Hello, fellow Explorers! 

Today I would like to take you on a little journey with me. A journey that leads you through the fantastic and wondrous world of PlanetQuest’s community project and gives its members a place to let their imagination roam free: The Bestiary and Botany Thread. 

Newfound galaxies are filled with six different planet types, waiting for you to explore their surface and mysteries. Planets teeming with life, my dear Explorers! 

Lurking in shadows, swinging through canopies, soaring above clouds—beasts of various forms and shapes roam these planets. Yet unknown, but waiting to be discovered!

However, not only beasts will greet you (not always pleasantly either). Poisonous, nutritious, curing, and many more traits are found in plants all across these ecosystems. Approach them with caution yet with the spirit of discovery!

Many of you Explorers already took on this brave role of discovery and entered your findings into our Bestiary and Botany Thread. We are thrilled to see so much effort behind your entries. Explorers, this is the way!

But first, my fellow friends of fur and fern, let me take you to…

Where it all started

A casual and simple conversation rarely turns out to be the source of great ideas. But on the 20th of April, 2022, an inconspicuous mention about creatures from our Art Director Jon McCoy in the Discord chat started a spiraling train in our community.

He simply mentioned that they had a bunch of ideas for creatures on our planets. That was enough to make the chat jump from possible pets, to zoos on planets, to letting the community come up with creature names as a base for concept creation, to the final point:

To let the community create complete ideas for creatures and plants to inspire our artists.

Thus the idea for the Bestiary and Botany Thread was born. Mere minutes later we had approval from the UC and created the thread. Doc O.B. and I created templates for beast and botany entries as guidelines for our fellow Explorers. On that same day four new creatures found their way into our little compendium.

From there we will take a look at …

Where we are now

We have come a long way from the day of inception. We evolved from just a thread on discord to an ongoing google document, tracking all entries with tables for beasts and plants relative to their planet types, and a corresponding page on our community PQ Wiki.

But to best sum up what we all have achieved in a bit more than a month, I’ll let some numbers speak for themselves:

As I write this blog, our compendium now contains over 140 entries: 99 beasts and 44 plants spread across all six different planet types (with a special love for Forest Planets it seems).

This would not have been possible without the work of several different Explorers from all of our three factions. To give these brave helpers the acknowledgment they deserve, we have come up with a bit of a treat. See for yourselves:

The Hall of Fame! Even if these titles are only of an honorary nature, we wanted to show our appreciation for the work our Explorers put into their entries.

Both the wiki as well as the google docs (links at the bottom) are open for everyone to take a look at.

But there is more to come—something very special, so let me show you…

What we have planned

From the beginning the Bestiary and Botany Thread was a twofold idea. First, we wanted to create a feel, or a theme, for beasts and plants in our new galaxies and, with it, some traction among our community. And at this point, looking at the number of entries, I would say we have come quite far in that manner.

The second idea was to create a contest around beasts and plants. Nothing is set in stone yet, but in the not so distant future we hope to begin our Bestiary and Botany Contest Weeks. Every week will have a planet type theme like the “Desert Week,” and every member of the community may enter an idea for a beast and/or plant for the specific planet type. The community will then decide their favorite entries.

The winners will find their spot on our Bestiary and Botany Wiki Page together with their entry, and as soon as we start our contest, we will also revamp the wiki page to better navigate through all the different topics around beasts and plants created by our community.

But before I let you off into the deep jungles, snowy mountains, and lava lakes of the new found galaxies, I want to leave you with a little…

Treat from our Bestiary and Botany Thread

At this point I want to do what I will do in the future: 

Feature an entry from our Bestiary and Botany Thread. 

Taking a closer look at the Hall of Fame above, who would be better suited to appear in this first blog post than our current holder of the title “Galactical Beast Master,” the one and only Unbreakable | S-T | S. Trader! With 17 beasts he holds his title firmly, but should not sit idly on his throne!

For now, I want to give you a glimpse of his ideas with his following entry:

But, there is even more, my dear Explorers! A fellow Explorer named Mahusenshi provided us with incredible artwork depicting this creature.

Treat this artwork as a gift from heaven. Now you know when to run!

Before I now finally send you out into the unknown, I will leave you with a wonderful remark of our well known and admired Art Director Jon McCoy about our little community project:

“The Bestiary and Botany thread represents the creative peak of PlanetQuest’s amazing community. It’s a place where no ideas are out of bounds or too wild to be considered. It also serves as one of the main avenues for community members to get their creative stamp on the game itself. An inspiring platform with almost limitless potential.” – Jon McCoy

I will be back to treat you all with some more examples of our ever growing compendium of beasts and plants.

Your friendly self proclaimed zoologist – Zeik Ubbentrop

Bestiary and Botany Wiki: https://planetquestwiki.com/index.php/Bestiary_and_Botany

Bestiary and Botany google doc: https://bit.ly/39mrMVd

Author: Flovster

Featured Artwork: Mahusenshi#2933 & Nottamali#9432

Editor: Luffy and Crüniac