Miranda is an uplifted woodlouse (sow bug), from the small colony of Twirp. Twirp gained its independance when their Hymenoptera (waspish) overlords failed to return with supplies, young guards and overseers. As the aging wasps in residence realized that no help was likely to happen in their lifetimes, they began the process of making the sowbugs self reliant so that if the colony was rediscovered by their cousins from the far future, they'd still be a 'resource' ready for the wasps to exploit.
Originally cultivated (and enslaved by some people's reckoning) for their ability to produce amonia for industrial use, the sowbugs were slowly given more and more education as the centuries wore on, until their amonia harvesting was pretty much an voluntary and automatic process.
Miranda herself was one of the first to make contact with other non-insectile races inhabiting their solar system and became a sort of interrim negotiator-leader when it came time for the colony to manage itself. Generally sowbugs are gregarious and more than a little shy when it comes to outsiders, so in Miranda they saw a scapegoat as much as a potential savior to their colony's problems.
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Woodlouse Facts: Waaaaay too many and too weird to fully cover here, but some key elements that made it into Miranda:
1: Sowbugs don't urinate - instead they exude amonia through their exoskeleton.
2. Sowbugs have simple gills which need to be kept moist and function much the same as lungs - usually located on their 5th pair of legs (They normally have seven). On Miranda here, they've switched upwards to her waist since her kind is now quadramorphic. They still need to be kept moist, but they function much more like lungs than their in her ancient cousins.
3. Sowbugs aren't insects or bugs, but crustaceans, having more in common with say, lobsters and crabs than other arthropods.
4. Sowbug females (And their subset, pillbugs), keep their young in a marsupial style pouch on their undersides. Their young are laid as eggs, hatch, and go through their first molt all within the pouch before leaving. On Miranda, the banded yellow patch on her tummy that dissappears behind her thong is her pouch.
5. Males and females each have '2' copies of their sexes, left and right, and in the non-morphic versions, each pair is coupled, right to right for five minutes, then left to left, for another five minutes, during mating.
6. Most woodlice, such as Miranda here, can't curl up like the pill bugs do, but instead have plates that flare so that when on their belly, can lie flush to the ground, which the nonmorphs grip with all seven pairs of legs, making them hard to flip over.
7. Most woodlice are scavenger herbivores, but a few are carnivorous - or have seasonally changing diets. Miranda's race can consume just about anything organic without ill effect.
8. Sow bug blood uses Haemocycanin which contains a copper atom instead of the iron atom found in haemogobin, and appears blue when carrying oxygen, and clear/colorless when not.
***
This is more a placeholder piccie for figuring out the anatomy and engineering of making one into a morph, but it came out alright. Face needs some redesign (and better perspective).
Originally cultivated (and enslaved by some people's reckoning) for their ability to produce amonia for industrial use, the sowbugs were slowly given more and more education as the centuries wore on, until their amonia harvesting was pretty much an voluntary and automatic process.
Miranda herself was one of the first to make contact with other non-insectile races inhabiting their solar system and became a sort of interrim negotiator-leader when it came time for the colony to manage itself. Generally sowbugs are gregarious and more than a little shy when it comes to outsiders, so in Miranda they saw a scapegoat as much as a potential savior to their colony's problems.
***
Woodlouse Facts: Waaaaay too many and too weird to fully cover here, but some key elements that made it into Miranda:
1: Sowbugs don't urinate - instead they exude amonia through their exoskeleton.
2. Sowbugs have simple gills which need to be kept moist and function much the same as lungs - usually located on their 5th pair of legs (They normally have seven). On Miranda here, they've switched upwards to her waist since her kind is now quadramorphic. They still need to be kept moist, but they function much more like lungs than their in her ancient cousins.
3. Sowbugs aren't insects or bugs, but crustaceans, having more in common with say, lobsters and crabs than other arthropods.
4. Sowbug females (And their subset, pillbugs), keep their young in a marsupial style pouch on their undersides. Their young are laid as eggs, hatch, and go through their first molt all within the pouch before leaving. On Miranda, the banded yellow patch on her tummy that dissappears behind her thong is her pouch.
5. Males and females each have '2' copies of their sexes, left and right, and in the non-morphic versions, each pair is coupled, right to right for five minutes, then left to left, for another five minutes, during mating.
6. Most woodlice, such as Miranda here, can't curl up like the pill bugs do, but instead have plates that flare so that when on their belly, can lie flush to the ground, which the nonmorphs grip with all seven pairs of legs, making them hard to flip over.
7. Most woodlice are scavenger herbivores, but a few are carnivorous - or have seasonally changing diets. Miranda's race can consume just about anything organic without ill effect.
8. Sow bug blood uses Haemocycanin which contains a copper atom instead of the iron atom found in haemogobin, and appears blue when carrying oxygen, and clear/colorless when not.
***
This is more a placeholder piccie for figuring out the anatomy and engineering of making one into a morph, but it came out alright. Face needs some redesign (and better perspective).
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 360 x 800px
File Size 116.4 kB
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