What would a civilization of Chinchilla people be like?

*Andean. Fuck.

if my players came across them in my setting, I'd probably have them be about half the size of a human and live in clusters of small communities in the mountains, with extended families of 30-60 living in converted natural caves or dug out dwellings in sedimentary rock, living largely as gatherers and scavengers, obtaining what little wealth they have through sending an occasional trader with their more valuable foraged goods and found objects into a larger nearby settlement. I'd probably make their method of defense a large network of escape tunnels in their dwellings and foraging areas. maybe give them a specific fascination with linens and jewellery, and a heavy focus on family and improving conditions for their children wherever possible. maybe have them just go by given names, no family names, but each hold a family identity represented by their sub-community or "burrow". probably have them be monogamous. relatively low intelligence for mammal animal people. huuuge advantage on anything audio related.

Chinchillas have thumbs, so them forming a society isnt actually so unlikely

But would they be comfy?

Fountains of dust.

You arent supposed to get them wet thats why they take dust baths!

probably not in my setting, no. they would likely be marginalized and deeper in the wilderness, but stable population-wise. the wilderness is obscenely hostile in the area where they'd be found. talking like pterodactyls big enough to ride off with fully grown bears and shit. eagle people have to eat.

>chibi skaven.jpg

:(

Don't forget the dedicated system of roads and runners!

Like any other civilization, only with Chinchillas.

>If it's too hot or cold, they die.
>If they get wet, their fur grows fungus and they die
>If they hurt their paws during their active lifestyle, they can't eat and die
>If they see other chinchillas getting food before they do, they go into stress convulsions and die
>If they mate, they're liable to have a heart attack and die
>If they get one of a great many diseases they're incredibly susceptible to, they die
>If their teeth aren't constantly monitored, they grow too big and they starve and die
>If they're disturbed or find literally anything unfamiliar upsetting, they die

Has there ever been a more pointless creature?

Humans?

They specc'ed literally every point into fluffiness.

And also ur mum

Actually, one of the main things I've been pondering is how they would approach the use of tools versus movement.

Chinchillas can stand on their hind legs leaving their 'hands' free but they tend to move on all fours. So I can see them using their little chinchilla hammers and ukuleles when stationary but I'm not sure what they would do when they need to carry something from one place to another. Chinchilla utility belts? Carry stuff pirate style in their teeth?

Now I have seen chinchillas hop on their hind legs so while it's clumsy I can see them do it when moving short distances or when it's inconvenient to keep stowing and unstowing what they're carrying, like a weapon in a fight. I could see them having a sort of hopping fighting style where they bounce back and forth at one another with their little chinchilla swords.

Try again stupid.

If all life is equally pointless, by definition no lifeform can be more or less pointless than any other.

One of ours died in the middle of a dust bath.

RIP Dusty, which was his actual name.

...

>all the Skaven in the Warhammer Fantasy world have been replaced with chinchillas

Well at least when they get killed you can turn them into nice coats afterwords.

more humans

>Effective combat efforts are down, displeasing the Horned Rat
>Effective infiltration is up, as random people keep going "BY SIGMAR IT'S SO FLUFFY", picking them up, and carrying them around, also displeasing the Horned Rat
>The Horned Rat himself is rapidly running out of depilatory solutions and razors

It would be adorable.

But also could be pretty painful to look at, if we are talking about anthropomorphic ones.

>pic

I like this thread. Chinchilla people would definitely wear paper hats.
Pic related, it's my chinchilla, Mika, wearing a paper hat.

This kind or anthropomorphication would be awful for everything.
Hard in the Uncanny Valley.

Awwwww! He's fluffy and he has a hat!

AAAAA It's The Point!

How stinky are chinchillas?

Chinchillas carry stuff in their mouths, dog-style, so if they invent technologies that need to be used during movement would be mouth-friendly

they make basically no smell, less than rabbits. It would be a cleaner society than ours.
source: my girlfriend own two of the furry little balls of weaponized cuteness

>You will never get lost in the mountains
>You will never be greeted by a race of intelligent, horse-sized chinchilla's that have never seen a human before
>They will never greet you with "Hail, friend!"
>You will never enjoy their soft, fluffy hospitality
YDIMSA

Stop this, it hurts.
Chinchilla's are nocturnal, right? Doesn't that make them bad pets unless you're the kind of guy who works nightshifts?

What about a civilization of meerkats?

Horse-sized friendly chinchilla. Sounds like Totoro to me.

>If they're disturbed or find literally anything unfamiliar upsetting, they die

Can we teach SJWs to do that?

You need to start off with biology, bad question.

What niche did they fill? What evolutionary traits made them fit to survive in that environment? What evolutionary advantage did the "people" part have? What are their predators? Prey? What do they eat? How often do they sleep? How well do they survive in other environments? Are they in danger of being replaced by humans?

They build walls to keep children giants from coming into their villages and hugging them

...

Meerkat civilization would probably be somewhat similar to human civilization, albeit with a few differences.

They'd be kind of like dwarves, except their expertise for mining is replaced with digging soft materials only. Still, they're great at creating their homes underground.

Real world meerkats have an actual hierarchy system, so there would definitely be a difference between any two meerkats.

There would be a disproportionate number of them that would take up the role of town guards, or soldiers; they would be great at patrol and guerilla warfare, though really bad at direct confrontation; they would likely hire on other species to bolster their ranks.

Lastly, they'd probably be communists. No, they'd definitely be communists.

Easy. Pandas.

They could make an interesting subject race in some sort of not!Incan empire

>Herd miniature llamas for bonus wool
>"Conquered" by terrifying eight-foot-tall orcs who walk around covered in blood due to religious reasons
>Are far too wimpy to be a good fight, so they get on perfectly
>Giant bloodstained warrior and tiny fluffy craftsman bros 4ever

They don't smell,they shit is odorless. The only bad thing, the piss, it's mild. I have mine hopping free in my home, and apart of dusting the little shits from everywhere and clean the piss (than he does in the same place nearly every time, I thinks that isn't very common) and his sand bath every week it doesn't make much fuss. The only problem I have is when he does nibble everything barely edible, like pencils. One time he eat an entire green one, he shited green for some time but that was it, I dunno how he isn't death yet.

They would have all their tools and items on short cords or chains connected to their shoulders or waists by belts.

So if they're using tools and need to move rapidly, they just drop whatever is in their hands and it hangs on their belts.

They're actually corpuscular, not nocturnal.

>I dunno how he isn't death yet
Maybe he doesn't try hard enough
Also I think because death is pretty high level

If they're good at digging soft materials, I think I could see them experts at pottery, and probably fertilizer (because they'd be able to find the best dirt).
So a highly agricultural civ

A chinchillization?

Friend of the Grummles want lucky-do?

The stylish bastards.

>they make basically no smell, less than rabbits

'less than rabbits' isn't hard, rabbits reek.
source: agreed to take care of a friend's rabbit for a long weekend while he was on a trip, took a week of scrubbing down the house afterwards to completely remove the shitty odour.

>Pandas

No you idiot, a chinchillavillazation!

Protected by Ghostface Killa?

To start with, the point of a civilization is to fulfill all the basic needs of a group within itself. Food, shelter, mating, and protection. The chinchilla people would need space for farmland/pastures (depending on diet), space for personal housing (amount of space depends on typical family size), and space for social and communal activity in which to pursue non-essential interests and meet others (ex. libraries, shops and bars, etc.). They'd also need a leadership structure to keep it all running, law enforcement, infrastructure, and emergency response.

I'm imagining something like a mountain, using terraced farming to grow crops on the outside, with a network of burrows on the inside. They've got a chieftain, a sheriff, a doctor, a smith, and a couple of scribes to record important stuff like laws and trade ledgers. Their primary jobs are farming on the surface, expanding their burrows, or mining, and their retiree plan is top-notch. They grow spices and exotic tobacco for trade value, and they mine whatever ore happens to be in their mountain that they haven't already used for infrastructure or a basic militia. They import draft animals, books, and high-end manufactured products that they can't create on their own.

They aren't a warlike people, and have little need for new territory since their city plans extend vertically more than horizontally and most other races consider mountains more of an obstacle than a suitable living area. They probably would conflict with dwarves if they lived anywhere near each other, but as it is most dwarves haven't even heard of a chinchilla. They can weather attacks by barricading inside their mountain and surviving off stored food, but this leaves their farms undefended and can screw over the whole colony if a siege goes on too long. In combat, their thick fluffy fur gives natural AC boosts and their small size gives a dodge bonus on top of that, so their tactics often involve exploiting that.

I see. Still, that sounds like a bad schedule for a pet kept by humans. Or can you "force"/train them to be diurnal?

I know rodents will sometimes adapt to their "colonies" which include the humans in their environment. They'll still scamper around at night sometimes, but I'd just keep them in another room so it wouldn't bug me.

That nigga dead

Chinchillas literally die if you get them wet

Nature's most adorable mistake

I know you aren't meant to get them wet and they bathe in dust but why do they die?

Their fur is extremely susceptible to fungus. It doesn't end well.

So rain is lethal to them?

Potentially. They live in the desert mountains of South America, their natural environment is about as far removed from wet as you can possibly get.

he died how he lived

Like this

Yes.

Chinchillas are basically the most fragile animal in the world. They are susceptible to dying if you speak too loud near them.

They are very emotionally sensitive.

And big ears of course!
The natural burrows can be extended into gnome homes.
You could probably do something with the volcanic dust bathing too, maybe even play up more volcanic stuff in general.

Maybe blend in some Incan influences with mountain farms?

There's also the consideration of interactions with other creatures like fantasy versions of the south American camelids or the rhea, domesticated beasts, competing tribes?

>wet chinchillas become fungus hosts, exiled like lepers and pushed out onto the streets, into the wilderness
>fungus hosts progress into protomyconoids, slowly drifting into insanity as their body is slowly replaced by the encroaching fungus. They are two minds over everything.
>Once the brain is totally replaced and the body completely consumed, a true mushroom man emerges.

This is Dark Souls, bitch.

crepuscular is an animal active around dusk, corpuscular is any cell that is unattached to another

>They are susceptible to dying if you speak too loud near them.
Are you shitting me or is this true?

...

No. They spook super easy and have weak vasculature. If they get at all stressed or frightened, they are liable to just straight up die.

I'd be willing to bet that the wild ones are more hardy. Domesticated Chinchillas are probably inbred as fuck so that's why they're so fragile. People will often also say horses are a weak species but it's really a reflection of the way we raise certain breeds. Actual wild horses are pretty resilient.

>How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?
>MUAD'DIB: the adaptedkangaroo mouseofArrakis, a creature associated in theFremenearth-spirit mythology with a design visible on the planet's second moon. This creature is admired by Fremen for its ability to survive in the open desert.

Long Live The Fighters!

Do chinchilla ears do anything other than hear? Are they really sensitive and used like whiskers when they burrow, do they cool it off in the heat, etc?

Chin ears have a very similar auditory range as humans, which is why they're using often as analogues for humans in testing. They are sensitive to lower frequencies then our ears, but otherwise cover the same spectrum.

They're just ears.

Chinchillas already have gigantic whiskers.

He was on his side and kind of stretched out so I think he might have actually died mid-spin.

Forget why he isn't dead; I want to know how every object and piece of furniture you own within a foot of the floor level isn't shredded.

>highly agricultural with a bit of industry
Yep, commies.

They eat tall grasses, soft woods, and occasionally fruits, and like all rodents, they eat constantly. A civilized breed would probably be sporadically nomadic, moving their tents from field to field when their tall grasses become short grasses, with settled life playing out sort of like a romp through a rainforest. Except, instead of chopping down vines with machetes, they'll just grab a stalk and start chewing it whilst chatting, hopping every so often to move further on.

Cables. Oh god, the cables.

with their floppy ears poking out from under their chullo hats.

>cables

Ah, so he'll be frying himself any day now.

F

youtube.com/watch?v=VwAVEXWJbf0

>going extinct because they literally refuse to fuck
Is there a more pathetic animal? I remember reading a quote by some conservationist that he would cook and eat every living panda if it meant the money wasted on saving them was returned. They're that much of a lost cause.

>Attack on Human

They could have a 'your size counts as one category smaller than it actually is' type ability seeing as most of what you see is fur.

>they attempt to grapple line up to a human and the sudden movement causes a heart attack

Gay

I think I read somewhere that pandas don't mate very often because bamboo is shit nutritionally so they don't have the energy and when zoo keepers gave them other shit to eat they became more active physically and sexually.

Or second hand rumor but bamboo is a shitty food source either way.

In dust clad.

That 'other shit' is basically science-mush specifically designed to emulate the material properties of bamboo, because the Panda's digestive tract is too retarded to deal with anything else.

They're a fucking stupid animal. Like, Tigers, I can see. Dolphins, sure. Whales, definitely, Rhinos, Elephants, Lions, Polar Bears, Bees, all worth saving.

Pandas do fuck-nothing all day because they have evolved to eat a food source that makes them permanently lethargic. Let nature take it's fucking course.

Any animal that evolves to eat a single food source is a dead end, like those ancient sharks that only ate nautaloids (however that's spelled).