Clobgins

The Clobgins are a four-armed bipedal species that has a singular large eye on their head and a thick tail. They stand only two feet tall, but their technology is so advanced that they would appear to us to be magical little beings. They’ve tapped into forces of the universe we can’t understand, so we can safely call them a race of alien wizards.

The Clobgin homeworld, Clobb, has been heavily modified since the forest world where they first evolved. Using their magic powers, the Clobgins have transformed it into a multitude of mystical domains, separated by bubble-like domes, that each have their own internal physics. From space, Clobb doesn’t even look like a planet anymore, it looks like a collection of multicolored soap bubbled floating through space where a planet once was.

Collesho is a wizard who lives in a domain that preserves the forest style of the world’s original form. The denizens of that particular sphere are the traditionalists of the Clobgins, the ones who protect the “old ways”. The rest of the domes are fine with that. They don’t care about the old ways, so let the forest wizards protect them if they want it so bad. Collesho lives in the old ways, tending an orchard that produces fruits that are perfect for potions and elixirs and unguents and all that.

Vydarn is a gruff miner in an underground domain. When the planet was normal, this domain would have been uninhabitable, the pressure and heat being too much for life. But now, the Clobgins can walk around in tunnels that run next to streams of magma with ease. Vydarn is mining for gold, which is great for making magical talismans.

Marmoi lives in a sky domain full of floating islands and airships. Marmoi is an adventurer who seeks opportunity wherever it arises. A lot of the time, this means that doing crimes, though. A particularly common “adventure” is gliding onto some island and looting their goods. Fun and profitable, but not particularly respectable.

A Fact About Clobgins: In most of the various domains of Clobb blood sacrifice is a very common procedure. In domains that can’t convince the population that being sacrificed is an honor, it is often a punishment for criminals or prisoners of war.

Universe: Brown

Fuzzadons

A furry, quadripedal species without the ability to see, the Fuzzadons have no eyes. Their sense of hearing is also considerably weak compared to human standards, but the large nostril slits on their head give them very good senses of smell. Their homeworld is a small one, orbiting an old red star.

Nestwa, like most of his kind, lives in a pack made up of close friends and cousins. Though there is no “leader” of most packs, there is almost inevitably a Favorite, one who is most loved by the rest and who the others are most likely to listen to. Nestwa is the Favorite of his pack, so it is because of his own restless nature that his pack has a tendency toward wandering the lands without a plan for settling down. Luckily, Fuzzadons are not very territorial, so they don’t end up in fights with anyone, but there is a lot of danger in not knowing what kind of landscape they might be in on any given day.

Keddul is a rare Fuzzadon without a pack. She is also a wanderer, but instead must take shelter with the local packs wherever she ends up. This is a viable lifestyle for her because of her species’s altruistic customs regarding taking in guests, and Keddul repays the kindness by offering her skills as a repair carpenter (Fuzzadon structures are all built from woodlike materials that must be regularly repaired given the planet’s frequent windstorms). Though Keddul can enjoy the many packs she encounters for a time, she is most happy when she is on her own, between jobs, camping out in the wilderness.

Keever is a much more “settled-down” sort. Living with a sizeable pack in a valley full of dozens of similarly-sized packs, Keever is the Fuzzadon equivalent of a city-dweller. Although Fuzzadon’s are generally nice, skittish beings, when they live in such close quarters, tempers can flare. As a fast and agile specimen, Keever is considered the default “Calmer”, whose job it is to separate Fuzzadons who have gotten into a fight and keep them separate until they have cooled down.

A Fact About Fuzzadons: The Fuzzadon language is a completely physical one made up of rubs and taps, which means that it must be done up close and personal and, very often, one at a time. Scent marking can be useful for spreading a message quickly, but complex conversation is a very intimate experience between two Fuzzadons.

Universe: Red

Jawmeodds

The Jawmeodds are a four-legged species who have two arms growing out of what we might call their head. They have a large mouth on their forehead with a frog-like projectile tongues. Though they live underwater, the Jawmeodds are actually unable to swim, instead walking on the floors of their world’s oceans and lakes. Jawmeodd culture is currently very fragmented, with thousands of individual nations spread over the planet (which, in their most prevalent language, is called “Desthup” which is their word for “All Waters”), and there is political turmoil and war, all the things you’d expect. Most of these nations are made up of theocracies who worship the souls of the founders of the nation who they believe have ascended to godhood (often, the supposed founders are purely fictional anyway, the real founders having been long forgotten).

Mativox is a denizen of the shallowest nation on the planet, Etekko. There are parts of Etekko where one could wander so close to the shore that one can stick their hands above the surface (though this is risky, as there are predators up there). Mativox is the Jawmeodd equivalent of a fisherman, except Jawmeodds have traps that float to the surface and attract animals there, which are then caught and dragged below to drown. This occupation exists in all the nations on the planet, but most of those are further from the shore, so they can only trap the planet’s numerous flying surface animals. Etekko’s, and especially Mativox’s, specialty is rare land-dwelling delicacies that are the exported across the planet bringing much esteem to the nation.

Frandox is a mime. They have mimes on Desthup.

Pryzzz is an ice manufacturer. The temperature on the planet never gets below freezing (except on mountaintops that have never been seen my Jawmeodds), so the discovery of ice was fairly recent and, as of this point, can only be achieved in technologically advanced nations, and even there, ice manufacturers are seen as the height of intellectual types (the way people might talk about “rocket scientists” on Earth).

A Fact About Jawmeodds: There is a form of art on Desthup that involves creating a box, the inside of which is covered with interesting textures. The viewer will go inside the box, unable to see or hear outside, and feel the textures.

Universe: Indigo

Strondovarians

The Strondovarians are an intelligent people. Their planet, Gurx, is not terribly large and it had quite limited resources, which meant that the Strovdinians had to learn quickly to work together. Their culture came to value intellect and cleverness because those were the traits that ensured their survival. But for all their focus on brains, they are not weak by human standards. The average adult Strondovarian stands over two metres tall and their four powerful arms are strong at both pinching and punching.

Gloueb is an astronaut. With the resources of Gurx running out, the Strondovarians were quick to seek out other worlds that could be useful, and they found them. They now have a vast space network of spacecraft that are gathering resources to build a New Gurx, a giant artificially-created world that will be more appropriate for their race. Astronauts like Gloueb have, for generations, been collecting asteroids, comets, and materials from other planets and gathering them together in orbit around the chosen star where construction on the superstructure has begun.

Evpel is a contributor to the Knowledge Base Of The Strondovarians, the massive digital collection of all information deemed important to the species. For whatever reasons, the Knowledge Base is not a complete repository of information, but just that they deem “Noteworthy”. It is part of Evpel’s job to determine what is Noteworthy and, unfortunately for Evpel, there are Strondovarians who want little more than to be remembered throughout history by getting declared Noteworthy. These attention seekers don’t care what they get famous for, as long as they are famous, so they will try to become famous for all sorts of criminal acts. On one occasion Evpel was even kidnapped by someone trying to prove their importance. After Evpel’s was rescued, all information that could even suggest the kidnapper existed was stricken from the Knowledge Base, from making sure the crime was not mentioned, all the way to reducing the stated population for Gurx by one.

And Bukkel is devoted to the study of the mind and unleashing any and all mental powers that could be possible. A lot of Strondovarians consider the ultimate goal of life to be the transcending of physical form to become beings of purely mental energy. That may still be a long way off, but Bukkel is hoping to make strides toward turning that into a reality. A lot of the research involves actually performing operations on living subjects, either volunteers, infants bred for the purpose, or unwilling subjects sentenced to this as punishment. Bukkel also makes puzzles for fun.

A Fact About Strondovarians: The design of Strondovarian knees (which they have several of in each leg) is such that they move almost every which way. This makes it very hard for a Strondovarian to be knocked off balance, but they can’t run particularly fast because of how complicated it gets.

Universe: Blue

Srimuns

Srimuns are native to the planet Throil orbiting a red star called Sudge. Their bodies are probably best described as being T-shaped snakes. On their head they have a sort of beard, which conceals small pincers they can use to hold things (though coiling tails around things is also used for less delicate work). Srimuns have two eyes, which are on retractable stalks, as well as two mouths, one for breathing and speaking and another for eating.

Over the course of nine-thousand years the Srimuns rose from simple hunters to develop cities and spread to all the other habitable valleys on their world. They developed submarines to travel their depths and computers to store their information and communicate. Wars were fought and, though they never split the atom, they developed many powerful weapons. Srimun society rose to some pretty nice heights, but then went into a decline. Srimuns had become too dependent on their technology. They no longer farmed, hunted or built things on their own. Cities were falling into disrepair and young Srimuns were not being trained in the necessary skills to maintain the technology. It was at this point that the Ugder first arrived on the planet. Had they arrived only a few generations later, they may have found only the remains of the Srimun.

First contact with the Ugder went extremely well, the language barrier being the biggest challenge. Embo Bount was one of the first Srimuns to meet the Ugder, the closest thing to an linguist on the planet in their days of decline. For whatever cultural reason, Embo and the others had no innate fear of the alien outsiders, so the efforts to learn to communicate with these strange beings went very calmly in face to face meetings. In time, the Srimuns learned to approximate Ugder speech (though the Ugder are unable to reproduce the sounds of Srimun languages) and the two species have been at peace ever since. Embo has gone on to visit the Ugder homeworld as an ambassador on many occasions.

With the arrival of the Ugder, knowledge in things like science and technology came back into vogue on Throil. Tuss Kubba, once a youngster who was content to wile away the days playing games, has now become devoted to researching the old sciences to learn the ways of the high-tech ancestors.

After being taught the ways of space travel by the Ugder, the Srimuns colonized the planet Nush, which is another world in their system. Bebb Lemb is one of the colonists there. Because Nush is much further from the sun than their homeworld, the Nush Srimuns live in heated and artificially illuminated tunnels below the surface. Bebb runs the colony’s machinery for converting surface ice into potable water.

A Fact About Srimuns: Srimans have domesticated a species of animal that somewhat resembles a flightless bird. These creatures are used both as pets, and also as steeds, which the Srimuns ride by coiling themselves around the beast’s torso.

Universe: Narsidon