"Dawsheen" race from Robert Reed's "Great Ship" universe
Added 2025-01-05 17:31:39 +0000 UTCCommissioned by generous patron J. M. - the latest on an ongoing series. These aliens exist in a world of life-scraping ice ages, and their queens (see background figure) act as literal bunkers for all life on their world - to shelter in.
"Cooperation brought the greatest successes. The early queens were ensembles: Species hiding together in the largest, most secure redoubts, existing as totipotent spores and fertilized eggs along with a dowry of mummified bodies and dried shit -- organic wealth brought to feed and fertilize what was, in simple terms, an ark waiting for the next All. That was a billion years ago. Life on the Earth was little more than a gray tapestry woven of single-celled bacteria; while on Dawsheen, the Queen was becoming more interesting and more elaborate, gradually but inexorably evolving into what that world would see as a spectacular, utterly beautiful woman..."
