Un'oit

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Dance, O Freest Aeon

This content is a part of Cosmoria.

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Index / Lexica / Timeline

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The Un'oit are a sapient species native to the void beyond the central Cosmoria galaxy. While their exact home world is unknown, a legendary planet called Ensemble, which is likely the rogue planet now called Verso. As carbon-based organisms, their biochemistry is not particularly out of the ordinary.

The Un'oit primarily live around Nocturne and its orbiting stars. The Euphony Civilization formed as roving Un'oit tribes and pastoralists united under Compositrice Euphemia. Stretching from the frigid rogue planets beyond Florathel to deep into Aylathiya at the Ynnud system, the Un'oit became very widespread. Preferring the low gravity of dwarf planets, however, restricts them to space habitats and asteroid settlements. Currently, the Un'oit remain populous across Aylathiya, Nocturne, and around many rogue worlds.

Physical Description

The Un'oit have forty legs, two large mandibles, and two flayed tentacle-like appendages for grasping objects. With legs three meters long supporting four and a half tonnes of mass, the Un'oit require harnesses to survive on high gravity worlds. On low-gravity worlds, their great momentum makes them fearsome creatures. Male Un'oit are much smaller, with the same proportions at half the size. Both sexes sport a thick fur coat along their backs keeping radiation away and heat in.

The Un’oit are mostly carnivorous but can sustain themselves on plants if the need ever arises. A hard beak-like structure covers the mouth when not in use, creating a vacuum-tight seal. Within the mouth lies three rows of sharp incisor-like teeth with which the Un’oit can tear through even the toughest hides. On the sides of their head are two compound eyes, unusual for predators the universe over.

Their principal sense organ is another one uncommon for apex predators, sound. With poor vision and an even poorer sense of smell, they have evolved precise hearing both in their ears and their legs. They can form a reliable three-dimensional map of everything happening around them based on this. When in an airless environment, the map becomes two-dimensional as there is no air for the sounds to bounce off. The Un'oit can survey the environment by lying flat and releasing infrasonic vibrations. Lying flat is also necessary for communicating on the airless worlds they frequent.

Reproduction and Life Cycle

Female Un'oit are intelligent and males are not. Sexual dimorphism is so extreme in this species that males are considered pets. A female Un'oit will produce a single egg every cycle, for about forty months. If the egg is not fertilized, the resulting offspring is a male genetically identical to the female. Should fertilization take place, the egg will begin the slow growth process of accumulating four and a half tonnes of weight.

After hatching, the young Un'oit spend as much time as possible eating. When not eating or sleeping, they play, accumulating a rich knowledge of sound from a young age. After nearly a decade and a half, they enter a cocoon. The males take only a few weeks for metamorphosis; their existing brains are good enough and all they need to do is reach sexual maturity. Females undergo a rapid brain development phase, blasting through reasoning, planning, and judgment that other species slowly develop. After nearly a year, they emerge and face their next task, learning the complex language of this species.

Communication and Language

The Un'oit can create three distinct classes of noise, wind, string, and percussion. While immature Un'oit respond to the whistles of the twin tubes atop their heads, the adults respond to the entire range of sounds.

Wind

By expelling air across a reed-like organ, the air is split down a tube. The tube has various openings on it which can contract and open, changing pitch. Wind sounds convey simple commands.

String

Forty strings lie in parallel and four bow-like structures rest perpendicular to them. Through contracting muscles within their throat, they can vibrate these stings at nearly any frequency they like. The result, a "quartet" remarkably similar to some stringed instruments. The strings convey the emotions behind a sentence, how the speaker feels about the words, how the speaker thinks the receiver feels about them, or how the originator of the information feels about them. It is a complex system that varies from culture to culture.

Percussion

Further strings exist beneath the mandibles underneath two slits. These slits can open to reveal them but usually remain shut in airless environments. Muscles can pluck these strings and can expand or contract the volume of their compartment to amplify or mute them. These strings convey the actual meaning of the words, similar to how text can convey words devoid of intonation.

History

WIP

Culture

WIP