More sketches of one of my Knight OCs, "Perjurus," who has essentially had his machine spirit "freed" by Chaos and is now a fully autonomous/sapient construct, now seeking out others of his kind ("abominable intelligence"/AI/machinefolk of various origins existing in secret - for example like the Orac Myraid from the recent Arks of Omen lore) While his pilot had his pacts with Chaos, he was unaware the machine had made such pacts of its own... (someday I'll write out his lore/story more properly, for now just have some artsss. First one is traditional, other two are digital)

i've been doing a lot of worldbuilding for one of my stories that i'd like to turn into a novel, and i have a very important piece of information to share:

the race of machine people (commonly called machinefolk) purr when content. their engines do a sort of soft rumble. they also have spires on their backs covered in solar panelling for energy conversion and will commonly lay out in the sun like giant 8 foot tall steel cats, rumbling contentedly in the warmth

a purring machine is a happy machine!

For your "send me stuff" post

Saw your post and since I have been a lurker of your blog for a while, decided to send in a ask. So, in your honest opinion, do you think that somewhere in the Cars/Planes universe, there is a place in the world that is very similar to TTTE? Like an entire area/island/part of the world that's all about trains and their history and is a great historical attraction for the non-rail vehicles.

Oh definitely! I think trains (as well as other machines, boats and I'm sure construction equipment too) kinda have their own "side of the world [of cars]" as it were, so they'd have their own train-oriented cities, communities, and automobile specialties. I imagine a lot of what we see in the World of Cars films of their trains is only the portions that are train-accessible in a non-train-oriented part of their globe. The closer you are to Illinois, however, the heavier the population of trains are, thus the heavier the culture of said trains appears. (Also I know I'm only talking US regions at the moment, but this is definitely also a thing in every other area of the world heavily vested with locomotives)

And like the parts of the world that we know that have train-access to them, train-oriented cities are likely the same way toward other vehicle types that pass through. Their major attractions especially would have the most vehicle-diversity access built in, for all rumbles of life to visit.

I may have also put this in a previous post or 'Tidbit' recently, but I believe that of all the machinefolk that we know exist, trains are among the oldest (particularly for land-bearing machines), as well as the longest living. Because of how large and heavy they are, they just have a vastly longer lifespan, and likewise seem to live in an entirely alternate realm of time to other vehicles (think the sloths in Zootopia, as an example). Their history would undoubtably be both incredibly long and intricate, as well as mysterious and somewhat mystical. Though their general disposition gives them the advantage of incredible memory, even they are without answers as to who built their first railroads and why. Scientists are fully certain that something other than trains built traintracks, but if trains were the oldest known beings on land, who built the tracks before them? (mm I am loving me some fun train-world lore here XP)

fc artificial intelligence

Margavens never went through that "us vs. them" nonsense that humanity did when it came to the machinefolks. Frankly, Xaallo thinks it's funny that a bunch of dumb, lazy organics made something as awesome are AIs.

He may be a little bit biased though

Mezlan

If we were going to give the latest Pathfinder Bestiary a proper Hollywood sequel title, we could do worse than Bestiary 6: The Rehabilitation of the Ooze.  Every Bestiary engages in certain projects, and one of B6’s is trying to figure out what to do with the Ooze subtype now that we already have five monster hardcovers under our belts.  

The creation of blights is one answer—we’ve got our first blight coming soon, actually—and highly intelligent, high-CR threats like the mezlan is another.  Blurring the line between ooze and construct (with a dash of undead thrown in), a mezlan is an ooze created from the consciousness of a willing volunteer.  Nearly impossible to kill and often retaining their class levels, mezlans were the elite spies and shock troops of a long dead civilization.  Now they are among the last remnants of that civilization—some still carrying out old missions, others trying to find purpose in a world that has moved on.  

For players and PCs of a philosophical bent, mezlans raise questions about the nature of consciousness and humanity. And because the techniques needed to create them have been lost, mezlans are a reminder that some secrets will always remain in the past…and probably should stay that way.

Told to seek a scion of the river god Proteus, adventurers instead encounter a mezlan posing as a shapeshifting ichthyocentaur.  If the adventurers have acquired the right symbols its fallen empire, the mezlan treats them as elite agents and begins reciting a millennia-old message.  But it will allow no one entrance into the temple it guards—even if the message instructs the adventurers to proceed inside.

The rivalry between the Golden Imperium of Nal, the first and greatest human empire, and the elven league of the Vith T’shir was a long and bitter one.  No less than three mezlans were created to kill the five elven royal families (for a sum that quite literally beggared a Golden colony and cost Nal its embassy on the Elemental Plane of Earth).  One was destroyed; the other is presumed to have followed the Vith Pana when they sailed to the Morninglands.  The third is still missing, and some elf scholars hope to interrogate it so they can learn secrets about the Vith T’shir they themselves have forgotten.

A mezlan operates an orbiting android manufactory—nevermind that no orders have come through in more than a century.  The mezlan sees her fluid form and dim memories of her natural life as proof that she is superior to the machinefolk she creates and tinkers with.  The presence of organic living creatures or proof of android souls (such as an android capable of casting divine spells) call that superiority into question and may drive her to violence.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #66 90–91 & Pathfinder Bestiary 6 186–187

(Note that at time of writing, the link to the mezlan’s OGC stats is cranky, but I’ll link above anyway.)

Not long ago I finally finished watching my first ever Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine.  Mezlans would serve pretty well for the Dominion’s Founders.

just some ms paint doodles of Illyria and Razz, two of the main characters for my story Furnace Whispers

Illyria struggles with the fact that shes a timid librarian stuck in the body of an 8 foot tall war machine. meanwhile Razz is living her BEST LIFE now that shes not on her deathbed and has a second chance at life as a machinefolk