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October 30, 2006
monster month - 21
by sven at 8:00 am
Further sketches, contributing to Jeffrey Roche's "Monster Month" event.
A distant relative of the polycephalic forg-man, the squat, spotted forg is native to the U.S. gulf coast, particularly in the shallows off of Louisiana. Some xenobiologists -- notably the esteemed Professor Ichbonnsen -- have postulated that forg-men may have actually evolved from the marine forgs, after they were swept up by prehistoric hurricanes and deposited inland, whole schools of the amphibians falling from the sky like a squalid rain.
Up until recently, it was thought that this species was entirely extinct. However, in 2005 several intact specimens were washed ashore during the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. While of great interest to the scientific community, news of the discovery of living forgs seems to have been largely superceded by human-interest stories in the American media. Curiously, at the same time, squat, spotted forg-fever has overtaken Japan. A plush version of the amphibian, forg-shaped backpacks, and forg-squonk cell phone ring tones are currently all the rage among the Japanese school girl set.
The blue martians -- unlike their green or orange cousins -- live in a profoundly stratefied society, under a complex system of castes and hereditary professions. The "war martians" (as they've come to be known) are noted for grafting helmets and other sorts of armor-plating directly onto their bodies, anchoring them within chitonous protuberances that seem strangely well-suited for this purpose.
War martians vie for ownership of drone male harems through violent head-butting rituals. Indeed, the thunderous cracking of skull against skull has been known to set off small avalanches in the polar regions, where members of the war caste are most common. While the soldiers' thick helmets do provide some amount of protection, significant brain damage is innevitable. Wreckless military offensives initiated by the elder war martian generals, often strategically dubious in the extreme, may be directly attributed to their more enthusiastic displays of cranial fortitude in earlier years.
(Were it not for this self-defeating behavior, Earth likely would have fallen to the technologically-superior martians long ago!)
posted by sven | October 30, 2006 8:00 AM | categories: bestiary, sketchbook