Scrovens – How they started

One of the difficult things about writing a book in a custom universe is how to populate it with factions and races that have a mix of unique features with familiar ones. While often relying on clichés from the type of setting you are writing about can be useful for achieving familiarity, it can also make them look bland to a reader.

With the Scrovens I was looking for something to fit the typical warlike nature of factions like orcs in many fantasy settings or the orks (notice the distinction) from settings like Warhammer 40k. Although regular orcs in space is still a slightly less explored topic in sci-fi than it is fantasy settings, I thought I could have something a bit more personalized and that was how the Scrovens were born.

As described here, the Scrovens have a very peculiar way of reproduction, which is essentially reproduction based on plants that are originated from either seeds or tubercle, with the Scrovens being the tubercles themselves and the scrovigs being some sort of fruit. But how was that reproductive cycle thought of, you might ask.

Well it all started with a very boring bus travel to visit my family and the knowledge I had from planting and digging for potatoes in the family farm for several years. You see, potatoes can be cut in pieces to create the plants, just like a piece of a Scroven can be used to create a Scroven Mother. Cutting the potatoes into pieces is the usual way to plant them and the plant takes a few months (3 to 4 months) to grow, both on the surface and underground, similarly to the Scrovens and their Mother.

On the later stages of development of the potato plant, it forms a small tomato like appendix at the top, which in the end opens up and turns into a flower, just like the Scroven Mother does the same, while releasing the vicious scrovigs in the process.

Another thing that happens with potatoes is that they often produce smaller potatoes on the lower extremities of the plant or where the terrain is not so soft, producing a typically more condensed, but very flavored type of potato. Scrovelings are essentially the equivalent to this kind of potatoes, small and condensed, but no less vicious than their larger brethren.

Scrovens like potatoes also come in different shapes and colours, with each corresponding to a specific variant of the species. On the first book of the series I focused mostly on the more common brown/grey looking Scrovens, although other variants might appear in other stories within the same universe, displaying slightly different behaviours and traditions.

If potatoes can fuel the imagination for the creation of an entire sci-fi race, imagine what other common events, objects or creatures can do to fuel your imagination. Sometimes inspiration is just around the corner and boring periods can actually be useful for allowing your imagination to run free.