Sa'Vasku Colours

Just out of interest what colour schemes have other Sa'Vasku players gone for?

> Just out of interest what colour schemes have other Sa'Vasku

FWIW, our tradestand display models are overall mid-green with a light
drybrush of yellows - looks suitably alien and bio-yucky....

Not that I'm implying this should be taken as [OFFICIAL], just a suggestion.

I did a wash of primary color on the body of the Sa'Vasku with flat black
primer under. Simple, quick, and it looks OK. One of these years I will learn
to drybrush and make them better.

-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/ft/

Metallic black. Think B5 Shadows...:)

Mk

I did two fleets--my own was a reddish cast with yellow drybrushing
until the
detail was well-picked, then inked in pits and grooves. The tendrils
were shaded red, becoming darker towards the tips. Some of the Sa' Vasku have
domes, which I painted a glossy black and then put in veins in red, then
painted gloss again. The other fleet is being done for hire, so I followed a
similar scheme
but painted them a grey-blue, dry-brushed light blue, with the body
washed in Citadel flesh wash; again the pits and grooves were picked out in
red, and the same color scheme for the domes.

Charles

G'day Nick,

> Just out of interest what colour schemes have other Sa'Vasku

Don't know if you've seen the painting FAQ at.... I've completely forgotten
and now can't find it in my bookmarks sorry (Tim is that one of yours?)

If you do find it (maybe via the web ring) its got a list of SV paint schemes.

We've painted up a few SV fleets now (for ourselves and others), essentially

First one was black undercoat with a blue body and purple legs (shaded from
dark to light as you went from the body to the tip)and 'eyes' /bulbs
whatever they are with pink veins over the top, finished off with a blue wash
and highlighting for the body and a purple wash for the legs and bulbs.

Second one was black undercoat with successive orange through to bone
drybrushing

Third one was green body, with light green veins, yellow legs and ruby (i.e.
painted live a gemstone) bulbs

Idea for a future one, black with opalescent highlighting (so get iridescent
like effect seen on beetles) and another idea was black with grey drybrushing
and then yellow zigzags all over to look like B5 shadows.

Cheers

Beth

I'm going to be painting up my Sa'Vasku (actually Space Fleet tyranid figures)
fleet this summer. Inspired by a recent nature documentory, I'll
be painting them based on the blue-ringed octopus.  This little bugger
lives mainly in the Australia area and is most noted as being very beautiful
and very deadly. Many people die each year from bites in both natural and
aquarium contacts. I think that's very fitting.

The basic paint scheme is a yellowish cream with mottles of a very slightly
darker tint of the same color. Each ring has about 3 different layers of blue
with a dark tint of the body color in the center. A number of pics are
available online as there is a very misguided aquarium trade of this octopus.

From: "W. Nitsche" <bnitsche@u.washington.edu>

> I'm going to be painting up my Sa'Vasku (actually Space Fleet tyranid

*GRONK*

> This little bugger

Not many here. Virtually all Australians get taught about this one from a very
early age. It's not aggressive. OTOH it's one of the few of Australia's
venomous beasties that I've actually seen numerous times, they're quite common
around Sydney.

> A number

I really, really hope you're kidding. But suspect you're not. Misguided? I'd
say Bloody Silly Stupid, Dangerously so.

Most fatalities from it are the very young, or the very old. But repeated
bites can kill anyone: Case in point: 2 US Marines on R&R in Sydney in the
late
60s were supposedly found next to a Blue-Ringed Octopus with multiple
bites on their arms. They'd been playing with it, putting it on their arms,

G'day guys,

Ahh good old Hapalochlaena maculosa (also known as Octopus maculosa), for
something that's only 5-10cmm in size they are sure a deadly little sod.

You won't feel them bit but about 10mm later you'll go numb, get dizzy find it
hard to talk, within a couple of hours you'll be vomiting and won't be able to
walk for a week... if you're a big strapping guy who isn't allergic to
seafood. If you're less than strapping then you'd better hope you're

within 15mins of a hospital - as every muscle in your body is going to
be paralysed (including your eyelids) for 10 or so hours, though your heart

often comes back fairly quickly if under medical supervision. There has
actually been very few fatalities in the last 40 years due to education,

better availability of treatment etc, but they're still one to watch out

for because if you're allergic to seafood you've got about 8 minutes to say
your goodbyes.

> Many people die each year from bites in both

That they do, I got it as the follow up to the seasnake lecture;)

> A number of pics are available online as there is a very

So do I!!!!! They may look beautiful, but feeding them must be a right royal
pain in the butt!

Cheers

Beth

Beth said (speaking of the killer octopi)
> So do I!!!!! They may look beautiful, but feeding them must be

But only for a few minutes....

This "If you're allergic to seafood, you have 8 minutes to have a significant
religious experience" line is one reason why I'm thinking that colonization
may be easier if there isn't any native flora or fauna on site. Sure, starting
from dust and rock would mean a fair piece of work, but imagine wandering
around where mosquito bites caused, not malaria, but anaphylactic shock. Where
getting a splinter or thorn in your foot is like a snakebite.

So come to Alarish, where "wildlife" refers only to your neighbors...

> On Sun, 21 May 2000, Laserlight wrote:

> Beth said (speaking of the killer octopi)

or if there is, get rid of it. the first step in colonisation is scouring the
planet, the next is terraforming it:). not popular with the greens, i'd
imagine.

no but seriously folks, my thinking is that if a planet has native life, we
won't colonise it. not only because it would be hard, but because it
would involve knackering the local ecosystem - violating an ecological
prime directive sort of thing. it would get declared a 'white planet', a
planet for science, to be free from human colonisation.

instead, we'd settle dead worlds, where our terraforming bacteria can go to
work unopposed and without threatening an existing ecosystem. now, if lifeless
but suitable (appropriate insolation, sufficientlystable geology, available
organic elements, etc) planets turn out to be rare (as i think
they will - i reckon that if life can emerge, it will), this will be a
problem, and the ecological arguments will go out the window, probably shortly
followed by the ecologists. oh well, this is why we have zoos.

tom

> no but seriously folks, my thinking is that if a planet has native

There would be a more practical reason: it seems from current knowledge that
Life transforms planets at least as much as planets transform life.
Given that a different set of life-forms would have different amino
acids, different sets of proteins etc it may be the case that Terran life may
not be compatible: if the two mix, one has Got to Go, if only from massive
allergic reactions, or clogging up of biochemical reactions with unrecognised
and undegradeable proteins that block receptors. Most Biochemistry is just a
cross between playing with children's building blocks
and a real-time version of 3-D tetris where the blocks can change their
shapes
in limited ways anyway. (sorry Beth :-) ) Add a whole new set of blocks
in the game and things may not work too well.

ANYWAY...

The ecosphere of a planet - things like the pH of the atmosphere, Oxygen
content and so on depend upon the life forms that are there. Do a wholescale
Xenocide on an Earthlike Planet and you may quickly find you have a Venuslike
planet instead. Don't do a wholescale Xenocide, and you may find that
lithophillic
(Rock-dwelling) bacteria and things that lurk in out of the way places
like Black Smokers may well come back and bite you in the nth generation.

Summary: The "Do Not Disturb" signs may be not for particularly ethical "Only
you can prevent Forest Fires" reasons, but more like those found on Toxic
Waste Dumps. They're more trouble than they're worth to decontaminate, bare
bedrock would be cheaper to terraform.

Of course with the advances in BioTech that can be expected in the next 200
years, and the fact that the Kra'Vak and Phalons at least are in competition
with us, this may not be valid, or the validity may be reduced. Or maybe the
usual way of colonising is to first convert a planet into bare bedrock, and
then re-seed. A very unfriendly thing to do to a neighbouring species.

The Tuffleyverse doesn't seem to work this way though: the wars are all
relatively
bloodless, the usual method of attack is not to cause all enemy-occupied
stars
to become Novae, nor to bombard all enemy-occupied installations with
cheap Gigatonne Planetbusters as soon as they're detected. The fact that
small-unit
combats occur a la StarGrunt or even DS2 means that megatonne or larger nukes
are not the preferred primary weapons.

G'day Alan,

> There would be a more practical reason: it seems from current

Very true, which is why I doubt we're just going to pass up planets because
they've got life, especially if that life has made it a nice place for us to
live.

> Given that a different set of life-forms would have different amino

Also very true and this would be the cases I meant by "you need your shots" or
"throw up that wall and never come back", but there is also a strong
possibility that we may be playing different games and that it doesn't matter
if I've got round poles and you've got square blocks because we're not playing
together (OK maybe a different issue in the long term, but in the short we
could get away with it and I'm afraid to say that's the timescale we usually
work on).

> Don't do a wholescale Xenocide, and you may find that lithophillic

But you're not going to know that for sure, so if you've got a nice little
planet with close to the right level of O2 and life (for arguments sake)

that is spot on 100% compatible with no more adverse reactions than we see
here on Earth are you really going to turn up your nose at it based on the
chance there's something hiding in the dark - especially when (a) its
equally likely something similar is waiting to bite you back on Earth anyway
and (b) its only gonna cost megabucks to colonise here, but zillions of
megabucks to terraform and then colonise the planet next door? Just can't see
the people with the money and say so passing it up.

Besides as you pointed out its the Tuffleyverse right, so even though there's
no good guys many of the less than good guys are going to avoid truly brutal
solutions and we've got good evidence that Kra'Vak and humans at least can
both utilise the same atmospheric conditions (bareheaded figs
of both are available - hey you armour/weapon guys use the figs as
justification....;P) and we've got to be fighting over something we both
want, thus planets with compatible life/conditions must exist and be
used by both of us....(how's that for a truly twisted attempt at a logical
argument);)

I'll retire to my corner now... have fun;)

Beth

Thanks for all of the colour shemes in the end i decided after many seconds of
thought, that as th Sa'Vasku grow i have painted the smaller ones bright
colours steadily getting darker as they get bigger, so from bright red
for CT to Black as a base for BB+ with other garish
colours on top of the base coat, don't look too bad either.

Well i'm happy with them and thats what counts.

[quoted original message omitted]

> On Tue, 23 May 100 aebrain@dynamite.com.au wrote:

> >no but seriously folks, my thinking is that if a planet has native

very true.

> Given that a different set of life-forms would have different amino

hmm. i would say that this was unlikely - things that knack our bodies
tend to be things that have evolved to do so; some random molecule from an
alien biochemistry is *extremely* unlikely to bind to any of our receptors,
enzymes, etc, because they are designed to be very specific for their targets.
with most proteins, a single carbon atom out of place on the target can reduce
the binding affinity by orders of magnitude. otoh, if molecules fromn the
local environment did get inside us, they might well be very hard to get rid
of. now, if they are big, they probably wouldn't get past the gut wall, as
there would be no specific transporters for them. if they were small and
stayed in the blood, the kidneys would probably get rid of them (the kidneys
basically dispose of anything below a certain size which isn't specifically
retained). however, if they were small and able to cross cell membranes, and
were particularly fond of sticking to, eg, phosphate groups, you might find
that, eg, they pile up in the cell nucleus, hugging our DNA and making a mess
of things (cancer,
etc).

> Most Biochemistry is just a cross between playing with children's

oi! i'm not spending four years slogging my brains out to get a degree in
russian vide games, you know!:)

> (sorry Beth :-) ) Add a whole new set of blocks in the

as long as the blocks are different enough, they won't stick together, so we
don't have too much to worry about.

> ANYWAY...

ah, but as long as you get your own life in soon enough, you can rescue it
from venushood and make it a fitter, happier, more productive Earhlike world.
of course, this may require tailoring much of the life that lives on it, but
that's par for the course.

> Don't do a wholescale Xenocide,

i suspect that the best option may lie between the two extremes - bash
most of the life out of the way and replace it with your own, and then be
prepared to smack down any other locals which get in the way.

> Summary: The "Do Not Disturb" signs may be not for particularly

bear in mind that most Tuffleyverse history has been human history; i accept,
though, that we don't see the KV rebooting captured planets, which
indicates that the adapt-to-local-life model is the dominant one.

tom

From: "Tom Anderson"
> bear in mind that most Tuffleyverse history has been human history; i

Not so much re-booting as re-formatting, but yes. Perhaps a dual-boot
is possible as well.