons. The nyrud species are the largest and only genus in the tyotonikor family–with six holding teeth–though the horned tyotonikors, now hunted to extinction, were marginally larger. Otherwise, Kazrud and Tantekrud–both in four holding-teeth families–are some of the most common wild species, weighing in at 80 and 300 kilograms respectively, with global populations in just the tens of thousands.

Many onikyinut species are rare due to overhunting, except for domesticated species, which are obviously very common. They are most frequently found in the Great Polar Plateau, in boreal scrublands or boreal savannas in the northern hemisphere; few or no extant ones are native to the southern hemisphere. Most exhibit mild K-strategists tendencies, but there are notable exceptions, even in larger species, especially those proto-Kyanah seem to have evolved to prey on; smaller species sometimes exhibit herd behavior, while larger ones rarely do. The pseudo-feathers characteristic to straight-walkers still exist. In smaller and/or polar species, they are often dense, while in others they may be quite sparse. They range in size from 25 kilograms or so up to the aforementioned nyrud.

Kazoyinut [~100 species]

Kazoyinut are the order of grazing herbivores, closely related to the onikyinut. They have a similarly small loadout of holding teeth, but these are optimized for grazing on the Kyanah homeworld. Since the fundamental reality that grasses don’t exist still remains, and structured plant vegetation tends to be tougher and coarser than unstructured plants, many of the adaptations seen in Earth grazers are actually flipped.

Without the need to reach into structured bushes and shrubs, they often have a compact, low, and squat build great for higher gravity, compared to their relatives, with wider mouths and pointier, less flat holding teeth. With this build, they tend to rely more on armor, sharp teeth or claws, and numbers, rather than size or speed for defense. They are found in most places that the onikyinut species are found, but tend to occupy a broader region and have proven more resistant to habitat destruction, possibly because of a diet that is more resistant to habitat destruction–unstructured plants generally requiring fewer nutrients and less water–and possibly because of a mild R-strategist lean seen in many species, though there are notable K-strategist families.

In terms of size, they occupy a broad range from 30 to 800 kilograms. The tyukrud is the most iconic species, since it has been domesticated and is popular in many cuisines. It is a sturdy, squat short-legged grazer, highly armored and around 70-80 cm tall at the shoulder but 3 meters long, with a mass around 250-350 kg. This species–in its wild form–meanders in large herds across the cold, windy boreal savannas–as low as 25 C in the winter–primarily feeding on crawlers. The ayenrud, a deer-sized–but much more lumbering and low-slung–herbivore native to the northern Kuardniet Planum is prized for the brightly colored display feathers–usually some shade of orange or red–that form a plume on its head, a rarity when most species of straight-walker feathers are a dull greenish or brownish shade.

Hetrudinut [~50 species]

Hetrudinut is one of the smaller orders of straight-walkers. They are actually closely related to the Nazekya order, having diverged from them around 70-80 million Earth years ago, but are characterized by having two pairs of enlarged holding teeth rather than one. They have some of the largest loadouts of holding vs processing teeth of any straight-walker order, and indeed most are obligate carnivores, with a few exceptions. They also in general possess some of the largest brains relative to their body sizes of any straight-walkers. Overall, hedrudinut tend to range from 3 to 500 kg.

Hetrudinut were once widespread throughout the northern hemisphere, but as many tend to compete in the same general niche as the Kyanah–fast, carnivorous pursuit predators of varying sizes–most have been wiped out or reduced to far more limited ranges. There are five extant families, in which most of the surviving Hedrudinut are located. Many can be seen in the boreal scrublands, and occasionally elsewhere–disregarding the Kyanah, who inhabit the planet from pole to pole and apparently beyond in modern times. Two of these families comprise the basal peripheral Hetrudinut, though most of them too are carnivores or hypercarnivores. The other three, Tyorket-forms, Ractorkortyot-forms, and Kyanah-forms, comprise the central Hetrudinut.

The tyorket-forms, including the domestic tyorket, are uncharacteristically sleek and lithe fast pursuit predators whose dew claws have been modified into hooked Deinonychus-like monstrosities capable of ripping open prey with ease and speeds that can reach as high as 100 km/h in short bursts for some species, making them some of the few native predators who are faster than Kyanah in a sprint. Tyorket-forms are generally in the 10-50 kg range, with the domestic tyorkets being on the high end. They are highly intelligent and known to collaborate on hunts with their own species, and–since their domestication, and possibly even before–with Kyanah packs.

The Ractorkortyot-forms, together with the Kyanah-forms, make up the Ractoryinut superfamily. This includes the Ratorkortyot itself, the largest obligate carnivore on the planet, reaching a mass of 500 kg, while other species occupy the 150-350 kg range. Given their habitat in the frigid polar regions, where temperatures in the polar night can drop to just a few degrees above freezing, many species have insulated themselves with blubber in addition to their pseudo-feathers, while still having quite a low-slung and stocky posture relative to most Terran life, but are still deceptively fast, having a digitigrade stance rather than the plantigrade Terran bears, who fill similar niches, in addition to having large tails. Ractorkortyots, and a couple other species, have elaborate Parasaurolophus-like crests which can be used in combination with their syrinx to make loud trumpeting sounds to draw in mates and ward off rival creatures. In addition to this, they have intelligence on par with monkeys or lower apes on Earth.

Kyanah-forms

The Kyanah-forms are obviously the family including the Kyanah themselves, and thus the only family that will be discussed in detail. They are characterized by the development of opposable thumbs and facultative or obligate bipedalism. This means that developing bipedalism has enlarged, not shrunk, their tails. Socially, they all exhibit little or no sexual dimorphism in terms of size and strength and generally form the Kyanah-like pack structures discussed elsewhere; additionally their brains have expanded from four cores to six.

Kyanah-forms may be further divided into the peripheral Kyanah-forms, usually on the low end of the size range. Many have adapted to living in the structured shrubs and reverted to an omnivorous lifestyle. Among the central Kyanah-forms, there are the Tkork and Kyanah genera. Tkorks creatures vaguely resemble Kyanah, and indeed they share a common ancestor with true Kyanah around 4-5 million Earth years ago, although they tend to be larger and slower, with proportionally larger teeth and claws. Like Kyanah, most tkorks form pack structures with superficially similar behaviors, and share their carnivorous diet, but lack language, cooperation between packs, or complex tool use. Although the word tkork comes from an old scrubland word meaning "stupid one", they are more intelligent and adaptable than almost any other organisms on the planet, with only Kyanah themselves blowing them out of the water; really they're only "stupid ones" compared to Kyanah.

The number of Kyanah-form species has been reduced from over twenty to just six since the emergence of behaviorally modern Kyanah, and four are threatened or endangered; only common tkorks–numbering around 100,000–and the Kyanah themselves are left in significant numbers. Those few non-Kyanah Kyanah-forms which have remained in any capacity to the modern era are those which specialize in small to medium-sized prey and prefer the inter-oasis niche rather than needing to migrate close to oases in the dry seasons, allowing them to give a wide berth around oases, where they will be systematically slaughtered if they try to make inroads.

Other than the Tkorks, there are of course the Kyanah themselves, which are discussed at length elsewhere, and are the only extant members of their genus. They are medium-large Kyanah-forms–50-70 kg–with the largest brains of any member of this family, and the most sophisticated hands and by far the greatest capacity for tool-using, and the only genus to have lost their pseudo-feathers entirely–likely a mix of natural climatic shifts and the development of fire, clothing, or more sophisticated nests. In fact, the number of Kyanah-form species has been reduced from over twenty to just six since the emergence of behaviorally modern Kyanah, and four are threatened or endangered; only common the Kyanah themselves are doing remotely well, and that is only due to efforts to eliminate . The rest were simply out-competed in their own niches.

Toroyinut [~40 species]

The forty or so species of the Toroyinut order are the the only straight-walker taxa that deviate from the digitigrade stance of straight-walkers, instead adopting a plantigrade form (ungulates, meanwhile, are nowhere to be found on the Kyanah homeworld…something about balancing on your toenails being suboptimal in higher gravity). As plantigrades, they are quite adapted to low-moderate intensity, long-range movement. Nevertheless, they still have the substantial tails of most other straight-walkers, more in line with dinosaurs than mammals.

Most are herbivorous or omnivorous, though the Koryandak family are omnivorous with a distinct carnivorous lean. This family are also facultative bipeds though in a more hadrosaur-like stance than anything human-like, which they use in combination with a plantigrade stance for long-range pursuit predation. This makes them the only known bipeds on the planet other than the Kyanahforms family. Ironically, the plantigrade, bipedal pursuit predators on this planet are not the intelligent and advanced life forms, nor even that closely related to them.

Toroyinut species are generally quite scattered and isolated, but mostly found in the southern hemisphere (as with most of the more “strange” straight-walkers). The remaining extant species typically range between 3 and 60 kg.

Qarazdyak [~30 species]

Qarazdyak is the largest order of basal-ish straight-walkers, lacking many of the features that main-line straight-walkers possess, which may shed some light into the order these features were obtained. They have, for instance, hard-shelled eggs, syrinxes, four-cored brains, endothermy, and synapsid skulls. However, they lack even the primitive tooth differentiation seen in other straight-walkers and have not evolved feathers. Their hip posture is additionally not fully erect to the same degree as other straight-walkers, with a semi-sprawled stance. Notably they evolved before the straight-walker/wingbeast split, making their placement quite thorny.

Many of the surviving species in this order are small to medium-sized generalists from <1 kg to 30 kg, probably rather akin to the basal straight-walkers themselves. They also predate the full dispersion of straight-walkers into the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and are mainly found in equatorial and southern regions, though few are present in any significant numbers. They are the largest of the small relic taxa, orders with few surviving species that are nevertheless distinct enough from everything else to warrant their own classification. The remaining few dozen straight-walker species not included in the above orders are in such orders.

[Jakob]

Wingbeasts are a taxonomic class that have evolved from straight-walkers in the past 120-130 million years. Like their straight-walker ancestors, they are warm-blooded, with generally four cores in their brains, with a few families of social wingbeasts having six. They are hollow-boned and capable of powered flight, but have many differences from Earth birds and cannot meaningfully be called “birds”. Feathers are uncommon, as they split relatively early in the evolutionary history of straight-walkers. Thus, their wings are more pterosaur-like membranes than bird-like wings, and they also have a snout and mouth with teeth rather than a beak, though they lack tooth differentiation. They have further evolved diapsid skulls to save weight, further evolving beyond the synapsid skulls of straight-walkers, making them the only extant diapsids. As with the straight-walkers they evolved from, they have a syrinx.

Wingbeasts are a taxonomic class that have evolved from straight-walkers in the past 120-130 million years. Like their straight-walker ancestors, they are warm-blooded, with generally four cores in their brains, with a few families of social wingbeasts having six. They are hollow-boned and capable of powered flight, but have many differences from Earth birds and cannot meaningfully be called “birds”. Feathers are uncommon, as they split relatively early in the evolutionary history of straight-walkers. Thus, their wings are more pterosaur-like membranes than bird-like wings, and they also have a snout and mouth with teeth rather than a beak, though they lack tooth differentiation. They have further evolved diapsid skulls to save weight, further evolving beyond the synapsid skulls of straight-walkers, making them the only extant diapsids. As with the straight-walkers they evolved from, they have a syrinx.

They also have a distinctly quadrupedal stance, with forelimbs that are bulkier than a bird or pterosaur’s wings. When on the ground, their membranes fold up, making them seem like ordinary quadrupeds, but with an odd gait as their wings are naturally longer than their rear legs, with large flaps of skin around their forelimbs. To take off, they will gallop at high speeds before jumping into the air and unfolding their membranes, with most species leveraging ridge lift and thermals over active flapping. These appear to give them more stability on the ground than a bipedal stance. They have additionally evolved a marsupial-like pouch as their long-range soaring is not conducive to laying static eggs. Approximately 1200 surviving species exist, with a roughly pole to pole geographical range, though favoring areas with useful air currents. Most are pretty terrible fliers by Earth standards, but in a 2.5 bar atmosphere, they can get away with that. Most are migratory, retreating to warmer latitudes and lower elevations during the winter and then back in the summer, in conjunction with cycling towards and away from oases–few species are permanently inter-oasis since they have the power of flight in any case.

Tekqukinut [~75 species]

Tekqukinut are a currently small order of relatively basal wingbeasts with many of their key features still in development. They notably have four wings rather than two, and have not entirely lost their tails. This makes them relatively short-range and inefficient fliers, often found in boreal scrublands, flood meadows, and other areas where large structured plants are relatively common.

Most are quite small and generalist, without the significant specialization of more evolved designs, with a typically herbivorous lean. In terms of wingspan, they range between 20 and 40 cm, making them mostly small in size as well. Their range is quite scattered, and many are threatened or endangered.

Kyagdyak [~200 species]

Kyagdyak are a relatively large order of wingbeasts characterized by adaptation to wading or diving in the only environments on the Kyanah homeworld where such activities can be practiced: oases and riparian graphs. Often they have long legs and necks, relative to other species, with needle-like teeth for holding onto slippery kenits, neuz, and aquatic plants.

They are quite widespread even despite the urbanization of the oases. However, they, like many taxa that play in the oasis-hugging niche, faced the same choice of adapting to urban environments or going extinct. The surviving species have done well with the former choice, becoming a widespread part of Kyanah urban ecosystems. In fact, they have in many cases managed to expand their habitats outward along irrigation canals.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their presence around oases, many Kyagdyak species have been captured and eaten by opportunistic Kyanah over the millennia, or even systematically farmed for their meat, eggs–which in many cases have a slightly different taste to straight-walker eggs–and membranes, though farming ground creatures is still more common in general (yet even still, they are a significant part of the diet of some cultures). The size of the species in this order ranges from less than half a meter up to 1.7 meters for the blue tukret.

Tekrudyak [~150 species]

Tekrudyak are the order of hypercarnivorous wingbeasts, with a full loadout of caniform-like teeth and powerful claws, capable of chasing down prey both on land and in the skies. They often prey on smaller wingbeasts, straight and sprawl walkers, and whatever else they come across, though there are carrion eating families included in the order as well. They usually have ground-based nests or burrows, but there are exceptions. Some exhibit mobbing or other collaborative behavior, but rarely form complex social structures.

In wingspan, the smallest species are 60 cm. The largest species, the great dzadoikor, reaches up to 3.1 meters in wingspan with a maximum mass of over 25 kilograms, making it the heaviest living wingbeast, albeit not the one with the largest wingspan, living in the boreal savannas of the Kordarten Basin in the southern hemisphere. It is a poor flier that tends to spend the majority of its time on the ground, making over 80 percent of its kills through ground-based rather than aerial pursuit and needing favorable winds and/or terrain to get off the ground. Smaller, more common,and more gracile, the tyrknikor, with a wingspan up to 2 meters and a mass in the 6-8 kg range, is one of the most widespread large species, with a near-global range and an estimated population in the low millions; it is a carrion-specializing scavenger.

Onidyak [~300 species]

Onidyak, along with Tekrudyak, make up most of the larger wingbeast species. However, Onidyak are primarily herbivorous with teeth to match, lacking the caniforms or needle-like teeth of some other orders. They tend to specialize in a grazing niche, with behavior to match. Thus, species in this order tend to spend most of their time eating unstructured plants on the ground, only flying when traveling long distances, and thus their wings are optimized for range and endurance over speed and maneuverability.

It should come as no surprise that they have a broad geographical range and lean towards the larger sizes. The largest onidyak species have wingspans up to 3.8 meters, giving them the largest wingspans of any wingbeasts, but they are not as heavy as the largest tekrudyak species. The smallest species have wingspans as low as 30 centimeters. The nytikut genus, with wingspans between 0.5 and 1 meters, are the most diverse and populus genus, feeding primarily on crawlers and fern analogs.

Kadyekdyak [~400 species]

Kadyekdyak are the most bio-diverse wingbeast order, even more than Onidyak, with nearly four hundred species spread out across nineteen families.Like Onidyak, they are primarily herbivorous in nature–though certainly capable of omnivory in a pinch. However, they are primarily browsers and thus are more adapted to short bursts of flight and also climbing to enable them to reach several meter high structured plants without needing to fly. Their teeth are thus optimized to consume the tough leaves and twigs of the structured plants.

Kadyekdyak are relatively small in size, with wingspans ranging from 20 to 60 centimeters for most species, befitting their fluttering and climbing niches. While somewhat rare in the most polar regions due to challenges with maintaining body heat, they are quite widespread everywhere else, even relatively hot and tropical regions.

Tekanahdyak [~50 species]

Tekanahdyak are a relatively small, new, and recently recognized, arguably dubious order, having split off from the Kadyekdyak order some 30-40 million Earth years ago. Their key defining features are large brain sizes and large skulls to match, with a few families being the only non-Kyanahform organisms to have six-core brains. Despite being primarily browsers, many have re-evolved the features for long-range endurance flight.

They are known as social wingbeasts, and with good reason. With their large brain capacity, they are capable of using found twigs and stones as tools, and construct large, elaborate rookeries with dozens or even hundreds of members, which all adults will aggressively defend from predators or outsiders of their own species. They are often found in tropical regios and chaos, such as the Kortuk Chaos and even the southern parts of the Zizgran Chaos. Some ancient cultures have trained them to act as aerial hunters and game trackers, despite their herbivorous nature. In wingspan, they range between 25 and 90 centimeters, and their intelligence is generally estimated to be roughly on par with Earth corvids or parrots, though they seem to be unable to mimic Kyanah speech.

[Jakob]

Sprawl-Walkers are the earliest fully terrestrial vertebrates on the Kyanah homeworld, having first evolved around 310 million years ago. Unlike the neuz they evolved from, their limbs have developed into four legitimate legs, which sprawl out to the sides like Earth lizards and they have evolved tough, scaly skin on part or all of their bodies, nictitating membranes, and oblong, leathery eggs suitable for a life on the planet’s dry lands. They have additionally evolved a four-chambered heart. They lack tooth differentiation, like the neuz, and also retain their anapsid skulls.

They are generally ectothermic, and as a result, many live in hot climates and the majority have neural spine sails much like a Dimetrodon for the purpose of thermoregulation by radiating away heat. Due to their ectothermy, they generally have clinched equatorial and tropical regions and are the dominant large vertebrates there, but have failed to expand significantly into the northern hemisphere, where endothermic straight-walkers dominate. However, the general geographical and climatic barriers to cross-hemisphere travel have meant that straight-walkers have overall made fewer inroads into the southern hemisphere, and sprawl-walkers are more dominant there, though they tend to also become scarce towards the south pole.

Extant species range from the 5 centimeters up to the Kayun-pack’s Ruekutuk, 3.8 meters long and up to 670 kg. Generally they have rather triangular heads with short necks and jaws, which are more crude than later straight-walkers. They are characterized by three digits on each limb, rather than the four seen in straight-walkers, though this is a general rule, and some taxa have four.
#Nakordyak [~800 species]

Nakordyak are the largest extant sprawl-walker order, with around eight hundred extant species. As sprawl-walkers, they have the typical splayed posture that is generally associated with sprawl-walkers, crawling like lizards with their bellies and tails dragging on the ground. They can be characterized by more advanced scales than the other large sprawl-walker order, Kordyak, which can be shed one by one instead of molting in a single mass. They also have a mobile upper jaw, though the degree to which it is mobile varies by species.

Species of this order are widely seen in warm and temperate regions of the planet, including both dry and (relatively speaking) wet areas. They additionally occupy a diverse range of sizes, from a few grams up to over 200 kilograms, in the case of the Green Takzu.
#Kordyak [~550 species]

Kordyak are the second largest extant sprawl-walker order, with roughly five hundred extant species. Like others, they have a splayed, lizard-like stance. Their scales are more basal than the Nakordyak order and other close relatives, and they tend to molt rather than shedding individual scales. They can be divided into oasis-bound and inter-oasis families, including the inter-oasis family Kazorqet, one of the largest individual sprawl-walker families, which contains the sandstriders, whose snouts are elongated into multiple flexible tentacle-like appendages to pick up reqtkin from tight spaces, and neural spines that form water-conserving humps rather than sails, making them resemble a strange cross between anteater, camel, and lizard; they are eaten in many Duneland cultures. As with all sprawl-walkers, they primarily occupy warm and temperate regions, and can range in size from 100 grams to around 70 kilograms. The oasis-bound families usually contain larger species.
#Zranundyak [~250 species]

Zranundyak are the only extant non-neuz vertebrates to have returned to a fully amphibious niche, as the aquatic straight-walkers have gone extinct. Their limbs have been derived into webbed or even flipper-like appendages, giving them a primarily aquatic niche. In fact, they are often confused with neuz, though the presence of scales and laying shelled eggs on land are dead giveaways as to their true phylogeny. Much like Earth turtles, they tend to hatch on the shores of oases and then make their way into the water.

This order is part of the subclass that has bony dermal scales, rather than epidermal scales like other sprawl-walkers or straight-walkers. Most tend to be relatively small in size, as they tend to be limited to a single oasis–except when small hatchlings of various species are picked up by the wind and carried for long distances–and thus a large size would make it difficult to support a stable population in all but the largest oases and hyperoases. In size, they range from several centimeters up to about 50 or 60 centimeters, depending on the species, with most weighing a kilogram or less.
#Kanekdyak [~50 species]

Kanekdyak are an order of sprawl-walkers that seem to be more closely related to straight-walkers than the other orders. They are characterized by an intermediary posture with a semi-erect or pillar-erect hip configuration, though they lack fully erect hips and have other characteristics of sprawl-walkers, such as endothermy, leathery eggs, etc. They are primarily found in the southern hemisphere, and some tropical and desert regions of the north in modern times. In terms of size, they range from a few kilograms up to 670 kilograms. The pillar-erect configuration, being highly load-bearing at the cost of having slower and more limited movement, has led to some of the largest extant sprawl-walkers on the planet, with some species in the Ruekutuk genus exceeding 400 kg.

The aforementioned genus is the only known extant unguligrade taxon on the Kyanah homeworld, as the stability allowed by the pillar-erect hips has allowed it to balance on its claws despite the higher gravity, its three digits eventually fusing into a hoof-like structure. These facultative carnivores resembled some sort of hoofed Rauischian, and have been domesticated and farmed by some southern hemisphere cultures. Although they make poor mounts and beasts of burden due to their temperament, they were the best thing that was available to many parts of the southern hemisphere until domesticated Onikyinut species such as the daketrud in the second century AD and the nyrud in the sixth century were introduced from the north.

However, not all families and genera, or even most are pillar-erect; they are still called sprawl-walkers for a reason. The herbivorous 140 kg Nuenzhetuk, for instance, is classed in this order, but has a considerably more sprawled stance than a proper straight-walker and is often found wallowing in the linear oases inside riparian graphs or (as is so often the case with medium to large herbivores) being farmed and eaten. Its more advanced knee and elbow joints, allowing it to briefly elevate itself, still distinguish it as a Kanekdyak, rather than one of the other orders.
#Kuenzdyak [~50 species]

Kuenzdyak is a sprawl-walker order characterized by the presence of dermal scales, rather than the more typical epidermal scales of most sprawl-walkers. In this way, they are quite similar to the temnospondyls, albeit not as dependent on truly wet environments. However, they are still often found in the oasis-hugging niche, and those species which have survived the urbanization of the oases are thus commonly seen in urban environments, more often than many Earth reptiles. The nitayah genus, which are usually between 7 and 30 centimeters in length, including their tails, are one of the more common members of this order to occupy this urban-oasis niche. Kuenzdyak are in general quite scattered and mostly found in equatorial regions, with rare forays into certain temperate areas like the regios of the lower Meatbucket. In modern times, they are quite a small order.Sprawl-Walkers are the earliest fully terrestrial vertebrates on the Kyanah homeworld, having first evolved around 310 million years ago. Unlike the neuz they evolved from, their limbs have developed into four legitimate legs, which sprawl out to the sides like Earth lizards and they have evolved tough, scaly skin on part or all of their bodies, nictitating membranes, and oblong, leathery eggs suitable for a life on the planet’s dry lands. They have additionally evolved a four-chambered heart. They lack tooth differentiation, like the neuz, and also retain their anapsid skulls.