The Hivrhin Ones

These people, from the planet Hivrhin, call themselves, in their language, the Ones. This is a reference to the fact that, though they now enjoy a strong sense of individuality, the species evolved from animals with insect-like hive mentality. Though they treasure their sense of self now, they still strongly believe in working together as a unit for a better society. That’s more than some other species can say.

That does not mean that there is total peace on Hivrhin by any means. While any individual “city” (their word for it is close to colony) is likely to be a very pleasant place, there are still conflicts and even wars between different cities.

Dr. Vedzax is one of the Hivrhin Ones.

Living in the Northernmost City, Wilgon is a member of the worker caste (though that is now a conscious choice, rather than a biological imperative) and she works at the planet’s largest spaceport. The species has been reaching into the stars for several generations now, and made contact with other worlds. It is rare for other species to visit the world. If they do, however, this likely the city they are going to see. As such, Wilgon has gotten a taste for other worlds and longs to one day get a job working on another planet.

Xarla is a worker for another city. She maintains the Queenhouses, which, as one may expect, house the city’s queens and their young. That particular city is at war with a neighboring one, and attacks on the Queenhouses are depressingly common, so Xarla has had to do a fair bit of fighting in between repair jobs. She has grown quite despondent and questions the meaning of what seems a futile life. Thanks to this, she is susceptible to a cult that has been growing in that city, trying to convince the people to begin a campaign to wipe out the rest of the cities and become the only lineage of the Ones. While Xarla is not yet fully on board with it, she enjoys the meetings with others who similarly feel that the world is not as it should be and that this could be a solution.

And Eughlunk is from another city, one which is located on an equatorial island. People there are known for farming, using small animals and harvesting a sugary dew from them. The city has grown rich by selling this dew to the rest of the world, and Eughlunk works as an educator for the city, showing the younger generations how to do the business. On Hivrhin, educators are actually well rewarded for their work, so Eughlunk lives a life of great luxury. There is even a good chance he will one day get to provide his genetic material to the queens to create a new generation.

A Fact About the Hivrhin Ones: The Ones do not have any popular form of fictional stories. It’s not that they can’t fathom it, they can understand why it might appeal to other races, and they can lie when they want to, but the idea of creating stories about events that don’t exist has never caught on among them.

Universe: White

Floatrians

Note that members of this species does not call themselves “Floatrians” as they do not have a name for their kind. They have not yet fathomed the idea that there are other worlds with people they would have to differentiate themselves from. They have evolved in an upper stratosphere of a gas giant planet. They are hermaphroditic leathery-skinned sacs filled with gasses that allow them to float. The heaviest part of a Floatrian is the “plate” above their three eyes. Floatrians can control bloodflow into this plate, and in doing so make patterns in the heat there. With vision going into the infrared spectrum, the Floatrians can see the patterns in each other’s plates and this is how they communicate (vocal communication would be quite difficult in the winds of their world). While they can project gas from an orifice on their back to facilitate movement, Floatrians also have fins that allow them to control their gliding and that suffices most of the time. While they can control the four “prongs” of their fins just enough to delicately grasp very small, light objects, they lack the finesse to really work with them and, as such, have created very little in the way of technology.

The primary diet of the Floatrians is made up of small creatures that, if they can be compared to Earth’s creatures, resemble a mix between plants and insects. Mostly, this means that the Floatrians are nomadic, following the insect swarms around as they seek out sunlight for photosynthesis. Neoss is a swarm claimer. It’s job is to stay as close to a swarm as possible, so that Neoss’s tribe may rightfully eat from it, while other tribes know to go find some other food source.

Boid, meanwhile, is a tribeless Floatrian. Having never formed the close connections to other individuals that would allow it a place in a tribe, Boid now travels far and wide with a valuable resource: information. Boid learns whatever bit of fact someone may find valuable (weather reports, news of tribes going to war, etc.) and, when coming across a tribe, will offer that information up for the right to feed at their swarm for a time before moving on.

But Vite is less kind. Leader of a tribe that doesn’t have a swarm of their own, Vite seeks out swarm claimers from weaker tribes and moves in to steal meals. With violence if necessary.

A Fact About Floatrians: When they are young and small, the Floatrians float quite high in the skies. As they grow older and larger, they can’t quite achieve the same heights (and don’t really want to). And as they get very old and weak, they tend to stay even lower, until they eventually die and fall finally into the winds and are carried away. It is perhaps for this reason that they, as a culture, tend to associate the direction of “down” with higher ages and higher numbers in general. To them, the number 100 is a “lower” number than 10, even though it is still a “larger” number. Also, they use base-4, but that’s beside the point.

Universe: Blue

A couple months ago, I crushed my finger in a door and, as a result, I have had a fingernail blacked with blood for several months. Well today it grew out enough that I could tell what was happening: the new healthy nail was growing under the damaged nail. Well, that was only gonna get worse, so I had to devote an hour or so removing the fingernail. Look, these last couple weeks have been such that removing my own fingernail is not the worst time I’ve had. Anyway, with that done, my left middle finger is now without a nail for me to clip. You know what that means! Except nobody knows what that means.

Long ago in that most apocalyptic of years, 2012, I realized that, having once lost a fingernail and waited for it to grow back, I knew which finger had the nail I had clipped the least. There was one thing I could be certain about. But then, just to throw my life into chaos, I lost another fingernail! So now, with the third such occurrence, I am even more at a loss. (Note that the previous lost nails were almost instantaneously lost in machinery, this is the only one I’ve had to methodically remove of my own accord).

So now I just don’t have the scientific data to know which nails I’ve clipped in what kind of order. My whole operation is a shambles. At this point, my best bet will probably be to wait until I’ve lost six more fingernails, and then I’ll be able to tell which I’ve clipped the most. Then I’ll have closure.

Haiku!

It’s Golden Fog time!
Yep, it is that time again.
It sure is that time.

Apart from that, not much to report. Go back about your business. Let me alone. I have no more anecdotes as exciting as that right now.