Stablehand: Mystery being numerology revisited

Yesterday I had to re-evaluate the numbering system I used for the attributes because it didn't quite make sense to assign the Undirected attributes to the same numbers as their Directed counterparts. Nothing practically had to be zero and Duplicity kind of had to be two just because of its "two-faced" motif, for instance.

So, I thought about it a bit and redid the number assignments like so:

0	Synthesis	Nothing
1	Unity	Eternity
2	Machination	Duplicity
3	Fantasy	Frustration
4	Verity	Portent
5	Faith	Flight
6	Esteem	Desolation
7	Will	Ruin
8	Totality	Incongruity

I deliberately assigned Portent to 4 because of the "four equals death" thing in Chinese and Japanese culture. Ruin got 7 because of catastrophe theory, and Desolation got 6 because of 6 cardinal directions and the idea of a compass-related MB sounding cool to me. Incongruity had to be 8 to be in the opposite position of Synthesis, and Frustration just got 3 because that was the only slot left.

Now to go back and see if I can make the Lost MBs' digits fit these numbers the way I did with the Empowered ones. And also look at the other columns, I didn't so much pay attention to that in those though now I'd like them to match too.

Stablehand: Qualifier and almost-current MB table

From today on, as I said on my deviantART journal, I'm going to be posting all the creature announcements and similar things here first before I post the pictures to my dA, since I now have a place on archive.org to put the images. It might throw off the download count on the page, but oh well. :p

Anyway! This is the Qualifier. It's kind of the opposite of the Evacuator, though since I haven't explained what the Evacuator actually does for reasons, that's not really saying much. Anyway, the Qualifier is a very complex creature with many, many different characteristics. Usually these characteristics have something to do with all the Directed attributes, or all the Directed attributes and all the Undirected attributes (which is what I drew). Practically nobody outside of its home... place has seen one, but within its home place, it's well known as being able to give some of its many qualities to other creatures. A little like a genie.

Actually that's a really good analogy, because it actually has a usually bottle or vase like thing on its back and it will give you what you ask for if you ask it for specific qualities. Unlike jinn though, it's not really malevolent or mischievous... as a general rule at least. I guess those are qualities it could have, though. I see them as being really varied in their qualities and potentially kind of unpredictable and shifting, but usually nice, agreeable, and silent.

The second thing is this. For a while I'd been sitting on a handwritten table of MBs, about identical to the one I already posted, which also had the Salvager, Crystalvox, and doodles of the Abyssals on it.

The Salvager (cracked, winged chameleon-like creature) is the creature of Hardened-Ruin. I'd decided that all the "Hardened" mystery beings would take Undirected attributes and basically turn negative things about them into positive things. So, the Salvager "eats" broken things through the mouth in its back, even things completely beyond repair, and spits them out good as new. It literally feeds on Ruin. :p

The Crystalvox, or "Henobia hrisala", is literally just a Volvox (big round colonial alga) made out of what looks like broken glass. It seems to have some sort of weird hive mind where different points on the sphere can experience sudden emotional impulses independent from each other but the sum of them translates into the behaviour of the whole sphere. It's hard to tell whether the colony as a whole is capable of self-awareness or conspiring against anything else, but it doesn't seem totally unlikely...

The Abyssals are actually based on a weird phenomenon I sometimes experience in real life. I've already described it here if you want to read more about it, but basically, when there are dark open spaces in front of me or I'm standing near the open door to a completely dark room, particularly if there are walls or similar surrounding surfaces I can't see well, I'll get this odd, unsettling feeling that there are these dangerous beings made of darkness that are hiding in unseen corners and crevices and moving along the walls and floor and they're going to attack me at any moment when I'm not looking.

When I described them in that post, I suddenly realised, whoa, this is a really interesting creature concept. How about I include them in Stablehand? My thought was that if I could convey to somebody else how legitimately scary these things are to me but at the same time, how cool the idea was to me out of context, that would really be something. And just maybe, if I fictionalised them and gave them a name, it might even help me stop seeing them everywhere. (...That last part didn't really work, by the way.)

Anyway, in Stablehand, Abyssals are really unpredictable beings with diffuse, shifting bodies that vary a lot in shape. They lurk in dark night air, in shadowed crannies, and in deep, dark chasms. This is one of their favourite places to be, hence their name.

At random, seemingly arbitrary moments, they leap out of their hiding places and snatch passers-by almost instantaneously, which are then never to be seen again. They seem to be able to project their presences such that everyone nearby can faintly feel their existence and their movements, but never has any idea exactly where they are or what their intentions are. Sometimes, they come completely out of their hiding places and allow others to see them face-to-face, but accounts of what exactly happens after are oddly... nonexistent.

Stablehand: Mystery being palette doodles

Recently I just realised that I'd literally NEVER done coloured pictures of any mystery beings except the Insulator and the Eventuator. So I decided to fix that.

From top to bottom: Instigator, Nebuliser, Synergiser, Observers, Ostentator, Conductor, Postulator, and an attempt to make a default colour scheme for hexarts.

Mystery beings: Ostentator revamp

Well, after looking at the Ostentator and thinking, well this is sure a cool thing but it sure looks a lot like these other things for a while, I finally revamped it. Mostly I just ended up revamping the feet, but it also made me notice a couple of things on the other mystery beings as I was doing it.

So, here it is. Now the Ostentator has some very weird digits that are halfway between a bird (more toward a raptor) and a camel. How that makes any sense, I'm not really sure, but I'm more satisfied with it because it's more distinctive and mystery beings are supposed to be weird to begin with. My guess for now is that the claws stay out of the way but still allow it to grip surfaces if it needs to.

(I'm not sure what to do with the spurs it originally had, though. On one hand I want to eschew them for simplicity's sake, but on the other hand it somehow seems clumsier without them? I don't know how that works.)

As for the others, I'd been trying to get each mystery being to match up with the number I'd assigned it and the Instigator was kind of defying that rule, so I revamped it to where it only has two semi-retracting claws; it felt like an intuitive thing to do when actual crocodiles also have two clawless digits. I also noticed when I was doodling the Observer here that I'd been drawing the patagium fully extended all the time and I started to question whether that made any sense whatsoever as far as the thing moving around. The answer was... no, it didn't. In the future I'm going to draw it folded, as you can see on the rough Zfetagransza I drew if you look closely.

Lastly, here's "Lord Ostentatious". Click up the picture, and you'll find it's even weirder in context.

Stablehand: final (probably?) attitude, plus a text table of all mystery beings

Okay, another mechanic update! Finally, after thinking about it confusedly for a long time, I decided to add another "column" to my already pretty well expanded mystery being chart, and also to give the "columns" a name: attitudes.

In light of this, it's time for another brief flashback.

---

This was my very first attempt to draw all the mystery beings on one page, back when I was still in the process of designing the first eight and just wanted them to look as distinct from each other as possible. At this time there were nothing but Directed and Undirected mystery beings.

From left to right, top to bottom, for the filled-in spaces:

Instigator, Seuwayote, Equivocator,
Nebuliser, Cloud leijonœrn, Adumbrator,
Synergiser,
Observer ("pet"), Carp Concurrent and Eternituga, Perpetuator and Eventuator,
Conductor, Shoushi,
Ostentator, Hlardraho,
Insulator, Veriasaurus, Carp Divergent and Transitor (I moved the Carp Divergent to Incongruity-Lost in the new chart),
Postulator, Ahalatl.

...And this was my second (plus the somewhat messy text table I made first), when I added what I now call "attitudes" as a mechanic. At this time, "Directed", "Gathered", "Hardened", and "Lost" existed, but I hadn't thought of the name "attitudes" yet or really quite figured out how they related to each other.

So, fast-forward to now.

Now, attitudes are very much a thing. What they are is ways a person or other being can express an attribute, ranging from Directed (extreme direction) to Scrambled (extreme indirection), with complete neutrality in the middle. That last part is what I just added, just so you know, and that one is Inception: a blank slate, and the attitude everybody without any reason to have a bias any other way starts out in. (In the beginning, I thought everybody would start out mildly Directed, or as I'd now call it, Gathered, but I think this makes more sense.) One of the main reasons I added this was because I wasn't sure where Hardened should go, as it was kind of between Directed and Undirected, but not exactly completely neutral either. Inception clears this issue up though by being a "more neutral neutral".

So. Here's a table of all the mystery beings I have either designed or concepted already. I'm probably going to be coming back and filling this in as I finish the rest, and after it's finished I'll put it in the guidebook with brief summaries of what I've already told you about each of the mystery beings. Then finally everything will be in one place! Edit: Instead I just copied it into the guidebook and started editing it there, so this one will probably pretty quickly be out of date.

(Starred ones have a concept but haven't been drawn yet. Question marks mean I haven't even made a concept yet.)

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Attribute			Inception			Attribute
Machination			???			Duplicity
Fantasy			???			Portent
Synthesis			???			Incongruity
Unity			???			Eternity
Esteem			???			Ruin
Will			???			Frustration
Verity			???			Desolation
Faith			???			Flight
Totality			???			Nothing
Attribute	Directed	Gathered	Hardened	Lost	Scrambled	Attribute
Machination	Instigator	Seuwayote	???	Equivocator	???	Duplicity
Fantasy	Nebuliser	Cloud leijonœrn	???	Adumbrator	Abyssals	Portent
Synthesis	Synergiser	???	???	Chaoswork chimaera	???	Incongruity
Unity	Observer	Eventuator	Eternituga	Evermore Albatross*	Crystalvox	Eternity
Esteem	Ostentator	Salvager	???	Hlardraho	???	Ruin
Will	Conductor	Shoǔshi	???	Vociferator	???	Frustration
Verity	Insulator	Veriasaurus	Blazondeer	Transitor	???	Desolation
Faith	Postulator	Ahalatl	???	Absenter?	???	Flight
Totality	Qualifier*	???	???	???	Evacuator*	Nothing

Stablehand: Synergiser & Seuwayote + a little more about mystery beings

At top is the Seuwayote, and at bottom is the Synergiser! Or a rather rough version of it, anyway. The Seuwayote is probably not totally final either. But at least I can tell you about it now.

The Seuwayote (Say-ooh-wa-yo-tay) is like a coyote of shadow. Though individuals' colours can vary, every Seuwayote's body is split into two distinct colours which are usually fairly unsaturated. Usually, this split is symmetrical, but some Seuwayotes' colours seem to be able to shift such that more of their body is the light colour or more of their body is the dark colour, or even such that they are only the light colour or the dark colour. It's not really known how or why this happens, or even whether Seuwayotes do it at will, but people suspect they can. Their bodies are extremely mutable and seem to be able to change as quickly and freely as a shadow, and also seem to camouflage well in shadows, allowing them to accomplish otherwise near-impossible feats like weaving around closed doors. They're often curious, but almost never attack anyone, or even make a single sound. When they do, though, their call is said to be extremely eerie and otherworldly.

Also, every Seuwayote has a hat, and it's literally inseparable from that hat. If the hat gets blown away in the wind, the Seuwayote will disappear and reappear from inside it, wherever it ends up. Destroying the hat may or may not destroy the Seuwayote itself, since sometimes they have never reappeared after the hat was destroyed, but others, they've just reappeared from the shadows and sprouted new hats out of their heads.

I already told you about the Synergiser, and I've edited this picture into that post for a little more chronological sanity too.

Oh, and here are better drawings of the "main" eight mystery beings' feet. My goal was to make them all "different", so none of them would look quite the same.

This posed slight problems for creating a number system for them, until I realised that if each one is different each digit could represent a different mystery being and they could just use base eight. (If you haven't guessed what the theme is among all of them now that I've accidentally given you a huge hint here, I'll be pretty surprised.)

By the way, "heterogeneous" in the diagram means that their surface has various pigments and textures like "normal" animals, like patterned fur or scales, and "homogeneous" means their surface mostly just has a single texture that doesn't really look much like any you'd find on a "normal" animal, though the colour may vary a little.

Stablehand: The mystery beings and their sensors

I had to make a diagram of the mystery beings' various sensors, because not even I could get them all straight. :P

As you'll notice, many of them can see in either infrared or ultraviolet, and the extra-special Instigator can see both. All of them also have a strange extra sense, which practically nobody in-universe knows the exact purpose or mechanics of (or at least, practically nobody outside the mysterious Borderlands; it's unknown how many people live inside them, if any). This sense is a little weaker in the Instigator than most, nearly absent in the Ostentator, a little better than most in the Conductor, and very strong in the Postulator, which seems to be able to use it in place of sight.

(I said Postulators don't usually echolocate before, but now that I think about it, I can actually see them using sound/radio waves in conjunction with this sense a lot, so that is probably no longer canon.)