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Description
This is a pretty early digital character reference for the Urr-Kha species I created some time between late August to early September 2022. This old concept art shows the overall body shape of the Urr-Kha and their rough scale, being just under a metre or 3 feet tall. The binomial name here is given as Protoantecessor artifex, though my Latin is pretty rusty so I am not sure how good that name actually is. Then again, taxonomist tend to screw up the Latin and Greek in binomial names all the time.

Here you can also see the two types of Urr-Kha; the Knurr (left) and the Ngarr (right). Although the lore around these two types is extensive, the central concept is based on the notion of the Wolbachia condition, a intracellular parasite found in insects. For Urr-Kha, I envisioned a mammalian variant of this pathogen, called Urrbachia or Ngarrbachia, an intracellular parasite that lives inside of a creature and affects their reproduction. Like Wolbachia, Urrbachia can only be passed on from mother to offspring, and so it attempts to force the host to produce more daughters, which gives the Ngarr an unusual sex ratio with more females than males. This creates a bit of division as well in their society, as the "marked", Ngarr, who have black-white markings in the fur of the face, have to reproduce with the Knurr, since their own kind do not produce enough males to do so. The female-biased sex ratio also affects their society in other ways, such as making them more matriarchal compared to ex. humans.

The idea of a culture affected by something like Wolbachia has interested me for some time, as it would dramatically upset typical sex ratios, in turn affecting the selection and in turn evolution of a species. The existence of a form of 'permanent infection' in a population of sapient creatures would also create a sort of natural division and subsequent conflict between those who are affected and those who are unaffected by the condition.

Description
This is a pretty early digital character reference for the Urr-Kha species I created some time between late August to early September 2022. This old concept art shows the overall body shape of the Urr-Kha and their rough scale, being just under a metre or 3 feet tall. The binomial name here is given as Protoantecessor artifex, though my Latin is pretty rusty so I am not sure how good that name actually is. Then again, taxonomist tend to screw up the Latin and Greek in binomial names all the time.

Here you can also see the two types of Urr-Kha; the Knurr (left) and the Ngarr (right). Although the lore around these two types is extensive, the central concept is based on the notion of the Wolbachia condition, a intracellular parasite found in insects. For Urr-Kha, I envisioned a mammalian variant of this pathogen, called Urrbachia or Ngarrbachia, an intracellular parasite that lives inside of a creature and affects their reproduction. Like Wolbachia, Urrbachia can only be passed on from mother to offspring, and so it attempts to force the host to produce more daughters, which gives the Ngarr an unusual sex ratio with more females than males. This creates a bit of division as well in their society, as the "marked", Ngarr, who have black-white markings in the fur of the face, have to reproduce with the Knurr, since their own kind do not produce enough males to do so. The female-biased sex ratio also affects their society in other ways, such as making them more matriarchal compared to ex. humans.

The idea of a culture affected by something like Wolbachia has interested me for some time, as it would dramatically upset typical sex ratios, in turn affecting the selection and in turn evolution of a species. The existence of a form of 'permanent infection' in a population of sapient creatures would also create a sort of natural division and subsequent conflict between those who are affected and those who are unaffected by the condition.