WIP: Scud Story Concepts (Patreon)

While I'm drawing finished pages for Airsled I've been slowly slapping together another short story project, this one about Scud Terranauts. It's currently untitled but, tbh, will probably just be called Terranaut because I like the word a lot.

It's inspired by the Martian with protagonist Chkbrr, the botanist of a deep inland research team, who misses the train home and must survive in an arid climate with dwindling food and fuel supplies until the next train can be sent in.  Rzzt-tt is their sibling, another member of the research team, and has a fight with Chkbrr just before the train arrives. Arguably, Rzzt-tt is responsible for Chkbrr being left behind, and once they realize their sibling isn't on the train they feel pretty awful about starting the fight! 

Chkbrr, perhaps because they are a botanist, is deeply mistrustful of eating terrestrial plants (plants in arid climates are frequently thorny and/or poisonous) and ends up having to hunt weird terrestrial animals to stay fed. The research complex that the story takes place in is the Pudd, which I drew some schematics for here. It's all marine biotech housed inside a custom calcium carbonate shell, so another challenge for Chkbrr is keeping the Pudd's tech alive through wild terrestrial temperature swings and desiccation threat with very limited sugar fuel.