Syeia-o-Opri: Borrowers

Syeia-o-Opri: Borrowers

Some still-being-developed barf about everyone’s favorite micro-hominid.

Borrowers (”Xenomicro” homosapiens, as classified by humans) are the most intelligent lifeform fully native to the Earth, and a member of the Great Ape Family (Hominidae). Despite their larger cousins, borrowers grow to only reach a typical height of 6-8 centimeters during adulthood. Humans are the direct, though artificial, descendants of borrowerkind.

Borrowers look almost identical to common-day humans. There is a difference in general organ size, bone density, and general body structure. Side-by-side, humans have “binocular” vision and a stronger jawline while borrowers have a wider range of view and generally smoother jawlines.

They are a highly social species and live in large swarm-like groups, and can create nests within any environment if given enough time and resources. Borrowers are omnivorous but a very low-ranking predatory species (compared to their descendants who are apex predators), typically only hunting small insects for meat, and otherwise utilizing agricultural techniques to produce their own food. Scavenging is extremely common as a borrower’s agricultural area is usually too small to fully sustain larger colonies. Hunted insects are often pests.

Borrowers utilize tools and (comparatively, with humans) primitive technology, knowing how to build simple elevators and creating their own fires. Smaller borrower hives that live near humans will often siphon electricity and build slightly more advanced pieces of technology from scavenged human “ruin” objects.

Social rules are taught to each borrower generation that aid in basic survival, as they are a common prey species for larger animals. Common rules include;

-Stay out of sight -Avoid the Tyrant Species as best as possible (humans) -Don’t get in a fight unless necessary -Help your fellows -If it did not originally belong to you, then do not take more than you need -Always accept gifts from the Tyrant Species as to avoid insultation (gift may be discarded after you get out of sight) -Knowledge given by one of the Tyrant Species must be shared with the rest of the colony

Humans call xenomicro homosapiens “Borrowers.” Borrowers call individual humans “Nephilim”, and collectively as “The Tyrant Species.”

darkness...

Lifeforms and Anti-Lifeforms. How to tell the two apart

(Anti-Lifeforms also go by the name Dymorite)

Lifeform - Follow strict biological rules. Every part of a lifeform’s body currently is or formerly was in service to the lifeform’s continued existence. Aesthetic physical form results from life-sustaining attributes. Has easy-to-read loop structures, often in the form of internal organs.

Anti-Lifeform - Characterized by total lacking of average biological organs and tools. Functional loop structures exist within the anti-lifeform, but do not follow necessary biological rules. If you see a dog with corrosive black blood and no organs, then it’s not a dog.

A human has a mouth that leads to a stomach, because a human needs to eat. A dymorite may lack a mouth all together, because it doesn’t have a stomach.

Syeia-o-Opri and the Race of Stolen Children

Hey. I have a g/t setting I sometimes work on. Here’s the basics of it.

Fairies arrive from the deep reaches of space, putting up a colony upon the face of the Earth. From the infant children of the Earth’s most clever native - borrowers, the fairies created humans, a macro-superweapon to be used in fairy war fields. Billions of borrower infants were stolen in one cycle and corrupted by fairy magic.

The borrowers are horrified at this. Humans are large, and even the weakest human is several times physically stronger than both fairy and borrower alike. The salt within a human’s body is deeply corrosive to fairies, and any spilled blood will desynchronize a fairy’s flow of will, which is a death sentence.

Humanity is only controlled via one thing - their names, which are fairy-given. As long as a fairy knows a human’s name, the human is under the fairy’s control. This creates an almost foolproof weapon for fairies to use against other fairies. Sending in a colossal being woven from Earth flesh, having salt in their bodily liquids, and iron within their blood, a human is perfect for exterminating enemy fairies.

Sadly, the fairies realized a bit too late that the “small bipedal idiot species” (by comparison) of borrowers left behind some “recessive material” within every human. Cooperation, a highly social structure, and love for each other eventually made the humans plot against their fairy lords. One night, two humans - a male and a female - decide to name each other and not tell the fairies about it.

It is the first dawn of the fairy apocalypse. With one human-to-human given name rises another, and spreads across the fairies’ human populations. The fairies do not understand why they no longer have any control over their superweapons, and only realize what has happened when it’s way too late. Any human still under fairy control is quickly overpowered by the out-of-control swarms, who have quickly figured out how to wield rudimentary weaponry.

Early humanity drove most of fairykind off the planet. In current times, humanity rules the Earth, fairies being powerless to regain their grip on their planet and borrowerkind carefully living beneath humanity’s shadow.

Contact with humanity has been attempted by fairies, but they learned that ANY smidge of aggression will cause the human being communicated with to revert to their original weapon state, killing whichever fairy had made the aggressive display. Contact remains ill advised.

Despite this, humanity is naturally neutral with borrowerkind. The borrowers stay away for their own safety.

Until one day, one member of the two races collide.

Euryphon’s draconid form.

While very large and visually terrifying, he is passive and fully lucid in this state.

A small guide to basic hostal designations in abyss-speak

In my tag “Abyssal Fanart”, I utilize terms in abyss-speak, which is a lingo I developed in early 2019 for myself in order to increase my enjoyment of fictional media as well as make it easier for me to create spooky fanart. Basic introduction.

Foreword; A “host” or “hostal manifestation” is essentially the abyss-speak term for a protagonist that is being focused on or played as. There can be multiple hosts in specific stories. Autonomo - You’re basically the stalker. (Example: almost all movies) Synchro - You’re the royal advisor everyone listens to, but have no grand say over overall personality and meat. (Example: Yakuza games) Silent - You’ve successfully infiltrated a place and the only way to screw it up is with speech. (Example: Half-Life games, except Half-Life: Alyx) Vaguetuned - You’re either the person who decides the meat and the clothes but not the personality, or you fill in for personality in pre-existing meat with pre-exiting clothes. (Example: Disco Elysium, Sunset Overdrive) Finetuned - You’ve created a meatsuit for yourself to pilot. You decide the meat, the clothes, and the personality. (Example: Dark Souls games, No Man’s Sky, Stardew Valley)

May or may not post more abyss-speak definitions in the future, we’ll see!