The Guardians of Valinon

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Table of contents

Rule of cool does not equal a defense against wanton stupidity. The Imperium of Vipra Government Type: Black, ultramarine, and white National Animal: Censuses cannot be effective due to the nature of the Outer Fringe, rough estimates are between 2. Number of Core Systems: The Vipran government is a gargantuan organization topped by the Imperatrix who the head of both state and government, her power over the nation not limited by a constitution, assisted by a straightforward appointed Imperial Cabinet. Despite this there are no obvious measures against corruption beyond the clear and present threat of Imperial disfavour and the intelligence reports of the Internal Security Agency that can bring corruption to light.

Due to the nature of appointment most positions are taken by atoran and other persons from the core populace of the Imperium, the Imperatrix selecting from people she personally knows or those recommended to her. A degree of favouritism and nepotism is unavoidable. The ministers and other officials of the Imperial Palace that compose the Imperial Cabinet control the executive and legislative branches of government.

They work with their subordinates in their departments to draft new laws, or changes to existing ones, and present them to the Imperatrix for approval before they can be applied. Small internal changes, such as adjustments to tax rates or the execution of eminent domain, are delegated entirely to their respective ministers and department heads.

Outside the Palace Administration and the Imperial Cabinet the highest ranking official are the governors of the core-systems and the Inner Fringe provinces. Governors exercise limited authority, their powers restricted to an entirely administrative role that defers to the central authority. The exception are military governorates, which are declared by Imperial mandate and have the authority to create and enforce temporary laws as well as suspend rights. Ultimately all governors, apart from military governors, have no military authority apart from paramilitary police forces and are administratively separated from the commanders of the military garrisons and stationed fleets who assume total local authority in the event of invasion.

Governors are appointed for five year periods after which their administration is reviewed, most governors being renewed to their post. Military governors are again the exception, retaining their position at the pleasure of the Crown. Largely paramilitary, the Vipran police are given the task of enforcing Imperial law and keeping the peace within the core systems and Inner Fringe. Law officials are mostly devoted to investigation and criminal detainment, petty crimes are managed entirely by autonomous drones.

As such Imperial police tend to be unseen, investigating felony crimes from behind closed doors, and when they are visible are often busting gang operations or arresting violent criminals. Most officers as a result are former military, even the desk jockeys, and tend to be heavily armed while the police organization is hierarchical with a strict chain of command and government appointed superintendents. By design the police force is intended to be a potential military auxiliary in the event of invasion, their organizational structure capable of being absorbed into a military fighting force with little fuss.

Despite the militarism, however, use of lethal force is rare outside of raids into known criminal dens, and less-than-lethal armament is commonplace. Detainment and interrogation are deceptively difficult for the police force. Suspects and other persons in custody enjoy rights before, after, and during detainment to protect them physically as well as psychologically. Similarly property damage is kept to a minimum, the police force having to compensate owners if they damage their property while executing a raid that did not result in evidence being seized, persons being aided, or criminals being detained.

Essentially any raid upon innocent persons will see them reimbursed for any damages caused while they were carried out. This leads to cautious application of raids, the police force only busting down the doors when they are sure there is criminal activity occurring. A wide net of cameras, drones, and other passive information collection services aid in ensuring they do not act without foreknowledge unless absolutely necessary.

The surveillance web is omnipresent and often unseen, drones no larger than a grapefruit floating through the air while cameras and listening posts blend into the scenery. Criminals taken into custody face what appears to be a very lenient system, with no death penalty and a focus on rehabilitation. Prison sentences, however, are universally indefinite with only one means of release. Criminals are kept in state operated prisons and rehabilitated until such a time that they are deemed to be socially suitable and are thereafter released.

Due to the intense nature of certain crimes and the potential for chemical imbalances or other biologically driven psychosis there are also voluntary psychosurgery programs that can alter brain chemistry and psychology mechanically. Criminal records are kept secret, apart from petty crimes and fineable offenses which are kept on public record, and rehabilitated criminals are allowed to participate in public affairs as any other citizen.

Founded in order to manage intelligence threats, the Imperial Security Agency is tasked with managing threats to Imperial security that originate both domestically and from foreign nations. Both work in concert through the overarching ISA organization, sharing information and periodically exchanging agents for maximum efficiency. Both branches, however, are overseen after success of operations by the central ISA bureaucracy and its own agents to maintain control of information as well as to maintain agent loyalty.

Deterring, mitigating, or outright resolving any potential information leaks, terrorist cells, and foreign agents within Imperial territory fall to the Domestic Security Branch. They operate within all sectors of the Imperium, monitor citizens and foreign nationals within Imperial borders, and carry out operations to ensure national stability as well as social integrity with minimal public attention.

Foreign criminal organizations are treated as though they were spy agencies and are dealt with by the DSA and will employ information taken from customs as well as law enforcement without their knowledge. Agents prefer to detain and secretly interrogate rather than assassinate foreign nationals, psychosurgery being used to extract information if the interrogation is not fruitful or to create sleeper agents.

No means are held back from DSB agents in theory but in reality they operate underneath the law only so long as they maintain their secrecy.


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The counterpart to the Domestic Security Branch, the Foreign Security Branch works in parallel with it and fills the role of managing intelligence and security operations outside the Imperial borders. FSB agents are primarily employed to infiltrate foreign administrations and technology sectors in order to retrieve state and industrial information, but they will also infiltrate foreign criminal elements in order to gain access to a native black budget from which other FSB operations can be funded without tracing back to the Imperium. Assassinations are relatively uncommon given the attention they garner but are not ruled out in the case of particularly dangerous individuals.

In the event of war in an infiltrated nation FSB agents may be directed to carry out sabotage of information, military industry, and civilian infrastructure as well as to assassinate capable leaders. The government organ devoted to collecting taxes, managing government funds, and devising the national budget the Imperial Services Agency is the beating heart of the Imperial government. The ISA bureaucracy is essential to the running of the state, managing how the treasury is filled as well as how it is spent. A Yearly census of the core systems and the Inner Fringe also fall to the ISA, along with national infrastructure and any national trade agreements or tariffs.

This is all only managed due to the bevy of bureaucratic AIs made for the ISA specifically, flesh and blood bureaucrats unable to manage the sheer number of documents that require review and submission. The ISA has a deserved reputation as being cold, calculating, and uncaring towards all things, citizen and department alike.

Born out of necessity to manage the rapidly growing sprawl of free colonists, conquering mercenaries, and expanding corporations that would become the Fringe, the Fringe Affairs Bureau is the chief oversight of the Inner and Outer Fringe. Their duties are varied and encompass all Fringe activity. Inner Fringe governors give regular reports to the FAB and in turn they are advised by the bureau on the methods to further bring the provinces into the Imperial culture and economy so they can be integrated as core systems.

Cultural assimilation is fostered within Outer Fringe systems deemed to be prudent for Imperial annexation while those that are protectorates or military buffers are extracted of taxes and industry or supported with military export contracts respectively. Management of the contracts that bind protectorates and other Outer Fringe states, as well as records of transitions to the Inner Fringe, are kept by the FAB and enforced by the bureau with military backing. The FAB enforces Imperial law with regards to corporate conduct within the Fringe, logging any criminal activity committed by persons and companies within the Outer Fringe and beyond it.

Corporations have their activity tracked by bureau agents who have legal authority to join any exploration venture, resource exploitation program, and all other corporate activities within the Fringe that may harm, displace, or otherwise interact negatively with native sapient populations.

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Bureau agents have authority to demand a corporation cease its activities immediately, to detain any individual they believe is in the act of breaking or intends to break the regulations imposed by the FAB, and transport them back to the nearest bureau center. At first glance atorans superficially appear as roughly seven and half foot tall and strongly built humans mixed with axolotls. Arranged above and slightly behind each earhole in a semicircle over the crown of the head are five gill stalks that flow down the atorans back, terminating somewhere between the bottom of the shoulders and the hips.

The underside of the gill stalks are lined with red-pink gill filaments that allow underwater breathing for atorans, a transparent nictitating membrane also allow sight while submerged. Atorans also have skin that ranges in colour green to blue and is coated in a naturally secreted layer of body slime which acts as an insulator and lubricant. Their eyes vary between shades of three colours, violet, blue, and red. Atoran vision is highly similar to homo sapiens sapiens, with a matching number of rods and cones, so they perceive the same colours.

Pupils are round and dilate somewhat slowly, light changes causing a longer period of hindered vision. The nictitating membrane all atoran eyes have covers the eye when consciously closed, keeping out dust and other detritus as well as contaminants. The membranes are not fully transparent however and atorans have their sight hampered with a blur while the membranes are closed. Despite this drawback atorans tend to have fewer eye infections from external sources due to the membranes. Unlike with their sight atoran hearing is altogether worse when compared against humans due to their amphibian nature.

The lack of external ear structures does not allow sounds to be directed towards the inner ear and thus the atoran have worse directional awareness when relying on hearing.


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Due to the biological deficiency their brain also does not devote as much of its mass to processing hearing, leading all atoran to consider what might otherwise be clear and audible sounds to a human as being distant or fuzzy. Another sense where atorans are worse off than humans, the atoran sense of smell lacks nuance or the ability to pick up most pheromones.

They do not communicate by the olfactory senses, nor pick out partners by smell subconsciously, and do not rely on smell in their everyday life. It takes particularly potent and obvious smells for atoran to pick up on them, such as spices or necrotizing tissues, and subtle scents can go unperceived by atorans entirely unless they are intentionally searching for them. This is also due to atoran brain makeup, olfactory pheromone markers taking little to no part in their lives leading to it being given less brain power so that more is devoted elsewhere. Instead most atoran will breath through their mouth so the air passes over their tongue and they can taste what is in the air.

What atorans may lack in the other senses they make up for with taste, able to consciously detect the presence of many pheromones and hormones. They can pick up chemicals that are in the air as it passes over their taste buds, able to use their gustation to pick up scents rather than their olfactory senses. They are very sensitive and can pick out specific spices that are laid out on a countertop, and the amount thereof, simply by inhaling through their mouth from ten meters away. Underwater they can pick out the presence of trace chemicals from up to one hundred meters away.

Due to their sensitivity and the brain power dedicated to it atoran react sharply to pheromones, hormones, and other tastes with emotional as well as physiological responses. Ingested foods and liquids however have much the same effect upon them as on other humanoid species.

Atorans have a slightly better tactile sense than humans, more nerves within their skin in general and concentrations differing, and the presence of many within their gill stalks turning those organs into underwater feelers as well as erogenous zones. The slime that coats their skin does not impede tactile sensation, instead the constant moisture keeps their body soft and more receptive to touch.

Generally more conscious of their sense of touch, atoran are not any more susceptible to pain and indeed are better at intentionally blocking or ignoring the sensation. Other tactile responses can similarly be dwelled upon and vividly experienced, such as the feeling of the threads of a cloth so fine it looks as though it was grown as one piece and not woven. Additionally their skin has blood closer to the surface, temperature controlled thanks to the insulation of the body slime, and oxygen transfer occurs through the skin to a small degree when submerged.

The gill filaments that line the bottom of the fives gills stalks are where the exchange occurs, the thousands of half-inch to inch long filaments filling with blood as blood flow is directed away from the lungs and towards the stalks. Due to the change in blood flow atoran experience a brief period of lightheadedness during the transition to underwater breathing before stabilizing. As blood rushes to them the stalks spread out, rising up and out in a half-star for maximum surface area. If threatened or moving while underwater however the stalks naturally slide back against the back and shoulders to protect them from being harmed or dismembered.

In the event a gill stalk is removed the arteries and veins around the base of the stalk on the skull constrict and limit bloodloss to the degree that, if the atoran can surface in time, the blood can coagulate to seal the wound before the atoran dies of blood loss. Omnivores with a primarily carnivorous diet, atoran cannot survive in good health on an exclusively vegetarian or meat-eating diet.

Their teeth are sharper than humans, with the edges of their incisors capable of cutting their tongue if they slide their tongue across them strongly, and their canines are slightly larger relatively to jaw size. They do not eat meat raw however and are likely to be sickened or infected with parasites if they do not prepare their meat with cooking, acid treatments, or other methods beforehand. Atorans tend to prefer eating meat due to the higher amount of proteins and lipids, their size and active lifestyles requiring large amounts of energy.

As a species atorans show a marked gender ratio imbalance, with men at a constant decline in ratio except where violence maintains the ratio or causes it to reverse the trend for a short period of time. Dimorphism between male and female atoran is mostly physical, with women having breasts with mammary glands, wider hips, and body fat spread more evenly across their body while men may develop it around the waist. The most marked difference is that women are taller and more physically imposing than the men, with female atorans tending towards athletic and sturdy builds while males are usually willowy and thin.

Psychologically atoran also differ depending on gender, with female atoran favouring aggression and violent solutions while men are on average calmer. Atorans also trend towards polygynous relationships where a group of women will bring a single male into their union in order to facilitate impregnation, atoran females often casually sharing males while developing romantic relationships with other women.

After impregnation an atoran will begin to show visibly after ten months, with gestation lasting an average of forty-four weeks. Over the course of gestation the mother will undergo physical changes to aid in the birthing process as well as to feed the newborn after. Atoran women recover from birth quickly and can be pregnant again within four weeks. Single births are most common, occurring roughly seventy percent of the time with fraternal twins occurring in another twenty percent and other births, such as identical twins or triplets, taking up the last ten percent.

Throughout their lives atoran have four distinct phases of development. First is the child phase, which lasts from birth to twelve years of age. After this is puberty from twelve to seventeen. Thirdly an atoran enters the adolescent phase from seventeen to twenty three. Lastly the atoran spends the rest of his life in the post-adolescent or adult phase.

During the first three phases the atoran develop physically and psychologically, with hormonally driven development ceasing when an atoran leaves the adolescent phase. Atoran children are born with sight, hearing, and their other senses but all are underdeveloped. Children will identify the ethnicity of their father and all the women raising them as their own even if they are obviously different until they can be taught otherwise.

During the latter two thirds of their childhood atorans learn rapidly, retaining information and picking up languages quickly while they do not tend to develop social bonds beyond their immediate family. Towards the end of childhood however they begin to phase into puberty, and will become moody, suffer emotional swings, and they begin to bond outside their kingroup.

Pubescent atorans develop their secondary sexual characteristics, with females developing mammaries, hips widening, and more muscle tissue while the masculine atoran experience less dramatic changes. Young atorans will also experience their last growth bursts during this period, reaching their final height by seventeen years old. Additionally they become fertile during puberty and their hormones cause them to seek out sexual gratification. Almost all sexual development has finished by the end of puberty, with the secondary characteristics developing only a little more during the six years of the adolescent period.

Atoran also develop strong personal bonds during this period but learn academic educations slower, their mental growth more focused upon interpersonal relationships and their own psychological changes. Psychological changes occur during this phase, learning and knowledge retention heightened as well as social development. During this time the psychosocial sphere of relations broadens and atorans will naturally develop as many relationships as possible, most being simple acquaintances however, and their social group expanding to massive size.

Their social groups become and remain cohesive with potentially a thousand or more members that they can maintain stable relationships with. Should an atoran be declined the opportunity to develop new relationships, which need only be casual to have lasting effect, they may become socially stunted in once they have left the adolescent stage. Atorans that have a suitably social adolescent phase will tend to have a much broader and larger social sphere for the rest of their lives, and this will also typically translate to how they view their ethnicity, culture, and other social matters; atorans that develop properly have no trouble identifying with their entire ethnic group and it comes as naturally to them as identifying with a tribe.

The Guardians of Valinon

During the over two hundred and thirty years in between atorans are highly stable and experience little in the way of hormonal imbalances of fluctuations unless they are suffering from a disorder. Fertility lasts until the last years of their life, when an atoran reaches over two hundred sixty years of age their body begins to shut down, decay, and otherwise fail them until they die of organ failure.

An odd combination of animal and plant traits, balu are chery-skinned humanoids with a short and stocky build. Their bodies are bereft any body hair, and blue fluorescent patternss spread across their skin in large birthmarks. Their sclera, or white of their eyes, is instead black, and they have brilliant amber irises.

Musculature is hidden under their fluid-plush skin so that even the most physically fit balu appears smooth and without much muscle tone. Sexual dimorphism among balu is of the same as humans, with identical differences in sexual organs and appearance. The internal biology of balus makes them distinct from other humanoids. Their digestive tract makes use of two stomachs, the first a holding chamber filled with prolific moulds which break down foods before moving them on to the second stomach where acid further digests ingested food.

Moulds also fill the balu large intestine, acting like e-coli does in humans and aiding in digestion. Within the dermal layer of Balus stomata replace the pores of mammals, allowing heat exchange. The red chloroplasts in their skin which give them their near-scarlet colour also help them with oxygen exchange while there is sunlight, excess carbon dioxide produced by muscle action moved to the chloroplasts where it is converted back to oxygen. Regardless of their minor photosynthesis, which aids in physically tasking exercises while in sunlight, they have, and require, lungs to survive.

Breeding is accomplished like many other species, requiring both a male and female, but balish women only enter a fertile state once every two years, and during that time are exceptionally fertile. Humans are by and far the most prevalent species within the galaxy, with many Fractal Earths in existence and many an empire formed entirely from human stock.

Due to this prevalence humans require no in depth description. They are present within the Imperium through conquest, and are of a wide variety of ethnicities. The most prevalent ethnicities are those of the misri arabic Mamluks, the greek Omegans and Radaitans, and the russogermanic Razonites. Many other ethnicities and varieties of humans as well as panhumans live within the Imperium, but tend to blend into the local human culture as far as the Imperium is concerned.

A human derived race, Talythians were created by design as soldiers between the Interstellar league and a Taledonian led republic. Designed to naturally fall into military paradigms, Talythians have two biological castes that divide them. Soldiers are the most common caste, composing more than ninety-five percent of the population, and live a scant twenty years before natural death. Officer caste Talythians are the minority but live to an average thirty years, half again as long a soldier, and are more mentally capable than their soldier kin.

All Talythians, whether officer or soldier, are born with innate martial skills and expertise, such as how to aim a gun, engage in close quarters combat, and stripe a rifle for maintenance. These instincts compliment their natural build, being short and heavily built at four and three quarter feet tall while weighing one hundred forty pounds on average. What they have in martial capability they lack in imagination or artistic skill, however, and most Talythians are uninterested in the arts. A feline race bemusedly beloved by atoran, alumina have been a focus of affection by the amphibian humanoids ever since they made physical contact.

However the cessation of the cold war and the regularization of relations with the Alversians saw an influx of alumina immigrate to the Vipran Imperium. Roughly two hundred and twenty five million alumina immigrated to the Imperium in the years after the cold war, the vast majority settling within the core systems to take advantage of job opportunities within Vipra as well as to use their unofficial favoured status to live comfortable lives. They bring with them technical skills as well as military veterancy from the Danaversian Wars but find employment in all walks of life.

Special thanks to Alversia for use of his Alumina, other details on them can be found in his factbook here. After wide ranging genetic therapies and modifications the inhabitants of the Hymns of Ascent have diverged from baseline maekari and become their own distinct subspecies but continue to refer to themselves as maekari, even if the are more correctly referred to as Ascent Maekari or Vipran Maekari.

Their phenotype is very similar to baseline with extremely humanoid features, gender dimorphism, salmon pink skin, eyes that range from violet to pink, and anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight tentacles on their scalp where hair would be on a human. Men still have the chitinous layer of keratin that forms a pseudo-exoskeleton, beginning to grow when they hit puberty and fully grown by the time they are thirty, covering them from head to toe in organic plating and tough membranes. Women are largely similar as well, but their life cycles are dramatically changed.

Where they differ from their kin is in their internal workings.

One more step

Ascent Maekari are not bound to the same life stages are the original maekari and their lifespans are dramatically longer at roughly one hundred and seventy years for both sexes. A smaller change are new lavender smelling pheromones that exude from both sexes bodily fluids, giving them a permanently pleasant odour as their sweat carries the pheromones in small amounts, and endearing them to aliens as well as each other.

Most minorly the height difference between sexes became more distinct, with women average five and a half feet tall and men six feet tall and their body shape, while still being thin and slight, has more variety in bulkiness than the baseline. Men are the most unchanged with only a few changes and unexpected consequences of the genetic manipulation, that being that they are more pronounced in showing their age such that as they grow older their tentacles stiffen and curl up like nautilus shells tight against their skull.

As well they become thinner and their chitinous growths develop some further protrusions and crests. Their muscle tissue bonds close to the chitin to the point where it can serve as a secondary mechanical lever akin to a regular exoskeleton by the time they are fifty. This allows older Vipran maekari who appear as though they should be weaker to actually have significantly more leverage for their weight, allowing them to move much quicker and be more precise in their movements at the same time. On the other hand women are no longer divided into strict life cycles.

With the caretaker stage removed entirely and the Sister stage merged with the Adult, maekari girls become known as maidens once they reach eighteen years of age and they become functionally fertile after years of development throughout puberty. They stay in this stage for thirty to fifty years, slowly transitioning to the mistress stage. Additionally their tentacles continue to grow throughout life, eventually reaching the back of their knees. The most dramatic change, from the maekari perspective, is that when female Ascent Maekari sightjack they also experience the tactile, gustative, and olfactory sensations of the individual.

They still require physical contact, and they require practice to manage the overwhelming sensations without suffering overload. Men are the same, still able to sightjack anyone who has come into contact with a maekari in their close vicinity, but taking in other sensations along with sight and hearing. They also still suffer the degradation of their sense the more they use this ability, but it extends to all their sensations and not just their eyesight. Perhaps to combat this or maybe through the interactions of the genetic modifications the Ascent Maekari spontaneously developed significantly heightened tactile sensitivity, first apparent in men and then, very shortly after, the women.

Found by the Viprans amidst the wracked cities of their world inside warrens carved into the bedrock and lined with quivering flesh, they were reintroduced to the galaxy and left their barren homeworld behind for scavengers to pick through. Now migrants travelling within large living spacecraft organized into large fleets, Ekonites have also immigrated in large numbers to the Imperium and settled in cities throughout the Core and Fringe. Like their antecedents the Ekilionites the Ekonites have mutable physiology, but they differ in that the new species has conscious control over the changes that take place and can guide or even take direct command over their own physiology to the degree of changing themselves on fundamental levels.

The easiet way for an Ekonite to change itself is by copying, typically by ingesting organic material with genetic or other forms of intrinsic organic coding, allows an Ekonite to copy the form and composition of the entity it came from or incorporate elements of it into their being. However this is not necessary and an Ekonite can experiment upon itself to create new appearances, organs, and other personal changes independently. This process takes longer however, albeit practice can shorten the time required significantly.

The average Ekonite will take many weeks or months to shift their appearance independently, while a trained and skilled expert can alter their body in minutes. This skill with their own bodies extends outside of it however, and Ekonites possess and preternatural ability to weave flesh and bone. An Ekonite can gestate biological constructs bioconstructs and release them in juvenile form, allowing them to spawn numerous subservient organisms.

These young bioconstructs then develop rapidly and can themselves create further drones that culminate in vast organic architecture and massive creatures on the scale of starships. Ekonites dislike having to create the initial bioconstructs with their own bodies due to extreme pain and fatigue involved, but when wearing their biosuits, which are discussed below, they can have their suit carry out the process in their stead in a more efficient and painless manner.

Effectively, each Ekonite can replicate their favoured ecosystem over a long period of time. Physically the average Ekonite, if any can be considered that due to their mutable phenotype, is divided into two large categories: The Fleet Ekonites and the Imperial Ekonites. Fleet Ekonites are those born on the Ekonite migrant fleet or first-generation immigrants from it, and are short humanoids with inhumanly pale skin and wispy white hair.

Conversely Imperial Ekonites, who are native to the Imperium, are much taller and with heftier builds, skin colours ranging wildly from atoran blues and greens to human browns and even improbable scarlets and neon pinks. Imperial Ekonites also tend to lack hair and instead have head stalks much like the atoran they imitate. Due to their shifting and morphic physiology however they can take almost any form if given the time and organic energy required, no two Ekonites looking alike.

Another intrinsic part of Ekonites and their culture is the suit each owns. Each suit is a work of art created by the maker to suit their personality, Ekonites growing their suits over their skin in a long and slow process that result in them being perfectly acclimatized with their suit. Alive in their own right, suits have brain nodules interspersed throughout the suit but primarily behind the neck that allow the suit itself to better assist the wearer.

By linking with their suits, connecting their nervous system with them, Ekonites take full advantage of this and gain superior reflexes, senses, and other benefits. Theirs suits do have a common feature however, that being tendrils in one place, usually from the scalp, that allow them to further connect to bioconstructs or other Ekonite designed biology. Aside from this their suits may have built-in weapons systems, extra limbs, dispersed eyes, and other such design choices made during growth.

One of the many non-humanoid races of the Outer Fringe the gruukaphalak, called gruuk for short, are centipedal insects with full sapience and the ability to verbally communicate. Their bodies average four feet long, eight wide and three thick, with two thick antennas topping their rear end and a flat face on the front. Their face is utterly flat, with no discernable head, instead their segmented body terminates suddenly and a wide pink gummy mouth is visible surrounded by seventeen beady black eyes.

Their eyes do not blink, and eight inch long scything mandibles are hidden inside their mouth to snap out and yank food inside where an internal chewing mandible can grind it down. Gruuks hold themselves in a semi-upright position, their body in a trailing S shape, and can move surprisingly fast along any surface their legs and pinchers can find purchase. Gruuks do propagate by semi-typical means, breeding sexually, but do find no enjoyment in the act. The mother will take several months to recover, her exoskeleton taking time to recover, and she feeds her infants with regurgitated crop milk.

Gruuk are weaned by six months of age, and are adults at fifteen years of age. However gruuks are considered odd and off putting for other reasons, mostly their vocal control and their odd fixation upon humanoids. Gruuks have an amazingly well designed diaphragm and vocal cords, able to control their voice to perfectly imitate others or even the sounds of machinery and inanimate objects, gruuks often speaking with humanoid voices. This has a tendency to disturb the people they adore, the centipede-shaped species have a species wide adoration of the humanoid form.

They will watch humanoids sleep, collect their hair or trimmings, and otherwise surround themselves with relics and fetishes dedicated to their favourite humanoids, finding any excuse to physically interact with humanoids. Arriving from a region known as the Wastes, the Elysians are a race that underwent rapid and widespread mutation into their current state under the influence of the Coalescence. They are a confluence of the various Olacian elven races, Elysians have a life cycle that consists of biological castes and telepathic community within the communal mindscape of Elysium.

They live in a instinctually structured society headed by the Nomarch caste, with the remaining four filling out the bulk of their civilization. Blooded are the soldiers, guards, and civil protection while Wayfarers explore the stars as well as develop new theorems. Factotum are the bedrock of the Elysians, the labourers and workers who toil. The last caste are the Painted who hold the social order together by creating cultural works and relieving the stress of other Elysians. All Elysians are born casteless no matter their parents, small and sexless, weaned and raised by Factotums as they develop physically and travel Elysium in their dreamstate.

During their childhood they are hairless and chubby, their skin pallid and eyes with pale blue irises. When they hit puberty their bodies undergo a dramatic shift, gaining sexual characteristics and transforming into one of the five castes. Elysium, the communal dream and mindscape of the Elysians, is a telepathic realm shared by all Elysians. All Elysians aside from Nomarchs only visit Elysium in their sleep, the highest caste able to interact with Elysium and its inhabitants at all times.

Despite not being aware of it during their waking hours Elysians are always in contact with the dreamscape and can be influenced through it by the Nomarchs, indeed the Nomarchs maintain control of society through influencing the mindscape of other Elysians actively within Elysium. In addition to this they can cause psychosomatic effects in others through the dreamscape, causing them to heal quicker, helping them resolve personality issues, or even cause them to develop down different paths. Through this Nomarchs are able to heavily influence which caste a young Elysian will grow into and continue to affect their development throughout their lives.

Psionically potent and able to act within the dreamrealm of Elysium when fully awake and aware, they guide the lower castes through that communal mindscape and control the fate of the Elysian people. Their influence is not limited just to Elysians and through concentrated effort they can connect outsiders to Elysium, thereafter influencing them as they would an Elysian and even altering them physically.

Physically Nomarchs are tall and ivory skinned, the shortest seven feet in height, their long limbed and hairless bodies thin yet exuding a strange grace that the serene expression of their delicate if straight-featured faces compliment. They can be of either sex but are highly androgynous, although both sexes are infertile, and the only obvious difference aside from sexual organs is that women have larger eyes and shorter canines.

Perhaps as a means of survival they mimicked one of the varieties of infested that roamed the former Olacian worlds and took on characteristics of women turned to perpetually bleeding and feral cannibals. Mutualistic fungi, bacteria, and multicellular organisms riddle their tissues and aid in processing lactic acids and provide myriad other benefits.

Their physiology is highly robust as a result of this in combination with elastic tendons, carbon structures that permeate their skin and bones to make them intensely hard to cut or break, and internal membranes that disperse incoming energy to protect organs from concussive force. Their skin is raven black yet, during times of distress, they bleed through their pores and their bodies are coated in a protective layer of scarlet ooze as the specialized blood and plasma congeals into flexible organic body armour overtop already bullet resistant tissue.

Phenotypically they are stout and hardy, with a layer of bodyfat overtop lean if highly developed muscles that gives them a voluptuous form, and they have wild orange hair that often covers their long pointed ears, shrouds their yellow eyes, yet does nothing to veil rows of perpetually growing serrated teeth. Most noticeable is the fact that Wayfarers have two thumbs on each hand as well as on their feet, which are just as articulated as their hands.

Closer inspection reveals their orange and white splotched skin is covered in transparent downy hair that acts as cushioning and insulation in place of bodyfat.

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Eyes, with proportionately large pupils, dominate their faces above thin noses and small mouth while their enlarged skulls give them a huge amount of encephalization. It is because of all this that they are the most nimble of Elysians and can climb nearly anything and are expert spelunkers, translating well to movement in zero-gravity situations, as well as the most intelligent in regards to mathematics and logic. Within Elysian society Wayfarers are the scientists, academics, crew of starships, and the advisors to Nomarchs.

Their hair is either ashen or onyx, ears shorter than other Elysians but pointed nonetheless, and their eyes tend to be pale blue. Averaging six feet in height and with builds that support intense musculature Factotums have many of the same mutualistic flora as Blooded and can work continuously under hard labour conditions without tiring. Disproportionately the Factotum caste are men, with three fifths of the Factotum population male, and are employed as manual labour.

Women often have domestic duties as well as secretarial work, alongside wetnursing and raising Elysian young in creches, but a good half of Factotum women also work in manual labour fields. Although they tend to work menial or tedious jobs, Factotums are not without intelligence or ambition as they match human intellect and will often compete for superior jobs, the attention of other caste members, and better social standing. These typically gorgeous Elysians range in height from five to seven feet tall for both genders and often have athletic or statuesque figures that are accented by flamboyant and bright skin colours that can be, but are not limited to, azure, forest green, amaranth, gold, and even iridescent purple in solids or patterned combinations.

Their hair, shining and luxurious, is similarly colourful and always contrasts with their skin. Similarly their eye colour varies widely and they have large irises to show them off. Like all other Elysians they have pointed ears, although theirs are the longest. They differ in that their skin and other tissues are far more elastic and do not tear easily, they have pubic hair and the men have facial hair that develops during puberty, and their pointed tongues can stretch up to a foot from their lips.

Additionally they are the most fertile of the castes and the progenitor of most. Mentally the Painted are highly imaginative, almost all being eccentric, and take up several artistic pursuits or devote themselves to mastering a particular art form. Anthropomorphic felines, the Vestris are a predatory and powerful species that blend humanoid and feline characteristics. Excepting certain subspecies they stand an average of seven to eight feet tall upon their digitigrade legs and weighing around three hundred pounds, predisposed towards athleticism and both genders naturally well endowed as though designed by a mind with an eye towards the lascivious.

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Their faces are instantly recognizable as feline, with a whiskered muzzle and eyebrows, conical ears atop their head, and slit-pupiled eyes that are bright yellow, blue or green. Their fingers have retractable curved claws intended to rend, claws on their four-toed feet blunt raking instruments. A thick coat of fur covers their body from head to toe yet they also have full heads of hair that grow quickly, with their hair colour often black and blonde.

Vestris fur patterns are highly varied and emulate most all found in Felidae species with subspecies showing preference towards specific patterns, although jet black and the various tabbies are the most common. The species also has a long tail that is an extension of their spine, the appendage moving in manners that match their state of mind.

Additionally all vestris are capable of purring as well as roaring. Like typical felines, vestris have forward facing binocular vision, with no sclera readily showing in their large eyes. They have a tapetum lucidum that gives their eyes a characteristic shine, reflecting light back into their eye and giving them exceptional vision in dark and lowlight conditions, although this does give them a slightly reduced visual acuity compared against species that lack the organ. In addition to this their eyes have slit pupils to enhance their lowlight vision further, allow them to quickly adjust to changes in brightness, and give them superior depth of field in their vision while they are in bright conditions.

Vestris eyes have additional eyelids, nictitating membranes that block out additional light when they sleep and provide protection if something is coming towards their face, and they can go great lengths without blinking while also having tear ducts that can water irritants from their eyes. With large conical ears that can effectively catch sound and rotate independently vestris have an immediate advantage in hearing that is only enhanced by sensitive eardrums that can hear higher pitched sounds with ease.

With their large ears and independent rotation they can pick out the source of any sound within several yards to within three inches of its source. Their ear sensitivity allows vestris to hear over one and a half octaves above the range of human hearing, meaning they pick out noises that would be biologically ignored by a slew of other species. However this also means that they are susceptible to specialized noisemakers and suffer additional ear trauma around excessively loud noises.

In addition to this vestris also have a vomeronasal organ that is used to detect pheromones in greater detail than their regular sense of smell can. By wrinkling their muzzle so their upper lip pulls up and dropping their chin slightly, leaving their mouth agape, and hanging their tongue out a small ways a vestris opens the pathways to their vomeronasal organ and when they inhale through their mouth the air flows to and past it. To that end vestris have exocrine glands that release three distinct batches of pheromones and have divergent scents that can be smelled without pheromone detection.

They are located in three areas with slight variance dependent on their sex: Their eyebrows hold territory glands that they use to define their property and when expressed carries the unmistakable smell of fresh orange peel; The friendship glands in the corners of their lips give off calming pheromones that show familiarity and closeness and have a very light lavender odour; And the last are the sex glands located just below the vulva in the case of females and above the phallus in men, carrying a rosy scent.

These glands tell those that can pick upon them the social, health, and sexual information of the vestris as well as who they are in relations with by who carries pheromones from other vestris. Unable to taste sugars as effectively as other species, vestris have a palate preference for meat. They can still detect and taste sugars but they do not have particularly large tastebud regions for them and instead treat sugars like a spice while the majority of their tastebuds are honed towards other taste.

As such they can pick out nuances in the flavours of meats, oils, and fatty acids. Dairy products such as eggs and milk products are equally tasteful to them while fruits and vegetables are less so. Other foods and ingestibles vary, with alcohol being disfavoured while certain smoked consumables are broadly enjoyed.

Drugs affect them as might be expected, although certain artificial products have limited to no effect, and plants from the nepeta genus are a recreational substance that either make vestris dozy and happy or excited and manic depending on their predisposition. Vestris have a superior sense of touch in their hands, feet, lips, and erogenous zones but have exceptional tactile sensation through their vibrissae, whiskers.

The whiskers on their muzzle and eyebrows are deep and tough, each whisker as thick as three to five fur strands and set deeper in their tissue than any other hair follicle. Through their whiskers they can detect their environment even when all their other senses are incapable, able to independently develop mental images of what their whiskers are touching. In the air their whiskers can pick up subtle changes in wind direction and speed as well as density, they can feel air displacement when objects move near them and tell the general size and velocity of the object if it is within three meters of their face and clarity dropping off rapidly with distance.

With large canines and carnassial molars the teeth of vestris are oriented towards meat eating and shearing through tissue. Their upper canines are large and curved so that when they bite they hook in and make escape closer to impossible than unlikely, stabbing like daggers before the curve makes any attempt to escape rend flesh in large gashes. When they chew their carnassial molar, which naturally sharpen, cut through tissue like rows of knives and can fillet meat down into palatable slices and chunks rapidly.

Small incisors are between their canines on the top and bottom and assist in chewing what plant matter they eat as well as holding bones while they grind flesh off with their molars. Their throat and gastro-intestinal lining is hardy, with potent acids that break down bone so that even fishbones are not a hazard, and should something become stuck in their throat they can consciously reverse the flow of the muscle action in their throat to regurgitate the obstruction without vomiting.

Altogether their dental structure is geared towards a carnivorous diet. However, vestris are not obligate carnivores. They are instead facultative and regularly ingest plant matter to supplement their diet. A vestris cannot survive without meat despite this and require at least a pound of high-protein tissue or substitute once a week in order to maintain their bodyweight and produce specialized proteins of their own. Eggs and certain milks can provide for this needs but need to be eaten in larger amounts and even then are not as healthy.

Vestris that can eat meat regularly are the most healthy, and if they go longer than a week without meat or a viable alternative they will begin to suffer kidney damage that, if left for longer than a few days, can lead to permanent damage and eventually death. Although they have a monthly estrus cycle and can become pregnant during estrus, during the summer season the estrus period of their cycle is extended and they enter their heat.

During this time they become significantly more active and socially manic, easily aroused, and the sex gland produces markedly more pheromones that have excessive potency and can act as an instant aphrodisiac. Other vestris around a female in heat that jacobson can become immediately aroused as their bodies react to the sex pheromones, females reacting similarly to men and becoming dramatically more sexually active if exposed to the pheromones of e vestris in heat.

Vestris that exhibit superfecundity during their heat, able to carry children from more than one father simultaneously. A pregnant vestris shows physically after five weeks, although anyone that can detect their pheromones can pick up on the change in their health and the presence of hormones changes after two weeks. Gestation lasts thirty nine to forty weeks over the course of which the woman undergoes physiological changes, most readily visible, and has hormone changes that prepare her for childrearing.

Lactation begins prior to birth and carries on for months thereafter, only ceasing once the child or children have been weaned. Vestris generally give birth to a single cub unless they were impregnated during heat in which case they will typically carry a litter of three to six cubs. Cubs are far more often female than male, with a four to one ratio on average. Their long shadows stretched across the dimly lit tavern. Their green-sleeved shirts and thick leather coats of armor branded them as Brigandines—the royal guards of Keeptown and elite warriors of Veredon.

The tavern's rowdy patrons drew quiet and still from the sudden appearance of the king's officials—officials who obviously took great pleasure in flaunting their positions of power.

Favori

Thieves, merchants, and adventuring warriors for hire came from all over the realm to spend their pieces at the bar or by the fire to share stories, trade secrets, and seek work. Leuco sat in the corner of the tavern at a dark, wooden table with an old bearded merchant. Leuco took his eyes off the numbers to suspiciously examine his business partner. No one's ever asked that. But you are absolutely right: The ebook is available at amazon for 99 cents.

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