To Aislinn

[IamLEAM1983]

Just curious, but have selkie Clanks ever been a thing? All we ever seem to see is either straight-up humanoid models or old black-and-white studio shots of CHAPs or the Kitaiteki. I know anthro models were around and that some still are, but Theriomorph models sound like they'd require tons of work.

Plus, would a selkie's soul ever have reason enough to come back without a pelt, or with being forced with a kind of deployable, mechanical rendition of one?

[TennyoCeres84]

"I can't say that I remember ever hearing something about selkie Clanks, so there have probably never been any. One practical reason for this is that even a basic automaton body would have been outrageously expensive, now and then. Selkies have never really risen to an economic class that would be able to afford such a luxury.Besides, the expense of intricately manufacturing a selkie and his or her sealskin would be astronomical. Archie's still filthy rich, so was Gorobei Iwata. Even civil servants had their new bodies paid for by the government.

A second reason is something you actually touched on: the lack of a pelt. Theriomorphs of any sort are inherently closer to nature. If you stuck the soul of a theriomorph into a fancy, clockwork-run body, I think the results wouldn't be pretty. Just like humans who face depersonalization when they enter a Clank body, they lose touch of reality. Even if you could simulate a pelt, it's not the same thing. Shifts are triggered by will. Muscle and bone reconfiguring into a new shape. A steampunk version of a selkie with clicks and whirs doesn't have the same organic feeling. It's akin to the selkie wife folktale. Selkie loses their pelt and potentially withers away on land without that connection.