Benvenute e benvenuti in questa rubrica in cui vi mostriamo le fanart dei nostri
personaggi, disegnate da artiste e artisti talentuosi da tutto il mondo, e le
commentiamo! Perché, insomma, un po' di fierezza ci vuole, no? Siamo
fieri che le persone scelgano di disegnarli, e per dimostrarlo mettiamo i
loro lavori sotto lo spotlight!
Il disegno del giorno, realizzato in una splendida matita colorata dall'artista Smilofelinae, rappresenta il nostro merfolk abissale, Lihsangiongiangionschio!
Sembra che l'opinione degli artisti sia divisa a metà, riguardo a come disegnare questo pesce abissale: metà di loro lavorano su pose e concept buffi e goffi, metà preferiscono mettere in risalto la parte "horror". E noi non potremmo essere più felici di tutta questa varietà!
In questo caso, la scelta è stata quella di mettere in mostra i denti. Le zanne delle creature delle profondità sono interessanti, vero? In un mondo oscuro, dove il cibo è rarissimo, i denti sono fatti per trattenere a tutti i costi, come le sbarre di una prigione.
E sapete cos'altro ha "denti" (le virgolette sono obbligatorie) simili? Le Dionea muscipula, le più famose fra le piante carnivore, che hanno trappole orlate di "denti" molto, molto simili a quelli che vediamo in questa illustrazione!
Il parallelismo biologico ci piace da impazzire! (Anche perché oltre ad essere appassionati di oceano, collezioniamo piante carnivore. Sì, siamo eclettici nel mondo naturale, ci piace troppo tutto XD).
E poi gli occhi scintillanti, le manine dettagliate (e che belle linee!), il modo in cui questi disegni lo fanno sembrare un qualche tipo di "mostro classico"... bellissimo!
Lihsangiongiangionschio è uno dei personaggi di Fish Don't Cry! Dategli un'occhiata, se cercate un'avventura misteriosa, magica e piena di... biologia marina!
Benvenute e benvenuti in questa rubrica in cui vi mostriamo le fanart dei nostri
personaggi, disegnate da artisti talentuosi da tutto il mondo, e le
commentiamo! Perché, insomma, un po' di fierezza ci vuole, no? Siamo
fieri che le persone scelgano di disegnarli, e per dimostrarlo mettiamo i
loro lavori sotto lo spotlight!
Il disegno del giorno, realizzato in digitale dall'artista Kobada, rappresenta il nostro merfolk abissale, Lihsangiongiangionschio, intento ad osservare... delle bolle?
Ma quanto è carino che Lihso possa fare "oooh" con una sola delle sue due bocche? Sembra proprio affascinato, da queste bolle...
In realtà, nonostante l'aspetto sciocchino, Lihsangiongiangioschío non è affatto stupido, è anzi un esperto notevole di magia e biologia. Sono cose che succedono, quando hai tutto il tempo del mondo, da solo, nell'oscurità, per studiare ogni sorta di materia esistente. O quello, o ti annoi! E per fortuna Lihso ha anche una forte base genetica per questa cosa: nonostante sia perlopiù solitaria, la sua specie è particolarmente versata in questa sorta di arti magiche. Sopravvivere nel buio, da soli, a pressioni eccezionali e con predatori che hanno bisogno di mangiare proprio te se non vogliono morire di fame, è un'attività che richiede impegno e attitudine, e solo gli esemplari più intelligenti di merfolk abissali sopravvivono!
È andata così per un lungo, lungo periodo di tempo.
Questo ovviamente non significa che Lihso non sia il tipo di persona che si ossessiona con i piccoli oggetti! C'è poco da vedere laggiù, diciamo che è una vita un po' monotona... e delle bolle catturerebbero certamente la sua attenzione! Cosa ci fa laggiù dell'ossigeno? O forse si tratta di metano? Magari c'è un camino idrotermale lì vicino da qualche parte, e lui vorrebbe certamente vederlo!
E poi Lihso è stato disegnato in modo adorabile... guarda i suoi occhietti strabici da pesciotto! E le sue manine con gli artigli! Assolutamente carinissimo.
Grazie mille!
Lihsangiongiangionschio è uno dei personaggi di Fish Don't Cry! Dategli un'occhiata, se cercate un'avventura misteriosa, magica e piena di... biologia marina!
Benvenute e benvenuti in questa rubrica in cui vi mostriamo le fanart dei nostri
personaggi, disegnati da artisti talentuosi da tutto il mondo, e le
commentiamo! Perché, insomma, un po' di fierezza ci vuole, no? Siamo
fieri che le persone scelgano di disegnarli, e per dimostrarlo mettiamo i
loro lavori sotto lo spotlight!
Il disegno di oggi è stata creata per noi da cjcraziness (per ArtFight, a cui le nostre artiste ufficiali stanno partecipando)!
È una rappresentazione di Rosas, con i tentacoli di Seras Alkahest che lo circondano.
I tentacoli di Seras sono una delle sue caratteristiche più prominenti, la cosa che più rimane in mente a chi interagisce con lei. E Seras stessa, con la sua personalità, è rappresentata bene da essi, dal modo in cui tocca tutto, stringe tutto, possiede tutto.
L'artista si domanda: "Quanto è interessante (e pericoloso) essere una "Murena" prediletta della strega Seras, mi chiedo? E dovrebbe preoccuparsi più di questo che del suo prossimo abito alla moda?"
E la risposta è... dipende. Vale la pena di vivere con l'ansia per qualcosa che non si può evitare? Se Seras decidesse di fargli del male, di trasformarlo, di scartarlo o di distruggerlo... che cosa potrebbe fare Rosas per difendersi?
Forse la "follia" di Rosas è quello che gli permette di godersi quello che gli è capitato, anche se è qualcosa di assolutamente pericolosissimo. Quei tentacoli che gli offrono cibo, bei vestiti e oggetti meravigliosi sono un trappola, ma non è certo se un giorno si chiuderanno su di lui a stritolarlo oppure no.
E fino ad allora... come dicono i Nightwish "Beware the beast, but enjoy the feast he" (in questo caso she) "offers".
Benvenute e benvenuti in questa rubrica in cui vi mostriamo le fanart dei nostri
personaggi, disegnati da artisti talentuosi da tutto il mondo, e le
commentiamo! Perché, insomma, un po' di fierezza ci vuole, no? Siamo
fieri che le persone scelgano di disegnarli, e per dimostrarlo mettiamo i
loro lavori sotto lo spotlight!
Il disegno del giorno, realizzato in digitale dall'artista DoodleDeity, rappresenta il nostro piccolo, specialissimo merfolk abissale, Lihsangiongiangionschio.
Ma cosa gli è successo, è stato catturato da una rete? Povero piccolo, che aria spaventata... ma non fatevi ingannare, potrebbe essere un altro dei suoi trucchi per farsi caricare a bordo di una nave, dove incontrare le sue amatissime donne umane!
Che cosa stringe fra quelle zampette artigliate? È un... cappellino di carta stagnola? Hmm... ci sono voci di artefatti simili, creati da potenti stregoni abissali, capaci di rendere chi li indossa dei mutaforma... voi vi fidereste di Lihso?
Lihsangiongiangionschio è uno dei personaggi di Fish Don't Cry! Dategli un'occhiata, se cercate un'avventura misteriosa, magica e piena di... biologia marina!
Benvenute e benvenuti in questa rubrica in cui vi mostriamo le fanart dei nostri
personaggi, disegnati da artisti talentuosi da tutto il mondo, e le
commentiamo! Perché, insomma, un po' di fierezza ci vuole, no? Siamo
fieri che le persone scelgano di disegnarli, e per dimostrarlo mettiamo i
loro lavori sotto lo spotlight!
Il disegno di oggi è stato realizzato dal nostro collega e amico di vecchia data, King (LovelyWingsArt), e ritrae, in stile semi-chibi, il merman Rosas! Questo adorabile bastardello è pronto ad incantarvi con la sua parlantina (e il suo accento posh inglese mischiato ad un temperamento che non è esattamente quello di un old-time gentleman...).
Anche se in questa versione la sua barba non è rifinita come al solito (manca il taglio che normalmente separa il pizzetto dai basettoni), Rosas ama sperimentare con look nuovi, e la barba "intera" (inteso come non-spezzata, non non-rifinita, quello per lui sarebbe un sacrilegio!) è una cosa che ogni tanto decide di portare, se pensa che questa cosa possa giovargli nelle, ahem... conquiste...
Rosas è uno dei personaggi di Fish Don't Cry! Dategli un'occhiata, se cercate un'avventura misteriosa, magica e piena di... biologia marina!
Seras Alkahest is a female sea warlock and the president of Alkahest Labs.
Appearance
Seras has a humanoid torso, resembling that of a human woman (but without breasts, although her strong, partially membrane-covered chest resembles that of a woman in a long dress), with pale skin. She has a noble-looking face, with a thin nose and high cheekbones, and two eyes with iridescent irises, but generally lime green.
Beneath her torso, her body divides into eight long, thick arms (often also incorrectly called tentacles), ranging in color from pale pink to silver, but capable of creating patterns and blotches on her skin thanks to her large number of chromatophores.
She is seven meters and fifty-two centimeters (7.52 m) long, from the top of her head to the tips of her fully extended "tentacles," but thanks to the incredible flexibility of her lower body, she can contract to a length of just under three meters.
In her "human" form, which she achieves thanks to the specialized use of her metamorphic magic, Seras appears as a tall woman with long blonde hair that reaches her calves. She has bangs, which most often fall over her left eye, but which can also be styled in various ways. She has large eyes, with thicker eyelashes than those of her natural body.
Personality
Seras is an extremely intelligent person, and as such, her decisions and ideologies are sometimes difficult to understand for social creatures, especially humans. Her morals are very different from those of humans; often, her choices can be seen as cruel, others as senselessly and blatantly altruistic.
Seras grew up alone in the ocean, communicating and interacting only with species other than her own. She has never been influenced by a social structure, but her actions are driven by curiosity, the need to survive, and experimentation. Her vision of life is one in which her personal freedom is the most precious thing, and no one should have the slightest chance of harming her.
Due to her solitary childhood, as well as the power she has acquired through magic, Seras is completely unaccustomed to being told no, to the point that she doesn't consider rejection by others a viable option: those who oppose her are ignored, forced, or immediately "eliminated from the equation," one way or another.
Most of her time, Seras studies magic and technology, as is the nature of sea sorcerers. Thanks to the highly advanced artifacts she builds and her highly advanced spells, Seras can produce results that allow her to earn enormous amounts of money.
Relationships with Others
Seras cannot have children of her own due to a number of issues (such as the fact that other members of her species are extremely rare and tend to attack and kill each other), so she has created "children" for herself by cloning small humans who she claims resemble her, and combining them through a mix of high magic and science with various parts of marine animals, creating a sort of "artificial merfolk" and raising them in the water.
🌵🎨 All the drawings in this page (and probably in all the other pages, if
not differently specified) were realized by our artists, Furiarossa e Mimma. You can see more of their works and support them on their Patreon page. Become patrons of the arts! 🌵🎨
King Azoth is a legendary monarch who, according to the stories of the Mediterranean and Atlantic pistrix, defended his species' spawning grounds from merfolk invasions until the (historically uncertain) moment when he was killed while valiantly fighting alone against an army of over a thousand merfolk.
The details of Azoth's life are largely the product of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians, both human and merfolk. For many pistrix, however, he remains a solid historical figure, believed in almost religiously.
He was the "husband" of Queen Serpent.
Appears (not directly, but in flashbacks) in: the first book in
the Odyssey saga, and also of the eponymous comic.
Although the Azoth bloodline, with its hundreds of descendants (or so-called) scattered across the world's oceans, appears to be a historical reality, the truth of who this common ancestor "king" was is highly debated.
One school of thought sees the king as a true historical figure, a leader and inventor who united the entire pistrix people under one banner to fight back against the merfolk's abuses, and who paid for this boldness with his life.
Some scholars, however, maintain that Azoth was nothing more than a fictional hero of folklore, or even a partially forgotten ocean deity, later associated with real events, such as the destruction of the Vertical Castle, one of the most important gathering and burial sites for the pistrix. There appears to be no documentation attesting that the pistrix ever had a centralized government, much less a monarchy. Other mythological figures later "historicized" can be cited as examples of a similar process of mythologizing, such as Hengest of Kent, a legendary ruler, or the well-known King Arthur.
Even Azoth's supposed lifespan of over seven hundred years appears to be a completely invented detail, although the pistrix (none of whom, among those interviewed, have reached that age) swear that it is natural, and even common for their species, to live that long.
Gallery of images (Click to enlarge!)
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Colonna 1
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colonna 3
🌵🎨 All the drawings in this page (and probably in all the other pages, if
not differently specified) were realized by our artists, Furiarossa e Mimma. You can see more of their works and support them on their Patreon page. Become patrons of the arts! 🌵🎨
(Ti sei perso, viaggiatore? Se stai cercando questa pagina in italiano, puoi trovarla QUI!)
Deep-sea merfolk (Abyssugens hispida), sometimes written as deepsea merfolk or deepsea siren, are sentient creatures that inhabit the abyssal zone, unable to survive naturally at low pressures, especially long periods out of the water.
Despite their misleading name, deep-sea mermaids are not part of the merfolk family, although deep-sea mermaids were once mistakenly classified as Maregens hispida.
Abyssugens are mysterious creatures, statistically almost never coming into contact with surface creatures. They are highly intelligent, but any rare interaction with other sentient creatures has invariably labeled them "weird": speaking a completely different language and living a solitary lifestyle in the deep, where concepts and priorities are markedly different from those of the surface waters or even on land, can make communication with a creature unlike themselves difficult.
Abyssal sirens have been reported to be capable of creating exquisitely effective magical artifacts; they are resourceful alchemists and artisans, inventing any trick to make their lives easier. They are true opportunists, seeking maximum yield from minimum effort, a trait necessary for them to survive in the harsh environment of the abyssal depths. They are also called abyssal merfolk, people of the abyss, or simply abyssals.
Conservation status
Data Deficient (DD): The available information is insufficient to provide a direct or indirect assessment of the risk of extinction.
Appearance and Physiology
Deep-sea merfolk have decidedly less human-like features than their surface counterparts, the Maregens. Their heads are more flattened, with a blunt but more prominent snout, slightly upward-pointing, revealing a pair of mouths, both functional and equipped with thin, sharp teeth, designed to tear flesh and hold prey during their lightning-fast attacks. Their nostrils are slanted and sensitive.
It has been reported that, although both are perfectly functional for both sound and feeding, many deep-sea sirens prefer to eat from one mouth and sing from the other. Over time, the singing mouth's tongue thickens and becomes more trained, making it visible to the eye which is which; both tongues are mobile and pointed, smooth, and pink.
Their skin is thick and tough, covered with tiny, adapted scales whose structure and shape are vaguely similar to those of the placoid scales of sharks and rays, which leave room for photophores. As pups, they lack these, so their internal organs and veins can be seen through their delicate skin.
Deep-sea merfolk have an elongated, almost tapered silhouette, with a distinctive posture that sees them hunched forward. They tend to remain static, upright when at rest; they have a prominent, jagged-looking dorsal fin, an anal fin, and a large, modified caudal fin, which has split to be flanked by two smaller fins (more abundant in photophores; it is uncertain whether these are decorative or somehow enhance their swimming ability). On the upper body, they have two double-jointed limbs (at the elbow and wrist), called arms, capable of rapid, wide movements, culminating in bony, webbed, prehensile hands with opposable thumbs. They also have backward-pointing bony tips at the elbow.
Their large, round eyes are lidless, revealing the large white ring of the sclera. They are surrounded by photophores on the skin that emit a pale blue or aquamarine light on command, allowing them to pierce the darkness of the abyss and gaze around comfortably. Due to the arrangement of the photophores, it might seem as if their eyes themselves are glowing, but this is not the case. Unlike fish, they are not fixed, and a deep-sea mermaid can rotate them in their sockets to direct her gaze at will; at rest, they exhibit a certain lack of focus.
In addition to their eye contours, deep-sea merfolk have a high concentration of photophores on their tails, which can create impressive light displays. These patterns are generally slightly different from one individual to another, and they do so from birth, which is why a single flash is enough for a deep-sea mermaid to recognize a previously encountered individual. Deep-sea merfolk' bioluminescence is possible thanks to specialized mitochondrial cells within their bodies called "photocytes," which create light internally by oxidizing a protein called luciferin, bringing it into contact with the enzyme luciferase. These photocytes are found inside the photophores, organs contained in the skin of deep-sea merfolk and several other deep-sea organisms. They have a glandular portion, from which the light emanates, a reflective layer lining the bottom, and refractive devices, a sort of organic lens that condenses the light.
Given the low temperatures, the most delicate parts of deep-sea merfolk's bodies are protected by thick gray or white fur, which grows around the head and throat, leaving the gills exposed. These are protected by both a gill cover and tufts that grow on the jaw and cover the respiratory openings when viewed from the front.
The bones of deep-sea merfolk are light and relatively flexible, yet fragile due to the difficulty in obtaining calcium at the depths where they live.
Their stomachs are more elastic than those of many other animals, allowing them to eat and store as much as possible if they manage to find a large amount of food at once.
Average life expectancy
Unknown, even to deep-sea merfolk. Deep-sea merfolk have a hard time keeping track of time, and their perception of the sequence of events is confusing and often almost nonexistent, so much so that their language has no word for "time," nor even for "present," "past," or "future." For them, the world is divided into "what I know" and "what I don't yet know," thanks in part to their incredibly precise memory.
Sexual Dimorphism
There is marked sexual dimorphism in adults, making it easy to distinguish males from females at a glance. The first factor to consider is size: including the tail, the male rarely exceeds 1.4 meters, compared to the impressive 5 meters of the female. This is clearly a phenomenon of deep-sea gigantism: the large size of a deep-sea animal would result in less heat loss, crucial in deep waters that rarely exceed freezing points, and a reduced need for constant activity, a characteristic of small organisms.
Furthermore, males tend to have more delicate colors, generally cool shades of blue, gray, and purple, with dark streaks and patterns running across their bodies. In contrast, females rapidly darken as they grow, reaching pitch black as adults.
Habitat and Diet
Deep-sea merfolk have made the saltwater between the deep bathyal zone and the beginning of the abyssal zone their home, moving up and down depending on the water's turbidity and the time of year, almost always finding themselves immersed in the aphotic zone, the area inaccessible to sunlight. We are therefore talking about a variation between 1,800 and 2,000 meters deep.
Their diet is exclusively carnivorous, which has forced them to become very unfussy and excellent predators. They would not disdain feeding on human flesh or that of other mermaids, sometimes even resorting to cannibalism.
Behavior
Sociability
Deep-sea mermaids mostly lead solitary lives, except for the time mothers and their young spend together during the young's early development.
A deep sea merfolk baby with active photophores.
The mother remains with her young for the first five years of their lives, providing protection, food, and teaching. The fries group together in small platoons (a term that in Maregens and Abyssugens indicates medium-sized groups of four to thirty individuals). The mother's attitude, while loving, is far from purely altruistic: to avoid getting lost in the darkness of the deep sea, the young deep-sea merfolk make extensive use of bioluminescence and sing small, high-pitched, melodious calls to signal their presence to their family. However, by doing so, they also attract various predators, which the mother, using her young as bait, can catch and devour much more easily. The song of the young deep-sea sharks has been compared to that of a songbird: high-pitched, sometimes modulated, but somehow "eerie" or "nostalgic" to human ears.
By the time they're five years old, deep-sea merfolk have become too large for their mother to benefit from sharing food with them, so she stops feeding them and encourages them to find a different area to live in. At that point, the young disperse and will likely live isolated lives that may or may not be interrupted by a brief encounter with another of their kind and, perhaps, a fortunate mating.
Even as adults, they retain charming, harmonious voices, a characteristic likely unique for creatures of their habitat. They are significantly less capable of ranging the sounds they emit and replicating the speech of other creatures than merfolk, especially considering that speech has little or no use for them beyond the age of five; the long-distance call they emit to advertise their location and availability to potential mates has been described as a sort of melodious "whine," a mix between the song of a whale and that of a great black-throated loon.
Hunting
Deep-sea merfolk are opportunistic hunters, rarely wasting energy actively chasing and searching for their prey. Much more commonly, they use the stun technique to hunt: they have a very keen sense of smell, and when they sense something approaching, they activate all their photophores in a flash that can stun the intruder. If it's dangerous, they immediately turn off their photophores and flee; if it's potential prey, they lunge to grab and kill it instantly. Their approach is different if the prey is a conspecific (see Courtship and Reproduction).
Several deep-seamerfolk can also use tools and artifacts they create themselves, based on lessons taught by their mother and on long-term experimentation. They are voracious predators that will readily devour any animal smaller than themselves that is safe to eat; This could make female deep-sea mermaids decidedly dangerous to humans, were it not for the fact that the two habitats are so distant that the danger is merely hypothetical... especially considering that the current human scuba diving record is "only" 332 meters. Alone
Deep-sea merfolk are not territorial. When not interacting with another creature, they usually remain still or swim lazily without a clear direction, occasionally changing course, with their bioluminescence turned off. They travel, carrying with them the artifacts they have created over time, in bags fashioned from the skins of other animals or by hand.
They are very often found immersed in a sort of meditative state, a practice thought to help them conserve the enormous energy a sentient being expends on brain activity. When "wandering," their mental state is similar to Vipaśyanā meditation.
Courtship and reproduction
In the deep, the extremely low population density makes it difficult for the sexes to meet. For this reason, when this occurs, neither the male nor the female refuses the opportunity to mate unless the prospective mate is seriously ill.
Once sexually mature, if a deep sea merfolk discovers traces of another merfolk's passage (an olfactory trail, for example, or objects left behind), she begins to sing intermittently to signal her presence. Females' songs are lower and more vibrant, while males' are slightly more modulated: the differentiation of their songs is useful for immediately identifying whether one is dealing with an individual of the same or opposite sex.
Deep sea merfolk are virtually always available for mating; since females undergo induced ovulation, several matings are necessary to achieve fertilization. Even if the female already has young she is caring for, it is not at all unlikely that she will respond to a male's advances.
During mating, male and female swim parallel to each other until the male inserts one of his two hemipenes into the female's oviduct. The hemipenes are normally covered inside the body, and are exposed during reproduction through the erectile tissue. Erection is caused by the pumping of water from the outside into the body, which an organ called the siphon introduces into the corpora cavernosa of the erectile tissue through a special orifice. Just like Maregens, Abyssugens are virtually impossible to mate out of water: not only would an erection be impossible, but even the expulsion of sperm, due to the engorging of special structures that pump it out, occurs through the use of water.
Males are further gratified by finding a mate because, between matings, she takes on the task of hunting for both of them and keeping them both in optimal conditions to produce many healthy eggs. At the end of their lovemaking encounter, the two go their separate ways, as remaining alone would invariably lead to competition for food and resources.
Deep-sea merfolk are ovoviviparous: the mother incubates the eggs inside her until they hatch, at which point the newborn deep-sea mermaids are finally ready to enter the world. They have litters ranging in number from fifteen to forty, with an interesting infant mortality rate that hovers consistently below three percent when the young are in the mother's care, but rises sharply as soon as the young begin living on their own.
Paradoxically, one of the dangers, albeit rare, that young deep-sea merfolk face is a possible encounter with an adult other than one of their parents: if sufficiently hungry, a mature specimen might attempt to devour a young deep-sea merfolk.
🌵🎨 All the drawings in this page (e probably in all the other pages, if not differently specified) were realized by our artists, Furiarossa e Mimma. You can see more of their works and support them on their Patreon page. Become patrons of the arts!🌵🎨
