The Multitude of Blong

The species that calls itself the Multitude of Blong believe very strongly in the concept of fiction. Their system of belief states that all stories made up occupy a mythical realm called the “Ocean of Ideas” which, when full, spills into reality and all the stories come true. They posit that at the start of the universe there was only the “First Storyteller”, a lonely mind that told itself stories to keep occupied, until all those came true. The characters from within those stories then went on to tell more stories. And the cycle continued, on and on like that, until the present day.

Nine Fire is a member of the Blongian equivalent of the police, but a division we don’t have on Earth. Nine Fire’s job is to investigate storytellers who have told stories that contradict other stories. Since they believe that all stories will come true, any contradiction could be ruinous to the fabric of reality itself. Nine Fire’s specialty is examining stories being told on the streets for recurring elements that might be useful in tracking down the original storyteller.

Seventy Throng is very unhappy. Seventy Throng has been told, as every Blongian has, that their life is a story that someone told in the previous cycle now come to be real. Well, Seventy Throng thinks that the person who told that story was an idiot. Seventy Throng’s life has been a total mess. There’s been plenty of suffering, but not an excessive amount. That would have at least make it clear that it was a tragedy. Instead, Seventy Throng’s life has been confusing and utterly mundane, full of events that don’t seem to come from anywhere or lead to anything, and individuals who never seem to stick around long enough to serve any narrative purpose. Long stretches of boring peppered with hasty nonsense. If this life was a story ever told by anyone, what was the point? What could possibly be interesting about any of this? Seventy Throng would like nothing more out of life than to meet that particular storyteller and cause them a lot of bodily harm.

And then there’s Sixteen Dunce. Sixteen Dunce is a stunt performer. Driving vehicles off ramps and climbing steep cliffs while juggling. Death-defying feats that really bring in the crowds and make Sixteen Dunce famous all the world over.

A Fact About the Multitude of Blong: All three of these examples from the Multitude of Blong are from a culture with a specific naming convention. Newborns on this planet are hatched in caves, and the number part of the name represents the order in which they climb out. So, Nine Fire was the ninth to climb from that cave during that hatching season. The last name is related to the year the hatching took place, years in the Blongian calendar being given titles. Other cultures on the planet have different ways to name individuals, but this is by far the most common.

Universe: Blue

The Schurdle

The Schurdle are a species of tall aliens from a planet with gravity lower than Earth. They live primarily along the world’s equator, the rest of the planet being too cold for their liking. Their diets are mostly vegetarian, grazing from tall plants, but there are some who supplement this by eating small insectoid creatures found in streams and rivers. They have no natural predators, having successfully hunted several species to extinction many generations ago. Tales from that time live on only as myth.

The Schurdle live in packs, with each pack taking up a “job” in society in the way individual people do on Earth. Faa-Russ is a pack leader in a mountainous region, working as a farmer. During the wet season, this can be a dangerous job, with mud slides always a concern. Faa-Russ has lost many packfellows over the years and grows hardened to loss and wistful for earlier days.

Jot-Kar is part of a reporter working in the valley with the planet’s highest concentration of Schurdle, almost what we’d call a city. Jot-Kar has a particular knack for trailing others without being seen, which has come in handy when investigating individuals suspected of wrongdoing. This has resulted in there being a lot of individuals who would be happy to see Jot-Kar dead. Jot-Kar and packfellows have survived many assassination attempts over the years, but it hasn’t made them scared to do their job. If anything, they see it as a sign they need to work harder to rid their city of corruption.

Very young Schurdlings, such as Tee-Nam, have beards. They remain with their parent pack for their childhood, but when the beards are gone, they leave to establish packs of their own. Tee-Nam is a daydreamer, often playing in the fields imagining how great it would be to run a pack.

A Fact About the Schurdle: The fore paws of the Schurdle have a design unique among the animals of their planet. It resembles a ring of musculature that can constrict around things, allowing the Schurdle to grip and manipulate objects. This appendage has allowed them to create technology that has brought them to a level comparable to the Iron Age on Earth (Though they’re much more advanced in making medicines than humans are even now and also they have invented surf boards). Not even the surviving species most closely related to the Schurdle have this appendage and that fact has not gone unnoticed by them. It is seen as the cause of their dominance of their world, almost all religions on the planet describing it as a gift from god.

Universe: Narsidon

Trabbans

The Trabban homeworld is one of varied climates and regions, but one dominant species has taken over. The Trabbans have no concept of nations or tribes, and a single Trabban language is spoken worldwide. This single culture hasn’t had a lot of reason to change over the years, so for hundreds of generations, their technological level has been stuck at a level comparable to our middle ages. Also, they kinda look like rabbits.

Doofsy is a farmer of the fungus-like food that makes up a large portion of the Trabban diet. Farms like Doofsy’s are large tunnel systems that need to be kept damp, but the farmers have to be on constant watch for lobburs, which are large worm-like creatures that love to dig into the tunnels and feast. Doofsy, unfortunately, has a strong fear of lobburs, which can make the work pretty hard.

Wuvva is a producer of the one type of clothing that Trabbans wear. It is a known fact that in ages long past Trabbans used to wear different kinds of clothing, but once the current style was designed, nobody saw any reason to wear anything else. Trabban clothing is probably the most advanced technology on the planet, creating a sort of internal climate that keeps the wearer at an ideal temperature, resists all sorts of physical damage, is ultra-hygienic, and even feels comfortable. They’re so great that Trabbans don’t even care about variety anymore. Trabbans like Wuvva have to study for years to make them, but are very respected by their peers for their work.

Flerfy is a sky sailor working on the zeppelin-like ships that are the main source of long-distance travel on this world. This form of transportation is one of the reasons a single worldwide culture is so possible. But Flerfy doesn’t care about that. Flerfy is convinced that there is still new and exciting things in the world, even if nobody else is looking for them. Seeking novel experiences, Flerfy now sails the skies into the least populated regions seeking any kind of danger or thrills or adventure. It seems entirely likely that if anything interesting ever happens to the Trabban homeworld, it’ll be because of Flerfy.

A Fact About Trabbans: The Trabban astronomers have detected the fact that the universe is expanding and everything is getting further apart, but their current theories ascribe it to the idea that everything in the universe is decreasing in size.

Universe: Brown

At this point it is a tradition for me to do something rabbit-related in every Super Sunday theme, so this is the one for this.

The Kod Kod

Planet Kodron is in Universe Silver, the universe with the Space Gods known on Earth as the Astrolympians. Those Space Gods, obviously, are not merely tied to Earth, but are representative of concepts all through the universe and their presence is noted even by the intelligent people of Kodron, called the Kod Kod. In fact, whereas on Earth these gods are considered mythical, the Kod Kod consider them to be scientific fact as concrete as the concepts they personify.

The Kod Kod are purple-skinned bipeds with two tentacles where humans have arms. They are taller than humans on average, but are spongy, which makes them much lighter and physically weaker. The planet is not very geologically active, having only one continent and few mountains. As a result, there is very little variation in Kod Kod culture overall. The Kod Kod are nocturnal and sleep outside in the daylight, their skin photosynthesizing light as they rest.

Living in a settlement along the Eastern Shores, Voggle Kod is a very average citizen of Kodron. He spends the days hunting for this world’s equivalent to fish, then selling any that aren’t needed to feed his family. This is the single most common occupation on the planet and is seen as good wholesome work. Voggle lives near a temple to the Space God of Hunting and makes sure to sacrifice at least one fish from every haul.

Teya Kod is a soldier in the Devnan Army, a force serving directly under the Space God of Discipline, who makes her home on this world. The God of Discipline likes planet Kodron because there are few actual wars that could make her army fall into chaos. As it is, soldiers like Teya are just people who like strict routines and rigorous self-improvement programs. They are much more likely to help out after storms cause damage than to get into combat.

Negma Kod is a worshipper of Constelli, the Space God of Intelligence. Negma’s mission is to learn as much as possible, expanding her mind to allow Constelli’s consciousness to partner with hers. Others in this field of worship, who have successfully opened their minds to sufficient limits, now run the greatest scientific laboratory in this universe, which is especially good for a species that has not yet made contact with other worlds.

A Fact About the Kod Kod: A two-sexed, the Kod Kod are able to determine the sex of a gestating infant by regulating the temperatures to which the expectant parent is exposed. This method has allowed generations to be made up more prominently of one sex, often as a reaction to the previous generation being prominently the other.

Universe: Silver

Knowing Swimmers

The natives of the Oceans of Planet Doiva call themselves “Knowing Swimmers” because, as far as they are concerned, they are the only thing swimming on their world that is intelligent. This aquatic species is three-sided, each side having an eye, gills and two of their total six limbs. They have only one brain and a mouth located at the centre of their mass of limbs. They may appear the same to us, but each side is actually devoted to a different purpose (intellectual pursuits, social interactions, and biological needs such as reproduction and eating), so it is usual for them to turn the relevant side to a task at hand. That said, each individual has a dominant side which they default to and that can determine their personality.

To Knowing Swimmers, what one does is the supreme indicator of who they are. Their occupations are so important that it becomes the name by which they are known, and as such they can have multiple names throughout their life. It also means that a lot of individuals can end up with the exact same name. This is somewhat mitigated by the small size of social groups on this world (Their names here are translated into English).

Food Grower is dominated by the intellectual side. For years this Food Grower was Youth Educator in one of the larger cave systems, but that life eventually became tiring. Youth Educator wanted some less stressful work, and found as a farmer in a smaller cave. Food Grower has not given up scholarly pursuits, though, and occasionally goes out of the way to seek out historical relics and study them as a hobby.

The Knowing Swimmers don’t experience sound the same way that humans do, so they haven’t got music like ours. They do, however, enjoy having sound vibrate through them. The job of Sound Finder is to look for new kinds of vibrations and bring them to the people. The invention of metal on this world was originally popular more for the vibrations it could facilitate than for what it could build. In other ways it is a lot like a musician on Earth, and this Sound Finder, being very successful, has become something of a celebrity whose name precludes others being given the same name. A Knowing Swimmer going into the same occupation now would more likely be called Sound Seeker or some other name.

While they call themselves the Knowing Swimmers, some of them know more than others. Most of the population don’t even understand that there is more to the Planet Doiva than its oceans, let alone that there are other worlds out there. But those in charge do know, and they don’t want the masses to be made aware. They employ agents such as Secret Keeper to prevent sensitive information from reaching the public. The existence of ones like Secret Keeper are not a secret, though. In general the Knowing Swimmers seem to be okay with the idea that there are things they are better off not knowing.

A Fact About Knowing Swimmers: The Knowing Swimmers lay eggs in batches of about a dozen at a time, but usually only one or two of those eggs will make it to life.

Universe: Blue