Crustacean Races

Why would they even need tools if they have claws though?

How do they communicate?
What's the basis for this community?
How did they develope into intelligent humanoids?

Not even the dude you responded to, but even if they are born master artisans with the chitinous fingers of a fucking piano player, there are lengthy treatises on how completely fucking awful it is to run a civilisation underwater. It seriously curtails your access to a lot of fundamental resources. You are limited entirely to crafting with stone and bone only, every other resource has to be scavenged or traded from the surface. You don't get to have even feudal levels of technology because you can't operate a forge or open flame.

And I want to be clear that even if you have wizards to help you, there are still problems, if you render an area hot enough to smelt metal, the heat conductivity of the water means that anything within 10 metres of the forge is at lethal temperatures, and also a lot of chemical reactions still can't occur because water has awful gas solubility and you can't isolate anything from certain salts etc.

A far more parsimonious solution to crab people is for them to be primarily land dwelling and they just LIKE water a lot. Strong bathing culture, seafarers, whatever.

Ok getting into evolution is a bit too much honestly. That's a straw-man and unrelated to the topic at hand. You can use that argument for literally every fantasy race that isn't human.

>Why would they even need tools if they have claws though?

Chitin on chitin combat is ineffectual similar to fists on bones like humans. Piercing weapons and reach tools are highly advantageous. Plus tools make fishing much easier than catching fish with their claws.

>How do they communicate?
Sign language, controlled bubble release or waterborne pheromone clouds.

>What's the basis for this community?
Way too general, could be literally anything like humans. Including different focuses for different communities within the same species.

>How did they develope into intelligent humanoids?
Well evolution is kinda out the window in a fantasy world, even without considering apex species theory where most real planets would only have one sapient species. But once again, this is fantasy user.

I'm assuming you're asking questions to prompt world-building and conversation, which i really hope is true, because if these are argumentative questions displaying your skepticism of crustacean races it means you're really REALLY bad at fantasy.

GOD you people are fucking horrible at imagination. See this guy's response.

crab people. crab. people.
walk like people
taste like crab

I like realism in my campaign. I do like to know how my world has developed. I mean the easy answer is always just magic or blessings from a god

Ok, and I must have mixed that up as an argumentative thing then. Sorry.

True but crabs eat a whole lot more than just fish. They are scavengers. I'd imagine they would eat everything.

Communication is essential to community and intelligence.

Well are they scavengers, hunters, do they farm? Or do they live independently and just come together to mate.

Haha yea of course it's for terms of world building. Obviously I can hand wave the development but I like to make it as in depth as possible.

Yea no worries. Its always hard to relay the tone of your message through text.

Because following real crabs they're essentially more fighty orcs. Including ripping off limbs that are broken to fight with/fight better.

Crabs fucking love to duke it out.

>The problem is communication and the ability to create materials.
There's plenty of land and amphibious crustaceans though. Hell some don't even need to have water filled holes to return to every half hour.

See that just makes me want that shit even more!

Also Makrura in Warcraft

I imagine them as the most stereotypical, tongue in cheek vikings. If you don't die fighting you wont go to crab heaven and keep on fighting. Don't even need longboats, just walk across the ocean floor to go fight those poor unassuming land dwellers.

Also they're probably immortal and can't die from old age, at least with lobsters. Which never stop growing.

Metalworking wasn't very big at all in the Americas prior to colonial contact and there were huge, complex societies here. I don't think the lack of fire is nearly as big a problem as you guys seem to. Besides, cold working of some metals is a thing.

Now that's an interesting idea! Much is made of the longevity of elves, but with crustacean people it's instantly believable.

Now I'm thinking of something akin to The Beast from 40K, with some massive, ancient Crab man leading a war against the land dwellers.

First post best post, boil the crustaceans, sea war now

>Crab people are invading your coasts
>Slaughtering your villages
>You cannot beat their brutality and size
>Try to negotiate with their sensibilities, open trade and more favorable things than risking death
>Crabs just fight harder, being offended by your offer of less fighting.

So gold would be very valuable to crab because of its ability to be shaped and also because it won't rust underwater. I can imagine a nomadic warlike community with a few possessions.

The Morgrawr from Endless Legend got you covered... sorta.

Underwater magma vents are a thing? They are fairly deep, but maybe the crab people can deal with it? If they can get access to lava they could develop SOME kind of forging technique.

Nah we figured out it would kill crabs that get too close. Crab would just smelt and forge on land or forgo the use of metals altogether

No wood, no cooking, no ability to do any sort of controlled chemical processes like chemically treated fabrics or medicines, poisons etc. Cold working metal is fine, but you still can't find metal any to cold work underwater, it all corroded away long ago. You need to scavenge from surface dwellers.

Gold is literally the only metal that they could access and work entirely underwater.

There's a difference between "Using your imagination when working" and "Race of invisible flying elephants that feed off of dreams and use telekinesis to build functional cars out of solid rock" tier worldbuilding. Underwater civilisations are a very well explored topic, and critical analysis has always concluded that they would suffer immensely in all but the most high-magic settings. And this isn't a "no fun allowed" thing, its the primary reason that merfolk and the like would logically be at conflict with the land dwelling races: They *need* access to coastal land, and they *need* the goods that human sea-traders have. Hell, its worth sinking the occasional human vessel just for the wood it's made out of. Wood is really useful and there's no undersea equivalent.

goblinpunch.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/merfolk-and-false-shipwrecks.html

I mean yeah, crabs are amphibious. As long as one got a water bucket to dunk its head into they can work on land.

There is a general assumption in the less informed of humanity that because humans evolved intelligence and nothing else has that it has to look like us.

However there are compilations from a science viewpoint that make aquatic races harder and less likely to form. Most technology we understand is based on fire. Everything and what we are cmoes from it.

You can't do that underwater. It's a totally alien way of thinking how a race could survive under water. First of all I think it requires 2 things.

1. A water world or something with at least 80% water on its surface.

2. An aquatic ecosystem that can help support aquatic intelligent life.

How would you forge metals under water as them? How would you shape them? That is the most basic problem. However that is not to say its impossible simply that at least from earth based life and oceans it seems impossible.

However back during the days of Spore fever before it was launched people made a game called The Evolution Game. It started you out as a single cell and then the group of forum posters would vote on stuff.

Anyways long story short we managed to crate a successful aquatic based tribal society but the leader of the game was completely stumped on where to go once it hit metal stage of advancement.

Up to that point they had evolved elecctro receptors so sensitive that they could mind control animals and had been doing that to make due. At the same time they found a malleable mass of moss like creature (forget the science but I think these exist today) and would be extra suspetible to the electro charge emmited by this race.

So they could form buildings out of this living moss. As for food they were carnivora and could eat food raw of a sort they would plunge their long probiscuous beak thing into prey and spit acid into then slurp them up.

Basic tools were able to be made from stones and obsidian ect. They were able to survive on the bottom of the ocean.

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I mean yeah, even the fish people in lovecraft got all their shit from their worship of their reality warping space fish demon.

Its a different society down there, one where industry is based on worship and servitude rather than resources and hard work.

I know for a fucking fact that if I try to incorporate crab people, I'll be getting South Park references out the ass.

>Evolution of sapience
>Realism

>goblinpunch.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/merfolk-and-false-shipwrecks.html
I really wish people would stop trying to reinvent every race and creature to be the most dominant in their field. There's really nothing wrong with mermen having no industry, being nothing more than really smart dolphins who lure people in my mind controlling songs or just straight up eating some dude claw and fang.

If they can't get their hands on a spear since underwater sucks for anything innovative then let them be brutal cunts, fighting and living hand to tooth.

>if you render an area hot enough to smelt metal, the heat conductivity of the water means that anything within 10 metres of the forge is at lethal temperatures

You're literally that guy who says that dragons aren't allowed to fly because they're too big. Fuck off.

That's cool as shit.

...

There are plenty of biomass sources underwater. Just because we haven't needed to find a wood substitute down there doesn't mean there isn't one. Perhaps something made of shells or coral does the same jobs. I think you're falling into this idea that their tech tree has to proceed the same way ours did, and I'm not at all convinced of that.

Triggered

>major

I'm not that guy but my dragons have hollow bones and are wyvens as opposed to real dragons.

A looming crab warrior, centuries old, left claw long ago torn off in battle, watches with alien eyes as yet another torso implodes under the terrible strength of his right claw, spears skittering harmlessly off his chitonous shell.

He tires of this. Who will be the one to release him from this tedium of undending slaughter? Who will deliver him to the stony shores of the Eternal Shoal so that he can finally partake in the Great Blue Tide?

(yeah, I know it's horseshoe crabs whose blood is blue)

OP here, and I just considered a sort of counter to the whole "Underwater civilizations suck" issue with crabs: Land crabs

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_crab

Adeptus Crustodes.

Because they're dumb?

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C-crab battle?!

I happen to be an expert on this subject.

I like to get around the whole only having snippers for hands by having my crab people befriend a race of telepathic octopods that act as fine manipulators. Lot's of fun stuff come along with have having giant snippers AND detachable tentacles

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>How do they communicate?
Many forms of crab can make noise. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine them using it to communicate information
>What's the basis for this community?
Originated as communal nest defense and maintenance of silt-traps made of compacted sand and rocks
>How did they develope into intelligent humanoids?
Status as a non-apex predator means they need to be on constant lookout for things to eat and for things eating them, bumping up brainpower, as did their nature as structure building creatures.

They might use another sense entirely to communicate. If we're talking about aquatic crustaceans, maybe some lateral line electric shit.

Jesus crabs are cute.

Real crabs talk like italians, extensive hand moving , various clicks and frothing from the mouth.

>"A-gimme da spaghetti"
>Rips arm off
>Shits eggs all over the floor

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>Not lobstermen
Now those were nightmares.

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Well that's all and good
but where's the arousaed face?

Cerulean Seas has crab people. And sea urchin people. And snail people.

sauce? I've seen that race around before

>No sex appeal
Bingo.

Queblocks chet.
They're nice trader lobsters.

here's a dudelobster and girlobster

>Also they're probably immortal and can't die from old age, at least with lobsters. Which never stop growing.

Acktchually, that's not entirely true. They could technically live for a very long time with outside assistance, but a lobster's shell gets thicker every time it molts, so if it didn't meet a violent death, eventually it would reach a size where it's incapable of molting; at this point it gets stuck and starves to death. If a lobster in captivity had a human assisting it with each molt, it could hypothetically live as long as someone was always there to help cut it out of its molting.

>Sensible dimorphism
This is my fetish

You must run some very low-fantasy settings, if not a single creature in them breaks the square-cube law.

These guys wouldn't defy square-cube law (unless they were fucking huge) but the main problem biologically with large crustaceans is the same as insects - we don't have exoskeletons because they're impractical due to molting. People think they would weigh more but it's relative since they have no internal skeleton, so the weight would probably be comparable to vertebrates. Molting is the real problem as the bigger an organism is, the longer it takes for your new shell/exoskeleton to harden after you molt, leaving you vulnerable to all sorts of danger.

Cool!
I like this post.

>the longer it takes for your new shell/exoskeleton to harden after you molt, leaving you vulnerable to all sorts of danger.
Which is also why they evolved into being AS social as humans.

So when the bigger one molt the tribe can defend and feed him.

I imagine the other lobster people can probably do that for eachother, yeah?

All will swear fealty to the Crabylonian Empire and the Crabylonian Emperor, Hammucrabbi

That's a cool idea. Also opens up doors for treachery and assassinating kings/leaders during their molt.

>Hammucrabbi
kek

Carve weapons and tools out of minerals, reef, and bio matter?

Sorry I lost all my limbs because they were broken and they haven't grown back yet.

Someone fight lift me up so I can fight the fight emperor and prove my fight loyalty to the fight fight emperor fight.

Well since they are all armored I'm figuring more that they use hammers and large stones. Caring little for bio stuff outside home making and food.

Or their pincers, those are usually strong enough to crush crab shells. The coconut crab can snap a steel knife in half.

This belongs here.

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Do crab people get crabs?

No, they get people

>Clickclackblublub goes to his crab doctor
>Complains he's been itching something fierce down there since he inseminated blublubclickclacks eggs
>Crab doctor opens the tail
>Humans fall out and start scurrying around, inventing industry and putting everything edible into a fire
>Clickclackblublub now has to apply an ointment three times a day

>but how do you make things underwater?
Hi user, this is the giant coconut crab.
Like many other crustaceans, once he reaches adulthood, he cannot breath underwater and thus lives on solid ground for the rest of his life.
He's also really cute.

This has been brought up in the thread constantly. There's tons of crustaceans that live on land, some don't even need to return to water to restock like mister coconut crab.
He's also a hermit crab, who are more related to rolly pollies and shrimp than crabs.

I like the idea of a bunch of normie land-dweller adventurers trying to wrap their heads around that.

>"They did what during the what now?"

How is that hard for the landnormies to understand? The biggest dude was killed.

They''d more be amazed that crabs don't give a fuck, ripping limbs off and dying just so that they can fight harder and better. And it being a natural state of the species.

Too delicious.

There's the Yurian/Aldani/Crabmen/Lobsterfolk in D&D. I'm pretty sure they've been in every edition except for 4.

There's no short supply of crab people, its just really hard to find a game where they are at least common.

I also like the idea that mantis shrimp aren't noteworthily agressive for a crustacean, just powerful enough to be noticed and I want that to be reflected in the crab people.

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I too would love a world where all land races who live on the great bountiful oceans must occasionally deal with raids from the crab men and make weapons and armor from their chitin.

Maybe they raid shores to get slaves to help them molt?

Would crabs need armor?

>The seas split asunder, and T'Ch'Ka'Na, The Tidebreaker, The End of Mercy, The Father of Storms arises
>His height rivals the clouds
>His amphibious servants cling to his shell, wielding weapons cut from his own impervious chitin, living in huts adhered to his armoured hide
>With every step, the ground shakes, and the dry-breathers tremble
>His black, soulless eyes cast themselves over the pitiful horizon as he spots his destination
>His maw, lined with serrated cilia, lets loose a horrific call
>His declaration of affection screamed out to the world, the Maelstrom-that-walks goes to mate with Mountains

>the Maelstrom-that-walks goes to mate with Mountains
But there's plenty of mountains under the sea
Stupid fetishist crab, humping our mountains.