Knlongads

Planet Ortoba Boboba is home to the species known as Knlongads. They are a humanoid species with purple skin, yellow eyes, bald heads, and facial hair. They are also an extremely heavy species, though they look thin by human standards, they are so dense that they would be completely impervious to Earth weapons like swords, arrows, and even small caliber gunshots.

During the war that once ravaged the universe, Ortoba Boboba was captured by the Flartians and, while a resistance there struggled for freedom, the many Knlongads who were off-world joined the Space Army to fight against the occupiers. Since the end of the War, Knlongads have been working to rebuild their damaged homeworld while their government makes secret plans to attack what remains of the Flartians, even if it means ruining the tentative peace that has grown.

The Space Army’s Ergad Derfochich is a Knlongad. A particularly dumb one.

Jank Dooper is a pan-galactic celebrity, an artist and performer of great renown among many species. In the time since the war she has made a name for herself by producing works that highlight the terrors of warfare and the toll it takes on innocents, her ultimate artistic statement being that Peace Is Better. It may not seem profound, but it has grown popular in galaxies that had been so devastated.

Wibbo Bikko is a gruff and angry sort. It takes a long time for him to warm up to anyone and consider them a friend. During the war, Wibbo was not willing to join the resistance, because he didn’t know them and he figured they were probably all idiots, but he was also unwilling to settle down and obey the Flartian oppressors. Acting entirely on his own, Wibbo built a shack in the wilderness and lived there. Any time the Flartians tried to approach him, he met them with deadly force. Eventually they learned to let him alone, since it wasn’t worth the effort to conquer that one guy. Eventually the Flartians were repelled, but as far as Wibbo is concerned, he was the only Knlongad not to have been a loser in that war.

During the war, Nilly Weerovva was a resistance fighter on the homeworld. During an attempted bombing of a supply depot, she was caught in a blast and lost her arm. Her colleagues smuggled her off the planet to receive medical assistance she would not be able to get there. Taken to the planet Rustagale, the cyberdoctors there crafted a powerful replacement arm for Nilly, one that gives her strength beyond the norm for her species. By the time she’d recovered from the surgery and learned to use the new appendage, however, the war was over. Nilly returned home feeling that she had not done everything she could to help. While she is not aware of the government’s desire to strike back at the Flartians, she is part of a grassroots movement that desires the same thing: revenge.

A Fact About Knlongads: Knlongads sleep in a bath of mud that they prepare for that purpose every day.

Universe: Bronze

Tallians

Tallians come from a world they call Tallius, which is a moon orbiting a rogue planet, a gas giant they know as Tallanar. They are humanoid in shape, though they have wings on their backs which can not be used for flight. Tallians communicate by vibrating their wings and cannot speak without the aid of artificial voiceboxes, though those few living off-world often do have such technology implanted regularly. Such speakers will often keep their wings bound under clothes to help keep them from unconsciously beating their wings while they talk.

Agnes, the doctor about the Space Army’s Stinky Saucer, is a Tallian, but not very many Tallians have gone on to join the Space Army. Even during the height of the war with the Flartians, the Tallians preferred to keep to themselves and wait to see how things resolved.

Gutsum works at one of the Tallius’s geothermal power plants, harnessing volcanic heat to power the world’s electrical grids. Occupations for Tallians are trained for from birth, individuals are not given much choice in what they want to do with their lives, but because occupations only take up a small portion of their time, few are unhappy with what they have to do. Gutsum spends her considerable free time meditating in the thermal spas near the power plant.

With no star of their own, the Tallians have never had much chance to study stars up close. Greep studies stars, an occupation which many see as not very useful or applicable to Tallian society. Most of Greep’s work has to be done at a distance, often studying information purchased from other species, but every now and then, Greep gets to actually board a spaceship and visit some planet or space station where stars are more easily witnessed. Greep treats these occasional trips as the highlight of her life, but always returns home, because too much time spent among the stars is kind of creepy.

Reeprog is an employee of the Tallian government, working at the buildings used to house diplomats from alien species when they came to visit the world. While Reeprog tries to be nice to visitors, she does find them obnoxious with their harsh languages and lack of knowledge of Tallian customs. Reeprog deals with them by making snide sarcastic remarks. Perhaps the best thing about cross cultural interactions is how little people are on guard for sarcasm.

A Fact About Tallians: For Tallians, eyesight is not the most developed sense, they rely more on their hearing and touch. Tallian music is designed to send vibrations through the listeners and trigger physical reactions. In listeners of other species, this can cause effects such as making them drowsy or even causing them to vomit.

Universe: Bronze

It occurs to me that, as far as my website knows, I never got better from my illness. Well, I am here to say that on June 15th I was told that I appeared to be healthy and had the PICC Line removed from my arm. In the almost-a-month since then, I have been trying to regain the strength that I lost during my downtime, and I have been working a lot to make up for the time I had not been working.

At the start of 2017 I made a list of things I planned to get done this year. We’ve recently passed the halfway point, and I do think I am more than halfway through the list even with the time my illness lost me. The only problem is that I did all the easiest stuff on the list, and now I have to focus on the harder stuff. And, of course, life is a constant parade of things that want me to not be doing what I want to do. More than anything, what I need is time to work on my things, but something always comes up to chisel away at that time.

Naturally, the first and hardest thing on the list is to finish SecGov. I fully intend to finish it this year, but there is so much drawing left to do, and that is the part of the process that I least enjoy. I said, going into this last story, that I didn’t want to cut anything because I didn’t feel up to drawing it. That woulda been nice, but it is an unrealistic goal. If I want to finish the story at all, I’m going to have to dial back from my plans. Ah well.

In any case, time permitting, I will continue busting through my goals and the fact I was sick for three months won’t end up mattering. Time permitting.