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One of my few paintings, purchased by a good friend to hang in his bedroom. The bold cubs of a wolf-like and cat-like species on some planet have approached each other for the first time. They were born and raised by their respective parents, but obviously they are skiltaire. This illustrates the result of the unconventional method the skiltaire species evolved for colonizing other planets. The shy cubs will soon join the new skiltaire tribe, and their other-species parents will continue with their lives, and if they have more cubs, they will be of the parent's species.
I used some existing skiltaire for this painting: Thalia, Sy, Tari, and a new one.
I used some existing skiltaire for this painting: Thalia, Sy, Tari, and a new one.
Category All / All
Species Mustelid (Other)
Size 1280 x 390px
File Size 146.5 kB
Yup. 1986. I was painting my skiltaire holiday cards around this time. I'm not much of an artist, and certainly not prolific, but sometimes I get an idea in my head that i HAVE to attempt to record as an original image. If this happened in this time, I would likely commission someone with real talent to do the painting... but back then, I just did it myself. I wish I did more art, even though I have not advanced at all in style or technique over the years.
I'll do any skiltaire! But... seriously... I used to do custom greeting cards for friends, and I made personal skiltaire for people. You can see at least one of my holiday cards in my gallery, featuring my mates and I as our skiltaire. I have done sketches/inked art in people's black sketchboks (I didn't charge anything), and I wouldn't mind trying to do art for someone, particularly of skiltaire. What do you have in mind?
I built a fursuit of my skiltaire character Lenya, an aquatic with longer-than-usual fur (he lives in a cold climate). I would absolutely love to have him drawn by you!
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2306991/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872188/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872177/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872169/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2307000/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2306991/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872188/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872177/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3872169/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2307000/
Yes. In my stories and role-playing games ( Other Suns), the skiltaire are found on many scattered worlds, with zeno-archaeologists unable to find ancient fossil remains. Human zeno-biologists cannot find a skiltaire "home world, so it is believed, since the native populations of skiltaire do not have the technology for interstellar travel, they must be a species that was "seeded" by another unknown race. Eventually the skiltaire are discovered to be sentient and powerful tel-empaths. In the original skiltaire stories, a human raises an abandoned skiltaire, they become mates, and Theta (the human's skiltaire partner) eventually gives birth to his child, which is a skiltaire, but with some of the human's genetic content. This anomaly goes unsolved, but it is a clue to how that skiltaire species "do it". It- being colonize other worlds. Skiltaire tel-empathy includes the ability ti micro-manipulate DNA, and using the combined power of a linked group mind, they send out pulses of TK energy that effect the haploid (reproductive) cells of alien mammals on other planets. It is a very "hit and miss" process, kind of like sending a generation ship "out there", or just flying about willy-nilly looking for a habitable wprld in your FTL spacecraft... but sometimes it works. What "compatible" species does this effect? Other sentients? Pretty scary, huh? The point is, it would be extremely difficult to prove this actually happens, and the skiltaire themselves aren't talking... because they aren't even aware that they can do this! The whole social-biological-psyonic ability is hidden deep within their physiology/psychology. Will anyone ever find out? Hopefully, not.
So, now you know the Secret of the Skiltaire. Please don't tell anyone! :)
So, now you know the Secret of the Skiltaire. Please don't tell anyone! :)
Goodness gracious! That's pretty awesome.
So err...even they don't know they're doing it? Like, a population might reach a certain critical mass and their underlying instinctual group mind causes it to happen? :o
And NightStar's been using machines for playing with DNA! gasp! All she needs is more buddies! x3
So err...even they don't know they're doing it? Like, a population might reach a certain critical mass and their underlying instinctual group mind causes it to happen? :o
And NightStar's been using machines for playing with DNA! gasp! All she needs is more buddies! x3
Yes, they aren't aware they are doing it, though I doubt it would happen due to population pressure. Since they are aware predators, skiltaire don't have over population problems. There could be some kind of natural (or unnatural) climatic disaster that would cause problems. Since most skiltaire on a planet are aware of each other, even over great distances, some sort of synchronization of mating activity would happen and the combined telempathic energy would be released to space, like electromagnetic waves. In many SF stories, telepathy is not effected by R-squared propagation, nor the limit of the speed of light. I'm not sure I'd go that far, though. Perhaps the energy transmits through some quantum parallel path, like a wormhole?
I interestingly enough, when I first described the process to Nicolai Shapero, the creator/editor of the Other Suns FRP game, he was actually shocked at the potential. He had already invited me to add skiltaire to the game cannon, and we were working on the stats. He accepted the premise and came up with the game mechanics. I remember when he introduced the skiltaire stats to the rest of the players, who were used to psyonics, since it had been a part of the game all along (most races had some psyonic talent, and it was a skill used often in the games). When he told everyone that skiltaire were natural telempaths, and their range was an average of "1 AU per point of psyonic skill", the players just stared, open mouthed.
This was because Nicolai had allowed telepathic soldiers and agents in the game, who could be trained to wound or kill with a telepathic attack. I had already described the skiltaire psyonic talent as tel-EMAPTHY, and that it was impossible to use a directed probe for anything worse then temporary confusion of the target. Anything more violent would back-fire on the sender or others.
The long-range telekinetic effect used for colonization, which I called a "cycle", required the entire skiltaire population of a planet to actually work. In the original long (play test) campaign, Nicolai had created a super-bad "villain" who would destroy entire starship fleets and wipe out planet populations. This character was not involved in every game, but was always lurking in the background. We eventually discovered his name and background, he was an honored strategic master general of the L'drey (the space-bound race that split-off from the Altani, the anthro-fox sentient species that were the founders of the Hegemony space federation). During the long and horrible civil war, this general had fought honorably and saved billions of his people, without resulting to brutal tactics involving the enemy. Then a splinter group of the Altani discovered his homeship, and destroyed it, killing millions of civilians, including the generals immediate family. He went rogue, and vanished for nearly a century (they live long, and have anagathics), after which his powerful secret forces began a rein of terror throughout Hegemony space. He was a ghost, and unstoppable. The players did not like the concept. There was more then enough other stuff to do in the campaign without having to chase an all-powerful mad destroyer. We expressed our displeasure, and Nicolai kept his super villain mre in the background, but would not write him out.
So... There were 2 (sometimes 3) different games-masters for the campaign, each running their own games. Some of us played the same or different characters in each individual game, but all games were part of the over-arching cannon. Eventually we ended up with time travel as a rare but possible feature (it worked due to the way FTL worked in the game). A very small, highly classified part of the Star Arm were dedicated to time travel research and maintaining the time line. During one expedition, the team discovered an unfinished L'drey homeship, a derelict form the civil war, never completed and left in orbit of a lost world. Over the next 2 years (real time!), in the various games, with different GMs and players. we carefully manipulated the plot so that the generals homeship was elsewhere and the empty hull was at the location when the insurgents attacked, destroying the "decoy". The general was not pleased, but he did not go crazy. He tracked down the rogue faction and went on with his part, ending the civil war. In the "current" timeline afterward, the general lived on as the greatest war hero in the Hegemony, honored by both sides and eventually retiring to be with his extended family on their homeship... Without Nicolai realizing it, we had managed to completely defuse his "Darth Vader", and turn him into the greatest hero the Hegemony had ever known. All the terrible things he had done... never happened.
The Party. That is what it was called. The process of planning and eventually executing the project took a long time in-game, and involved many player characters and hundreds of NPCs. Quite a few people eventually found out what had happened, even if it was never "official" news. The L'drey have a tradition called Meet Point. Every decade, homeships gather at one location and all the families celebrate together. We are talking thousands of homeships, and thousands more well-wisher's starships, with billions of sentients in the reletivly small area of the Meet-Up. This time, there was a difference, though. The hundreds of people involved in the various time travel special forces, who had access to records and were aware of BOTH time-lines, and all their friends and relatives who were told about it, after it happened, were at the Meet-Up. Many of them were skiltaire. The celebration became a orgy of pure emotion and physical joy... initiating a "Cycle". Now, on a typical skiltaire world, you may have several thousand to a few million taking part in a Cycle... but at the meet-up, there were many million skiltaire, as well as millions more psyonic species... billions total, all adding to the energy of the Cycle.
Nicolai confided in me after the game that the Cycle was so powerful... the largest event of it's kind that had ever occurred... could have pierced space-time... and been the very spark of life in the Universe.
Wow.
I interestingly enough, when I first described the process to Nicolai Shapero, the creator/editor of the Other Suns FRP game, he was actually shocked at the potential. He had already invited me to add skiltaire to the game cannon, and we were working on the stats. He accepted the premise and came up with the game mechanics. I remember when he introduced the skiltaire stats to the rest of the players, who were used to psyonics, since it had been a part of the game all along (most races had some psyonic talent, and it was a skill used often in the games). When he told everyone that skiltaire were natural telempaths, and their range was an average of "1 AU per point of psyonic skill", the players just stared, open mouthed.
This was because Nicolai had allowed telepathic soldiers and agents in the game, who could be trained to wound or kill with a telepathic attack. I had already described the skiltaire psyonic talent as tel-EMAPTHY, and that it was impossible to use a directed probe for anything worse then temporary confusion of the target. Anything more violent would back-fire on the sender or others.
The long-range telekinetic effect used for colonization, which I called a "cycle", required the entire skiltaire population of a planet to actually work. In the original long (play test) campaign, Nicolai had created a super-bad "villain" who would destroy entire starship fleets and wipe out planet populations. This character was not involved in every game, but was always lurking in the background. We eventually discovered his name and background, he was an honored strategic master general of the L'drey (the space-bound race that split-off from the Altani, the anthro-fox sentient species that were the founders of the Hegemony space federation). During the long and horrible civil war, this general had fought honorably and saved billions of his people, without resulting to brutal tactics involving the enemy. Then a splinter group of the Altani discovered his homeship, and destroyed it, killing millions of civilians, including the generals immediate family. He went rogue, and vanished for nearly a century (they live long, and have anagathics), after which his powerful secret forces began a rein of terror throughout Hegemony space. He was a ghost, and unstoppable. The players did not like the concept. There was more then enough other stuff to do in the campaign without having to chase an all-powerful mad destroyer. We expressed our displeasure, and Nicolai kept his super villain mre in the background, but would not write him out.
So... There were 2 (sometimes 3) different games-masters for the campaign, each running their own games. Some of us played the same or different characters in each individual game, but all games were part of the over-arching cannon. Eventually we ended up with time travel as a rare but possible feature (it worked due to the way FTL worked in the game). A very small, highly classified part of the Star Arm were dedicated to time travel research and maintaining the time line. During one expedition, the team discovered an unfinished L'drey homeship, a derelict form the civil war, never completed and left in orbit of a lost world. Over the next 2 years (real time!), in the various games, with different GMs and players. we carefully manipulated the plot so that the generals homeship was elsewhere and the empty hull was at the location when the insurgents attacked, destroying the "decoy". The general was not pleased, but he did not go crazy. He tracked down the rogue faction and went on with his part, ending the civil war. In the "current" timeline afterward, the general lived on as the greatest war hero in the Hegemony, honored by both sides and eventually retiring to be with his extended family on their homeship... Without Nicolai realizing it, we had managed to completely defuse his "Darth Vader", and turn him into the greatest hero the Hegemony had ever known. All the terrible things he had done... never happened.
The Party. That is what it was called. The process of planning and eventually executing the project took a long time in-game, and involved many player characters and hundreds of NPCs. Quite a few people eventually found out what had happened, even if it was never "official" news. The L'drey have a tradition called Meet Point. Every decade, homeships gather at one location and all the families celebrate together. We are talking thousands of homeships, and thousands more well-wisher's starships, with billions of sentients in the reletivly small area of the Meet-Up. This time, there was a difference, though. The hundreds of people involved in the various time travel special forces, who had access to records and were aware of BOTH time-lines, and all their friends and relatives who were told about it, after it happened, were at the Meet-Up. Many of them were skiltaire. The celebration became a orgy of pure emotion and physical joy... initiating a "Cycle". Now, on a typical skiltaire world, you may have several thousand to a few million taking part in a Cycle... but at the meet-up, there were many million skiltaire, as well as millions more psyonic species... billions total, all adding to the energy of the Cycle.
Nicolai confided in me after the game that the Cycle was so powerful... the largest event of it's kind that had ever occurred... could have pierced space-time... and been the very spark of life in the Universe.
Wow.
*brain goes 'pop!' and 'fweeee-eeeee' like a stretched balloon*
Whoah. That just plain rocks. X3 Thank you so much for the detailed recounting of all that! It sure gives me fun things to think about. It sure explains some things!
*giggle* Best universal life creation ever.
Best 'party' ever, for that matter. =^.^=
On a tangent I couldn't help thinking of Skiltaire at times while watching Babylon 5 (finally) recently. Heh, especially when the telepaths making love (and accidentally revealing Vorlon secrets) totally gets the attention of aaaalll the other nearby telepaths.. XD Silly orgasms, giving away secrets and sparking universes! Gosh!
Whoah. That just plain rocks. X3 Thank you so much for the detailed recounting of all that! It sure gives me fun things to think about. It sure explains some things!
*giggle* Best universal life creation ever.
Best 'party' ever, for that matter. =^.^=
On a tangent I couldn't help thinking of Skiltaire at times while watching Babylon 5 (finally) recently. Heh, especially when the telepaths making love (and accidentally revealing Vorlon secrets) totally gets the attention of aaaalll the other nearby telepaths.. XD Silly orgasms, giving away secrets and sparking universes! Gosh!
I seem to do that. I put together a project and put a lot of work into it, sometimes finishing it (maybe to my satisfaction), then I move on to something else. I helped run the first furry conventions, and after 11 years I retired (kinda over-did it). I published one of the first furry newsletters (snail-mail) with my partner doing the editing for a few years, then I stepped aside. It's now a Blog (infurnation.com). I wrote 6 published comic strips based on a 3-year multiplayer RP on a muck because I was invited to by a furry publisher. Have not done any more comic writing since. I learned to used Sony Vegas video editing software and created a Second Life furry music video. Just one. I have tried to get back into art, but after spending a LOT of time working on a particular piece based on a family RP game, and not liking the result, I have been reluctant to draw anything (though I will still do drawings in people's sketch books when asked). Everyone else seems to be so much better than I am, and I haven't improved at all. (self fulfilling prophecy: I don't draw, so I never get any better)
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