I'm a little stuck on my ideas for his species. His species has psychedelic spit (more for self defense than anything, so they can bite an enemy and run away when the enemy starts getting affected by it) but I was kind of thinking his species were commonly known for making a lot of medicine and being good nurses & doctors — though his species were driven to near extinction for being hunted down for their saliva glands and stuff like that.
Like.. is that okay for a species history & info? Is it uninteresting/boring/too stereotypical? It feels kind of boring but I dont know. I just want ideas and suggestions and personal opinions on the ideas I have so far ^^
That's exactly how it is! I'm not really great at wording it, but you really got what I meant ^^
I dont know how many people have used that idea before, and I didnt want it to be an idea that has been used over and over again. QwQ thank you for responding!
Of course ^^! I just want people to be drawn in by things they havent really seen a lot of before, if that makes sense? A story can get boring if you expect where it goes all the time, but I know where you're getting at .u.
That definitely sounds like an interesting idea! Looking at nature, different species of snakes can have several types of venom, one being neurotoxins that influence the nerves. It wouldn't be completely out there that a fast acting agent alters the brain, causing it to become psychedelic. Snake venoms and cnidaria venoms consist of many components with their own working and are so potent because they just fire hundreds of chemicals at you, each with a different working, and in our own (real life) society, often new medicines are discovered by separating the components and testing their individual workings.
The one roadblock I can see is why they need to be killed and have their saliva glands removed in order for the venom to be extracted for medical purposes. Wouldn't the purpose of such a venom be used for split second defence, making a venom that's so slow it's more efficient to just kill the creature to extract it be a bit counter-intuitive to their purpose? A more likely scenario would be that they are captured alive and are used to harvest the venom. Maybe the mass capture also led to a large part of the population dying if the researchers weren't careful enough to ensure the wild populations could live on? Alternatively, maybe they store the component within their body, and it's easy to kill one off and squeeze a whole lot of it outta their skin.
It also can help to reason why, if both populations are sapient, they didn't communicate and strike a deal to sell this venom instead of resorting to the killing of intelligent beings, something I can't see many intelligent species resort to easily. Answering this question can add a lot of interesting worldbuilding to both his species and the antagonist species, as well as their cultures and interactions ;v;
(One small thing to think about would be how their own venom acts as a medicine to their own species even though they are immune to its effects, seeing as they don't seem to suffer the psychedelic effects from swallowing the venom they produce, if I'm reading that right! If it's a soft science system you can disregard that notion, but in a hard science system it can help thinking about this <:)
Ooh, thank you for helping me think more about it! What i had in mind was a vague idea and i wanted help making my thoughts more realistic and reasonable. (I mean, as realistic a world can be with walking talking lizards XD)
For better context, the world i have for this species has multiple intelligent life forms that are animalistic, and the area that i placed his lizard species in is more like a crossroads for all the countries so theyd be constantly meeting other species and the culture would encourage their species to become doctors and nurses because with a lot of people in one place means its more likely for disease, right?
I dont think they themselves are affected by their saliva, but i feel like they want to know and understand how it affects different creatures and it would be common for them to want to create medicine to help each other and other species, if that makes sense?
I was originally intending for Kiba to be more like an antagonistic character (but i dont know what i want right now for him) so having the population being hunted down to near extinction seemed like something that could make someone of a particular species dislike the rest of the species around them for helping their population dwindle/not trying to help their species. I hope I explained what i was thinking well! You are very helpful, thank you so much ^^
Oh, I like that crossroads idea! The many different illnesses would definitely be an issue in that area, and I can imagine vaccinating each species would be one hell of a task l'D One of my characters is built upon that principle, even!
Oh right, that definitely makes sense! A bit of an altruistic, curious type of creature that wants to discover the world and what their bodies can do? That's actually really damn endearing, and if you word it like that, I can't think of many fantasy species that are written like that. So your worry about being boring or unoriginal definitely don't hold up to the originality of the idea! ;v;
In a world where most sapient species are animal-based, having some be more defensive and others be less critical towards killing those who do not belong to their own kind makes sense to me. After all, some creatures have other instincts than our own primate brains do c: