#it comes to say how crazy the military was in Khaenri'ah

[reginrokkr]

◟༺✧༻◞ Ruin Machines II: Ancient kingdom guardians.

As Dain said before in "We will be reunited", the Ruin Machines all hail from the fallen land of Khaenri'ah. And these machines are now known in Teyvat as Ruin Guards. By design, they are tools of war for Khaenri'ah. [...] The humans we face in-game, the Hilichurls and the Abyss monsters behave according to certain social dynamics and adapt their behavior according to their ecological environments as natural and elemental organisms would, while the Ruin Machines are automated tools designed and manufactured by the people of Khaenri'ah.

Although they are all classified as Ruin monsters due to different design purposes and functional differences within their respective divisions, Ruin monsters actually have different forms. For instance, for the relationship between the Ruin Guard and Ruin Grader we can think of their design basis as "machines of war built in man's image". By respecting this foundational idea, a distinction is then created when it comes to their form. If there are major differences in their shape, we can think of them as having different design purposes, respectively. Using military units as an example the Ruin Guards most resemble "infantry" whose job is to advance and hold territory while Ruin Hunters are much closer to skirmishers.

When we designed the Ruin monsters, we identified two set points at the Creative Concept and Writing level and the Ruin Machines must satisfy at least one of them. One is functionality "form determined by function" while the other is biomimesis. The combat, art design and presentation of the Ruin monsters basically revolve around these two set points.

—Form determined by function—

[...] The Ruin Serpent is from the underground kingdom of Khaenri'ah and is a piece of engineering machinery designed for civil construction and tunnel development. Similarly, as one of the Ruin monsters its body has also inherited a biomimetic form assembled from parts. Prehistoric giant creatures such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Pterosaur were sources of inspiration for the Ruin Drake. This is also more in line with the theme of the Ruin machines being strange and ancient

—Biomimesis—

Aside from "Form determined by function" another major part of our design philosophy for the Ruin series is "biomimesis". That is, imitating a living creature in structure and behavior. Khaenri'ah is a nation located underground. In terms of ecological diversity, its nature is lacking compared to the surface. Therefore, among the mechanical engineers of Khaenri'ah, there are some people who are obsessed with the idea of mimesis... In other words, they wanted to create a mechanical ecosystem underground using human intelligence. As for the Ruin Sentinels, the engineers are people who have not seen life on the surface so they drew inspiration from bionic beings in their own imaginations to create war machines. The overall design of the Ruin monsters follows "biomimetic" principles. In addition to considering the mechanical structure, we also had to consider the ecological behavior of the animals they were inspired by.

#◟༺✦༻◞ Fragments of light from the roots of Truth ┊Reference.┊ #there is more about this but #that's more technical talk to implement it in-game #this is about what I was most interested #specially the biomimesis part about it #because it always struck me with curiosity #since the first time I saw it and investigated some of it #until the meaning and the description of some items and monsters #including the abyssal woofies #did make me realize #that perhaps in this obsession of imitating real life creatures #there is also the obsession of King Irmin #to plunge everything in darkness #and the fact that the might've known #that if that comes to happen no life could happen #these things are being powered by abyssal energy #as Childe told us in his mission and according to a few drop items #it's also crazy to think of Ruin Guards as infantry #it comes to say how crazy the military was in Khaenri'ah #and once again how strong humans must've been to compensate #one other detail I haven't mentioned is the new Ruin Drakes #and how in some descriptions there is this telling #that Khaenri'ahns were obsessed with the distant past #of the Dragonlords specifically #these people surely knew a loT #anyway rant's over djfhjg