Other Species
These are some other common or noteworthy species given a very quick once over, information anyone would know about them.
Hachi
Hingari
Forever is a long bargain
- German Proverb
Hachi are not even remotely human. They're about 12' tall, as black as black gets, their skin is a carapace and they have over 300 documented senses. They seem able to produce and alter their limbs and body pretty much at will but generally have 4 legs, 2 arms and a head. (In actuality, many xenobiologists think that a hachi's torso area is their real body, the other extensions come out from that.) Hachi always travel alone and no one has figured out how to kill one during any recorded history. Dropping a nuke one one might annoy it but that's all it would do. They're one of the most peaceful species, simply because they can afford to be: no one ticks them off. Well, not if they want to survive. Hachi technology is seldom seen but largely small and organic in nature and they seem to be immune to most psychic powers. Some rumours claim that the hachi have a religion, but it involves worshipping themselves. As they're immortal as far as anyone else knows, this might actually make sense.
Game Stats:
Classified, they're entirely an NPC species. No one gets to play one.
Energy in itself is a sort of redemption. No wonder we admire Satan. But if the Devil were listless, if he were a pale man in his underwear who watched television by day behind closed venetian blinds - oh if that were the devil I would fear him.
- Edmund White, "A Boy's Own Story"
A species or species of unknown origin who appeared on various worlds over the past millennia or so by unknown means. Attempts to communicate with them initially all met with failure and, after the first wave was slaughtered, the next came armed. They are immune to most energy weapons and very good at hiding by the military recently claims to have defeated them. At the very least, no one has seen any more recently.
Known Abilities:
Hingari seem able to absorb and re-direct energy pretty much as will with varying degrees of strength. Some of them have been known to teleport and hcange their shape as well but not all of the do this. All other information about them is supposition.
A person can only feel alone if he has never gotten to know himself.
- Anthropos
The ib is a hive mind species with incredible skills. In their natural state they are blobs which can hear and see and nothing else, eating by absorbing nutrients through their skin. When the hive mind has been of them, they change and become 5' tall, with a gray snake-like skin, 4 arms, 2 legs (all of which is very flexible, like rubber). They have 2 ears that are hyper-sensitive was their lower head and the top of it is a light coloured skin that is really their eyes, giving them 360 degree vision (and above them, as well). They only have a mouth (which is between both ears) if the ib wants to speak, most of them just listen. Each part of the ib whole can have any of the skills of it at any time, in theory. The problem is that the amount of that skill is only available based on the individual ib who have learned it, giving them a practical limit as to how many ib can have one skill at a time. Ib breed via a form of self pollination, creating spores that become more ib, allowing each part to, in theory, colonize an entire world. However, the ib rarely increases itself for reasons only it knows, but generally to prevent the knowledge of ib from being forgotten from the rest, which can happen if ib has not been in contact with ib to make sure the information goes to all of them correctly.
You know, its strange. People who can tell you in a minute what they would kill for can’t tell you what they would die for; and the people who know what they would die for can’t tell you what they are living for. And its weird because they’re all the same thing. When you know what you’ll kill for then unless you’re a sociopath you have to know what you’ll die for; a life equals a life. And we’re all going to die someday, so whatever you send your life doing, that is what you died for.
- Daniel Keys Moran, "The Last Dancer"
Source/Inspiration: C J Cherry's Faded Suns Trilogy
To understand the mri, one must understand shon'ai, the Game of the People, the passing-game. The Kel play shon'ai with knives while other mri play with wands or stones. To be mri is to play the Game, its player-to-player, hand-to-hand passing rhythm "as old as time and as familiar as childhood." To play the game is to cast oneself -- one's fate -- forth from the hand, to let go, to make the leap forward freely, and without fear.
The mri are, quite simply, the best mercenary species around. No one knows where they come from, but the records held by the sen (their celibate order of scholars) go back many millennia. Humans have warred with them on occasion, but the mri believe that single combat is how to fight and have no fear of death and refuse to take prisoners. Needless to say they're not on the 10 most liked species list of practically all species, including those who hire them.
And hired they are. Mri will remain with a species as long as a pact is maintained between them. If broken, they leave. That possibility has led many species that have hired the mri to attempt to exterminate them out of fear that the same species will be turned on them by their enemies. It's a rather nasty circle, but the kel (warriors) accept what the sen say and do whatever needs to be done for honour. They cast themselves, and the species that does not catch them or refuses to release them tends to have a grim ending.
Game Stats:
All 40-70, the higher the better. They excel in the use of weapon and killing people, which makes the scholars all the more surprising to foolish outsiders who don't see knowledge as a weapon.
Proposed Skill(s):
Honourable Kill (Body) - used to kill people, mostly use of very old weapons as well as modern ones - anything that can be used to hurt someone in single combat.
2 It is always a good policy to speak the truth -- unless you happen to be an exceptionally good liar.
- Jerome K Jerome
The pagmi are an alien race that stand about 1' tall (well, round) with deep green long fur all over their bodies. They have no arms and legs or heads and are essentially balls of fur to most. However the pagmi are much more than they. They only have one sense – touching – but it's the most advanced sense of touch known. A pagmi can sense any entity within a mile of them and practically read their life story based on a quick touch of fur to whatever. Even without that, it's impossible to lie to one and they never, ever lie. No one is sure how pagmi reproduce and most of them just turn into a mass of hair when they die. Pagmi can move by manipulating air currents around themselves, somehow touching the air and getting it to help them. (They claim everything is sentient.) Pagmi only speak the truth and never deceive others for any reason, which has won them both prestige and hatred in many quarters.
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