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Playable Races: Novan

This document is not yet complete!

Due to the nature of the game and its development cycle, information here is subject to change, and certain pieces of information are missing or omitted. Please handle this with care.

To be more precise, YOU ARE READING A TOUCHED-UP ROUGH DRAFT. This writing is not production ready by any means and is more here for the people who are super curious!

This document written in-character, as if you were reading a manifest from the game's lorebook.

Key Overview

Attribute Associated Information
Home World Arcnova (XNC-Core System (Pulsar), Planet № 1))
Propagation Technique Natural Mutagen-Enhanced Cloning Process
Average Height 3.2m
Average Mass 104kg
Average Lifespan 224.6 Years

Overview

    Novan are exoskeletal, tall, slender bipeds. Unlike most races, they are incapable of speech and auditory speech processing, as they do so through visual stimulus. They are perhaps the furthest from typically expected bipedal life and, for lack of a better word, the most "alien".

Phenotype

    Novan are often colored all black, with slight shades of either red, violet, or blue. They often have lines or regions of bright cyan or magenta glowing parts, typically in joints or parts of the chitin which must buckle or bend. Their panels are typically solid, not unlike an insect's exoskeleton. Their chitin panels are typically 3 to 5 centimeters thick, and in total make up around 20% of their body mass. For this reason, they are extremely strong.

    Novan have five eye-like lobes shaped in a pentagonal formation, with one eye centered on their forehead. These are not all eyes, however, and each pair serves a different purpose.1

  • The odd forehead eye is used for empathic communication with nearby peers and other races.
  • The lowermost pair is used for communication, and are asymmetrical. Through triboluminescense, UV and X-Ray radiation can be fired off in short bursts towards their peers via the left of the pair. The right side has an organ sensitive to these flashes. This is how they communicate, through a series of specifically timed flashes.
  • The middle pair can see within the infrared spectrum, and is used for navigation of hazards on their world. This vision is not particularly clear, and so Novan vision is poor.

    Novan have four long, pointed ears. These are used for locating prey and threats, and are independently controllable. This allows them to form full 3D maps of their surroundings, including with vertical discretion. They are extremely sensitive, capable of discerning where individuals using invisibility tech were standing through sound alone.

  • To reiterate, they are not capable of auditory processing. Their brains are incapable of breaking sounds apart to identify them as speech.

    The Novan digestive system classifies them as hemophages - blood eaters. Under both of their forearms are two large tubules which contain silicate spears approximately 30cm long and 2cm in diameter. These needles are connected through a long, stretchy artery directly to their lymphatic system. To eat, they launch these spears at prey and "drink" their blood, passing it through the lymphatic system to clean out contaminants like viruses and bacteria, and then directly integrate the blood into their own systems. Most importantly:

  • They do not have a waste system. As a consequence, they lack all faculties required for digestion of food items. They do not have a stomach nor do they have intestines. They do not have mouths.
  • If one of their feeding spears breaks, it can easily be regrown. The same is true for the filament connecting it back to their body.
  • Spears are typically launched at a velocity of 50m/s.

    The Novan respiratory system works a bit like above-water gills. It is exposed through six slits located on their backs. These gills absorb carbon dioxide and split the carbon atom off, which is used to construct parts of their chitin and in biological chemical reactions. The gills secrete and dispose of oxygen and cellular waste molecules.

Home World

    The Novan homeworld is a tectonically and volcanically hyperactive dwarf planet with an average temperature of 102C. As a result, Novan are tailored to these extremely high temperatures and cannot live in climates a Human may consider habitable.

    Cities are built in very large scales, composed of spires of solid obsidian and basalt. They are often decorated with colored glass. (Section incomplete!)

Culture and Standards

    Novan are always seen wearing basalt masks. These masks are decorated with glowing, fine lines of paint often showing zig-zag and dot patterns. Culturally, this mask is an effective requirement when around other races, as they consider it a taboo of the highest order to show their faces to those that are not their own kind, or honored among their kind. Interestingly, this stems from a deeply rooted religious belief that because they deviate from Divine Design, they must hide their faces to other races which are known to have also been created by the universe's omnipotent force. (* n.b. the universe does have a divine figure, but this has yet to be published) Most masks have only three "eyes", specifically the upper pair and the forehead. It is also considered taboo to hide the eye through which empathic communication is performed. Some masks may have all five, however.

    Decorating masks is seen as an expression of personality and so each mask is tailor-fitted to an individual and tells a lot about their personality, interests, and age.

    (informatlly written, personal notes) I want biotech for them, but not like body horror, I really dislike that type of fucked up living tech, its weird and a bit gross and I want my cryptids to be tolerable to average joe who plays the game. I think a design more like what Rain World does with specifically purposed cells and simple structures like slugs, bugs, and worms feels a bit better.

Romantic and Bonding Interests

    Novan do not create relationships. They may form bonds with several individuals, but it rarely exceeds a level comparable to what you might consider to be your friend. They also do not value family or heritage, as communities are considered a single unit, the parents of an individual are held in the same regard as the individual themselves.

A part of this document has been omitted.

Certain parts of the specification (specifically for how this race is designed anatomically) contains mature content which has no means of being age-gated at this time. Until further notice, the section will be largely cleared to prevent this content from being visible to possible underage visitors.

    (informally written)Novan reproduce asexually, but do require a member of the opposite sex to concieve a child. The "mother" creates a small egg, the "father" (I use quotes because they don't have these roles) instead mutates this egg rather than fertilizing it which causes it to grow from the size of a BB to the size of an ostrich egg over a couple months. Then the egg gets laid, and the genetically unique child will hatch in a couple more months.

  1. This five-eye setup and the use of masks was loosely inspired by the Urzuk from Creatures of Sonaria. ↩