Kessenski

The Kessenski [kɛ.ˈsːɛn.skiː] are one of Zalanthium's widespread species and one of its youngest, hailing from the desert world Gypsum since the 4000s CE. They are a hardy and observant reptilian species, known for the skills cultivated in them by their millennium-long development and engineered into them by their creators. They have an awkward range of comfortable temperatures compared to most with the same carbon-water chemistry, and can usually be found compensating with heated clothing or personal infrared lamps.

The Kessenski have been made aware of alien life since their inception, as their very creation was a response to the devastation of an interstellar war. Though they remained stranded on Gypsum for some centuries after their dispersal, they were able to re-initiate contact with the nations of Zalanthium through applied use of their technological knowledge. Today the majority of their population can be found spread across the majority of Zalanthium's connected systems, with their cultural roots best preserved only on their home planet.

Origin

The Kessenski were genetically engineered by the previous inhabitants of Gypsum, the Clahaalia, whom they now outnumber twelve to one. They were made to be suited to Gypsum's environment after the wartime desoformation of the planet made it uninhabitable by the Clahaalia. The Kessenski were intended to be vessels for Clahaalia minds, their bodies set to be taken over by a particularly nasty application of thaumic nootechnology. They rebelled, however, and using their stolen technological knowledge and environmental advantage managed to liberate themselves without being possessed.

Physiology

Genetically engineered by a team of biologists for the purpose of total species transfer, the bodies of the Kessenski are informed by a combination of practicality, aesthetic preference, and potentially a little bit of convincingly justified perversion on the parts of the team members. Their genome is a chimeric copy of several common desert animals from Gypsum's pre-desoforming days, altered to fit the new climate and to bring out the exact body plan needed for their original intended purpose.

General

Kessenski walk on two legs, balance aided by their thick tail and adjustments to posture. While not particularly known for great speeds, they have very high average physical endurance and stamina, owing to several persistence-hunter traits inserted into their physiological blueprint. Their body heat relies solely on outside environmental heat, producing none of their own. Their comfortable temperature range that allows them to effectively move without starting to overheat is 76°C to 92°C.

Senses

The brains of the Kessenski were made to be adaptable in the sensory ranges it has access to. This adaptability was meant to ease the transition of Clahaalia minds into their brains and bodies, but now serves as a way of optimizing sensory processing. At any time, the Kessenski have a limited amount of precision in their senses that they can allocate out, leading to overall below average capabilities if evenly spread. By closing off or unfocusing certain senses, they can get a much clearer image of another.

Scent is usually only used intermittently, as it seems to be the easiest to reallocate without consequence. Sight is often narrowed or reduced as well, curiously. Especially in already low-visibility environments, cutting visual processing is a common tactic to enhance other senses such as hearing and touch. This is more common for Gypsomn Kessenski, as interstellar life tends to focus on visual data above all else.

Kessenski sight has an accessory sense that connects it to heat, giving them a broader ability to process heat as a visual sense if their processing is allocated right. This is most commonly used in low-light conditions, where ambient heat transfer provides clearer information and infrared radiation of endothermic species can be utilized as alternative light sources.

Touch is an incredibly important sense for the Kessenski, and it serves as an extension of their hearing. They have acute vibratory detection across their bodies, but especially on their palms and the soles of their feet. This trait is inherited from their primary constituent species, which used minute vibrations on the sand to detect small prey. Receiving signals like this, as well as another inherited ability from that same constituent species, formed the basis of their auxiliary "sand-singing" language commonly heard—or more accurately felt—on Gypsum and other desert worlds.

Hydration

Kessenski have no naturally inclined way of separating water from their native environments, as many species on Gypsum do. They get their water the same way all other species do, and in the case of Gypsum's environments that means separating it out from the sands with the Little-Shore devices necessary for survival on that world.

Kessenski do, however, have incredibly water-efficient bodies. They lose very little through breathing nasally, and have an instinctual inclination to avoid exhaling through their mouths. They do not sweat, thermoregulating with other methods instead. The latter half of their digestive system is also much more focused on water conservation than nutrient absorption optimizing. A Kessenski can go roughly twenty-six standard days without any water and survive, with adverse effects only appearing after the first ten.

Reproduction

Kessenski are an oviparous species, and they usually only produce one egg at a time. Hatchlings emerge after about a year, and mature in roughly fifteen. Puberty starts on average for the Kessenski at around ten years of age. By about three to four years old they can operate basic machinery such as the Gypsomn survival devices.

For Kessenski hatchlings, hydration and nutrition are great concerns. Unable to use the sands of their homeworld for water and not coordinated enough to gather food themselves, they spend their first year and some change reliant entirely on their parents. Female Kessenski produce a viscous milk, which is extremely dense nutritionally and composed of complex molecules that break down into water and simpler nutrients in Kessenski stomachs. This is what hatchlings primarily feed off of before they are able to digest other foods and drink water without spilling a good portion of it.

Sociality

Behavior

Kessenski have inherited a lot of their culture from the Clahaalia, and a good portion of their instincts match their progenitors as well. Curious and puzzle-seeking by nature, they have a tendency to explore the big and the small of the world. Whether surveying planets and stars or working their way through the social intricacies of a conversation, it is said that a Kessenski is in their element when in the midst of the unknown, in pursuit of discovery. Through their lives, they gain reputations for being well-spoken and resourceful because of this.

The species tends to be extremely conscious of temperature outside of their home planet, requiring specialized suits to retain enough heat in their bodies to move. This constant vigilance in regards to their surroundings is recognized as a sort of neuroticism, endemic to the Kessenski but virtually absent on Gypsum. This belies another divide between the Abakht-Kessenski and Basen-Kessenski: the constant ambition and motion of those raised off-world, something of a pseudo-imperial greed behind their actions, opposed to the motive of survival eminent of Gypsum-born Kessenski.

Organization

Kessenski are social beings, up to a point. They have tended towards medium sized colonies of about fifty to a hundred individuals since their liberation, which themselves organize into broader national allegiances. These colonies, on Gypsum at least, are rather isolated from one another and have difficulty truly uniting with others. They have a rather loose sense of kinship and family, bound more by cohabitation than lineage.

Off-world, where four fifths of the population resides, their organization defers to that of the Greater Celestial Concord, though Kessenski tend to have large households and friend groups regardless. A sort of simulacrum of their native social environment occurs, boosted by their penchant for crafty speech and interpersonal exploration. In government, they occupy many positions that require management of large teams, though this professional usage of their social tendencies causes quite a bit of stress.

History

Creation

The Kessenski were a desperate genetic experiment by their predecessor species, the Clahaalia. Both native to Gypsum, the two species have had a rocky history together. The planet was in the process of desertification into its current form when the Kessenski were being developed, as the rising temperatures and decreasing humidity made the planet nigh uninhabitable for the Clahaalia. As they retreated into their arcologies, teams of geneticists found and mixed together several species of desert-native life, which would then be modified to fit the desired specifications.

The Clahaalia didn't just want to leave the world to a new species and abandon their home planet, as any species would be averse to. The Kessenski were developed to be bipedal like the Clahaalia, made to have the same speech capabilities, the same general size, created with similar brain structures that were flexible enough to alter their own senses and malleable enough to fit a broad connection to their mind. The first generation of them was taught skills and made to do actions the Clahaalia did, made to burn memory into their muscles. The purpse of all this? The Kessenski were meant to die out, philosophically speaking. Their brains and bodies were created as vessels for Clahaalia minds, supposed to be supplanted by a mind transplanter device.

The Kessenski, quite understandably, were unwilling to accept psychological genocide. Through a carefully planned rebellion just days before they were scheduled to have their minds destroyed, they managed to destroy enough arcological infrastructure to gain the desertic environmental advantage and liberate themselves. The Clahaalia subsequently destroyed every settlement they still had on-world, having been a starfaring species for a long time and deciding that holding Gypsum was no longer worth it. Free now, but fully stranded and blasted back into iron-age level technology, the Kessenski took their homeworld as theirs alone, recovering and recording what they could of the technological skills they were taught.

Development on Gypsum

The Kessenski took their first generation's lifespans recovering whatever they could from the blasted ruins of the former Clahaalia civilization and building what they could for manufacturing purposes. Sourcing water was still possible with the thin briny lakes, but in just twenty years those would finally be dried up and turned to sand as well. The Little-Shore, a device to boil the water out of Gypsum's hydrate sands, was prototyped during this time, and though many died off without access to it in the first century post-liberation, the survivors of the finalization of Gypsum's endless desertification had the tools necessary to survive it.

The preserved knowledge of the first generation was useful to the burgeoning species, even with the extreme lack of usable metals and woods and binding fibers. Over the centuries they built back up to the level the Clahaalia had been when they first took to the stars, using precious water electrolized into its elemental gases as fuel. In this time, the language drifted, culture developed, religions formed and expanded, and the scattered tribed had organized into nations across the entire surface of the planet. Had they taken up the journey into space at their inception, they would be culturally indistinguishable from the Clahaalia, but these circumstances made them seem a fully disconnected species. As if Beunn Brehhail of the Clahaalia and Radin Ihmat of the Kessenski were two planets that had never been the same.

Ad Astra Zalanthia

In the early 5000s, the first Gypsomn space program reached Selenite, finding it abandoned and largely untouched since the old Clahaalia empire. Subsequent missions to the other worlds of Dnn Bnfai found the system entirely empty. Mysteriously, the Kessenski were left in a ruin-smattered assemblage of planets, theirs for the taking with salvageable technology their ancestors failed to recreate available in small clusters on each. They reverse-engineered this technology on their returns to their home, bringing several nations together to work on the technological acceleration required.

By the 5300s, they had reached every body in the Dnn Bnfai system, with infrastructure gearing up to send them beyond. Still divided on a planetary scale, the slowly-growing union of Abakht Seker made sure that these missions were for research purposes. The first mission was to the cool orange star Hwrett, yielding an immediate connection with another burgeoning space empire and another species to connect with: the Tannjens. Before the Concord was even established, these two species began a long relationship of mutual benefit, and the divide between the Kessenski of Gypsum and the "outworlders" started its slow progress towards its current state.