Creatyrspace
Driftcraft
& Survival
The Creatyrs are natives of thresholds, and thresholds lead to many worlds. Some of those worlds have no air to drift in, or burn, or freeze, or flood with radiation. To follow the thresholds there, the Creatyrs built their own technology. They call it Driftcraft, the craft of those who remember the path between, and everything in it is made to carry a drifting body safely through places it was never born for.
Plant Mode and Spirit Mode
A Creatyr carries both a plant and a spirit, and it chooses which one leads. Plant Mode is only possible where there is oxygen. In Plant Mode a Creatyr takes oxygen in, which lets the spirit gain its benefits. It burns its stored fuel normally, its blood meets oxygen and shines, its wing veins light up, and the full language of light is open to it.
Spirit Mode needs no oxygen, because the spirit in a Creatyr is sustained by aether. A Creatyr in Spirit Mode is not weak, and it can live for a very long time, but it can do very little. Its glow falls to a faint pulse like the breathing light of rest, its body slows, and it draws on the energy stored in its bones. For this reason many who dwell in Spirit Mode become guides and watchers, roles that ask for presence more than action.
The choice of mode is always the Creatyr's own. One that is standing in an oxygen-rich place can stay in Spirit Mode if it does not want to take in oxygen, and it can still be there among the others. Neither mode changes how a Creatyr looks. Its style and its colours stay exactly the same, and only the strength of its glow changes.
| Plant Mode (with oxygen) | Spirit Mode (without oxygen) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Only where there is oxygen | Anywhere, even in oxygen |
| Looks | The same style and colours | The same style and colours |
| Glow | Full strength, wing veins bright | A faint breathing pulse |
| Energy | Burns stored fuel normally | Slow, drawn from reserves in the bones |
| Activity | Full | Little, but never weak |
| Life | Normal | A very long time |
| Common role | Any | Guides and watchers |
Many plants can switch to fermentation when oxygen runs low. It keeps them alive, though more slowly and with less energy. White phosphorus also needs oxygen to glow, and it shines in the dark only while it is reacting with it.
The Lifespring
Oxygen is worth carrying, so the Creatyrs built the Lifespring, a source of breathable air that makes its own oxygen wherever it is set down. A Lifespring draws oxygen out of whatever the world offers. It can split water, or take oxygen from the carbon dioxide in a thin atmosphere. With one beside it, a Creatyr in a hostile world can step back into Plant Mode when it needs to speak in light, work, or fight.
The International Space Station makes its oxygen by electrolysis, passing electricity through water to split it into oxygen and hydrogen. NASA's MOXIE instrument on the Perseverance rover made oxygen from the carbon dioxide in the Martian air in 2021.
The Four Armours
Creatyr armour comes in four kinds, each with its own weight, its own style, and its own coverage of the body. Three are full suits, sealed and built to carry a Creatyr through the worst a world can offer. The fourth, the Bloomshell, is a light part suit for places where the air is kind.
| Armour | Weight | Covers | Style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bloomshell | Light | Part of the body | Open and comfortable, with the belly, arms and legs bare |
| Emberveil | Heavy | The whole body | Full armour under a long cloak |
| Hoarweave | Heaviest | The whole body | Tall plated battle armour with a visored helm |
| Starward | Medium | The whole body | Sleek full armour cut like a detective's long coat |
The three full suits are sealed. Each has a Lifespring built into it, so its wearer can breathe in any world, and each guards the whole body from the danger it was built for, whether that is heat, cold, or radiation. They are also made to endure. Each can take many hits, whether from bullets and blows or from fire, ice and the other elements. Elemental harm is still what can hurt one, and it hurts most when the element is the opposite of what the suit was built for.
A spacesuit is first of all a pressure vessel. NASA's suit runs at about 4.3 psi of pure oxygen, kept low so the wearer can still bend and move, and a backpack supplies the air. Without a sealed suit the body cannot survive in a vacuum.
Bloomshell. Light armour, and only a part suit. It is made like a comfortable outfit: a chestguard with light shoulder and hip plates, while the belly, arms and legs are left bare. It does not seal the wearer and it carries no Lifespring, so it is meant for places with air, where a Creatyr in Plant Mode can feel the sun and the wind. It offers light protection against blows and lets its wearer move as freely as they are used to. Its wings stay bare.
Emberveil. Heavy full armour for hot worlds, worn under a long cloak. The plated suit beneath is sealed and cooled, and the cloak is the first line of defence against heat, shading the plates and turning away the worst of the light and flame. Heat and fire are what it endures best, and cold is what it endures worst.
The surface of Venus averages about 464 degrees Celsius, under a pressure about 92 times Earth's. Surviving such heat means reflecting what you can, insulating against the rest, and moving heat out of the body, which real spacecraft do with radiators. Desert peoples wear loose robes for the same reason on a smaller scale, because the cloth shades the skin and lets air move beneath it.
Hoarweave. The heaviest of the four, a full suit of tall, broad plate armour with a visored helm, built like a soldier's battle suit. Thick insulating layers sit under the plates and hold the warmth of the body in. Ice and deep cold are what it endures best, and heat is what it endures worst.
Titan's surface is about 94 kelvin, or minus 179 degrees Celsius, and deep space is only about three degrees above absolute zero. Real spacecraft hold their heat with many thin reflective layers, called multi-layer insulation.
Starward. Medium-weight full armour in the style of a detective's suit. It is cut like a long coat, tailored and dark, with a high collar, yet it is full armour all the way through. Made to move, search and endure, it shields the whole body from radiation and from impact.
Materials rich in hydrogen, such as polyethylene, are expected to shield against cosmic rays better than aluminium, and NASA uses polyethylene as a reference shielding material. Tiny space dust and debris strike at many kilometres per second, far faster than any bullet, so real spacecraft use spaced layers that break an impact apart.
The Core
Armour keeps a Creatyr alive, and a core gives it abilities. A core is a small aether-based heart that slots into the top of the back. It does not make air or hold off heat, cold or radiation, because the full suits already do that. Instead a core gives support abilities, such as healing support, or reconnaissance support like seeing through walls with X-rays. There are different cores for different tasks, and a Creatyr chooses the one it needs. A third kind, the Lanterncore, only supplies power to weapons, and is described in Chapter 9.
Hearthcore. The healing core. It gives its wearer healing support, steadying the wounded and mending injuries the way a hearth steadies a cold house.
Seercore. The reconnaissance core. It lets its wearer see what the eye cannot, such as X-ray sight that reveals what lies inside objects and behind walls.
X-rays pass through soft material and are stopped by dense material, which is how medical X-ray pictures and baggage scanners work. Real reconnaissance tools also use thermal cameras and ground-penetrating radar to see what the eye cannot.
Sensing Through Armour
A Creatyr's senses lean on air. The pressure sense of the wings and the hum of the resonator both need something to carry them, and in a vacuum there is nothing. Armour makes this harder, because a sealed shell stands between the body and the world. So every full helm is built with vents. In a place with air, the vents can be opened, letting the air reach the antennae and the facial ridges, so the Creatyr can feel pressure and hear the hum of the world as it does without armour. Where the air is safe, a Creatyr can also simply take its helm off.
In a vacuum the vents are closed and the suit is sealed, but a Creatyr is not left blind. Aetheric sensitivity, its primary sense, does not need air. The materials of Driftcraft let aether pass through them, so the sense reaches the antennae and facial ridges even through a closed helm. Vibrations also travel through solid things, so the hum can be sent through the ground, a hull, or the suit itself, and read as it returns. What a Creatyr loses in a vacuum is the fine map of the air, which means no pressure to read and no weather to sense.
Sound cannot travel through a vacuum, because it needs matter to carry it, but it travels very well through solids. Astronauts talk by radio, and spacecraft listen for vibrations through their own structure using contact sensors.
The Wings in Armour
The wings are sense organs as well as the main surface of the glow, so armour treats them with care. The Bloomshell leaves them bare. Each full suit can cover them with wing mantles, thin layered sheaths that fold and flex with the wing instead of binding it. A mantle can be drawn back in a place with air, so the wing can feel the wind and show its light, and drawn closed where the air is gone or the danger is high. The mantles are translucent, so a covered wing still gives off a soft glow.
Real spacesuits stay flexible because their joints are built in folds, like a bellows, so a limb can bend without losing the sealed pressure around it.
Wearing the Weight
The heavier armours slow a Creatyr at first. Creatyrs feel light, but they are very strong for their size, and the strength of their bones and slow, steady muscles is what carries the weight. With training a Creatyr learns to control a heavy suit completely, until the slowness is gone and it moves at its normal pace, a walking fortress that answers every thought.
Astronauts train in a giant pool, the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, so that learning to work in a heavy suit does not have to happen in space.
The Staffs
Creatyrs carry staffs, tools that shape the world around them. There are three kinds, made for different places.
Mendbough. The staff of healing. It gathers calm, gentle aether and lays it over wounds and weariness.
Rootwright. The staff that builds where there is oxygen. It grows and shapes living material, such as wood, root and leaf, into walls, bridges and shelters.
Voidwright. The staff that builds where there is no oxygen. It shapes metal and stone instead of growing anything, and it works in vacuum, where the usual ways of building stop working.
In a vacuum, two clean metal surfaces can fuse when they touch, a real effect called cold welding. Engineers treat it as a hazard on spacecraft, and some are now testing it as a way to repair them.
Source Reference Used To Create This Lore: Forstwind · wezalsya.jimdofree.com