jayrockin:

More artwork of Shyam from Runaway to the Stars. She’s been on my mind despite the fact I’m writing a book she doesn’t show up in.

Shyam was born in microgravity and cared for by her three parents in a bilingual space station port city. Most of the working population there were other tailed spacers (mostly hailing from the English speaking space polity Jovia), and typ human workers from Naya Pradesh, the terraformed planet below (mostly Hindi speakers). Shyam now lives alone on Naya Pradesh, mostly isolated from her family and other tailed spacers. Unlike them, she has to deal with gravity all the time, which is mostly a foot issue– tailers were engineered for maneuverability in zero-g, walking and standing bipedally on their short legs and thumbed soles wears them out much quicker than a typ human. Quad walking is faster and easier for them on-planet, but Shyam is very stubborn and doesn’t walk on all fours around typs if she can help it. She spends most of her time repairing heavy machinery and machining custom parts in her workshop on the edge of the space elevator hub city of Naya Pradesh.

Info dump on the history of tailed spacers as genetically engineered humans under the cut:

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