---

ORIGIN

---

• Originated in Monte
  
• Intended as a low-cost construct for mining jobs, accidentally developed into a proper race
  
• The manufacturer decided to cut costs further by basing their AI off an existing type of construct, not realizing they had free will
  
• "Whoops I guess we made a race huh"
  
• They were never slaves- although they were designed specifically for mining, barebones live under the same conditions as any other citizen in Monte
  
• A good portion of them still work as miners, as they are naturally inclined towards it
  
• ????
  

---

CULTURE

---

• Barebones tend to be hoarders, keeping miscellaneous bits and bobs in case they become useful
  
• It is very important for a barebones to have some amount of engineering skill- since barebones hospitals are few and far between, they often have to maintain their own bodies
  
• Barebones value worth in a literal sense- they value useful tools or materials more than objects of sentimental value
  
• Because of this, they tend not to add things to their body they don't need- hence their skeletal appearance
  
• It's always better to use something until it breaks than to keep it preserved forever
  
• When a barebones dies, the body is dismantled and the parts are given to friends and family, often to be reused in new barebones
  
• Having fresh, unused parts at the time of death is seen as unused potential in a tragic sense- recycling and continuing to use these parts is a way of fulfilling that potential
  
• Old, broken parts are typically recycled back into raw materials
  
• Keeping a piece of a barebones on display is a big no-no- it insinuates that the part is worthless, and is disrespectful to all those who have used it before
  
• ????
  

---

APPEARANCE

---

• Barebones are named for their extremely thin bodies
  
• Most tend to be humanoid, although other morphs exist
  
• Typically range from 4 to 8 feet tall
  
• Primarily have metal bodies, although barebones made from other materials are known to exist
  
• Tend to stay close to other species in terms of size and shape for convenience of living
  
• ????
  

---

BIOLOGY

---

• Barebones are entirely mechanical- no organic components whatsoever
  
• Generally they run off of shred energy, but they can also consume food if they have a specialized setup for it
  
• No sense of taste
  
• They can "smell" whether or not the air is safe for people with lungs, but they don't perceive flavor of any kind- this is a sense left over from their roots as mining robots
  
• Barebones can add any type of electronic device to their body, but most tend to limit themselves to one or two 'extras'
  
• It takes some time to become accustomed to a new body part- a barebones with a newly replaced arm will generally be clumsy and uncoordinated with it for the first month or so
  
• Self-modding is possible and very common, most barebones tend to keep a box of spare parts in their home for add-ons or repairs
  
• About 90% of Barebones have significantly modified themselves in some way, those that haven't are usually very young
  
• Their thin metal structure was designed to be cost-efficient for easy mass-production, and sturdy enough to allow them to take dangerous mining jobs
  
• Heads are typically camera-like, with a single lens
  
• Most lenses have a closable aperture for protection and adjusting to different light levels
  
• Barebones' actual minds and personalities are stored in a hard drive just small enough to fit in the back of their head- the rest of their body is completely subject to modification
  
• Because of this, it is possible for a wealthy Barebones to have multiple bodies- usually a 'personal body' and a more specialized body for certain jobs
  
• Barebones are powered by a scrap core, typically kept in their torso
  
• ????
  

---

LIFE CYCLE/FAMILY STRUCTURE

---

• Barebones can theoretically live forever as long as they are properly maintained, and typically reach maturity at 18-20 years
  
• Being robots, Barebones do not grow (apart from self-modification)
  
• Children are built from scratch rather than born- there is a several-month-long period in which the parents gather parts from various places, draw up plans, and actually build the child
  
• Usually they tend to stick to one of the original designs, allowing the new Barebones to modify itself however it chooses as it grows up
  
• Younger barebones will lean toward being overly logical and pedantic, and will have little to no concept of social norms and practices
  
• This is due to their AI being designed for being a worker and not much else- however, each Barebones is capable of learning by rewriting its own code, allowing it to develop as a person
  
• As a barebones gets older, it will develop more emotional and social capabilities until its personality is essentially indistinguishable from an adult of any other species
  
• Barebones can and frequently do form relationships outside their species
  
• ????
  

---

MORPHS

---

Note that the following morphs are starting points for Barebones, and are often modified and repaired during the course of the Barebones' life. Younger Barebones tend to be closer in appearance to their original design, while older Barebones show their age with extensive modifications.
 
Biped Frame- The original design for the Barebones, and the kind most still use as a starting point. Consists of a standard body shape with a lightweight and skeletal design. The rectangular head features a lens with a small light for illuminating dark areas. The unit stands at roughly 6 feet tall.
Lifter Frame- A heavy quadruped frame with a flat back for carrying large objects. Consists of a rectangular body with four large legs, each with a set of gripper claws for traction and stability. The platform on the back is mounted on a gyroscopic joint, which can tilt to avoid disturbing sensitive cargo, and there are numerous open loops present for securing the cargo with straps. The front of the torso has a rotating lens and a pair of floodlights. The unit stands at roughly 4 feet tall.
Sheala Frame- A pod-shaped frame designed for deep sea exploration. The turbines on either side can unfold into a pair of legs for land travel. Consists of a teardrop-shaped body with two large legs, each with a set of turbines built in. They have a small set of folding arms for manipulating objects, as well as a large lens and a pair of floodlights protected by a thick plexiglass dome. The unit stands at roughly 4 feet tall.
Crawler Frame- A small insectoid frame designed for scouting and charting new areas. Consists of a spherical shell that divides into eight sections. The tip of each section serves as a claw to dig into surfaces, allowing them to crawl along most walls or ceilings. They can retreat into their shell at any time for protection or for rolling along surfaces. The sphere is 6 inches in diameter and has a telescopic lens with a small light built in. The unit stands at roughly 1 foot tall.
Nymph Frame- A miniature version of the Biped frame designed for surveying and exploring new areas. Its short legs aren't suited for walking more than small distances at a time, but they can fold into the chest area for more streamlined flight. The unit stands at 18 inches tall.
Scorpion Frame- A large, six-legged frame with a retractable tail for demolition and excavation. The attachment on the tail can be easily removed and replaced for different purposes, making this frame excellent for more specialized applications. The outer shell curves up and around the tail while retracted to provide protection and stability.

---

RULES

---

This is a species development thread! Here you can have discussion on the species presented, and offer suggestions/ideas for developing them- thus directly contributing to the species! Anything is fair game so long as it follows the restrictions (if any are listed). This main post will be updated as we go, allowing for people to always have an up to date resource on the species.

---

Restrictions/No-go's

---

• Keep it SFW!!!!
  

Happy October, everybody! Welcome to the first revival of our old newsletter system- now with monthly updates instead of weekly, because god knows we don’t have time for that. Here you’ll find updates on everything we’ve done in the past month, plans for the upcoming month, topics we want to encourage discussion on, and things we’re looking to get feedback on. Please feel free to use this thread as a discussion board- while we love having the nice, instant conversations of Discord, keeping things talked about here will allow outside people to participate and keep easier-to-read logs for us to reference for later!

What did we do in September?

The entire team has been putting efforts into a massive overhaul of both how our internal structure and the outward facing community works for 2021, something most people here are probably aware of by now. One of our main focuses so far has been making a formal website that serves as a hub for our projects and resources- something we’ve needed for a long time. Molasses and Mraof have been working especially hard on the website management end of things, and Molasses has been chipping away at branding and layout work- check out some concepts for our new mascot!



Mortis has been working hard on the Void Session edit (and its mirror), and is almost finished- progress is expected to be complete by next week, but a public release may take extra time based on how long it takes to get promotional material done up. Uploading backlog to Furry Life Online is still happening slowly, but the goal is to get a fully populated gallery of all of the Skinstealers’ work- the first of its kind! As part of the overhaul effort, Mortis has also been adding piles of pages to the wiki, namely for characters. These aren’t particularly detailed yet, but should serve as good bases for the community to add onto as more information is released in projects.  There’s also a playlist and fandev section added to the forum now- enjoy some new ways to interact with Morbit and the community!

Lastly from the Skinstealers- a new major project is in the works, set for 2021 release! They can’t release much information for now outside of the Patreon chat, but it started development in this past September and has a lot to do with the relationship the system has with art and the internet. Look forward to it!

Ashtray has also been in full swing, taking up most of Mortis and Comorant’s week’s work time...but we’re in the home stretch now, and it’s looking to be finished by the end of the year. 



Comorant’s solo work has mainly involved relaunching Dopple Effect and updating it twice- check it out if you haven’t already! It serves as an interesting prequel of sorts to Crankshaft Rafflesian, and the environments and designs are incredibly surreal…



Pear and Lucy have been working on the return of Pre-Alpha Session, and while we can’t show anything of it yet outside of the Patreon chat, the panels are looking sleek as hell. In addition, Pear’s opened up species commissions- two new species morphs have been added to the canon!


Knux400 has been neck deep in working on a major TCPdex update, the majority of which we’re keeping our mouths shut about...and if you figure it out, don’t spoil it! We want the big reveal to be a surprise! In addition, he’s also launched a Darkest Night RP event on Discord- you can check it out here. It’s low investment roleplay lasting 3 days, but sign ups and prep are open now!

Ari and Seth have been very busy with moving, but Ari has been working on Prismic Sanctum and Tethered, and got updates out for both. If you haven’t checked these projects out yet, now is a great time.

Zenthis has been at work on Egress, both on the forums and for the mirror. Egress had an update on the last day of this month, just barely in time to be covered by this newsletter. The mirror is currently readable but not yet done. 


What are we working on in October?

Overall, we plan on continuing with more of our overhaul plans, and getting a significant amount of it done by the end of October. Our biggest goal is to have the majority of the website done by then and have something presentable, though our hard deadline is by the end of the year. The majority of our website’s written content is done already, but there’s a lot to do with layout, backend, visual assets, and getting everything pulled together as a cohesive piece. Still, once we get it all together, we think it’ll be something we can be really proud of! 

Comorant is planning on doing some Halloween themed shenanigans, mainly in the form of Crankshaft updates. Dopple Effect will also continue to get updates (at least two planned this month, ideally), and a Masa con Papas update would also be ideal to try and start it up again. A oneshot would also be nice, but isn’t guaranteed- we’ll see how it shakes out!

Mortis is planning on finishing up the Void Session edit next week and getting promo material for that in order ASAP, and starting to promote that. Wiki work will continue at a steady clip with the goal of getting everything filled out on a basic level by the end of the year- definitely not a “done by the end of October” goal, but progress will be made for sure this month! Aside from that, expect work on the new major project to be talked about heavily in the Patreon chat, and probably some updates to an Explicit rated project we won’t talk about here.

Both Mortis and Comorant will continue updating Ashtray, and have no plans of stopping that until it’s done. Not getting done this month, but next month...next month it just might...

Knux will keep going at that TCPdex update until it’s blasted to bits, while Mortis sprays him with a squirt bottle for every meme-related ability name. 

Zenthis is planning on at least one Egress update as per usual this month, in addition to finishing the mirror.The Egress mirror should be fully completed by the end of the month. Other than that, Zenthis will be helping with other minor website work.

Community Involvement

Let’s get some discussion going- we want to promote specific worldbuilding topics each month to help us develop Morbit on a deeper level, and also get feedback on specific areas where we think we could use improvement. Once again, please use the forums to discuss things if you can- this leaves a better record for us and reference for the future! We absolutely will lose your Discord messages and we want to be able to take everything into account here and involve all potential participants.

So: worldbuilding topics for this month! This month’s prompts involve witches, wizards, and Darkest Night! Being October, it’s time to get spooky- while Morbit witches and wizards aren’t as inherently spooky as they are in our world, there’s still a lot of potential for weird shenanigans, and we figure there’s probably a lot of questions to be asked! You can ask us questions in this thread here, make your own threads in Fandev, add pages to the wiki, start up roleplays, you name it! No matter how new you are to these concepts, no question is too silly and the more we’re asked, the more we can publicly develop and reveal the concepts and slap that shit on the wiki for future readers. Everybody wins!

The feedback we’re looking for this month is regarding character enrichment and fan involvement. One of the main things we’ve gotten input on recently is a sense of character oversaturation- everybody’s got fan characters at this point and we need to find ways for people to use these characters and get a richer experience out of having them. We want to find ways to let people take all these characters that live in Morbit and help them start really fleshing them out in ways that make them feel more fulfilling to have, be that through roleplaying, forum games, anything that people can suggest. Along those lines, we need to start encouraging fans to be more involved in the community and providing resources for them to set up their own events and activities- what do you need to help get things rolling? What features would help you enrich this community? Let us know!

As a final note- big thanks to Vic for helping us out with the TCPdex update and community outreach in general this month! Welcome to the mod team, and thank you so much for helping this community!

Thank you all for supporting us, and we hope to hear from you in this thread!

LOVER VOL 1: HARDCORE BADBOY EXTREME
spotify link

1. Dummy!- Toby Fox
2. SWERLK- MNDR, Scissor Sisters
3. Bonafied Lovin- Riot in Belgium & Ooh Ee Remix- Chromeo
4. Ghost- Mystery Skulls
5. My Love Is Better- Annie
6. Obey The Groove- No More Kings
7. D.A.N.C.E.- Justice
8. Bad- Micheal Jackson
9. How to Be a Heartbreaker- MARINA
10. Unreal Square- Squarepusher

PRIMUS VOL 1: A FRIEND TO CALL HOME
spotify link

1. Sleepyhead- Passion Pit
2. Kids- Kyle Dixon & Micheal Stein
3. Shelter- Porter Robinson, Madeon
4. Cat- C418
5. Enemy Approaching- Toby Fox
6. Court Date- ABSRDST
7. Departure- Killabyte
8. Everything Will Be Alright- The Killers
9. Walking- Modulogeek
10. creature- half alive

VOIDSY VOL 1: KITTY FACE MOTHERFUCKER
spotify link
[cw: this is the flirty voidsy playlist. im very sorry.]

1. BASMF- 3OH!3
[cw: explicit lyrics]
2. Soccer Practice- Jonny McGovern
[cw: explicit lyrics]
3. I Like Your Booty (But I'm Not Gay)- Insane O'Flex
4. Gay Bar- Electric Six
[cw: suggestive lyrics]
5. Sexy And I Know It- LMFAO
[cw: suggestive lyrics]
6. STARSTRUKK- 3OH!3
[cw: suggestive lyrics]
7. My Type- Saint Motel
8. Love Fools Anonymous- Prozzak, Wackyboyz
9. Satisfaction- Benny Benassi
[cw: suggestive lyrics???????]
10. A Mask of My Own Face- Lemon Demon

HARK VOL 1: RIGHT HAND KILLER
spotify link

1. Silver Lights- Coconuts
2. Consecration- Perturbator
3. give/take- Mr.Kitty
4. Viol- Gesaffelstein
5. Roller Mobster- Carpenter Brut
6. Humans Are Such Easy Prey- Perturbator
[cw: nudity on album cover]
7. I AM A DAGGER- Lorn
8. Division Ruine- Carpenter Brut
9. Feels Alright- Watsky
[cw: suicide, drugs]
10. The Final Battle- Infinity Train

Morbtober 2020
First year

Hello! I wanna give this a shot. I got some morbit/general themes together, and I wanna see what the community can do with them!
Both canon and fanon submissions are accepted, and you do not have to follow everyday. You can draw, write, make a playlist, make a mood board, anything you want! The idea is just to have fun! I

Please keep it sfw and spoiler when appropriate

For anyone who may not be able to do every day, I’ve highlighted one day a week to be a weekly focus instead
Days are 3,10,13,23,31 (I randomized this)

Please share anything you make, and remember to have fun and be respectful!
As a side not, I’m going to try and get around to making an image with this to post around. Can’t get on a computer tonight.

BUDDY VOL 1: BLADES AND BLUSH
spotify link

1. Moog City- C418
2. Kids Two- Kyle Dixon & Micheal Stein
3. Daggers- Robot Science
4. Fresh Static Snow- Porter Robinson
5. Bosozuku GF- Anamanaguchi
6. Atlas: Life- Sleeping At Last
7. The Mancer's Dilemma- Darren Korb
8. Part of This- Son Lux
9. Rollin' Girl- wowaka
10. I'll Keep You Safe- Sleeping At Last