The Anomalopes
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Medium: Midjourney AI + Lightroom + Procreate
The Anomalopes are a mysterious race of aquatic people inhabiting the deep seas of the largest-known ocean planet in the galaxy.
They are a notoriously private and insular species, so much of what is known about them is based on observation and conjecture. What is known for certain is that they descended from some of the very first starfaring humans, who genetically modified themselves for aquatic survival.
Though the Anomalopian ancestors gained much in their ability to move, breathe, and see underwater, they lost one key vestige of humanity: spoken language. Human vocal cords are unable to make sounds that carry well underwater, so they gave it up entirely.
Instead, they developed a complex form of sign language that employs their entire bodies—watching two Anomalopians talk is like watching a graceful underwater ballet.
This has both fascinated and confounded xenolinguists across the galaxy, who have made very little progress decoding this expressive and embodied language. This difficulty seems to stem from the fact that the language is not only visual but tactile, with small currents of water being passed back and forth between the speakers. As such, we have only been able to decode the simplest of visual messages, which are used at a distance or when speaking to a large group.
Only a few outside observers have been invited into Anomalopian cities. In one such visit, they saw what they believed to be some kind of community meeting or democratic forum, which they described as a “civic whirlpool.” The Anomalopes schooled together, forming “currents of communication” that were ostensibly used to understand and debate issues. Eventually the whirlpool dissipated into groups, which the xenolinguists and xenopologists hypothesized to be an embodied representation of the final “vote.”
You may notice in some of the portraits that small sea creatures are attached to the Anomalopes’ bodies. It is unclear whether the animals are loved as pets, or if it is merely a convenient symbiosis. This is one of many mysteries about their culture that we will likely remain in the dark about for a long time.
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