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.

Just like last July, I am going to spend this month fleshing out the species of the cast of my Space Army comics.

Fundroons

The Fundroons are a species of shapeshifters capable of fully controlling their bodies and taking on any appearance they desire. When they made first contact with the rest of the universe’s species, the other species were very nervous about the Fundroons. Their paranoia led them to try wiping the species out. The Fundroons had no problem defending themselves and the other species just had to accept that these shapeshifters would have to be tolerated. The naming conventions of the Fundroons have never been explained to any other species, but the translations of their names are always abridged to two letters for some reason.

The Space Army’s C.W. is a Fundroon.

M.M. is pictured here in the default shape of a Fundroon, which is appropriate since M.M. has not left the Fundroon homeworld. With no reason to try to blend in with other species, there’s no reason to pretend to look like anything else. On the homeworld, one doesn’t shapeshift to pretend to be anything else, one shapeshifts to hunt prey. M.M. is extremely good at hunting prey, preferring techniques like flying in then taking a spear shape to pierce a target.

There is a disease that can affect Fundroons that causes their body to forget the default shape they are supposed to revert to when not shapeshifting. In the case D.F., his body got confused while he was in the shape of a chair, so now D.F. looks like a chair when not focusing on being something else. He isn’t immobile or anything, he can still walk around as a chair, but it does make him very self-conscious about his appearance.

T.F. is a Fundroon living abroad. There is always work for a shapeshifter, and a lot of that work is not exactly savory. T.F. has been hired by all sorts of criminal elements to do things like robberies, fraud, and all sorts of other illicit acts. Basically, T.F. is exactly the kind of shapeshifter that gives shapeshifters a bad name. But he’s making money, which is all he cares about.

A Fact About Fundroons: When off-world wandering among non-shapeshifting races, Fundroons tend to keep their eyestalks visible as a kindness to other species, so that they know they are dealing with a Fundroon (obviously this does not apply when a Fundroon is trying to trick the others). It also makes things easier for the Fundroon if they don’t have to focus on maintaining a non-default shape as a face.

Universe: Bronze