#getting back into typography w/ a classic <3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

salavarte · 4 years

Photo

Short version: A lil sketchy exploration of the Uluth, the psychic hivemind squidpeople who are part of the antagonistic regime in my ttrpg current game. Lelu & Zwyo are members of the resistance. Really this was just so I could draw Lelu w/ some context. Lelu is a cutthroat negotiator and interrogator that uses the fact that they look like an adorable vinyl toy to throw people off. Zwyo is 1/2 of a pair that creates a series of political protest art (she does typography) & is involved in her community’s music scene.

Long version (copied from my patreon) w/ some extra art:

“A little bit of sketchy nonsense that I decided to color as a warmup. "Uluth" have been part of The Road's TTRPG lore for awhile (tumblr archive says 3 years but I think longer than that) - the races on The Road and the setting were something my partner made before we met so a lot of the world was set in stone by the time it became a collaborative project, and like many custom fantasy settings, have 'classic' fantasy race parallels (halflings, dark elves/orcs/trolls, and liches, the latter of which we aren't coy about).

I was running a very BPRD-esque game in a haunted hotel with some eldritch horror undertones when I conceived what I felt was my contribution to The Road's races (sort of, I'll elaborate later). The Uluth, a very loose homage to mindflayers, but turned on its head a bit to create a "good" (like, speaking alignment wise) version. I actually cribbed the leg design from the way I used to draw Mindflayers. A race of humanoid, psychic squid-ish people that were all linked up to pockets of collective consciousness that served as their gods/monarchs. An Uluth has a lifecycle that goes gelatinous egg -> larvae/tadpoles -> something that looks more like a baby -> fully ambulatory child with a large rudder like tail -> juvenile (starting to express adult characteristics like definition in their fins, tails are shrinking into pretty much a nub - think teenagers) and then adult, with no tail, their final colorations (if they didn't have em already) -> and then finally, when their physical body dies, their ""soul""/psionic self ascends into the Overmind to contribute to the collective consciousness. At the time I made them, in the prime timeline of our games, Uluth had immigrated to The Road several hundred years prior to the current age (1974) as a Roman-level civilization, but their naturally pacifist nature, frail bodies that were susceptible to stress, etc. led them to be killed off by another similarly developed species to the point of extinction.

Originally, I never intended to draw a living Uluth or think much about how they looked like normally - they were viewed solely through the lens of the ghostly, psionic selves that had slowly gone insane and created a mad, fractured overmind, the psionic abilities of which had caused strange labyrinthine passages and other weird shit to spontaneously form in the hotel (....I really liked "House of Leaves" as a teenager, ok). But my player was running a very mad scientist-y character at the time and managed to rehydrate Peklam's (second image) mummified body and shove his soul back inside it, so all of a sudden we had a walking talking Uluth. Peklam was then one of my PCs for a game we did later with the same group of characters! The image of Peklam was done during that time, but I still like it, it was done when my art style was loosening up.

When we started doing AU games, we did a setting ran by me called Mindrunner in which the Uluth not only survived the cull, but partnered up with another race to become the dominant culture on the planet, and by 2035 The Road is highly technologically advanced with a lot of progressive things regarding universal healthcare and public resources, but has suffered in other ways, mostly regarding the dehumanization of a "undead race" that most Uluth, as creatures that never REALLY die, treat with a lot of fear/disgust/disdain. This sentiment is shared by eh most people. I would explain it further but I feel like this is already kind of rambly and dense. But suffice it to say, this other species, the Annubi, which a lot of our other characters are, have a similarly complicated lifecycle where they are normal, gradually get more decrepit but more powerful (and mentally unstable) as they age with NO UPPER LIMIT, creating Liches, and all of the psionic pressure on the road from so many Uluth is accelerating the process. Not to mention the stress of being treated like shit. Not that the current regime would accept that maybe they should be helping these people instead of shooting them in the head and calling it a day.

Needless to say, we are playing the game from the POV of the insurgency, because the government sucks in the real world so it's cathartic to overthrow a fictional one, lol. Not all Uluth feel the same - the two named characters here, Zwyo and Lelu, are members of the resistance. Zwyo assists another character to create political protest art (Zwyo does typography and layout, the other guy, Mandrake, does the art) and Lelu uses their psionics to be a master interrogator, and utilizes the fact that they look positively adorable to catch people off guard. They are in fact quite cutthroat, and used to be a bit of a con artist before joining the resistance movement.

Funfact: Uluth are super into "athleisure" type clothing because it dries quickly and does not restrict their movement. Another fashion staple is transparent accessories, like sleeves, jackets, bags, etc. Zwyo is very into the underground music scene in her home, and is a little more into "human music" and fashion.

This is really all just because I wanted to draw this NPC Lelu, who I had no idea how to design, as I hadn't thought a lot about what "young" uluth look like. Lelu is an adult Uluth who's body never got larger or lost its tail, and retains many juvenile characteristics (big ol eyes and head, short muzzle). They mostly take it in stride and are a small bastard.

That's it! Back to more important matters. Uluth are not the most visually exciting things in the world, they aren't as "weird" as I prefer my alien races to be, but for the setting, I find them visually appropriate and think they're cute. They are a throwback to an alien race I made when I was, like, 15.

#Mindrunner #The Road #aliens #Character Design #creature design

18 notes · View notes