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The Lyrian Bloodseeker

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...Not long after our encounter with the Snapjaw, we came across another of Lyra’s dangerous critters. The Bloodseekers were drawn by the smell of Kellerman’s lower torso. They were some of the stranger creatures we had seen in our travels, I don’t think even the aliens we saw on Athena were this bizarre. With the exception of their muscular legs and weird heads, they looked like walking skeletons with long skinny tongues flicking in and out of their thin skulls. We watched the three that came up to the lower half of Kellerman wrap their tongues around his legs and rip them off of the pelvis. When the Bloodseekers fed, they sucked everything out of Kellerman’s legs until they were nothing but husks and then….oh then they swallowed the bones and skin, clothing and all. Mitchell pulled out his auto-pistol and popped a three rounder into the one closest to our refuge in the abandoned temple, needless to say: a big mistake....

A conceptual revamp of one of :icontherepublicanmartian:'s Lyria xenofauna, the nimble scavenger known as the Bloodseeker. The original design: [link] . Additionally, I have made some adjustments to the design as Repub' generally intended, which will be discussed below.

Streamlining:
He wanted to streamline the design, which I did by resizing the external segments to be more evenly sized throughout; I also reduced head size and increased tail size to make them more equal. The back's "cover plate" was sunk further down onto the torso to further streamline the creature, but is still jointed at its base to allow the Bloodseeker to gorge itself without being constrained.

Ribcage:
The ribcage was deepened to allow the Bloodseeker to suck up larger food items more efficiently (via contractions of its dark muscular "throat") and to consume more food overall. The rib-like formations behind the legs were extended to mirror the ribcage as well, to prevent air circulating under the creature when it runs, which would slow the creature down. Since it has numerous openings in it, the ribcage's overall size doesn't hamper the Bloodseeker's running ability.

Leg Structure:
This was the "big deal" in the design, and the part that required most of my ingenuity. The original Bloodseeker featured theropod-style legs which, while cool-looking, weren't all that feasible for an alien organism to evolve independently. Therefore, I redesigned the legs to better fit a non-Terran organism. While functionally similar to a theropod leg, the Bloodseeker's legs have five "portions", as opposed to a theropod's four. Nearly 50% of the Bloodseeker's muscle mass is in its thighs, which provide almost all of the power needed for movement; the calves provide movement to the entire lower leg, which is more or less unmuscled (all tendons/ligaments/etc.). The spring-like lower legs act as shock absorbers, allowing the creature's massive thigh muscle to throw its legs forward and back at great speed, thus running. The two-toed feet are mobile, but only for gaining traction. Living on a low-gravity planet, and being small for a Lyrian creature, Bloodseekers are relatively thin, skeletal creatures which probably wouldn't be able to walk under their own weight on Earth. Larger Lyrian creatures share this general leg structure, though the muscle mass/distribution in them varies between species.

Muscle Structure:
The original Bloodseeker design featured leg musculature similar to that of Terran animals. For the same reasons as the leg design, I intended to redesign the creature's leg muscles. Working in a similar manner to Terran leg muscle, the Bloodseeker's leg muscles are, in essence, scalloped in shape, with a separate muscle block overlapping - and overlapped by - another just like it. The blunt spike on the upper thigh anchors the topmost muscle block, which anchors the muscle block just beneath it, and so on. To move, the top block pulls on the next block, and so forth, retracting the leg. On the inner side of the legs there is another row of scalloped muscle blocks, though they are smaller and weaker than the outer side muscle blocks.

All Other Features:
More or less for fun. LOL
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XEternalBarugon's avatar
i love skeletal kaiju ^_~