The Residents of the Siich

On a planet called Siich, there is a species of small flying creatures that refer to themselves, in their language, as “The Residents of Siich”. They are not particularly inventive at naming things (Siich is essentially their word for “the World”). They are born in clumps of eggs belonging to a community, with no attention paid to parentage, and each individual is assigned a task at birth and named for it. This task is all they are trained for, and all they care about.

All three of today’s examples come from the same community on Siich, but there is not a drastic amount of difference between this community and others.

The Alarmer is a young Resident. It’s job is to patrol the community’s territory and, if anything is amiss, to raise the alarm about it. Appropriate for that task, the Alarmer is a workaholic who forgoes its own well-being in the name of better serving the community. For the moment, this is fine, as the Alarmer is full of youthful energy, but what will happen when it ages and grows weaker and cannot continue to push its body to the limits?

The Robber is the community’s professional thief. It go into other territory owned by other communities and steals their resources, be it food or livestock or materials. The Robber is not stealthy, though, or it would be the Burglar. The Robber will confront and threaten its targets unless it gets what it wants. With no reason to question the ethics of what it does, the Robber goes about the work with glee.

The Interpreter is a representative of the more peaceful contact between communities. Learning the languages of other communities, the Interpreter translates messages received and to be sent in the interests of trade or diplomacy. As a result of this job, the Interpreter is more understanding of other cultures than most Residents. The Interpreters in most communities are often the Residents that are most desirous of creating a lasting peace on the planet.

A Fact About The Residents of the Siith: The Residents can not take off from a standing position and need to climb to a branch or a cliff and jump off to begin flying.

Universe: Silver

Horhutans

Planet Horhut is, to put it mildly, not a great place. It is ruled by a dense bureaucracy that has no concern for the ecological well-being of the planet’s biosphere. The pollution is terrible and life for the lower tiers of the societal hierarchy is a maddening trial.

Rather than slithering like a snake, Horhutans move by flexing their scales in a wave pattern that conveys them along. When not moving, they position themselves in an upright manner that lets them stand about as tall as humans. They have a large sense organ on the top of their heads, which is based on seeing magnetic waves. They have two arms that have claws that they can lock onto whatever they are holding.

Little Choy once insulted a Horhutan.

Naynik is a Horhutans of a reasonably high social tier, not super rich, but also not forced to dwell in squalor the way most of the populace is. Still, it isn’t a great life. There are so many rules that one must follow or lose face that Naynik is constantly stressed out and worried about making a misstep.

Veadivo is employed at an information office, inputting data incessantly into the government’s databases. As is desired by the government, this job has destroyed any traces of interesting personality in Veadivo and co-workers.

Irxadan dreams of a better world. Why must we toil endlessly in meaningless tasks? As far as Irxadan can tell, the only reason it is done is to tire the Horhutans and prevent them from meaningful tasks. Irxadan would love for this to change, but can’t think of any way to change it, and anyway, is too busy working in a factory that makes whips that rich Horhutans can use to hurt poor ones.

A Fact About Horhutans: There was a time when Horhutans created space probes with the intention to explore their galaxy. After doing that for a while, they got bored of it. The government did not find anything interesting quickly enough to justify spending resources, so they not only cancelled the program but went so far as to remove evidence that it had ever existed, because they didn’t want to admit that they’d made a mistake. The probes they made were actually very well designed, however, and may still be out there collecting information that nobody on Horhut is going to gather.

Universe: Blue