In honor of finishing a story that has lots of these, meet the pídebes!
The planet Meksan is a waterlogged world. Both large continents are covered at their lower elevations, so that they are a lacework of canals, inland seas, and high elevation islands. And the sentient population (a single species) has taken full advantage of the land and sea. The amphibious pídebes walk upright on land on their seven tentacle-like legs, while in the water they move by way of a jet tube, like the cephalopods on Terra. The upper opening for the jet tube—the mouthlike orifice on the chest—contains the vocal apparatus. The jet tube can channel both air and water, making it ideal for a species that speaks both in atmosphere and in water.
As they have no bones, pídebes have an interesting internal framwork. The head and torso are supported by a cartilaginous pseudoskeleton, but their eleven limbs are supported by nothing but large columns of muscle.
The frills on the head and chest are gills; they are not shown here as thick as they are in real life. The gills can be pulled in slightly and protected by lacing their upper and lower limbs over them. They extend deep into the chest, however, and even when curled inward, they can still pull in air by expanding their chests. The somewhat exposed nature of their breathing apparatus does mean they are somewhat prone to respiratory infections.
Pídebes are marsupials. Females have a pouch on their abdomens just below their gills (it is possible that the gills on their heads are fuller than males’ because of the smaller area on their torsos.
The skin of a pídebe is usually a deep blue color, but some populations have variations that make it a deep emerald green or a light aqua color. A few also have spots of varying shades.
Pídebes are omnivores, and, understandably, eat a lot of seafood. They are, however, liquivores—they insert their proboscis and inject a digestive juice into their food and liquefy it before swallowing it through their proboscis. Even pídebes themselves find this somewhat repulsive, and typically wear veils over their probosci and only eat in private—although cooking is still a group activity.
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You know what I found out while making these guys? That if you don’t put feet on critters in the Spore game, they float when you take ’em out for a test drive.
Pídebes are one of the worst-represented on the Creature Creator. The eyes especially make it look like they’re wearing goggles. Their faces are supposed to be a little like Abe Sapien’s, only with a weirder mouth. Now they look like they’re bizarre goggle-wearing squidmonkeys. This one definitely shows the problems with this program. But it was still fun to make.
Here’s a rough but somewhat truer representation of what I was going for:
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