Hello everyone!

[Glyph]

Welcome, and cool art! As a biology major you might be interested in speculative biology, of which we have some in OA and are always looking to expand and improve.

Not sure if this falls under the speculative biology umbrella or not, but a couple other areas of the setting that could use some love are the Rianths (and possibly the Splices) and Provolution, particularly re the subject of how early in the timeline these might plausibly start to happen - currently some articles on this are quite old and likely overly optimistic for our current take on things. Others aren't consistent with newer articles that aimed to take a more pessimistic tone.

We've been talking about revamping these elements of the setting for a while and that would likely work best if we had as many people with a biosciences background involved as possible.

Not saying you (or anyone) needs to jump into this, or course - but just throwing it out there for consideration.

Todd

I'd be willing to check those out. Provolving something into sophonce is probably the easiest aspect of that topic, which can be quite surprising considering how that kind of biological modification tends to not be seen compared to more visible morphological changes. If you could direct me to where this is being discussed so I could catch up on all the relevant information, that'd be great.

[Drashner1]

I'd be willing to check those out. Provolving something into sophonce is probably the easiest aspect of that topic, which can be quite surprising considering how that kind of biological modification tends to not be seen compared to more visible morphological changes. If you could direct me to where this is being discussed so I could catch up on all the relevant information, that'd be great.

Sorry for the delay in responding - been busy with other things both OA-related and otherwise.

The current take on provolves hasn't been discussed in a long time so this would probably be a case of starting a new thread (which is fine) - most likely in the General Setting Discussion sub-forum for now.

In terms of what the EG currently says on the subject, this Provolution Timeline page probably works as a 'single source of truth' for the EG's current state of things re a number of provolves, including early ones. It also includes links to the various dedicated articles for different provolves.

At the level of individual articles, a lot (most?) use dates that have more to do with whatever the author thought sounded cool or plausible at the time, not any sort of grand plan from the project.

In terms of the issues we have discussed considering and possibly revising:

a) What scientific/technological developments lead to the ability to provolve in the first place?

b) What social/cultural developments lead to at least some chunk of the population being supportive of the practice?

c) How does the tech develop and how does that translate into the history of provolved species?

d) Does the current mix of provolved species creation make sense given how it ranges all over the place in terms of the size and type of beings involved? If not, what sort of modifications might be made to address this?

e) Do the dates we have make sense (are they too early in the timeline or not make sense given the number any type of species described?)?

Others may have other thoughts on this or other points that such a discussion might include.

Again, this is not something you must take on or even lead on - it's something we've been meaning to do and will eventually, but getting various members with a bioscience background/interest involved in it seems like a good idea.

Hope this helps and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. If you are inspired to start a thread on this as mentioned above, feel free to do so.

Thanks!

Todd