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Hello all. I have a idea for a scifi world and wanted your opinion.

Its a distopian society set centuries after a colossal war that nearly wiped all civilization off the face of the planet (might not be set on earth) one of the effects of the wars was the uses of weaponized nano tech and and genetically engineered viral mutagens has left the surface a constantly shifting wasteland of biomass and shifting nano forged metals and sand. vast rippling fields a carnivorous biomass sprouting semisentiant meat trees and hunted by ferrous metallic nano beasts.

The remaining humans are barely that through generations of exposure to the environmental mutagens, combined with rampant genetic and cybernetic modifications, some of which is mandatory or job related, others are fads, fashion, or personal preference.

The Cities are massive bio-mechanical monsters Kaiju sized creatures that feed on the wild bio masses and nano forged structors. the tech is all technorganic in nature genetically grown organs worked around cybernetic systems. If you toaster starts to act up you can simply cook and eat it. and your car (or what ever they use) might decide to eat your neighbors pets or even one of your neighbors. the buildings are parasites latched onto the surface of the cities, like ticks or fungus leaching off the the living cities life blood. inside your apartment everything is alive your faucet is linked to modified sweat glands, and they have done away with the need for toilet paper since the facilities lick you clean. the peoples wastes are pumped into the cities systems. and people have built down into the cities guts literally harvesting the still living fat and muscles as part of the food for the people. vast farms are built into the intestinal tract, growing needed food and building stuffs from the monsters gut flora. and huge farms built in the rich gak fields in the colon.

I'm thinking of calling the creatures BioTitans that were bred to bear the weight of the ParaCities. Each city is effectively its own city-state but there are loose federations of allied cities based around the type of BioTitan used in the cities construction. Thick shelled, slow shambling Terrapin titans see them selves as brothers, and the scuttling crablike titans as competitors. One of my favorite Ideas is a massive ape like titan knuckle walking across the world, buildings growing from its back, arms, stomach, chest and neck like shelf fungus.

can you imagine cities fighting, or going to war? or a sick city? or one weighed down by too many parasite buildings rendering it anemic? or a city getting randy and boinking.


I have a lose story idea I have for this too.
In this world there is a church that preaches that mutation is the manifestation of mans sins. In the beginning Mankind was pure in Sinless born from the perfect man and woman A-Tom and Ev. but man grew arrogant, cruel and decedent. and god decided the world needed to be cleansed, But god new man still had hope so he commanded a blind prophet named Noh Eye to build him a vault of blessed metals of a type that no nano could warp, and gather men and women of pure gene stock along with animals and plants to be kept safe in holy slumber. god then took the vault up into the heavens before smiting the world with change. plagues of the deamon retrovirus ran rampant, forcing humanity to bare his sin on the surface, The Nano devil befouled the great works of man that he had made to rival gods own power. he Nano even marked the most wicked of all humans implanting them with his foul taint in the form of techno viral outbreaks and pathological cybernetics. (I like that you can catch a nano pathogen and become an unwilling cyborg) The church believes that if they can find this holy vault they can use the geneticly pure contents to strip the mutation from the world and wipe out all sin along with it and usher in a return of god on earth.

The vault is in fact several satellite stations sent up by the governments of the world as they lost control of there weapons leading to this gray goo scenario. they do contain cryo samples of humans, and animals and plants as well as cloning facilities to attempt to rebuild the human race. the Church first leads a pogrom on In there own ParaCity cleansing the non believer and those to mutated to ever be saved, and ceasing control of the BioTitan. they then lead a holy crusade looking for ancient holy texts that describe the rituals needed to summon Gods vault back to earth. killing and destroying anyone who resists and destroying several cities and titans that were in there way

ohhhh new idea

There are flying bio titans. but these are much smaller they can only fit a few parasitic buildings on them

So these Subspecies are called Burbs. (get it sub burb) because they evoke memories of the flying creatures of the old world that use to rule the sky called birds. since they cant produce everything there population needs Burbs are usually aggressive pirate towns they will stalk anouther larger town swoop down and tear off one of its parasitic buildings. the burb eats the bio mass while the pirate gang splits the loot and slaves. Burb pirates often send scouts into the city to try and track down the parisite that ha the resources they need from the raid

This could easily be made into its own game, with models and a rulebook. The concept is certainly interesting.

I was thinking that myself.

but I am just woking on it as a story world so far. I have started to sketch out some concepts of the BioTitans too, and after seeing the new Regicide video game I think I wanna develop a fictional verion of chess played in this world with living pieces and rules for mutating them.


I was thinking of weapons, one person suggested the burbs need bombs. with the amount of crap my hens put out I was thinking that was a good enough bomb, especialy with a crew of pirates armed with flamers who can ignite it as its released. Also maybe impact hatched eggs carrying carnivorous burrowing worms or grubs.

I figured fighter craft grown from bees, wasps, dragonflys, bats, and the ground attack craft would have to be able to leap from city to city so they'd be based on leaping units, fleas, grasshoppers, frogs (with some aa capability), kangaroos, and the like..

Weapons would be a odd mix of biological and mechanical Machine guns that feed the bullets through with muscle contractions, Guided missles made of giant fireflies who generate there own explosives. cannons that fire carnivorous ordinace,

A long time ago I had developed a biological hold out laser gun for a game. It would be implanted under the an agents skin, used bioluminescence for a light sources focused through an array of cornea for one or two shots before the agent was exhausted. I had decided not to go that dirrection here since I thought it was too far fetched even for my weird science universe but its actually possible. I just read a artical about a scientists that used human tissue to gow a biological green laser diode

Got bored so I decided to make some concept art and well...

thats cool

I appreciate the effort.

I put together a little sketch of my own



I'm not a good artist so I will admit the outlins of these are traced. I used a Galapagos tortoise as the body and wasp nests, barnacles, and mushrooms

I figure the armoured barnacles would act as factories and low level hab blocks similar to the the ones from judge dredd, the mushrooms would be powerplants amd housing for the wealthier populous, and the Waspnests are millitary functions, searving as moterpool, artillery, rocket launchers, and aircraft hangers. Course ther are also several layers of the city down below the shell, farms in the geneticly modified gut flora, rendering plants siphoning off the turtles fat for city use. damage control teams patroling the nerves, or braving the heat of the blood vessels, or the super heated furnace of the heart. repairing damage and extending the life of the titan. others iinhabit the head guiding the titan with controls wired right into the beasts cortex

This reminds me of a bio-punk Mortal Engines. Sounds extremely intriguing.

thanks the Mortal engines series was definitely there as part of the inspiration of this, also in part I got some of it from the Jesus incident (but more so from the sequel novel the Lazarus effect) as well as the biopunk world of orc stain and even to some extent the tv show Lexx


I need to tech the T class titan up a bit but not much, I think at the scale of the titans most of the mecha parts are too small to really show up. Some smoke stacks from the factory levels, maybe radar dishes and antenna as well. I have started working on a C class titan (centipede but maybe I'll call it an I class for insect since I also want crab based ones)

I also want to start working on some designs for smaller biotech. I'm thinking of working on a Waspfighter, and fireflymissle.

Do you think the military portion should have something obviously offensive as apposed to my all encompassing wasp nest hanger missile launcher combo?

It sounds very intriguing. It actually somewhat reminds me of a book I read called Leviathan, in the book they used genetically modified beasts as zeppelins/war machines.

I fething loved Leviathan/Behemoth/Goliath.
I think you may want to take some inspiration from the Aquilon, OP. And woot, another Mortal Engines reader!

Aquilon:

Ohhhh Id forgotten about Leviathan, but a weapon system similar to there spike bats would be interesting



Hmmm lighter then air style Squid warships, with there aquatic jet propulsion altered to work in air and augmented


Hmmm I don't think I could jutifiy a burb sized one but as a heavy flotilla

Octopus are cargo ships, Squids are war ships, heavier then air flyers like the Fighter wasps, or Dragonfly intercepters would carry slug throwing weapons of some sort but on the floaters they would use bombs and powerfull energy weapons, Biological laser cannons, Focused Sonics, or bio electric discharges, so that they would not have to deal with the issues of recoil.



And thanks I will check out the Aquilon,

this is a rough sketch of a War Squid. Its really rough I may clean it up later and redo some of the mounts

War Squids are some of the largest airships used by Paracities in combat (squids for fighting octopus for trade), these are tiny when compared to a biotitan though. And this isn't even the largest type of war squid they breed

The war squids are engineered with huge gas bladders, and there highly effecient nanite collonys keep them aloft. how ever since they are essentially lighter then air vessels weight is a factor instead of being armed with heavy projectile shot they carry powerfull energy weapons. ranging from focused sonics, to bioluminescent laser cannons. although there lower deck also carry gravity bombs either the explosive or hungry kinds. and they have been enginiered to be able to generate massive chargers of electrical energy that they can discharge when fighting with there two paddle like hunting arms

I like it, it really does remind me of some of the creatures from Leviathan

Damnit, dude, you make a cool setting out of the few things I get legitimate squick out off...