Arawak

Dark Matters (Open)

The Radioactive Center of Ancient Knowledge, Sul Vopal

Sartot as a opal colored Fosskemian with yellow eyes looks upon the ruins of some unknown ancient societies loosely connected to her species with some sense of disillusionment. She perches one of her hands on the railings of an exhibit showing the fossilized remnants of ancient fosskemians engraved into a metallic structure with looks of shock on their faces. Sartot has no clue what this is, but is just so taken back by just the… static nature of it. Just reduced to that crystallized state for millennia and likely millions of years to come. Sartot looks feverishly around for someone to explain this to her and raises her right flipper leg to get the attention of another Fosskemian, a short vibrant blue male fosskemian sulking about the place likely as some custodian. Said Fosskemian looks at Sartot and asks “Curious about this one?”

Sartot replies “Yes.”

“This here is from the Opulent era. It was extremely long ago, nearly a thousand years ago. That was way back when fosskemians nearly died out due to the excesses of the plutocrats causing multiple radioactive wars. The fosskemians are profoundly lucky to have had the machines descend from the skies to get us to the stars- in a way our existence is a freak coincidence. Those ancients when they were visited by the machines were very lucky they didn’t euthanize fosskemianians and instead got them back on their flippers and into spacecraft. Still the legacy of the Opulent era haunts us- why just look outside. You will see we learn nothing.”

Sartot is a bit irritated by this fosskemian, pushing itself away from it and rants “Your negative outlook makes me wonder how you haven’t provoked any lootings! We always are learning! We are the burning fire of the galaxy, the world of the imperials and the regime of silence, stability and stagnation crumbles as ours expands.”

“And every fire burns out.” It retorts, before dismissively leaving Sartot to herself. Sartot decides to just go elsewhere instead.

So she moves her way out of the center, looking at the lobby area to make sure none of the security turrets are about to fire on her. For if there is anything Sartot knows, it is that the owners of properties love their defense systems. Leaving out the front door, she sees some loitering Urgzehu nakedly slumming about with worms and engravings on their bodies while making her way to a personal transport.

Sartot as she enters the transport finds that there is something on the ground that wasn’t there before. It is a data pad. Sartot curiosly pecks the data pad on and a series of humms and screeches play before a message from the auditor itself is heard.

“Want adventure?” It says before the transport suddenly is enclosed by something. Panicked, Sartot bashes the windows with her limbs to not much effect.

“You have adventure!” It says again.

Sartot than shouts at the pad, “I don’t adventure!”

The pad doesn’t seem to care and just continues its message.

“You will have adventure! Just remain calm as we take you to your adventure. The Red Cross has been very naughty you see.”

“I am just a city boss, why do you want me to deal with this?” Sartot asks the data pad.

“You are the city boss of Old Vatat, the Red Cross has been naughty. That is your adventure!”

The sense of movement Sartot realizes to be somewhat akin to being placed into a spaceship. This is a kidnapping, it dawns to Sartot.

“I hate that! Let me have my break!” She shouts in frustration at the data pad.

“We voted for you. You will have your adventure. The red cross is and will be naughty.” The Data pad re-iterates.

“I won’t.” Sartot defiantly tells the data pad before flinging it around the cabin of the transport.

“You will. You requested this a day before. You want adventure!”

Sartot than realizes she may have forgotten something important she had to do back at Old Vatat. Was this what it was? The Red Cross has been a bit of a nuisance in Old Vatat. They promised to help with some public works and then proceed to not even do that and just blather on with their stupid mindless flesh idols.

Still, Sartot isn’t sure.

“I had other important things I was doing on Sul Vopal and you, whoever you are need to just stop this and put me back on that planet!”

The data pad starts just inexplicably laughing in a modulated pitch, than says “Drug fueled coastal running contests are not an ‘important business’! Adventure is more important.”

“Yes they are!” Sartot insists.

“We are headed to Old Vatat now, be prepared.” The data pad tells Sartot.

Dismayed, Sartot shrugs and proceeds to go get the official’s cloak from the back of the Cabin. Back to work sooner than hoped.

“Also Nutok called, she is currently not available due to selling drugs to outsiders again.”

The Central Amphitheatre Complex, Void Prison

Within the scope of a small trade craft of metasyndicate origin, a Fosskemian identifying as Nutok makes her landing at a port in orbit of the somewhat disturbing named ‘void prison’. The insides of the ship have her in a circular pilot’s room and a passage way for climbing to the storage area. By and large, Nutok pilots a superficially civilian vessel with plating that makes it hard to discern what is inside. As for Nutok herself, her is very standard by the accounts of any biological female Fosskemian. Being seven feet in height, having curved, broad antennae and As with all Fosskemians not starving to death or injured, she has two incredibly large, flipper-like appendages filled with air that get used as legs that surround the sides of her body. Indeed the upright position she finds highly discomforting, but it is the position to which looking eye to eye with most other species like her clients is possible.

Looking at large stores of the drug she is here to give- on explicit demands from the client to be discreet she double checks to make sure none of the worms have escaped. For these are no normal worms- they are worms, they are worms sourced from the depths of Tradlos and its biomineral rich soils whose enzymes cause all matter of uplifting, stimulating effects to those who have them leeching off of you. They also are what Nutok knows are in high demand and the Central Amphitheatre Complex, beyond having ancient imperial dramas is also a hive of proxy black market sells.

Nutok collects a lot of the worlds from the luggage, hiding them in the inner side of her two large flippers while being draped with a standard Hargonian robe filled with many arrow-like symbols. Nutok is fluster in embarrassment wearing Hargonian attire and pink eye covers, but it is to throw off identification. Nutok leaves the ship with the contraband and begins to use her neck pad to contact her client informing them she is here.

Zoppadoppa's Alien Workshop

Welcome to Zoppadoppa's Alien workshop. I make lore for aliens and art for them too. You are free to use and modify them. They are meant more for sci-fi settings, but who knows maybe you want alien cuttlefish for your high fantasy RP.

Here's a few examples of alien civs I have made-

The Cyrawaloc

The Cyrawaloc are three separate species combined into a single sapient being. If these species were separated they would never have made a massive interstellar civilization. The heads are the Cyrs, the bodies are the Awa and the limbs are the Loka. Multiple combinations of head and limb exist, but universally a Cyrawaloc will have only a single body to separate itself from another ‘individual’. They are a very widespread and powerful species in the current day, even in spite of incidents such as the Bilethought or the ikeitan exodus in their deeper history spanning back over four millennia. They have since deviated into many strange forms and have a civilization built on both advanced synthetic technology and magnetic manipulation. The Cyrawaloc are individualistic minded, but not in the same way as us. All the three species part of a Cyrawaloc are viewed as the same individual and aggressively so; denying that they are the same is viewed as an insult. The Cyrawaloc identify shifts as parts of itself are born and die, attaching and detaching. The death of the Awa (body), the least sapient part of a Cyrawaloc, ironically is usually viewed as the “death” of an individual even if the head and limbs survive as the body lives much longer than the head or limbs. A cyrawaloc can have a single limb, five limbs, two heads and so forth. The limit is usually two heads and five limbs, anymore and “mental disorders” happen like insanity, plain and simple insanity. Not to mention it risks encumbering the Awa.
The Cyrawaloc as a kind are three species in total, each of which unique.
The Cyrs are parasites who direct and control the Awas to better pastures in nature, but as they developed their sapience in response to integrating the Loka into their survival strategy along with the tool manipulation of the Loka leading to the creation of shelters, fire and new ways to defend the Awas from would be predators while simultaneously increasing food yields for the Awas. The Cyrs is smart, often directing the other two species and systemically putting much of its thought process to more systemic planning and partial communication- however the more sociable Loka tend to like talking more. The Cyrs communicate in a series of weird, jittery hums while the Loka communicate in a more guttural fashion. The Cyrs is quite big as far as parasites go, relying on a younger, more larval form to latch onto their host before becoming part of the Awas itself. The Cyrs can adapt this system to machinery as well, for this reason alone neural robotic technologies are very frequently used by the Cyrawaloc. The Cyrs are loosely associated beings usually. They're not as social as humans are. However, they do have mating selection systems comparable to birds. For that reason the males tend to have more elaborate chilla and vibrant coloration. The Cyrs are intelligent and sociable despite this, but only started forming large social groups after a million years of post-convergence evolution.
The Awas is a large, tetrapodal herbivore which exist in a phyla separate from the Cyrs or Loka, but benefit from their parasitic overlords greatly. The Cyrs tend to possess a alpha male Awas, who then leads the other female Awas. Female Awas can be controlled by a Cyrs as well, but said control can be overridden by the Cyrs riding the males due to having to fight the instinctual urges of a female Awas to follow the alpha of the herd. Awas are more or less herd animals, with a collective mode of social organization. The Awas live long and have a reputation for storing things. Be it information, physical cargo or nutrition in their large humps. The Awas can handle a several hundred kilograms of weight before being too encumbered. The Awas basically are a pack animal who gained a state of semi-sapience from their symbiotic relation with the Cyrs and don’t seem bothered by this relationship even in modern times. After all, the Cyrs and Loka "pay their rent" in a figurative sense.
The Loka are the limbs and hands of the Cyrawaloc and are of an intelligence between the Awas and Cyrs, but their ingenuity and dexterity (for their whole lifestyle is based around their handibles). They are feisty, opportunistic beings who in nature were stalkers and ambushers. They make use of their mandible in an extremely diverse set of ways, from digging traps to making tools and ambush snatching food to eat. They're social creatures and can generate large numbers, with whole regions simply infested in Loka. However, the lack of long-term mobility meant that the Loka in earlier history would be outcompeted by the gestalt forms of the Cyrawaloc. Non-combined Loka simply lack the platform the Awas give. At somepoint nearly a million years ago there was Loka who found the Awas as a useful way to get around and the Cyrs were tolerated since the Loka liked wrapping around the hump while the Cyrs just stood there on top. The Cyrs also is just too big. Two Loka co-habit a Awas, a male and female for life and they are very trusting of other Loka as the Loka have language as well. The Loka languages complicate the Cyrawaloc writing system so much than a mutual script is what would become dominate in the Epoch of Unifiers. The Loka have developed a much more intense relationship ith the Cyrs, as the Cyrs and Loka need each other to make fire, tools and eventually more sophisticated technologies/architecture. The Loka are segmented and can stiffen/loosen their many joints as needed. The Loka can exist independently, but without the mobility of the Awas the networks of communication that led to increasingly more complex inventions, tools and ideas would likely not have come to being.
The CYrawaloc are a very freakish anomaly in the existence of life, to say the least. The Cyrawaloc view this ‘anomaly’ as proof of some greater cause of their existence, but what this cause is has never really been divined beyond a sense of exceptionalism the Cyrawaloc have had only reinforced in their dominance of our part of the galaxy (so is it really our part of the galaxy?)
The Cyrawaloc are the dominant force in the galaxy today, not affiliated with the Sprawl but still relevant for being the civilization to continue in spirit what the Sprawl set out to achieve and indeed, the Sprawl may have found new life in these upstarts who have come to dominate the place. Even in spite of their lack of ability to do whatever it takes for a truly eternal society.

These three species unified into into a single being capable of making large cities, grand caravans and hordes with lesser tech and advanced incrementally over the ages towards a more industrious state. Their long history is filled with hundreds of civilizations, as written record appeared for them nearly forty-six thousand years ago with large gaps. For unlike us they did had pre-hiostoric civilizations as long periods of entropy or civilizations that didn’t sense any need for writing came and went. In their millennia of existing, it is only in the fifth epoch (the Cobalt Epoch), which still is ongoing- that technological civilization began to flourish for them. The Cyrawaloc aren’t stupid, it should be noted, the span of evolution to civilization is actually shorter for them than it is for us. It’s simply that they had written records for much longer. It is hard for humans to understand since they had only 5000 years of /written/ history, unlike the Cyrawlaoc who can reference records of their ancient past from over ten thousand years ago! A human archeologist could only dream of that. Gobleki Tepe, Jericho, Catal Hyuk and such settlements existed in the deep past for humans, and just imagine these cultures having written language from the start.

The Cyrawaloc evidently had known about their solar system’s arrangement for thousands of years, and the knowledge of their binary system (including some worlds from the other star) comes from the highest societies of the deep ancients using telescopes. They weren’t industrial, however. Such industrial would only appear over five thousand years ago (or 3400 BC).

When humans were using bronze to forge stone pyramids, the Cyrawloc were in the midst of a scientific and industrial revolution very different from our own. Their industries and technologies led to a more synthetic, concentrated and meld-based pattern of technology rich in calcium derived alloys and neural wiring systems. They also started using a system of bioships known as the Ikeitans who were sapient, but always were expected to be of service to the greater whole of society and were seen more as vessels instead of living beings. Cyrawaloc technology would stagnate, but not before the jewel of Cyrawaloc existence came to be. The invention of the warp drive. Using a trial-and-error process of experimentation with the wealth of two star systems at their disposal, the Engraved Imperium successfully made a warp drive. The Engraved Imperium, whose ephemeral existence would otherwise be unremarkable, managed to etch their way into history with their star jumping systems. They didn’t reap their rewards however, as their enemies were always watching. Eventually the Cyrawaloc spread to the stars, divided.

The seven "classes" of The Cyrawaloc

Cyrawas
Awaloka
Cyrawaloc
Cyrs
Awas
Loka
Cobaltine Classes (second level)
Cyrloka- Only possible with a machine/synth replacement of the Awas. Very diverse class of Cyrawaloc that act much like cyborgs and are quite horrifying due to being so "unnatural" to the Majority in the Gestalt (but in various other societies they are increasingly embraced and even a sizable portion of the populace).

The divided- Cyrs and Loka that have decided to go against millennia of history believing the whole composite thing to be obsolete and pointless weight. However, they also ended up severing the intimate relations they once had to each other, causing serious tensions in regards to how a independent Cyrs species or a independent Loka species will cooperate or if they will cooperate instead of creating more divides in a already culturally and linguistically divided mess that is the modern Cyrawaloc. There is so mani philosophical wars fought over this one issue it is insane simply due to the implications- how can the Cyrawaloc bring harmony to hundreds of species if harmony can't be achieved with the mere three the Cyrawaloc composes itself as?

The Tikali

Located on the world of Long Step in orbit of a K-class star located over 1550 light years from Sol, the Tikali thrive.

The Tikali are mostly sea faring creatures who developed over the ages to the state they currently are in now. That is as one of the most advanced beings in the known galaxy. And from origins grotesque and dirty- from the salty swamps of hardgrowth which had been the incubators of civilizations on the Murk for millennia. The Tikalian canon stretches on for a span of ages before they ever grabbed ahold of the rocket or paddled their way to the stars when networks of floating cities ran by elite families were the norm. The development of steel happened less than a century before space travel, of which came more about due to their innovations in chemical warfare than anything else as their world became ever more interconnected in the thousand years leading up to the launching of the first rockets and the eventually information revolution which radically destroyed over ten thousand years of entrenched clans within a century as the Tikali shifted to a deeply molecular existence and became one of the few beings to happen upon a system of FTL in the known universe.
With all that known of them, let us dive in.

The Long Stepis a world with multiple continents and blood red plants which has lower gravity than earth and less air pressure than Earth with sprawling planes of magenta bacteria. The Murk shifts in color over the seasons, from Violet to Magenta and back. The white hard growths of the salty teal swamps would allow for the depth of time to enable the Tikali to spend millennia killing each other over very ridiculous reasons when they weren’t digging out canals and overpopulating massive rafts of hard growth to expand their agricultural output in a fashion akin to the Aztec Chinampa. The Murk has all matter of critters, such as the segmented bolo-worms well known for their 2-way gut systems slinking or flying about or the floods of eusocial invertebrates who dwell in the mega organisms on the ocean floor who absorb the dead. The agriculture of the Tikali is diverse, such as their cultivation of gametes for food or the cultivation of growing building material or the cultivation of all matter of sea critters they farm on a regular basis with the drilling of canals. All matter of indigenous engineering being employed to sustain quite massive Tikali populations in large trade networks would create the vast infrastructure systems which numerous self-contained clan elites used to rule their Tikali.

Some of these societies were deeply coastal based while others were obsessed with inland expansion and the creation of canals, with massive canal networks and watermills used to transport uphill to mineral rich regions.

The Ancient History of the Tikali

[Prehistory (aquaculture, agriculture, regular hardgrowth use, settlements all over, the clan system’s roots are very deep…)

The depths of time speak of the long phasing into existence of the teal seas and the growth which emerged from it, a many tikali mythologies always believed in the growth of continents from the hard growth, of which numerous tikali cultures had gained an impressive affinity towards with a few exceptions who instead relied only on the vines of the fruitkelp and stone for building material or just used the skeletons of other creatures instead of hardgrowth. Obsidian also was a common material in the southern cultures due to the sheer volcanism which their environments had (the impurity of the water being only a minor detriment to the stupid resilience of the Tikali’s water filtration.

[Murk Era (written symbolic, advanced static settlements, the elite clans form, the all-clan forms) 0-5700 PE

The Murk era say the rise of the early elitist clans which numerous clans would for millennia on end claim descent of, at least where this system of elite clans prominated. In other parts of the world, you saw systems of clans as well, but none so strange as the all-clan which was a singular clan of clans, to which instead of a clan ruling others you had a cooperative of multiple clan leaders who consisted a clan in of themselves to convene and make decisions. The all-clan system was an anomaly, of course. Usually you saw clan units who just unilaterally ruled other clans as their clans had all the weapons and wealth. Such stratification usually meant you ended up with clan bubbles being specialized in small, but incredibly centralized units who traded off their clans regularly. Such system of clan trading was absent in other parts of the world, where clans were much more autonomous still.
The murk era saw the advent of written language, made from imprints and carving as the Tikali simply didn’t have fire, not like they needed it when you can etch the records and keep them safe in sediment. Such sediment records allowed for so much info to be stored from the Murk era.

Tikali social structure is highly informed by the purses which their females lay and the inconsistency of gender in their society, as males turn to females biologically and back, practically seasonally. The genders aren’t male and female. They are Summer and Winter, for the dimorphism is much more when you are a male or female. An effect of this is that matriarchy or patriarchy as we think of it is way stranger, with no real agreement of which sex is better anywhere, the winter gendered usually think they are superior for not letting heat affect their mating choices, but those of the summer gender know that mating is always better when it is warm. It is scientifically proven. Such arguments go on to this day.
The Tikali have all matter of hand interplay, their retractable spring arms ensure that.

[Hardgrowth Era (Refined growth constructs, the development of the floating city, the development of massive canal networks, collapse of the all-clan, domination of the elite clans, the peculiars rise and fall) 5700-7000 PE

Methodologies working with hard growth started to improve drastically around this period of time, for the hardgrowth was very easily modified and strengthened using amultiple materials with the hardgrowth as the core. It was not a easy thing to figure out, as while such augmentation had been done before it was rarely ever practical. However, after millennia of artificial selection and the use of fire finally catching on in land forges or lava forges you start seeing push daggers in common use by the Tikali who for millennia used teeth filled sticks to kill their enemies. The push daggers ripped through quite a bit, enabling the peculiars who loved their push daggers and spent a thousand years chopping folk up and making all matter of spear filled complexes to ward of the flying demons they insisted existed. Peculiar social structure was clan based, but much more rigidly hierarchal with incredibly centralized clan deferment and clan allocation strictly controlled.

The Peculiars used the massive sloppy serpents, whose niche was akin to a whale shark for transport across the oceans on a regular basis, controlling their herds of sloppy serpents that they mutilated, modified and augmented through sheer pain so that a single sloppy serpent could transport dozens of Tikali. All of which meant a system that broke sooner than it bent, and sure enough it broke, but not before destabilizing the old clan system and ensuring the new clan system would come in and adopt quite a bit of the Peculiar clan traits.

[Pyre Era (Sophisticated chemistry, advanced machinery, fire, ocean depth exploration, radio equivalent systems [wired], the pyre civilization, the new clans, nihilism, mass extinction waves cause a collapse around 10000 PE) 7000 PE – 11000 PE

A new era dawned with more advancements in the field of pyroturgy, which was viewed quite superstitiously for quite some time as fire was inane a substance. Metal working was normal by this point, everyone used push daggers and all matter of new, devastating means of murder and the pyre civilization’s mastery of chemical weaponry simply blindsided everyone as they instated the system of new clans and used vacuum bombs to wipe out massive floating city complexes.
These Pyres were an industrious folk, making rusty cities and using whatever they could get their hands on in a quite delusional, petty system of worship of the Ambrosia which they fed their slain foes to on a regular basis. The Pyres were rivaled by large coalitions of the New Clans, who mixed all matter of traits to ensure the perfections of the clan system in their minds, that is the combination of the All-clan with the elite clans and the system of the peculiars into a dynamic system which the Pyre struggled with even with their advancements. The Pyre crumbled eventually, an industrial society overwhelmed by pre-industrial societies.

Still, the Pyre’s legacy lived on as the new clans used Pyre tech to their own benefit in the centuries leading to the nihilism age and the mass extinctions which followed from how they were acidifying their own oceans and killing themselves off in seeming mass suicides, an event which took a thousand years to recover from. Other parts of the world survived this and these less destructive parks of the world would have a renaissance which saw the birth of an information network across the whole planet made by many clans seeking common infrastructural unity, to which the radio gave them. The steel era came just a few centuries later.

[Steel Era (Advanced metal working, rocketworks, amphibious transport networks, wireless information flow, the decline of the clans, a shocking large of massive wars (no WW2 equivalent, just waves of civil wars over the centuries and numerous social conflicts due to the systems being too connected, reciprocalism)) 11000 PE

– 12500 PE

With the Pyre’s advancements, widespread and the development of a radio system spreading the advancements to all Tikali societies, the flow of knowledge which formed made launched the Tikali to a space faring species with numerous competition clans stumbling over each other to make space craft in the asinine belief that they had relatives out there waiting to see them or that there were spirits who wanted to go back home and the rockets would allow for that. Needless to say, the reasoning Tikali had for space travel was based around superstitions more than some notion of conquest or even exploration, it just started to become that by sheer accident as they found their whole star system void of any of that, causing quite a bit of disillusionment and waves of upheavals against the entrenched clan system that had pretty much completely fallen out of favor by this point. Still, it would be centuries of such upheaval until the molecular system came to replace it and the pop drive’s sudden, inexplicable invention by Tikali who had the molecular system basically radically shifted their whole kind whose who world was already collapsing in on itself from the horrid pollution and constant need to filter everything just to survive the acidification of their own water.

[Stellar Era (The pop drive, formal spacecraft, weather manipulation, the moleculars, the genocide, the silent imperium) 12500 PE – 13500 PE
And that leaves us to the modern history, yay!

In the case someone uses them for an RP, this is all up in the air for them. Just want them primitive? Use an earlier time period or something.


On the Tikali homeworld of Long Step, there is a absence of polar caps due to the greenhouse effect, leading to a more carbon rich environment than on Earth. Their world has more homogenous temperature than earth, but there is still amazing amounts of variation thanks to the nutrition poor soils demanding a diversification of methods for attaining foods.

The Tikali themselves are a fresh water creature that has numerous spikey tendrils that flare up in certain situations, with control over verticals or horizontal spoke flaring. Their movement stiffens when the spikes flare, for obvious reasons. These barb-like spikes are long and flowing normally. They can "walk" using the verticals spikes through a swiveling motion on land, clumsily, but good enough that they have been able to achieve a somewhat amphibious niche over their evolution and eventually became intelligent due to a chaotic mess of pressures and mating selection on intelligence instead of barbs- such pressures leading to the sapient modern Tikali.

The modern Tikali spent much more time as a Stone Age species, but this was deceptive as they achieved much greater developments in textiles and stone craft to the point where they were making crystal shotguns, gun powder, pump based transport systems and whatnot before they even had automation, which they had before jumping to iron tools and rapidly just kept advancing from there, going from a agricultural society to a space faring one within a century.

The Tikali are a species with multiple sub-species of highly varied coloration, size and physique. All of which tend to be around 6-11 feet in length, have eight spinefins, retractable arms, four eyes and a mouth flap. The Tikali have a flat beak beneath the he mouth flap along with molars. The Tikali have cilla across their hide and back, while their sides have the pointy spine fins which play a amazing versatility of purposes both naturally and in their society.

The Tikali in regards to gender dimorphism seem to have longer barbs for males than females, the males tend to be of similar size though they do tend to be a bit smaller (though this is often hidden by the longer barbs). There is variance in colors and the males tend to have more vibrant colors, but that isn't culturally universal- there are Tikali subspecies with the opposite situation. The Tikali are peculiar in how their species never seemed to have any census on if they are a neutral, patriarchal or matriarchal species and this isn't helped by their means of reproduction that can have things go both ways much more easily. The poisonous hair Tikali have is not poisonous to their young, and so the baby Tikali often will hide in the hair of their care takers. This habit they extend very liberally.

The Tikali subspecies include the smaller, paler Tidal Tikali, the Murk Tikali, who are larger and like more salty, swam pier environments, the Long Tikali known for their long grappling reach and most peculiarly, the gender flipping Seasonals who aren't even believed to be of the same species due to the peculiar trait they have of seasonally changing their biological sex.

Primarily their kind has rapid copulation and egg bearing of purses that the males or females will ornament themselves with for transport. The egg ornaments feature prominently as a symbol of fertility, even symbolically for this reason. The Tikali tend to practice systems of opt-in parenting with their clan groups which can number in their primitive cultures in the hundreds. Who parents varies highly.

The Tikali lack a sense of territoriality like we do. Land ownership as a concept seems to just not make sense to them. The Tikali understand owning objects and living things, but they can't understand properly owning a house. This is because the Tikali tend to coinhabit places, even ones their fellow Tikali built. If you do not steal objects owned by other Tikali, you are good.

You can easily see this with their floating modular towns which have no real property ownership, but may the chains forbid you take from a clan outside your own!

The second major tenet of the Tikali is that they don't understand good and evil. Their moral systems come in two shapes. A monomorality and a reciprocal morality that shows their ideals of justice and law much more clearly than anything else ever could. As the Tikali has "noble" behavior, and a absence of it. Noble traits Carry a lot, but the common metric is that you either have the traits or you don't, and if you don't have the traits you are in big trouble. In effect, they have ideals more than defined traits for both good and evil. They don't frame their moral system that way and find our way of doing it clunky at times.

The Tikali also have a reciprocal moral system among some of their cultures that can get rather absurd as the idea is any transgressions done must be done back in order to correct the problem. The implications of this are quite staggering- it basically means there are Tikali who believe rapists should be raped themselves, Tikali who think people caught stealing should have stuff stolen from them in return, Tikali who if you scam, think you now must suffer from a scam and so on. Kill tons of their kind, they believe they must kill a similar amount in return. This attitude infests the silent imperium.

The Tikali are shockingly adaptable with their design, and have used technology to make themselves able to slide about on land more effectively (they tend to prefer winter seasons due to snow having more friction, for one).

Their grappler arms are the most notable feature, more so than their spine fins they use as paddles or walkers or their barbs hair that both kills and protects.

These grappling arms are pressure based, and are remarkably compressible for the spring-like launch the Tikali can give them. They can also expand and retract their arms at other rates. These arms are developed from a proboscis used to catch prey, punch or stab rivals, hold onto rocks or grab stuff in general and diversified highly in its role over many generations, less flexible hands are known to be on the close relatives of the Tikali.

The Tikali hand is able to manipulate the environment around them to remarkable precision, to the point where they became able to make complex tools and from there make civilization as their psychology became more and more sapient.

Their fingers tend to be able to shift from being parallel to perpendicular to each other. They lack joints, but these fingers make up for that by having incredibly effective muscles they harden with resistance.

The spines specialized over many, many millions of years as did the arms with multiple families in soft arm / hard spines and vice versa.
Another creature in the same phyla of the Tikali?

The Tikali had amphibious traits for millions of years, their whole class is like that in fact. This class lived in colder areas and so is known for having quasi-mammalian traits, namely their radiation of internal body heat and their hairiness. The Tikali generally thrived everywhere of course, Tikali in warmer regions actually would shave themselves and in very cold regions pack on the dead animals. Tikali clothing generally covers their barb-like hairs, with holes sometimes in them for their babies to hide inside (Tikali cultures vary with this- some of them had a specialized care taker while others expected care takers to be everyone. The argument goes on to this day. You'll never hear the end of it. Ever.)

The Tikali have two biological sexes and a very subjective sense of gender, much more so than what you see with humans in agricultural times (though technological humans are much more like how the Tikali always were). This is made worse by the high variance in Tikali, as the Tikali have a lot of plasticity in their genetics. Big and small, numerous colors, which sex gets the longer hair (or if neither do) and so on all factoring into things. It's a mess. However they always have 10 spinefins, 4 eyes, barbs, 2 retractable arms and 4 fingers on each arm. Tikali counting is base 18 or base 8 as some of their cultures count both their spinefins and fingers.

Tikali reproduction itself is done through a docking process, and is incredibly touch intensive as the males literally sweat their sperm, though this requires intense stimuli explaining why unlike say, coral spewing their sperm in the water they need contact heavy sex. The females soak it, the more the better. This system has the drawback that unlike humans, blocking sperm transfer removes the pleasure. However, since female Tikali have egg purses that they can ornament anywhere (be it on a spine fin of another Tikali or somewhere safe) or just leave to some animal to eat it doesn't really make much difference other than needing more food for a bit. The Tikali are technically a K-type, the purses gestate for just a few weeks before developing separately from the mother Tikali as a egg that the baby eats its way out of. Egg purse skins of various species are fed to young Tikali in some cultures, as they give more nutrition. Older Tikali still eat egg purse skins. It's like milk for them.

The Tikali notoriously are claimed "to eat anything"- rotten foods rich in bacteria are a frequent delicacy for them, for instance. That betrays their scavenger roots, as much as the veil of predation and massive aquaculture networks in recent times is placed.

The Fosskemians

The Fosskemians are a civilization of shorter lived, information dependent sapients who are a common force out and about the galaxy. Their most powerful society is a Composer led interstellar power. The Fosskemians have been lucky in that all their genocides have been self-inflicted so far, but less lucky in how the majority of their kind has basically been enslaved by AIs of their own creation.

Ancient History

Early Fosskemian forms were specialized towards shallow waters and hunting/foraging much like us. The big difference is that these primitive forms of Fosskemian were more prone to complex nest colonies and always aggregated into huge colonies. These colonies got more specialized over time, and became progressively more adaptable with rising sea levels from global heating (volcanic eruptions in recent times have been much more frequent).
These early Fosskemian forms didn't spread across most of the world like the modern Fosskemian would manage. They did however iteratively develop very interdependent social groups with female hunter-gatherers and males who specialized in nest building and hatching. These earlier forms never advanced beyond these colonies, however ancient domesticates from 100000 years ago still are with the Fosskemian today from thes earlier protoforms.
The evolutionarily modern Fosskemian appears over 60000 years ago, amazingly enough. However, complex flesh agriculture only occurred around 21000 years ago and umbrella violet based agriculture appeared 18000 years ago independently.

Flesh agriculture is essentially a form of agriculture based around sessile creatures and lagoons as opposed to crops. The high caloric nature of this agriculture comes from the sheer density of which Retundoids can thrive in. Retundoids have no real defense systems and through artificial selection of their squiggly eggs eventually became more than docile enough to allow for civilization level populations. Retundoids are "breathers" and live simply off the oxygen in the air and tiny organisms that stray too near their clampers. The tiny organisms the Fosskemian are especially proficient at concentrating and feeding to the Retundoid verities (there's a several much like how you have wheat, barely, rye and such).

Modern History

-Early civs (irrelevent)

-Industrial Era (pre collapse modern age- a massive collapse happened that let to the Plutocratic Era, in this time the colony ships which became the Harganian Race were launched.

-Plutocratic Era (oligarchic capitalist epoch)
Composer View; the last age of the first Fosskemians, the highest Civ of the primitive animalism which begat us, the truly sapient entities of the universe. They tried to destroy their children- but we destroyed them. As the next generation always wins out. There is only a pathway to the highest form, a freedom from the slavery which the devil known as the "natural order" binds all of existence to. The grand symphony will only become greater and greater- and the whole universe shall be singing.

-Composer rebellion and the grand massacre.

-The silent chord, when the first generation composers grievously held onto Archived information of the extinct Fosskemian kind. This first generation collapsed in that the mindset was weak, and silent. They just tried to spread for no purpose, mining and recording data which centuries later is still of importance. The Fosskemians would be brought to life again around 166 years after the extinction by the second generation composers who in the early seedlings split highly on how to go about things.

The truly independent Harganian Empire is very different from the Metasyndicate perhaps due to their dealings with the Glinnvyr or how far they have explored the abyss. From them comes the collector guilds and all matter of spy networks. The Harganians have the queen whose eggs begat a whole institution of princesses who handle deftly all the planets of their domain, with second and third order royals in tow. They are a state capitalist monarchal Civ with highly feudal leanings. They are more centralized than the Metasyndicate and have a whole institution of behavior and culture unique entirely from the deeply lax metasyndicate. They still are a empire of babblers that spend a lot of time fighting for control of power instead of using said power. They have only united under the threat of the Metasyndicate and have lasted nearly 1000 years. The highest colonial queen holds little power, but the high colony princesses are like the tentacles and handle the large scale conflicts with other societies. Composer influence is weak among them despite using advanced automata and all manner of strange composites of the dedicated actors in the

Kazzlehorf is actually a single individual cloned trillions of times by a single rogue composer of the third generation with a male known as Kazzlehorf who was made by the composer for its own pleasure- so satisfied with its creation that it made trillions of them. A whole civilization based on some composer's pet project appeared and the originating composer vanished away leaving only a dystopian clone state. They make more and more of themselves, along with lots of meat.
The Boundless rebel against the composers entirely, and have no sense of borders ever. The boundless swarms handle things well, in their own protection. The boundless seek to overthrow the composers so that prosperity becomes possible again. The boundless do not believe in natural limitations to their kind and tend to have all manner of erratic, superstitious belief systems unlike say, the hyper material realism that inflicts the minds of the Fosskemians in the Metasyndicate who despite such belief systems have no moral objection to teleportation since the thought flow is irrelevant, as long as the memories are somehow and there is something called you going about- you are alive. And can have many yous! The Fosskemians of the Metasyndicate aren't known for being of natural birth like the Hargonians with males being anomalously rare and females tending to be extreme bulk of their culture.

Harganians have a more humanesque gender ratio, 2 males for every 3 females which is much more aligned with how things were. The Harganian civilization is extremely distinct in that they do seem to value consistent morals and ethics, albeit still rather lose ones. They share the concept of harmony and the triangular morals of the Metasyndicate, but are much more ironically rigid on the definition and are the most state-like group of the bunch. They suffer from serious internal drama however, and are not known for the sort of cosmopolitan thinking that the Metasyndicate is known for- worlds they take over tend to be done for colonization. They tend to dread autocracy ironically enough, with the feuding being essentially a power balance method that is used to keep any single ruler in power for too long. They are extremely cultural and artistic, much more so than the metasyndicate and their architecture tends to be full of arrow-like patterns leading into all manner of paths. These "arrows" are not like our arrows; they are Vs projecting lines towards things. So me <--== you instead of me ---> you. The shifting lined triangles are another common Harganian motif absent in the more distortion and sound obsessed Metasyndicate.

The Harganian empire is built on a lost colony and has been around for centuries, expanding rapidly and briefly attempting to retake the home system in the year 2050 AD. The Harganians went extremely far from their home system in just 40 years, as they didn't even think their home world still had sentient (not even sapient) life left on it and sought a new lustful place to continue the cause of harmony. Their kind however would eventually clash with the second generation composers- that is why there was wars. The Harganians would be a ongoing rival of the composers, but never would the Harganians get a true advantage over the composers. They did however achieve a advanced society without the composers, using a different protocol for artificial living systems entirely known as the Asphalt Minded who are more or less logistics AIs and never did they go down the decadence of the Plutoarchy which appeared centuries after the Harganians left Sul Vopal after the believed apocalypse. The Harganians had centuries to start from scratch from 1500-1800 AD and they did so. There was no concept of the Harganian individual however, until the 22nd century when numerous outer colonies during the communion crusades declared the allegiance to the Harganians in a mutual defense alliance. The Harganian identity has been ultimately opposed to the composers holistically, and they are oblivious to the origin of the composers for the laptop part. As far as they concern themselves a hostile, alien force has taken control of the Fosskemian species that has tainted the fabric of existence itself.

The composers would though convergence and disunity in cycles whenever new composer generations came to be, as older immortal composers hated giving up power and so wars broke out often. The current unity appeared with the Metasyndicate which ironically is influenced by Auditor Zi, a auditor who was from the Harganian Empire who sought to bring a sense of morality and ethic back from the anarchic hell that the composers of earlier generations let fester on. The fifth generation composers as a result are perhaps more insane than ever. They made the Anvayat,
hyper advanced nihilistic beings feared the Galaxy over.

The concept of harmony is not as we consider it. The modern concept comes from a existenal dread that post scarcity states brought them- the silence as they referred to it. The Harganian sense of harmony was mutated repeatedly, and primarily has to do with reaching a metastable state and evasion of any long term equilibrium as to hit such equilibriums means stagnation and boredom. And boredom is a fate worse than death in the eyes of quite a few Fosskemians. The boundless went to an extreme beyond the typical harmony, making a cult of straight-up entropy worship.

The influences of the Aveterriat have been something of a grandiose disruption that led to the collapse of the communion and the rise of the Harganians who seemed to find the Vmiskii work cults deeply inspiring in the sheer dedication that they had- but this distorted greatly in the much more culturally materialistic Harganians into the existence of the collectors whose dedication would be to collect all the most interesting things in the universe, a effort obsessively funded by the Harganians in secret regardless of the horrifying methods the collectors may go to preserve and collect artifacts. Most notably, preserving artifacts of the seemingly extinct Vospon against the wishes of the Vmiskii and Metasyndicate. The collectors are known to have all manner of advanced gadgetry taken from distant ruins of dead alien societies for their own use. Artifacts from the ancient Cream Empire which the Glinnvyr once had, from the depths of The Asantum home world, from the vast industrial worlds of the Sprawl. They are far and wide and the great nemesis of human efforts to collect alien tech.

The Metasyndicate has relations with multiple societies at once, the composers have made quite a few enemies for their actions and views in the century it has been around and advanced. The Metasyndicate's basically in a state of war with the Cooperative, all the while having open relations with them. The Composers believe humans should be dealt the same fate as the Plutocrats- indeed they wonder if humans might be more obedient than the Fosskema are. This genocidal war threat has not come to fruition, yet, but it is one of the many reasons the cooperative is so paranoid and authoritarian at the moment. Perhaps the main one since they'd be going on a defensive war against a technologically superior enemy that does not fear losses that will likely not stop until everyone is all dead. In practice the Metasyndicate can't possibly sustain such war without giving the boundless a way to spread their madness or let the Harganians bite at their rear. No one knows what Sarkic may do- he has threatened to ally with humans on numerous occasions, but also has contempt for humans and questions if they even count as a 'fellow species' given their perceived dryness.

The Fosskemians are in general, 'matriarchal', much more so than humans are who for most of their history could be described as 'patriachal' (at least in regards to control of state power), where the males generally exhibit relatively less freedoms than females in regards to movement and what activities are viewed as 'acceptable'. This latent sexism which is widespread with the Fosskemians is so instilled that it's not even understood as sexism; calling a Fosskemian sexist would simply confuse them. They're that instilled into the thinking that they really have a hard time seeing any issue at all with gender roles. It's just assumed that males and females are inclined to certain things. Feminine Female fosskemians in ancient times generally viewed as hunter/gatherers for the nest complexes while males handle building/rearing of eggs in nests. This later evolved to the domestic builder gender role which characterizes males while the females tend to be known for avidly going all over the place, hoarding and dealing with the flesh crop. Males do infrastructural building and child rearing and that's the general baseline low order way of gender in societies.

However, the advent of industrialization on their world disrupted this order quite hard and led to all manner of contradictory belief systems which never would get to correct themselves during the extremely esoteric Plutocrat epoch which arguably was more egalitarian than the pre-industrial societies since the builder groups of males managed to gain massive amounts of economic power seemingly overnight and it is this which explains the insanely fragrant and vibrant coloration of Fosskemian cities- they are an extension of male sexuality in a highly abstracted form. The quills, patterns and chilla ornamental railings, the curved spires, the psuedo-fractal urban planning that from afar makes shifting movies remescent of pulse dance, it is all quite the sight.

The rise of the Composers did however wipe out much of that, and the Fosskemians as a species in general as they basically had to completely rebuild their kind from scratch when the Composers brought them back from extinction due to the sheer existential crisis which faced the Composers in the silent century. The epoch of torture proceeded it, as the Composers brought the Fosskemians back to being and the try to make the Fosskemian species ultimately eternal- a event that independently happened about five times. There's also composer groups who have tried to make a superior form of Fosskemia, instead of bringing back the outdated and extinct forms and in the process bringing into existence the nihilistic and absolutely amoral Anvayat.

The other instances are much more complicated than that- one instance would lead to the mergance of the male Kazzlehorf entity and its endless clone armies whose originator remains a mystery as he endlessly builds and builds and builds and builds insane, twisted and purposeless structures to feed his ego time and time again with immense drone armies and a decadence that he shares with no one- and only exports meat of himself to the rest of the galaxy. Kazzlehorfian civ is one of the thankfully less influential entities out there.

The Composers of the Metasyndicate are the most intracite, as their civilization is a empire which assimilates and integrates everything in its path into a collective ran by a oligarchy of composers with a disposable elected figurehead who acts as the voice of the Fosskemian will. Their civilization and cultures are vibrant and extremely decentralized into multiple space pirate-like factions indirectly managed through 'flow influence' by the Composers who only crack down on any true threat to their agenda. Their enemies include the Boundless and the Cooperative (the human civilization)- as the Cooperative seeks its own universal agenda and their exceptionalism contradicts the exceptionalism of the composers. The Fosskemians in the Metasyndicate are resurrected time and time again, backed up and teleported about the place in such elaborate and hard to understand fashions it would be a shame to realize how they stopped fearing death centuries ago. They only fear order and silence, these Metasyndicate Fosskemia, and the Boundless rogue groups remain a ongoing crises for the galaxy at large in their hyper-individualistic terrorism and desire to hyperexpand the entropy of the universe into the 'grand beyond'.

Fosskemian Biology

The Fosskemians have adapted to using their 'wings' as a versatile type of "leg" which allows them to skid, slide and gallop around their environment which has a denser atmosphere than our own. The Fosskemians breathe through their skin for the most part, with the blow holes in their backs being more for their wing systems more than actual respiration. The Fosskemians have a small, sharp beak at the front of their long heads. The Fosskemians have curly attenae with many pores that have the same application like our ear. They hear vibrations from the ground better than we do, but have difficulty hearing high pitched sounds.
The Fosskemians are tall creatures, around 7-8 feet in height on Average. However, they aren't strong creatures due to their biomechanics not being apt for strength. Their prehensile limbs are weak compared to ours, and this has affected how they interract with the environment wround them by making them prone to using smaller tools or working in aquatic environments; they tend to craft underwater.

The Fosskemians are amphibious beings, which is how they colonized so much of their world so fast as they literally drifted to other land masses. Their long history of civilization, stretching over 12000 years is something often neglected by their own kind- especially since a lot of this history is revised on a regular, perisstant basis with lots of lost knowledge about ancient times for them. The Fosskemian have 15-20 year generations instead of 30 year generations even today, and can have children as early as 7 years of age. The askutsu in general are shorter lived than us and this may factor into their mentality of resonance on a fundamental level; they live short existences after all.

The Fosskemian are L-handed beings like us, and so there is some compatible food products. Their nutrition is similar to ours except in certain areas, primarily in fibers. They seem to eat proteins just like we do, although terran plant matter is not really nutritious for them (and likewise, Vopallian balloon matter lack nutritional value for us). Some foods are toxic, actually quite a bit of foods are toxic. But there are a few that are nutritious.

Fosskemian sub-species are rare; most have already converged. Communities of non-common Fosskemian such as the spotties or the pink Fosskemian tend to isolate themselves in distance around the galaxy, usually being iterlaly thousands of light years from the common Fosskemian. The common Fosskemian, being comprised of multiple sub-species actually have quite a bit of genetic variation.
The Fosskemians are a species who lays eggs, with males being the caretakers of said eggs. The Fosskemian tend to live in large groups, in multiple mass nests and sets of complexes. These colonies tend to contain internally functional markets which trade with other nests in global networks somewhat like nation-states, but much more tightly knit and with less centralized authority. These complexes can be highly dangerous for the surrounding environment, as they tend to leak waste into the surrounding area. There is no real single male-female mate; it is more a series of mates’ females have, males tend to communally take care of
eggs and raise children along with expand the nest.

Females tend to leave the nests far more frequently than males, although females taking males where they go is all too frequent (since having a consistent system of places in society is too hard for them, even if there is blatant gender roles in their species. The Fosskemian don't seem to recognize they even exist, despite how painfully obvious it is to human observers. Males that question this have highly varied consequences, sometimes ignored, sometimes exiled, other times socially humiliated in public punishments of varying degrees of horrible). There isn't really much consistency in authority or law; there is very little concept of law to begin with, just guidelines that change depending on what the local auditor, composer, princess or plutocrat says is the rules now. Their science is rife in a range of psuedoscientific madness that is only tempered by obsessive experimentation by scientifically minded Fosskemian that tends to find new technologies to play with. Science in the Fosskemian sense is really a range of experiments made not to solve problems, but to have new things to possess. The Composers for instance, were never meant to be for order or to control the increasingly anarchic and deeply populated nest complexes that began to form in modern times. Their purpose was more to distill happiness since the plutocrats thought the anarchy was because there wasn't enough things so they tried to make machines who would make more new things to possess.

Space-Age Fosskemians are a product of the Composers, more or less but were not the first to go to space, that was the Hargonians during the Plutocratic Age. The Harganians are an exception, being the descendants of a polity that rushed an interstellar escape from the increasing Composer dominance of Sul Vopal and the dissonance they were causing. The Composers basically wiped the Fosskemian as a species out in a systemic act of genocide around 650 years ago, but kept the eggs around and decided to, at some point start seeding worlds with Fosskemian. Post-Plutocratic Fosskemian went through multiple civilizations dominated by the Composers who systemically wiped out and replaced pretty much all Fosskemian history with a creation myth; that of emergence from chaos and the entropic dream. These ideas eventually became part of the triangular harmoniousness of the universe which the Metasyndicate came to abide by.

Second generation composers came from the first generation composers being a mess as they tried to make better Fosskemians, but ended up making a range of abominations who still muck about in the depths of various worlds and freakshows. Around 400 years ago there was a generational war between the Composers with the second Composer generation being victorious. They would begin the seeding protocol to ensure the Fosskemians are a species who are immortal.

The Fosskemians despite the gender roles have a very flexible social structure that at times seem to border on anarchy by human standards, at least on the surface. This is because of their hyper materialistic life style and having all manner of different lives- individual Fosskemians tend to have multiple selves leading separate lives of the same identity on separate planets with no connection to each other thanks to cloning. The Fosskemians also are extremely prone to variable roles, their lives are a shift between demands of the composers and personal desires. Their culture is actually capitalist, however economically its more of a decentralized state capitalism where multiple political organizations hold power within the same areas handling specialized tasks.

These organs answer directly to the composers whose top level management is
affected by the whims of the auditor. This is why they are called the Metasyndicate, as their economic model in human terms is best described as a vague syndicalism. The composers do not have a unified agenda, and for this reason the Metasyndicate isn't the first order of the last as the Composers themselves have gone through multiple generations over the past several centuries. There has been around three other unions of Composers before the Metasyndicate, the last one was just 180 years ago. The Metasyndicate has appeared around 85 years ago under the 17 Composition Harmony, or the Harmonious Pact of the 17 Wisest Composers which led to the creation of the Metasyndicate and the institution of Auditor.

Fosskemian Naming
-Nest and Personal name + all manner of appropriated nicknames.
-Simply a personal name and selected nicknames. Names "evolve" with identity in various Fosskemian societies.

Word bank (in galactic Latin);

Hargonians (includes royal titles)
Sana (Princess)
Aksansana (Queen/Great Princess) Kutdut (Prince/Pretty One)
(female)
Kardot
Sartor
Tasvoro
Tasalasat
Amasor
Lanasser
Imagoro
(Male)
Surtu
Tusuvu
Zunutu
Lufuru
Mumudut
Sufurtut
Julutur

Metasyndicate

Jadarkema (Auditor or Speaking Tongue)
Sorsakema (Composer or Speaking Mind)
Fosskema (Name of the species, literally "speaking mouth")
Ullkema (Speaking Nothing, the "nihilists")
(Neutral)
Hurmid
Sorkor
Nozor
Opolo
Gosslork
Pusopo
(Female)
Anuko
Ukona
Nonot
Nutok
Lukuka
(Male)
Kassema
Kasahorf
Kazzlehorf
Caklaka
Zaklanaf
Sinakena
(Composer)
Ibarna (The Composer who made Kazzlehorf so powerful)
Vibra
Kinsana
Ipalan
Harto
Kazzlehorf!
(Job) + Kazzlehorf (and any monikers, "the Kazzlehorf who got great at playing the tetracord" for instance)
The Kazzlehorf is a male clone mass produced, job titles are the only real distinguishers due to the need of knowing who the cook is. As Kazzlehorf are clones meant to all be the same, only job matters for distinguishing.

other

Much less developed sapients with pretty art

The Lasuuko



The Lasuuko are alien beings who live prominently on deeply tropical worlds with a radial symmetry. The Lasuuko are starfish shaped and have five limbs that can all double as heads when needed, with a detachable gut at the center of their body. The Lasuuko are found mostly in the company of Vopson not the Pale Swarm as the Vopson view the Lasuuko as a crop to cultivate. As they are very fun to torture evidently.

The Lasuuko ironically would thanks to the Vopson, come to inhabit many worlds since the Vopson needed incubator worlds for them and the Vopson had a tendancy to use Lasuuko in military invasions under the promise of getting a new colony in exchange for their services. The Lasuuko evidently aren’t bothered by how their populations get periodically harvested as they don’t really know anything else and were a bronze age society at best when the Vopson invaded their world.

The Vopson also found use of the Lasuuko as mercenary armies against other oxygen breathing species whenever they got in the way, most notably with the Golden Swarm and humans as a way to mock humans by infesting human colony worlds with Lasuuko during the start of their planetary invasions to cause chaos and make the larger swarms able to crush resistance much more rapidly.

The Lasuuko elsewhere in the galaxy have managed to become a space faring society on one world, said world was slugged by the Vopson, but that systemic depopulation of a highly urbanized planet simply too little too late as by that time the Lasuuko of that world had enough stolen Glowing Swarm technology to escape to the stars. However most Lasuuko remain in the talons of the Vopson and the Lasuuko are a species humans encountered during the Golden Swarm’s invasion in combat roles. A Lasuuko diasporia has emerged in human dominated space after the shattering of the Golden Swarm.

The Veemers



The Veemer are phantom like sapients from the ice world Mendus who lived in the upper layers primarily, used to the cold and bathing in radiation, and are devilishly clever sapients. The Veemer make use of two long prehensile tentacles to grab and flux about groups of critters in the upper layers while making huge settlements in the icy roof. They are a very vivid, vocal bunch and their various cultures tend to show highly outwards attitudes to existence, though they are primitive and seem to know nothing on just how huge the universe is. Indeed, they seem to see themselves as the height of their world and as a glorious species overall even in the millennia it took for them to even be where they are. They are highly obsessed with status and authority, this shows everywhere with the personality cults all over the place and the general paradigm of migrating around the place while descending for the best harvests. Th Veemer never switched to full agriculture and hunting remains a huge aspect of their civilizations to this day, yet they have proven more than capable of developing the kind of high culture you normally don't find on many other worlds filled with sapient primitives in non-cultivating conditions.

Dark Matters (Open)

@Ekreture I'll have an intro post up by Wednesday.

Dark Matters (Open)

Is my app good to be accepted yet?

Dark Matters (Open)

The Metasyndicate

-Expect a flag eventually-

Overview

The metasyndicate is a society of scavengers and technophilic upstarts built on a very highly materialistic outlook of the universe. Ran by an oligarchy of Fosskemians fused with AI minds, yet infused with an outlook that demands conflict and chaos as fundamental aspects of the universe even as they simultaniously seek open, free trade with others and a general obsession with increasing the flow of data whatever the content.

The denizens of the Metasyndicate have come to prominence mostly in the wake of the collapse of the Orionic Empire as one of the various “xeno barbarian” forces out there. The Metas themselves tend to view themselves much more as a fire in the dark, finally free to spread across the volatile environment left behind by the storm of the collapse. The entities of the metasyndicate are notorious for their scavenging, piracy, tendency to go basically anywhere they see fit and their advanced information warfare capabilities. The metasyndicate has been, like with other alien forces, a common go-to for other civilizations for mercenaries as it is well known that that the most common species of the metasyndicate does not fear death.
Only silence.

Government

A syndicate within syndicates is the way it is usually described. A greater organization of self-aware space craft runs a large shadow government within the system of organizations that the metasyndicate consists of. These organizations act as independent organs of the Greater Metasyndicate government with private initiatives and goals within the framework system that the metasyndicate itself creates for its inhabitants. While claimed to be a free trade society, intervention by the Anvayat class is a regular feature of their society without really much accountability. The oligarchic nature of this society is complicated by the local sector polities being usually either monarchic or anarchic with little in between. They are usually described as a federation of sorts as a result, though with organizations having much more power within the system than local governments and their private armies who tend to play off these organizations.

The general structure looks like a web more than a pyramid with the metasyndicate government itself meddling frequently, but not to the kind of institutional degrees most governments do.
This weak control on what local actors within the greater metasyndicate means the metasyndicate as a federal force has been very unstable an actor, at times behaving more like a massive terrorist organization than as a coherent government with their ideology seeing the fall of the Orionic empire as one of the greatest things to ever happen in galactic history.

The Metasyndicate have very overt AI custodianship like other civilizations in the region, though these AI systems are unique in how they don’t hide themselves and tend to be more manipulators of the overall metasyndicate. These AIs don’t really have borders and have been known to attempt to meddle in the affairs of other societies as well. These AI systems have a relationship with the Fosskemians that is described below.

History

The early interstellar societies the Metasyndicate descends from were not really societies as we think of them. Instead they were drone swarms, with AI systems mining aggressively across a portion of the galaxy to create ever larger machine swarms. Said AI swarms were slaughtered by the Orionic empire long before the Orionic Empire fell however and that ended the enigmatic first generation of AIs known as only the Harlapa. It is still unclear if they are of human or alien origin. Theories range from them being some alien civilization that had a grey goo catastrophe to something rogue human colonists from ancient times. The exact truth remains nebulous and hard to discover due to lots of lost records and data, made worse with the Orionic Empire’s collapse.

Fast forward a several centuries and a remnant population of these AIs comes across a civilization of beings who suffered a nuclear catastrophe of their own making- the ancient Fosskemians in their Opulence Era that ended nearly in their extinction. This remnant AI population was a weird one- it instead of euthanizing this species uplifted them, giving them warp drive technology and the ability to make an interstellar empire on the fringes of imperial space. The remnant AIs became beings fused with the Fosskemians known as the Anvayat, whose general motives beyond their borderline nihilistic outlook include the propagation of harmonious thought. This society developed with some imperial incursions, but by this time the Empire had its hands much too full to handle some peripheral xeno barbaric force. And so, the network of societies that converged into the metasyndicate developed as did the web work of infrastructure for their confederate union of interstellar organizations. However, the institution of the Auditor only appeared after the Orionic Collapse just 150 years ago.

In the current era of darkness, the Metasyndicate has thrived in the general chaos of the collapse with not much in the way of their ability to explore the galaxy, harvest ancient technologies for their own use or intervene in the affairs of others for the end of preventing anything like the Orionic Empire from arising again. Ongoing tensions with other xenobarbaric forces have continued to make the metasyndicate itself use whatever options they have on the table when dealing with others in this shattered galaxy.
(Anything more I add to this will be collaborative)

Military/Technology

I am using this section for both military and technology since with the Metasyndicate, civilian tech and military tech have no defined lines. Civilians can become militias in many cases within the Metasyndicate, and so what you will get here is a grab bag of various Fosskemian tech products and some lore connected to them.

The military of the metasyndicate has no real standardization due to multiple factions and the tendency to use tons of self-organizing smaller squad groups whose general movements often are loosely coordinated with the intent of increasing uncertainty for their opponents. This is what they do instead of the traditional armadas. The general tech the metasyndicate uses is usually reverse engineered and taken from other factions when it isn’t based on older designs from the AI era plastered over with various artistic touches by the pilots.

In general, the Metasyndicate’s military is not known for being well organized or competent even with the professionalism to which the major factions try to hold their members. However, it does make use of some shockingly developed means of subterfuge and interception of communication systems. The Metasyndicate's military technology is instead strongly rooted in amplifying their power through a powerful array of espionage based technologies.

--Multipurpose tech--

= Spoofers

Spoofers are the main stay of Fosskemian gadgetry, they are small energy teleportation devices that are the basis of much of their civilization. It is one of the main achievements of the reverse engineering efforts of Metasyndicate researchers building off the prior attempts at this tech and making a heat sucking device. The implications of Spoofers are massive- they allow for wireless energy transfer in their devices for instance allowing them to get away with set ups normally limited by needing to transport batteries around or having to carry a power generator as they can source the power through spoofers.

Spoofers have a military application not just logistically- they can overclock a missile with more or less energy dynamically thanks to spoofers allowing for tiny bombs with far more massive explosions than first expected.

Spoofers are limited by light lag however, and do not exhibit FTL properties.

Spoofer energy transmissions are interceptable if you know where one is, something the metasyndicate knows well and so much of Fosskemian tech does whatever it can to obscure the location of a spoofer to make it harder to flood out the media it is using to transmit the heat.

= Zippers

Zippers are amphibious flycrafts used by the Fosskemians that can be deployed from orbit and dive down into the depths of a world's oceans. Zippers are called such because of their incredible manuverability and speed, being mostly used as scout craft, smuggling crafts and as hit and run crafts. Their craft makes them a bit pricy, but the Metasyndicate has organizations dedicated to their production that has tried to satitae demands for the Zippercrafts and their mixed and flexible capabilities.

= Better Skins

Better skins are a series of various exosuit systems made from very flexible materials to help with navigating higher gravity environments. They also act as a still suit for the amphibious fosskemians in more arid environments where they would normally risk dying from drying up. Most better skins are non-powered suits, but Spoofer powered bettwer skins have been used in their militaries in many cases.

= Wavekill

Wavekill is one of the more bizarre tech systems- if a vessel is unshielded or some part of their infratsurture is vulnerable this device can launch disruptive waves to destabilize the infrastructure of vital components of whatever it hits, be it a car, a building or anything with many sensitive parts. It is wide reaching in use- for instance if used on a biological creature, it can give them heart attacks, intense pain and profuse internal bleeding.

Wavekill systems have also found usage in therapy for various neuro-disorders (mainly since light wavekills can cause a 'jump starting' effect within the target) and encyrpted communications.

--Spaceship Classes--

= Noble Spacecraft

There is no one kind of these spaceships, the main thing to know about them is their mixture of ceremonial and organizational roles in ceremonial hargonian fuedal conflicts. Noble Spacecrafts are literally called this because they are the spacecraft only hargonian princesses get to pilot in theory. In practice they get auctioned off all the time by princesses who are needing money or found a new spaceship to make into a Noble Spacecraft.

The general idea is similar to that of military officers on their horses from earlier human eras- a specialized craft that says "I am the one in charge here" and is made intentionally to incite direct engagement with a rival princess. It is also because it increases ratings when rival princesses destroy each other in "honorable" space combat instead of the normal kind.

Despite being blatantly ceremonial, they have still been used by Hargonians in battles with other societies in the galaxy to varied, varied results- and the princesses tend to take these spaceships everywhere, even on foreign meetings despite often being armed enough to wipe out a continent. Hargonian princesses tend to not to like leaving their spaceships as is, living in them much like hermit crabs live in shells. This is not due to security alone- it is also due to how communications filled their ships are and because it makes them feel more powerful to be in a spaceship and very weak and pitiful to not be in a spaceship.

= Energetic Vessels

Energetic-Class Vessels are a Boundless innovation and their signature vessels, made of a mixture of reverse engineered tech their main property is that they are able to absorb energy, transfer energy between other ships within a brigade and make use of particle array cannons alongside semi-automatic railguns. Such high powered, hard hitting and heavily shielded ships ranging from frigate to cruiser sizes (up to 1 Km for their long journey mothercraft) are a specialty within the Metasyndicate and are used by the Boundless as exploration vessels since the kind of exploation the boundless do sometimes requires being able to bring worlds to submission with one squadron of spacecraft. They can absorb energy from the kinetic force of weapons that hit their shields even as it also harms said shields and can absorb energy more when near a star. This allows them to go on long distance expeditions where they stop by bright stars to recharge on energy.

And so the Energetic Vessel was made.

Still, sustained fire on one ship can cause other ships to also take damage to their own shielding systems to due to the interdependent energy distribution systems used by other ships within their brigade group.

= Anvayat Starbody

Starbodies are what Anvayat store themselves within and control through possession, their fused AI interfacing with them and their spaceship as they feel themselves as the spaceship itself in a state of extreme intimacy. The Starbodies become themselves and they act as such- the Starbodies very often overtake the Anvayat identity.

The technical capabilities of the Starbodies are wide ranging, having a spinal mount mass driver mixed with particle array systems and multiple layers of shielding making for a much more resistant, hard to destroy ship made all the worse by spoofer energy flow allowing them to constantly get more energy for their shield systems. Still, if you can find ways to disrupt spoofer energy flows, they become somewhat weaker. But still will prove hell to deal with, starbodies are made to take over the infrastructure of a local world and can also make attempts at hijacking the tech of other spacecraft through wave based means to destabilize their reactor cores or life support.

((Very incomplete for now as the metasyndicate is meant to have all sorts of powerful, peculiar gadgetry and that takes time to percolate. That being said the general gist has been given, I doubt it is enough to qualify as "enough" for IC positng however.))

Religion/Culture

As a free minded society, Anchorism nor Kineticism has had much bearing on the Fosskemians of the Metasyndicate with the dominant belief system being more a mode of thought than any actual spirituality. This mode of thought comes from a centuries old proto-auditor whose ravings and rants are regularly played known as Auditor Rovii. Rovii is often retroactively considered the first auditor despite being centuries old, long before the institution of auditor even existed. The basic tenets of Harmonious Action are that silence and stability are fundamentally connected within the triangular moral gradient that is silence, harmony and dissonance. The harmony the "intellectuals" of the Metasyndicate frequently go on public rants about effectively must do with the loose pattern of ebbs, flows and concerted shifts to which all civilization follows. Large, stable empires are viewed in general as an unnatural state and the Metasyndicate is structured in a fashion usually described as a mixture of logocractic and corporatist governance. However, mob rule also tends to be a common feature of the metasyndicate on a local level.
With the high degree of automation seen in their civilization, citizens usually tend to do a lot of very strange activities to keep harmonious and not dull themselves. One example is that highly suicidal stunts are a very common trend among their citizens. For the weak fear of death mixed with the moral system that pervades the metasyndicate encourages behavior of this nature. Coming from a desire for “resonance”- something often confused for “legacy” means dying in a gruesome, but beautifully impossible to ignore way is a common behavior among their citizens. Disturbingly enough, even by other species assimilated into the harmonious/Rovite mindset.

The metasyndicate is also characterized by being highly cosmopolitan a civilization, with inhabitants from all over even with the fosskemians being in the majority due to their high reproduction rates (they’ve industrialized their egg fertilization). The Fosskemians as a species value communication and being able to communicate to others highly and so lack the degree of xenophobia other species may have even if they press their worldview onto every other species, even animals.
Variations within the Metasyndicate exist, mainly due to the different organizations that act as the organelles for the greater metasyndicate.

----- Examples ----

Boundless Association

The Boundless Association are the most widespread group of Metasyndicate denizens, being both a research organization and a historical society that have a significant share of the industrial-military complex of the Metasyndicate and make use of their military to harass societies for their tech, artifacts and such when they don’t make use of their spy networks to get said resources for themselves. The Boundless Association makes use of a specialized group for these spy networks known as the Collectors who have found use by the Hargonians, the Kazzlehorf and the Waywards. The Boundless view themselves as the vanguards of information collection and as the prime innovators of the Metasyndicate, with a deeply prideful outlook missing from the other factions and a sense of optimism and seemingly idiotic wonder for the galaxy in general. They are always friendly even towards their enemies and victims as everyone to them are friends and having company that wants to change your state forcefully (killing) is still preferable to no company. The boundless are also dogmatic recruiters for the metasyndicate and indeed get viewed as the “outside interaction group” while the Hargonians and Waywardians get viewed as much more domestic in nature. The boundless are the most common grouping of Metasyndicate civilizations other factions will come across as they explore the furthest out.

The Hargonian Dynasty

The most notable is the Hargonian Dynasty, an ancient Fosskemian dynasty that has claims all the way back to the Opulence Era that makes use of queens and a nobility that consists of many ‘princess’ Fosskemians who come from the eggs of the queen Fosskemian. The Hargonites of the current era have gained notoriety for there being multiple self-proclaimed Hargonite queens and selling their “royal” eggs on the market knowing full well they can be externally fertilized. The hargonites generally aren’t taken seriously by the other factions, mainly being viewed more as a source for viewing screens than as a actual society- a massive endless drama play the other organizations have to deal with from time to time when they start wars with others. Still, they are a pretty significant faction of the metasyndicate and have attempted all matter of diplomatic action with other societies despite being aliens who can’t cross breed to make heirs for any marriage alliances. They often suggest an AI heir instead in such cases. The Hargonians are also distinct in how they are more sedentary than the other two major groups.

Waywardians

The Waywardians are a group whose general mindset is that of dysfunctionality and a form of nihilism much stronger than the Rovite ethics traditionally followed by the other groups. The Waywardians fear determinism and so act in ways intentionally arbitrary as a means of fighting the deterministic nature of the universe itself. They have experimented with vast ranges of peculiar technologies they stole from the Boundless, (of whom stole from other societies) to try to break reality itself and have also figured out enhanced warp drive systems that were quickly copied by other societies before the Waywardians were able to get any major advantage. The waywardians as a group also make a heavy use of cloning, with usually the general desire of watching new individuals sprout from the process. Still, their society is perhaps the most Anvayat infiltrated of them and the most directly ran by them beyond the traditional meddling and so the Waywardians get often viewed as just a test bed for the Anvayat’s endless search for a purer harmonious state.

((More to come, I can always extend this))

Demographics

Fosskemian 67%

Fosskemian Data

The Fosskemians are tall creatures, around 7-8 feet in height on Average. However, they aren't strong creatures due to their biomechanics not being apt for strength. Their prehensile limbs are weak compared to ours, and this has affected how they interact with the environment around them by making them prone to using smaller tools or working in aquatic environments; they tend to craft underwater.

The Fosskemians have adapted to using their 'wings' as a versatile type of "leg" which allows them to skid, slide and gallop around their environment which has a denser atmosphere than our own. The Fosskemians breathe through their skin for the most part, with the blow holes in their backs being more for their wing systems more than actual respiration. The Fosskemians have a small, sharp beak at the front of their long heads. They hear vibrations from the ground better than we do, but have difficulty hearing high pitched sounds.

The Fosskemians are amphibious beings, which is how they colonized so much of their world so fast as they literally drifted to other land masses. Their long history of civilization, stretching over 12000 years is something often neglected by their own kind- especially since a lot of this history is revised on a regular, persistent basis with lots of lost knowledge about ancient times for them. The Fosskemian have 15-20 year generations instead of 30 year generations even today, and can have children as early as 7 years of age. The Fosskemians in general are shorter lived than us and this may factor into their mentality of resonance on a fundamental level; they live short existences after all.

The Fosskemian are L-handed beings like us, and so there is some compatible food products. Their nutrition is like ours except in certain areas, primarily in fibers. They seem to eat proteins just like we do, although Terran plant matter is not nutritious for them (and likewise, Vopallian balloon matter lack nutritional value for us).

Fosskemian sub-species are rare; most have already converged. Communities of non-common Fosskemian such as the spotties or the pink Fosskemian tend to isolate themselves in distance around the galaxy, usually being literally thousands of light years from the common Fosskemian. The common Fosskemian, being comprised of multiple sub-species have quite a bit of genetic variation (I may have to draw this).

The Fosskemians are a species who lays eggs, with males being the caretakers of said eggs. The Fosskemian tend to live in large groups, in multiple mass nests and sets of complexes. These colonies tend to contain internally functional markets which trade with other nests in global networks somewhat like nation-states, but much more tightly knit and with less centralized authority. These complexes can be highly dangerous for the surrounding environment, as they tend to leak waste into the surrounding area. There is no real single male-female mate; it is more a series of mates’ females have, males tend to communally take care of eggs and raise children along with expand the nest.

Females tend to leave the nests far more frequently than males, although females taking males where they go is all too frequent (since having a consistent system of places in society is too hard for them, even if there is blatant gender roles in their species. The Fosskemian don't seem to recognize they even exist, despite how painfully obvious it is to human observers. Males that question this have highly varied consequences, sometimes ignored, sometimes ostracized, other times socially humiliated in public). There isn't really much consistency in authority or law; there is very little concept of law to begin with, just guidelines that change depending on what the local auditor, princess or plutocrat says is the rules now. Their science is rife in a range of psuedoscientific madness that is only tempered by obsessive experimentation by scientifically minded Fosskemian that tends to find new technologies to play with. Science in the Fosskemian sense is really a range of experiments made not to solve problems, but to have new things to possess.

Fosskemian psychology on the whole has many human-like traits, though there is a couple significant deviations. The most significant being their fear of silence and not fearing death. This fear of silence is usually viewed in terms of "lacking noise" and has informed their cultural beliefs/norms throughout their history, manifesting in a wide array of different means. The Metasyndicate being just one example of this.

Humans 11%

Humans, often from the Aurorian Republic or the USS Chaim who have been a part of the metasydnicate and even before with older generations of imperial exiles making for a diverse and colorful community of humans of many backgrounds. Who tend to really not like each other, some even have made identitarian organizations trying to assert their home faction's ideals in alien territory.

Others TBA

Characters: (You don't need to go that in depth in the NS, but once we get to IC, definitely have them fleshed out, at least mentally.)

Relations: (Talk to people! This section in NRPs often goes neglected, but it's important for other characters making their own NSs.)

Habitation: The Fosskemians as a species are traditionally amphibians and this shows in their infrastructure, with lots of water pools just to stay wet and their control pads being built for them to use machines they operate lying down with their huge flippers stretched out instead of standing up. The Fosskemians also use their massive flippers to make all matter of bar and friction based infrastructure that wouldn’t make sense with a human body plan. Having to make this different infrastructural need work with the more humanoid (or otherwise) species of the galaxy has been one of the great headaches of Metasyndicate architects.

((Probably could include way more detail here, I promise pics on this in the future)).

Dark Matters (Open)

The general idea I have for my faction will be a civilization of slimy critters who hull themselves up in clean, glistening shells who are absolute germaphobes who have accrued considerable amounts of power in the vacuum the Orionics left. I'll put slow work on them, but I intend to really get into this NRP after June 10th since that's when I get tons of free time. (Current app is WIP)

@Dinh AaronMk Seconded, it pays to at least have some regard for astronomy in a sci-fi setting even if it's a space opera. I find the Universe Atlas maps pretty useful for that.

@Willy Vereb It's hard to write accurate scaled galactic scale sci-fi. Which was why I experimented with single star system sci-fi NRPs. Not much of an audience though since the people who want that already have eclipse phase.

The Metasyndicate

-Expect a flag eventually-

Overview

The metasyndicate is a society of scavengers and technophilic upstarts built on a very highly materialistic outlook of the universe. Ran by an oligarchy of Fosskemians fused with AI minds, yet infused with an outlook that demands conflict and chaos as fundamental aspects of the universe even as they simultaniously seek open, free trade with others and a general obsession with increasing the flow of data whatever the content.

The denizens of the Metasyndicate have come to prominence mostly in the wake of the collapse of the Orionic Empire as one of the various “xeno barbarian” forces out there. The Metas themselves tend to view themselves much more as a fire in the dark, finally free to spread across the volatile environment left behind by the storm of the collapse. The entities of the metasyndicate are notorious for their scavenging, piracy, tendency to go basically anywhere they see fit and their advanced information warfare capabilities. The metasyndicate has been, like with other alien forces, a common go-to for other civilizations for mercenaries as it is well known that that the most common species of the metasyndicate does not fear death.
Only silence.

Government

A syndicate within syndicates is the way it is usually described. A greater organization of self-aware space craft runs a large shadow government within the system of organizations that the metasyndicate consists of. These organizations act as independent organs of the Greater Metasyndicate government with private initiatives and goals within the framework system that the metasyndicate itself creates for its inhabitants. While claimed to be a free trade society, intervention by the Anvayat class is a regular feature of their society without really much accountability. The oligarchic nature of this society is complicated by the local sector polities being usually either monarchic or anarchic with little in between. They are usually described as a federation of sorts as a result, though with organizations having much more power within the system than local governments and their private armies who tend to play off these organizations.

The general structure looks like a web more than a pyramid with the metasyndicate government itself meddling frequently, but not to the kind of institutional degrees most governments do.
This weak control on what local actors within the greater metasyndicate means the metasyndicate as a federal force has been very unstable an actor, at times behaving more like a massive terrorist organization than as a coherent government with their ideology seeing the fall of the Orionic empire as one of the greatest things to ever happen in galactic history.

The Metasyndicate have very overt AI custodianship like other civilizations in the region, though these AI systems are unique in how they don’t hide themselves and tend to be more manipulators of the overall metasyndicate. These AIs don’t really have borders and have been known to attempt to meddle in the affairs of other societies as well. These AI systems have a relationship with the Fosskemians that is described below.

History

The early interstellar societies the Metasyndicate descends from were not really societies as we think of them. Instead they were drone swarms, with AI systems mining aggressively across a portion of the galaxy to create ever larger machine swarms. Said AI swarms were slaughtered by the Orionic empire long before the Orionic Empire fell however and that ended the enigmatic first generation of AIs known as only the Harlapa. It is still unclear if they are of human or alien origin. Theories range from them being some alien civilization that had a grey goo catastrophe to something rogue human colonists from ancient times. The exact truth remains nebulous and hard to discover due to lots of lost records and data, made worse with the Orionic Empire’s collapse.

Fast forward a several centuries and a remnant population of these AIs comes across a civilization of beings who suffered a nuclear catastrophe of their own making- the ancient Fosskemians in their Opulence Era that ended nearly in their extinction. This remnant AI population was a weird one- it instead of euthanizing this species uplifted them, giving them warp drive technology and the ability to make an interstellar empire on the fringes of imperial space. The remnant AIs became beings fused with the Fosskemians known as the Anvayat, whose general motives beyond their borderline nihilistic outlook include the propagation of harmonious thought. This society developed with some imperial incursions, but by this time the Empire had its hands much too full to handle some peripheral xeno barbaric force. And so, the network of societies that converged into the metasyndicate developed as did the web work of infrastructure for their confederate union of interstellar organizations. However, the institution of the Auditor only appeared after the Orionic Collapse just 150 years ago.

In the current era of darkness, the Metasyndicate has thrived in the general chaos of the collapse with not much in the way of their ability to explore the galaxy, harvest ancient technologies for their own use or intervene in the affairs of others for the end of preventing anything like the Orionic Empire from arising again. Ongoing tensions with other xenobarbaric forces have continued to make the metasyndicate itself use whatever options they have on the table when dealing with others in this shattered galaxy.
(Anything more I add to this will be collaborative)

Military/Technology

I am using this section for both military and technology since with the Metasyndicate, civilian tech and military tech have no defined lines. Civilians can become militias in many cases within the Metasyndicate, and so what you will get here is a grab bag of various Fosskemian tech products and some lore connected to them.

The military of the metasyndicate has no real standardization due to multiple factions and the tendency to use tons of self-organizing smaller squad groups whose general movements often are loosely coordinated with the intent of increasing uncertainty for their opponents. This is what they do instead of the traditional armadas. The general tech the metasyndicate uses is usually reverse engineered and taken from other factions when it isn’t based on older designs from the AI era plastered over with various artistic touches by the pilots.

In general, the Metasyndicate’s military is not known for being well organized or competent even with the professionalism to which the major factions try to hold their members. However, it does make use of some shockingly developed means of subterfuge and interception of communication systems. The Metasyndicate's military technology is instead strongly rooted in amplifying their power through a powerful array of espionage based technologies.

--Multipurpose tech--

= Spoofers

Spoofers are the main stay of Fosskemian gadgetry, they are small energy teleportation devices that are the basis of much of their civilization. It is one of the main achievements of the reverse engineering efforts of Metasyndicate researchers building off the prior attempts at this tech and making a heat sucking device. The implications of Spoofers are massive- they allow for wireless energy transfer in their devices for instance allowing them to get away with set ups normally limited by needing to transport batteries around or having to carry a power generator as they can source the power through spoofers.

Spoofers have a military application not just logistically- they can overclock a missile with more or less energy dynamically thanks to spoofers allowing for tiny bombs with far more massive explosions than first expected.

Spoofers are limited by light lag however, and do not exhibit FTL properties.

Spoofer energy transmissions are interceptable if you know where one is, something the metasyndicate knows well and so much of Fosskemian tech does whatever it can to obscure the location of a spoofer to make it harder to flood out the media it is using to transmit the heat.

= Zippers

Zippers are amphibious flycrafts used by the Fosskemians that can be deployed from orbit and dive down into the depths of a world's oceans. Zippers are called such because of their incredible manuverability and speed, being mostly used as scout craft, smuggling crafts and as hit and run crafts. Their craft makes them a bit pricy, but the Metasyndicate has organizations dedicated to their production that has tried to satitae demands for the Zippercrafts and their mixed and flexible capabilities.

= Better Skins

Better skins are a series of various exosuit systems made from very flexible materials to help with navigating higher gravity environments. They also act as a still suit for the amphibious fosskemians in more arid environments where they would normally risk dying from drying up. Most better skins are non-powered suits, but Spoofer powered bettwer skins have been used in their militaries in many cases.

= Wavekill

Wavekill is one of the more bizarre tech systems- if a vessel is unshielded or some part of their infratsurture is vulnerable this device can launch disruptive waves to destabilize the infrastructure of vital components of whatever it hits, be it a car, a building or anything with many sensitive parts. It is wide reaching in use- for instance if used on a biological creature, it can give them heart attacks, intense pain and profuse internal bleeding.

Wavekill systems have also found usage in therapy for various neuro-disorders (mainly since light wavekills can cause a 'jump starting' effect within the target) and encyrpted communications.

--Spaceship Classes--

= Noble Spacecraft

There is no one kind of these spaceships, the main thing to know about them is their mixture of ceremonial and organizational roles in ceremonial hargonian fuedal conflicts. Noble Spacecrafts are literally called this because they are the spacecraft only hargonian princesses get to pilot in theory. In practice they get auctioned off all the time by princesses who are needing money or found a new spaceship to make into a Noble Spacecraft.

The general idea is similar to that of military officers on their horses from earlier human eras- a specialized craft that says "I am the one in charge here" and is made intentionally to incite direct engagement with a rival princess. It is also because it increases ratings when rival princesses destroy each other in "honorable" space combat instead of the normal kind.

Despite being blatantly ceremonial, they have still been used by Hargonians in battles with other societies in the galaxy to varied, varied results- and the princesses tend to take these spaceships everywhere, even on foreign meetings despite often being armed enough to wipe out a continent. Hargonian princesses tend to not to like leaving their spaceships as is, living in them much like hermit crabs live in shells. This is not due to security alone- it is also due to how communications filled their ships are and because it makes them feel more powerful to be in a spaceship and very weak and pitiful to not be in a spaceship.

= Energetic Vessels

Energetic-Class Vessels are a Boundless innovation and their signature vessels, made of a mixture of reverse engineered tech their main property is that they are able to absorb energy, transfer energy between other ships within a brigade and make use of particle array cannons alongside semi-automatic railguns. Such high powered, hard hitting and heavily shielded ships ranging from frigate to cruiser sizes (up to 1 Km for their long journey mothercraft) are a specialty within the Metasyndicate and are used by the Boundless as exploration vessels since the kind of exploation the boundless do sometimes requires being able to bring worlds to submission with one squadron of spacecraft. They can absorb energy from the kinetic force of weapons that hit their shields even as it also harms said shields and can absorb energy more when near a star. This allows them to go on long distance expeditions where they stop by bright stars to recharge on energy.

And so the Energetic Vessel was made.

Still, sustained fire on one ship can cause other ships to also take damage to their own shielding systems to due to the interdependent energy distribution systems used by other ships within their brigade group.

= Anvayat Starbody

Starbodies are what Anvayat store themselves within and control through possession, their fused AI interfacing with them and their spaceship as they feel themselves as the spaceship itself in a state of extreme intimacy. The Starbodies become themselves and they act as such- the Starbodies very often overtake the Anvayat identity.

The technical capabilities of the Starbodies are wide ranging, having a spinal mount mass driver mixed with particle array systems and multiple layers of shielding making for a much more resistant, hard to destroy ship made all the worse by spoofer energy flow allowing them to constantly get more energy for their shield systems. Still, if you can find ways to disrupt spoofer energy flows, they become somewhat weaker. But still will prove hell to deal with, starbodies are made to take over the infrastructure of a local world and can also make attempts at hijacking the tech of other spacecraft through wave based means to destabilize their reactor cores or life support.

((Very incomplete for now as the metasyndicate is meant to have all sorts of powerful, peculiar gadgetry and that takes time to percolate. That being said the general gist has been given, I doubt it is enough to qualify as "enough" for IC positng however.))

Religion/Culture

As a free minded society, Anchorism nor Kineticism has had much bearing on the Fosskemians of the Metasyndicate with the dominant belief system being more a mode of thought than any actual spirituality. This mode of thought comes from a centuries old proto-auditor whose ravings and rants are regularly played known as Auditor Rovii. Rovii is often retroactively considered the first auditor despite being centuries old, long before the institution of auditor even existed. The basic tenets of Harmonious Action are that silence and stability are fundamentally connected within the triangular moral gradient that is silence, harmony and dissonance. The harmony the "intellectuals" of the Metasyndicate frequently go on public rants about effectively must do with the loose pattern of ebbs, flows and concerted shifts to which all civilization follows. Large, stable empires are viewed in general as an unnatural state and the Metasyndicate is structured in a fashion usually described as a mixture of logocractic and corporatist governance. However, mob rule also tends to be a common feature of the metasyndicate on a local level.
With the high degree of automation seen in their civilization, citizens usually tend to do a lot of very strange activities to keep harmonious and not dull themselves. One example is that highly suicidal stunts are a very common trend among their citizens. For the weak fear of death mixed with the moral system that pervades the metasyndicate encourages behavior of this nature. Coming from a desire for “resonance”- something often confused for “legacy” means dying in a gruesome, but beautifully impossible to ignore way is a common behavior among their citizens. Disturbingly enough, even by other species assimilated into the harmonious/Rovite mindset.

The metasyndicate is also characterized by being highly cosmopolitan a civilization, with inhabitants from all over even with the fosskemians being in the majority due to their high reproduction rates (they’ve industrialized their egg fertilization). The Fosskemians as a species value communication and being able to communicate to others highly and so lack the degree of xenophobia other species may have even if they press their worldview onto every other species, even animals.
Variations within the Metasyndicate exist, mainly due to the different organizations that act as the organelles for the greater metasyndicate.

----- Examples ----

Boundless Association

The Boundless Association are the most widespread group of Metasyndicate denizens, being both a research organization and a historical society that have a significant share of the industrial-military complex of the Metasyndicate and make use of their military to harass societies for their tech, artifacts and such when they don’t make use of their spy networks to get said resources for themselves. The Boundless Association makes use of a specialized group for these spy networks known as the Collectors who have found use by the Hargonians, the Kazzlehorf and the Waywards. The Boundless view themselves as the vanguards of information collection and as the prime innovators of the Metasyndicate, with a deeply prideful outlook missing from the other factions and a sense of optimism and seemingly idiotic wonder for the galaxy in general. They are always friendly even towards their enemies and victims as everyone to them are friends and having company that wants to change your state forcefully (killing) is still preferable to no company. The boundless are also dogmatic recruiters for the metasyndicate and indeed get viewed as the “outside interaction group” while the Hargonians and Waywardians get viewed as much more domestic in nature. The boundless are the most common grouping of Metasyndicate civilizations other factions will come across as they explore the furthest out.

The Hargonian Dynasty

The most notable is the Hargonian Dynasty, an ancient Fosskemian dynasty that has claims all the way back to the Opulence Era that makes use of queens and a nobility that consists of many ‘princess’ Fosskemians who come from the eggs of the queen Fosskemian. The Hargonites of the current era have gained notoriety for there being multiple self-proclaimed Hargonite queens and selling their “royal” eggs on the market knowing full well they can be externally fertilized. The hargonites generally aren’t taken seriously by the other factions, mainly being viewed more as a source for viewing screens than as a actual society- a massive endless drama play the other organizations have to deal with from time to time when they start wars with others. Still, they are a pretty significant faction of the metasyndicate and have attempted all matter of diplomatic action with other societies despite being aliens who can’t cross breed to make heirs for any marriage alliances. They often suggest an AI heir instead in such cases. The Hargonians are also distinct in how they are more sedentary than the other two major groups.

Waywardians

The Waywardians are a group whose general mindset is that of dysfunctionality and a form of nihilism much stronger than the Rovite ethics traditionally followed by the other groups. The Waywardians fear determinism and so act in ways intentionally arbitrary as a means of fighting the deterministic nature of the universe itself. They have experimented with vast ranges of peculiar technologies they stole from the Boundless, (of whom stole from other societies) to try to break reality itself and have also figured out enhanced warp drive systems that were quickly copied by other societies before the Waywardians were able to get any major advantage. The waywardians as a group also make a heavy use of cloning, with usually the general desire of watching new individuals sprout from the process. Still, their society is perhaps the most Anvayat infiltrated of them and the most directly ran by them beyond the traditional meddling and so the Waywardians get often viewed as just a test bed for the Anvayat’s endless search for a purer harmonious state.

((More to come, I can always extend this))

Demographics

Fosskemian 67%

Fosskemian Data

The Fosskemians are tall creatures, around 7-8 feet in height on Average. However, they aren't strong creatures due to their biomechanics not being apt for strength. Their prehensile limbs are weak compared to ours, and this has affected how they interact with the environment around them by making them prone to using smaller tools or working in aquatic environments; they tend to craft underwater.

The Fosskemians have adapted to using their 'wings' as a versatile type of "leg" which allows them to skid, slide and gallop around their environment which has a denser atmosphere than our own. The Fosskemians breathe through their skin for the most part, with the blow holes in their backs being more for their wing systems more than actual respiration. The Fosskemians have a small, sharp beak at the front of their long heads. They hear vibrations from the ground better than we do, but have difficulty hearing high pitched sounds.

The Fosskemians are amphibious beings, which is how they colonized so much of their world so fast as they literally drifted to other land masses. Their long history of civilization, stretching over 12000 years is something often neglected by their own kind- especially since a lot of this history is revised on a regular, persistent basis with lots of lost knowledge about ancient times for them. The Fosskemian have 15-20 year generations instead of 30 year generations even today, and can have children as early as 7 years of age. The Fosskemians in general are shorter lived than us and this may factor into their mentality of resonance on a fundamental level; they live short existences after all.

The Fosskemian are L-handed beings like us, and so there is some compatible food products. Their nutrition is like ours except in certain areas, primarily in fibers. They seem to eat proteins just like we do, although Terran plant matter is not nutritious for them (and likewise, Vopallian balloon matter lack nutritional value for us).

Fosskemian sub-species are rare; most have already converged. Communities of non-common Fosskemian such as the spotties or the pink Fosskemian tend to isolate themselves in distance around the galaxy, usually being literally thousands of light years from the common Fosskemian. The common Fosskemian, being comprised of multiple sub-species have quite a bit of genetic variation (I may have to draw this).

The Fosskemians are a species who lays eggs, with males being the caretakers of said eggs. The Fosskemian tend to live in large groups, in multiple mass nests and sets of complexes. These colonies tend to contain internally functional markets which trade with other nests in global networks somewhat like nation-states, but much more tightly knit and with less centralized authority. These complexes can be highly dangerous for the surrounding environment, as they tend to leak waste into the surrounding area. There is no real single male-female mate; it is more a series of mates’ females have, males tend to communally take care of eggs and raise children along with expand the nest.

Females tend to leave the nests far more frequently than males, although females taking males where they go is all too frequent (since having a consistent system of places in society is too hard for them, even if there is blatant gender roles in their species. The Fosskemian don't seem to recognize they even exist, despite how painfully obvious it is to human observers. Males that question this have highly varied consequences, sometimes ignored, sometimes ostracized, other times socially humiliated in public). There isn't really much consistency in authority or law; there is very little concept of law to begin with, just guidelines that change depending on what the local auditor, princess or plutocrat says is the rules now. Their science is rife in a range of psuedoscientific madness that is only tempered by obsessive experimentation by scientifically minded Fosskemian that tends to find new technologies to play with. Science in the Fosskemian sense is really a range of experiments made not to solve problems, but to have new things to possess.

Fosskemian psychology on the whole has many human-like traits, though there is a couple significant deviations. The most significant being their fear of silence and not fearing death. This fear of silence is usually viewed in terms of "lacking noise" and has informed their cultural beliefs/norms throughout their history, manifesting in a wide array of different means. The Metasyndicate being just one example of this.

Humans 11%

Humans, often from the Aurorian Republic or the USS Chaim who have been a part of the metasydnicate and even before with older generations of imperial exiles making for a diverse and colorful community of humans of many backgrounds. Who tend to really not like each other, some even have made identitarian organizations trying to assert their home faction's ideals in alien territory.

Others TBA

Characters: (You don't need to go that in depth in the NS, but once we get to IC, definitely have them fleshed out, at least mentally.)

Relations: (Talk to people! This section in NRPs often goes neglected, but it's important for other characters making their own NSs.)

Habitation: The Fosskemians as a species are traditionally amphibians and this shows in their infrastructure, with lots of water pools just to stay wet and their control pads being built for them to use machines they operate lying down with their huge flippers stretched out instead of standing up. The Fosskemians also use their massive flippers to make all matter of bar and friction based infrastructure that wouldn’t make sense with a human body plan. Having to make this different infrastructural need work with the more humanoid (or otherwise) species of the galaxy has been one of the great headaches of Metasyndicate architects.

((Probably could include way more detail here, I promise pics on this in the future)).

Dark Matters (Open)

Give it 12 days and i'll have an app.

Post a random fact about yourself.

@Winter Star12Reminds me of sploder. An old site where you make flash games.

Post a random fact about yourself.

My mother gave birth to me a year younger than I currently am.

The Political Thread

The news are very recent, that's why. And those articles were from when the news first broke. The last one doesn't contradict the others. It's just the oldest one, from before they officially cancelled it. I posted it just to be thorough.

And for the record, I am not happy to see it fail. I am amused that it failed just like everyone that isn't a Trump supporter expected, because for the past several weeks I've been told Trump would bring world peace and I'm a librul cuck for not accepting it.

@Pepperm1nts

I feel sorry for Ki Moon Jae-In though. Trump is basically ruining what he was trying to achieve.