LEFT
Quick speed sketch of some Futuristic Soldiers (possibly Chinese). Seems like every sci-fi artist has their own version of high tech super soldiers with freaky masks. Soooooo… here’s mine. Am I cool yet?

I probably won’t go any further with this, I just really needed to do something without inking.

MIDDLE-LEFT
Gale and Carakitten belong to Ashley Lee. [link]

I might as well start talking about Joel and blockheads. Most of this stuff will never make it into the comic so why the heck not?

Joel is a Blockhead. That’s what they call them anyways, a human body with a Artificial General Intelligence machine fitted where the head would be. Blockhead sounds like an insult but Blockheads were never very good at realizing they’re being made fun of so the name kept.

I won’t say exactly why they’re made (by the hives of course) but when you get down to it, human bodies are cheap. Seriously. So freaking cheap. Just feed them various plants and you can get a self-healing fairly adaptable mechanism. In the Blockhead’s case you just hook a few stem cells up to a device mimicking a placenta (except with boundary conditions mimicking the neck and viola, a headless human body). Put the AGI device on that and there you go.

Being full AGIs, Blockheads are afforded the same rights and protections as humans are. They are however not human and definitely not neurotypical, having a very unique way of seeing the world. They’re often stupid where humans excel and excel where humans are stupid. Don’t confuse them with having autism though, that’s a different sort of non-neurotypical thought.

There was some drama when Blockheads were first made, mostly centered around whether or not their creation was also an abortion. Hives are generally pro-choice, but did a good job of making sure the stem cells involved never had a higher nervous system, or even the start of one. They obsess over ethics a lot. This has sometimes caused problems.

I should start being more clear about AIs and AGIs. AIs are computer programs that behave smartly. AGIs like Babyface, Hellflowers, and Blockheads actually are conscious and deserve the same rights as people.

As for speech, Blockheads use speakers, so they tend to sound like someone speaking through a radio. They also are crap at nouns and prefer verbs (to them a stump, a chair, and a bed are all things you can sit on and therefore in the context of sitting are all the same. Labeling only one of these a chair makes no sense to them). So a lot of verbs and adjectives are used in their speech.

Joel is a devout Christian (of course, Christian AGIs interpret “Jesus saves” within the context of saving on a computer, but he's still definitely Christian) from Mexico with a love of mythology and world religion studies. If it weren’t for his crazy hiatus in New Mexico with Babyface he might actually have become a reverend.

MIDDLE-RIGHT
Coyote of Gunnerkrigg Court. [link]
He is not your friend.

RIGHT
Babyface with a Carakitten and a Hellflower with a hypersonic missile and hands on approach.

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Just a bunch of sketches and preliminary worldbuilding. Nothing should be considered "Canon" until it's in the Aphelion comic itself. The story has been heavily revamped several times over and will continue to do so. Honestly I like remaking things, and since this is merely a hobby, I will continue to do that.