WIP The Camodi (looking for collaborative aid)

Hey, folks!

Let me preface by saying the content of this post is likely to change pretty drastically throughout the creative/developmental process! That being said, I'm happy to hear suggestions and thoughts as I go.

The Camodi (renamed from their working title "Fragments of the Colossi") are a race of predominantly humanoid but not unreptillian space-faring aliens.

The scope of this project is ambitious, because I'm an artist and a world builder, so I can't just make a race, I've got to make the complete package. That means everything from racial armor, weapons and blocks, to procedurally generated settlements and questlines to immerse my players (but really, I also want to make it for myself.)

Below I'm going to try to break this down into sections. Please bear in mind that I am nothing if not needlessly verbose sometimes, and when it comes to world-building I'm overly thorough, so this will be an in-depth look rather than an at a glance break down of a fun but generic space-race.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Updates -
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• 7/18/2017: Setup the WIP discussion. Worked on some roughs.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Visually the race has taken a recent turn from more reptile goat, to more reptile, multi-armed humanoid whose aesthetics are drawn pretty heavily from the Tharks as portrayed in John Carter. Their look is still evolving, but that is where I took my main influence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mod Direction
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Less of a race mod, more of a race expansion. I hope to not just offer a neat little custom race, but features like blocks, armors, vanity items, weapons, quests, crew and generated colonies.​

​

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mod Information
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything present here was drawn or pixelled by me!

All art here was drawn or pixelled by me!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disorganized Racial Notes -
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

• Monarchy Rule.
• Presently in the midst of civil unrest due to sudden advancements in technology and the bid for diplomacy rather than aggressive colonization of other planets.
• Split presently lacks proper names, but their working titles are Traditionalists & the Enlightened.
• Traditionalists adhere more to the primal barbarism that nearly wiped out their kind with centralized worship for a singular deity: The Architect.
  • For The Horde: Traditionalists believe that a single spawning ground and no defined parent makes them stronger as a military force. They want to return to that and abolish family units.
  • They're largely feudal in their mentality and would rather dominate a planet than live peacefully with its present denizens.
  • Often appear with long coils as a mark of their loyalty to the Traditionalist way. (See physiology to understand coils if confused.)
  • Wish to unseat the current Monarch to begin reversing all the work she's done.
  • Consist of proud few who can 'trace their beginnings back to the first warlords.' The irony of which seems to have escaped them when forever preaching a return to mass spawning grounds, rather than defined family units.
• The Enlightened are those who embrace and follow the current monarch's agenda for a peaceful journey through the stars.
  • Physically marked by their short, sealed coils, or lack of them altogether.
  • Are largely responsible for most of the technological advances made by the Camodi in the last several centuries.
  • Maintain the "walk softly and carry a big gun" philosophy when dealing with new races. They'd prefer to do things without violence, but they're prepared to mete violence against violence if necessary.
• Plasma and biotech focus. From ship fuel to weapons. Clean dark matter energy.
• Ships put off a residual plasma gas tail that's darn colorful and glowy.
• Biotech, bioscience, biomimetics - focus on applying nature rather than altering nature into synthetics.
• Cambodian and Egyptian influence for architecture.
• Fun Fact: Tusk Locking is an activity with a few meanings. Family members, or those close will greet one another by locking tusks and resting their foreheads against one another. Reversely, it is also a sign of aggression to lock tusks in the heat of a disagreement. The former is done in lieu of an embrace and has a variety of additional gestures, depending on the Camodi and how well liked the one in question is.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Camodi - Physical
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the images show, they're a long, multi-limbed bunch of creatures with a very classic 'alien' feel to them.

• Genders are defined in terms of procreation, but feature very little within their social or political framework. There's a distinct lack of the weaker sex mentality.
• Sexual dimorphism isn't as markedly featured as some races. It's mostly in the lines of the Camodi itself. Females tend to have narrower core, smoother muscle mass and a very subtle flare at the hips. The easiest identifier is whether or not the Camodi has horns in addition to their tusks. Horns implies masculinity, but it should be noted that it's not unheard of that a female of the species developed them. It's simply more frequently seen on males.
• Tusks aren't gender specific.
• Hairless, with the exception of fine nerve-riddled strands atop their head. Thicker than average hair strands. These have the ability to sense barometric changes, which was an evolutionary trait necessary in the early centuries of their existence.
  • It was customary for men and women coming of age to take part in a Coiling Ceremony that painfully twisted the strands into Coils that were banded and capped. As the Camodi grows, the hair is trained into that shape and the bands are added to-- a rudimentary means of determining a Camodi's age, was by looking at the length of the coils and the number of bands on each.
  • With advances in science, and with changing fashion, many young Camodi have done away with and sealed the follicles entirely, or chosen to keep them vainly short-cropped.
• They lack human adjacent assets. No nipples, no belly buttons. Because of a lack of live birth, none are necessary. This has been a subject of some unrest with other sepcies.
• Gestation takes place in a soft shell egg.
• If anything, they're more closely related to reptiles in a lot of ways.
• Slit pupil, secondary lid.
• Smooth skin, although some develop a chitinous hide over the years, a bit like lizard scaling.
• I head canon that they reach such staggering heights and maintain low body mass because of a lack of intense gravity on their planet. This has led to some trial and error in creating bio-suits suitable for regulating and maintaining a comfortable level of pressure. Simply put, without the weight of gravity, they simply grew long and limby.

I anticipate some difficulty with spriting due to the extra limbs, but I've got confidence I'll figure it out.

In the meantime I'm still trying to nail down exact styles so that I don't go into spriting and end up having to rework things because I thought of some new, better look, or something.

There will be more sections added as I can remember to do so, but that's the bare minimum at least!
​

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm in the market for people who find the core idea interesting enough to want to be a part of that development. Creatively I have a lot of it covered, but I do appreciate the insight of other people, sometimes you just get too close to a project and need that fresh perspective. Also coders who know anything, because it's otherwise just going to be a lot of trial and error for me.

Hit me up here, or through private messages if you're interested in being a part of this.​

​

 

Looks like they would a be cool race but aren't they a little too closely related to the Tharks in terms of looks? It feels like they're a subspecies rather than a different thing altogether but if you want to keep them this way I don't think anyone is going to complain apart from the most spastic of lore hoarders.

Either way I wish you luck with completing this, wouldn't mind a fresh species to send through the wringer of building a themed space station/planet.