fictionama Ask a Supernalian Anything! [Fiction]

[Kobold King he/him]

I am River Leaper of the Indigo Moon Cluster. My species and yours have quarreled in times past, but there is space enough in the galaxy for us to coexist in peace. It is my wish that all sapient beings one day inhabit one cluster of allies as close as any blood-family; to pursue this goal I open this conversation to questions about the ways of the Supernalian race, the functioning of our society, and any other topic that piques your mammalian interests.

 

For those unfamiliar with our species, we are very social carnivores native to the Jewel Supernal, a beautiful moon hundreds of light years from your Earth. Our appearance is such as this, as depicted by a human artist who goes by the name LarkoftheRiver. (A wonderful artist, as your kind goes. It is a shame she was born with human eyes.)

 

 

Please feel at ease in asking me anything which comes to your minds. May this mark a day of harmony between the Humaneria and the Supernal Sky-States!

 

 

((Out of character: this is an exercise by which I can flesh out my science fiction setting through the questions you, the members of the 17th Shard, ask me. It also lets me show off the details and concepts I've already established within the Humaneria 'verse. Feel free to ask River Leaper any question that comes to mind, though, however silly. Just don't bring up 'the war.'))

[STINK he/him]

1. What's wrong with our eyes? I mean, we need glasses sometimes, but we can see using them.

 

2. Are you not mammals?

 

3a. What is your calendar? 

 

3b. What is the biggest social event in that calendar?

 

4. (This was the first question I thought of, but then I saw the spoiler) What have we fought over? How likely is this peace going to last?

 

5. Pepsi or Coke?

[Curious Anamaximder he/him]

Do you have FTL?

[Kobold King he/him]

1. What's wrong with our eyes? I mean, we need glasses sometimes, but we can see using them.

 

2. Are you not mammals?

 

3a. What is your calendar? 

 

3b. What is the biggest social event in that calendar?

 

4. (This was the first question I thought of, but then I saw the spoiler) What have we fought over? How likely is this peace going to last?

 

5. Pepsi or Coke?

 

 

1. This statement is with respect; the vision of humans is inferior to ours. You each have two eyes, barring accident, while we possess four. You are capable of detecting only half of the colors we take for granted. Your brains are less adapted for processing what you see than ours are, and are more easily fooled by optical illusions. Yours are adequate for the limited purposes you require them for, but lack the finesse of ours.

 

2. We are not mammals. As a class of life we are more similar to your amphibians, as we require bodies of water to lay our eggs and rear our young.

 

3a. Our calendar is one respect in which we might learn from you. Ours is not precise, for we did not track the seasons in our early history as you did. We did not plant crops which required precise harvesting times; we cultivated flesh-rearing livestock which did not have seasonal breeding patterns. 

 

When we did develop a calendar, for arranging meetings between clusters, we based it off of the movements of the other moons moving through the sky at night. This gave dates on the magnitude of months, but gave no specification on the scale of days. Generally a meeting between clusters would take time solely in waiting for the other group to arrive, as one set would always arrive sooner than the other! Instead of designing a more efficient calendar, our ancestors simply employed chains of young-but-useful ones to wait by the meeting place and alert their families when the other cluster arrived.

 

It is only much more recently, within the last hundred years of our history, that our armies and corporate clusters have seen fit to arrange a more precise calendar. But it is a technical thing that most of our population still refuses to see as necessary.

 

3b. We have no holidays or calendar dates of interest. In times past, the hunting of particularly large herbivores was an occasional seldom enough to evoke much celebration upon completion. As our culture became pastoral, particularly fruitful harvests were celebrated in the same manner. As time went on, victories in battle became observed in the same way. While these forms of occasion are irregular in timing, they are uncommon periods of sudden triumph for a cluster that evoke great joy and sentiment in our groups.

 

This statement is with respect; I have often considered your celebrations to be of an inferior quality. While yours originated as celebrations of harvests, they have become empty and hollow, tied to days instead of victories. What do you do if "Christmas" or "Happy New Year" falls upon a bleak time between triumphs? I cannot understand.

 

4. I did not wish to discuss the war. It was a bloody, pointless affair, fought out of hate rather than lack of land or resources. We were disgusted by your practices and you were terrified of ours. A series of misunderstandings was allowed to spiral into a war of bitter violence and extermination.

 

Twice.

 

Many clusters have made concessions to ensure peace, however. It has been made illegal on most of our worlds for a Supernalian to devour human flesh, except of course in self-defense. You see, we are ever willing to compromise!

 

5. This statement is with respect; I feel violently repulsed from the info my data-trawl revealed of these beverages. Why would you do these unspeakable things to pure water? We drink blood on occasion, but why would any being want to drink air?

 

 

 

 

Do you have FTL?

 

 

Of course. The Ghost Burners' Cluster invented the first plutonic generator centuries ago, and many other clusters followed suit. With the exotic energy such a generator can produce, a craft can be transported instantaneously across the cosmos, though of course particularly long leaps require more energy than even our plutonic generators can produce.

 

Through interstellar travel we have colonized many planets within our homeworld's vicinity, and encountered many alien species.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Kobold King

[STINK he/him]

Why do you drink blood? O.o

[Kobold King he/him]

Why do you drink blood? O.o

 

 

Why do you drink air you've mixed with water and chemical syrups? At least blood contains nutritious proteins and iron.

[Curious Anamaximder he/him]

How technology advanced are you?

[Patar he/him]

Are there other sentient species on Jewel Supernal, or are you the only ones? If there are other species, do you get along with them, or are they your enemies?

 

How large is Jewel Supernal compared to our Earth?

 

What are the Supernalian's religious beliefs?

 

What kind of structure does the Supernalian government have?

 

Are there any humans that have influenced or inspired your race?

 

Would a man like Batman be considered a hero or villain in your society?

Edited January 10, 2016 by Patar365

[Kobold King he/him]

How technology advanced are you?

 

 

This is not a simple question as there is no meaningful measurement of a civilization's success. We possess the technological means to attend to most of our needs; very few of us lack for food and water, as our production has become quite efficient. We are capable of holding our own against any other civilization with plutonic technology, and can create as many ships and drones as we need to make our way through the galaxy. We can even hollow out asteroids to inhabit when we lack for space.

 

But how advanced does that make us? The Yulli are better roboticists. The Hriites and your own kind are better geneticists. We can scarcely comprehend what the Zotra-byn are capable of, and they cannot even build their own starships. Technology and science are too complex in scope for solid measurements to be made of them.

 

 

 

Are there other sentient species on Jewel Supernal, or are you the only ones? If there are other species, do you get along with them, or are they your enemies?

 

 

We are the only ones, but there are different sub-species among us. For instance, the nocturnal Clearside dwellers are larger than I am and are adapted for hunting during the long dark nights. There are other varieties of Supernalian which evolved to be wholly aquatic. Until we unearthed fossils of our common ancestors, which lived about three million of your years ago, it was not even universally acknowledged that we made up the same stock.

 

I myself am descended from the coastal Crownside population, that is, from the Supernalians which inhabited the mangrove forests on the side of the moon locked to our planet. The coastal Crownside sub-species makes up the stock of those which first founded civilization among our species. For many centuries the other sub-species were seen as lesser to us, but in time our cultures became largely unified.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Kobold King

[ChickenPlague he/him]

For what purpose do parts of your body change color, and can you consciously change colors or keep them the same?

Edited January 11, 2016 by ChickenPlague

[DreamEternal]

I am curious about your people's history and culture. Can you tell me about an influential philosopher or spiritual leader? The more ancient the better.

Edited January 11, 2016 by DreamEternal

[Kobold King he/him]

Many more questions. This is encouraging! The human I use for typing these replies has been busy, but we have returned to satisfy your curiosity.

 

 

How large is Jewel Supernal compared to our Earth?

 

What are the Supernalian's religious beliefs?

 

What kind of structure does the Supernalian government have?

 

Are there any humans that have influenced or inspired your race?

 

Would a man like Batman be considered a hero or villain in your society?

 

 

The Jewel Supernal is close to sixty-five percent of the mass of your Earth, with a correspondingly weaker gravitational pull. It has an atmosphere much thicker and richer than that of your homeworld, despite scientific thinking that suggests it should be losing its atmosphere from lack of gravity. This fact was actually used as an argument in favor of planetary animism for much time, leading me to answer your second question.

 

 

We, like you, do not possess a single unifying religion. Many different belief systems have been practiced, are currently practiced, and doubtless will be practiced many years into the future. There are several theistic religions, though none quite approaching monotheism. (There is one, however, that involves a tight cluster of gods that function like one single individual.) One of the most significant religions of our culture, in number of believers, is a form of planetary animism. I myself follow this belief system, so I am with bias.

 

I and many others of my kind believe that planets and moons have souls, or something akin to a soul. Something greater than a soul. The soul of our own world is said to be Supernal; to shine brighter than most because of the life that dances across its surface.

 

Once we entered our age of reason, when a scientific method was designed and employed by researchers, peculiarities in our homeworld's characteristics were ascribed to its Supernal nature overruling the natural laws of the universe. I am told that a human, Sir Isaac Newton, did much the same in his claims that a God was responsible for adjusting the orbits of your solar system's planets.

 

In the modern day, most Supernalians are inclined to believe that the universe follows consistent and self-sufficient laws. There are many who believe in gods. There are many who believe in none. There are many who believe the planet is Supernal. There are many who believe there are no souls in the universe at all. We are not homogeneous, you see.

 

 

The basic unit of our society is the cluster, a group of up to fifty Supernalians headed by a matriarch. The matriarch is usually the one who birthed the rest of the females, who will not usually take mates while their mother still lives. Males drift between clusters in hopes of impressing the matriarchs and convincing them to mate. Any one cluster often becomes highly specialized in what it produces.

 

Some clusters invariably become wealthier than others, or else birth stronger females and convince more numerous males to fight for them. Thus some families become powerful. The powerful clusters will issue edicts for lesser families to follow, or will make demands of them for the good of all. A cluster of engineers may be conscripted to create a starship for their superiors, for instance. In the case of a war between clusters that impacts the wealth of our entire state, one of the powerful clusters will intervene and issue a judgement in favor of one or the other. Thus we dwell under a form of hereditary oligarchy.

 

This statement is with respect: human activists wishing to "liberate" us with the "ideals of democracy" are not welcome. We are in fact quite offended that they keep coming.

 

 

Humans who have inspired our society? No. You have heroes, as all races do, and we admire them. But human heroes seldom have anything to teach our society that our own philosophers have not already suggested.

 

As for influence... it could be said the unpleasantness between our kinds influenced us, in making our clusters more united to wage war against a common enemy. The heightened unity we have enjoyed has lingered even after the war's conclusion, and so for this you may take credit. Take no pride in it, however. Many of our young had to perish before this unity could be achieved.

 

 

For this question I required yet another usage of the data-trawl. There are many things I do not understand about this story. Why does this man disguise himself as one of the weakest, most harmless creatures of your world? Why is he not met with ridicule when he reveals himself? Is the story of Batman one of your comedies?

 

The contested morality of his activities is very confusing to me. It is honorable that this Batman should use violence to stop deranged killers from harming innocent humans. But it is confusing to me why the ones in power over 'Gotham City' would seek to stop him. His is a personal war against lunatics. His war does not threaten the wealth or well-being of the population--quite the opposite, in fact. I am not sure why those in power are not lauding his efforts, as they are clearly incapable of permanently dispatching these lunatics themselves.

 

I believe most Supernalians would take greater issue with the fact that he lies to hide his identity, for reasons I will explain over the next two questions.

 

 

 

For what purpose do parts of your body change color, and can you consciously change colors or keep them the same?

 

What do your people find most strange about human culture?

 

 

These questions are linked.

 

The colors of our fins, 'ChickenPlague,' are our language. Every thought that cycles through a Supernalian's mind is channeled into a code of colors and fin movements instantaneously. There is no conscious component to this. We share our every thought, emotion, and desire with one another, which is why our clusters tend to be drawn so close together over time. We cannot lie.

 

 

Thus, 'Cognizantastic,' the trait we find most perplexing about human culture is the dishonesty. The blatant, constant, never ending dishonesty. You will conceal negative feelings for each other out of etiquette, driving yourselves further apart when a simple fight would clear away your dispute. You will conceal romantic feelings for each other out of fear of rejection, resulting in emotional anguish your poets find great inspiration in. Your men of business will conceal negative qualities of their products for their own benefit, and your politicians... I cannot speak respectfully of your men of politics.

 

This statement is with respect: dishonesty is an inherent aspect of human society that is alien to us. While we can come to accept this in you over time, we have a proclivity towards finding it distasteful and distressing. We also believe that your groups are less unified than ours as a result.

 

 

I am curious about your people's history and culture. Can you tell me about an influential philosopher or spiritual leader? The more ancient the better.

 

 

 

The most ancient teacher of ours is also a hated monster of folklore. "Drowning Crescent" was her name, and we called her "The Deceiver." According to legend, she was capable of telling falsehoods, and was thus monstrous. I will not dwell on her, as aspects of her story can be seen as offensive by humans and other species with... voluntary languages.

 

Two religious leaders who I will speak of, however, are Purity and Glory, who founded doctrines that are still followed by Supernalians to this day. They originally bore other names, but changed their names in honor of the ideologies they favored.

 

Purity was an ancient teacher of the Supernal nature of the Jewel. She taught that the sphere we inhabited was possessed of a powerful soul, an even godlike soul. A soul worthy of worship and emulation. She also taught that as a living part of the Jewel, we ourselves were possessed of a fraction of its godhood. Purity taught that the natural instincts of our species were "pure," created to keep the Jewel as a whole in harmony. Thus, every activity of our kind, from hunting to speaking to running to mating, was attached to spiritual fulfillment. I find this a beautiful, comforting concept.

 

Glory lived many centuries after Purity, but her doctrine has also become popular over time. Glory also believed that the Jewel was Supernal, but she believed that we, the most intelligent inhabitants of the moon, were its crowning "glory." She taught that the Jewel Supernal's most glorious achievement was giving rise to thinking beings capable of understanding its wonder. Thus the worthiest activity a Supernalian could engage in was the practice of thought, reason, and the reflection of the universe's bounty.

 

Purity and Glory doctrines have often been characterized as being concerned with the spirituality of one's nature and the spirituality of one's reason, respectively. There are ways of thinking that combine the two, but they make good examples of how one singular Supernalian religion can be tinted many colors by the minds of those that practice it.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Kobold King

[ChickenPlague he/him]

Is the Indigo moon cluster actually the color indigo?

[Patar he/him]

You stated earlier that the environment is very swampy and amphibious. Are there any other prevalent ecological differences between Jewel Supernal and Earth? 

[Kobold King he/him]

Is the Indigo moon cluster actually the color indigo?

 

 

No--at least not all of the time, for we are always changing the colors of our fins. The word 'Indigo' is symbolic. Indigo is a introspective color. A cold color. A color of slowness and deep meditation. We have traditionally been a cluster of scientists.

 

 

You stated earlier that the environment is very swampy and amphibious. Are there any other prevalent ecological differences between Jewel Supernal and Earth? 

 

 

I was unclear, it seems. The Jewel Supernal has many environments: oceans, deserts, forests, mountains. It has the same range of diversity as any other world.

 

It is on average warmer, however, as our atmosphere is greedy. It holds in the heat and won't easily let it go. The Jewel has no icecaps at its poles. Snow was largely theoretical before we left for other worlds.

 

As the Jewel Supernal does not tilt as far as your Earth, neither are there noticeable seasons. Small dips in temperature and precipitation occur, but nothing so dramatic as what your world seems to experience.

 

The ecology of the Jewel follows the same principles as yours, of course, but the makeup is quite different. Soft-bodied invertebrates were able to colonize the land early in our history, and even now mollusks are one of the dominant forms of land-based life. Vertebrates such as we coexist with them in a complex, competitive ecosystem. It certainly makes paleontology difficult, as these mollusks seldom leave fossils, but we believe that our own evolution of intelligence may have been spurred on in competition with a large invertebrate carnivore. We needed to become more clever if we were to out-compete it and take our rightful place as the Jewel's apex predators.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Kobold King

[Kobold King he/him]

Why is it your "rightful place" to be the Jewel's apex predators?

 

 

It is certainly not our rightful place in a cosmic sense; the universe does not care whether we are predator or prey. But I assure you that we would much rather be the hunters than the hunted.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Kobold King

[Young Bard he/him]

What do you consider to be the major limitation of yourself or your species?

[ChickenPlague he/him]

Are those things on your back wings? They seem too solid for flight to me.

[Datan Nomlibash]

How are your family structures orginized? You have said that you congregate in clusters but how does mating and child rearing work? Do you mate for life or do you just do whatever? Are there any differances between the subspecies cultures?

[Kobold King he/him]

It has been some days since we answered questions. This time the human who types these replies was not busy but was merely lazy. He is vexed by my saying so, but it is the truth. My apologies.

 

 

What do you consider to be the major limitation of yourself or your species?

 

 

This is a difficult question, and many would suggest different answers. For instance, many who are not Supernalians propose that our reluctance to lie puts us at a disadvantage with races that employ natural dishonesty. (This is not so. Those of us who interact with aliens have become quite skilled at smelling falsehoods, and as much as we refrain from thinking and speaking of it in peace time, deceptive maneuvers have always been a part of our military history.)

 

Psychologically, I would maintain that our chief weakness is a propensity towards xenophobia. Or not xenophobia precisely; xenophobia implies fear, while it is our inclination to feel more of an indignation against aliens than any form of phobia. In any case, we are not disposed towards coexisting with most alien life forms, and as a consequence few of us leave our own small section of space. Fortunately, with orbital habitations cheap and affordable, colonizing other worlds is not a necessity for any species' short-term survival.

 

 

Are those things on your back wings? They seem too solid for flight to me.

 

 

They are fins. We can stretch them to be taut or fold them neatly by our sides, but they are not used for flight. They are used for communicating, as I have described, but also to steer our bodies when leaping. The low gravity of our homeworld combined with its dense atmosphere makes such fins quite advantageous. Most animals have them.

 

 

 

How are your family structures orginized? You have said that you congregate in clusters but how does mating and child rearing work? Do you mate for life or do you just do whatever? Are there any differances between the subspecies cultures?

 

 

Females such as myself will almost always stay with the clusters we were born with. Males however will leave their families to join other clusters, serving diligently beneath the head female in hopes of enticing her to accept them as mates.

 

We are not monogamous, but a male can only mate with one female in around a year's time. For this reason he will only seek to entice a female that is strong, powerful, or otherwise worthy of his respect and devotion. The female will mate with many such devoted males when the inclination to breed takes her. The males will often stay in the cluster after mating, often mating with the head female again the next time she wishes to birth a brood, but it is not unusual for them to instead find other clusters to spread their services.

 

Once fertilized, a female will seek a still body of water to lay her eggs, of which there can be several dozen in one brood. She will remain in the water, eating food brought to her by the rest of the cluster, for the equivalent of about six of your months before the young ones are hatched and capable of functioning on land on their own.

 

Our child-rearing process is not as... personal as yours. What little parenting we conduct is communal, and a cluster will often have as many forty young ones running underfoot at one time.

 

We do not, in general, feed them. They hunt for insects and vermin for their sustenance, or else scavenge from the leftovers of their elders' meals.

 

We do not, in general, teach them. They are possessed of a natural curiosity that leads them to follow us in our daily habits and to learn from our examples.

 

We do not, in general, name them. As they learn our language from observation they name themselves, using word combinations that they find particularly powerful or edifying. For instance, I was particularly fond of swimming and leaping out of rivers when I was young and freshly hatched. I found leaping from rivers alongside by sisters and brothers to be exhilarating and the ultimate form of freedom, and so chose "River Leaper" as my name.

 

There is usually a very small mortality rate among the young ones before this age, and many may be traded to smaller clusters in exchange for more useful goods. When the remaining young ones have reached approximately ten years of your age, they will have reached a level of size and intellect that makes them worthy of being fully accepted as an equal by the cluster. The adults will then take a greater interest in their personal upbringing, learning the names they took for themselves and beginning to teach them the more extensive bodies of knowledge our cultural history has to offer.

 

 

Over the course of our history, our cultures began to become more unified as a result of conquest and assimilation. But there still exist differing cultures in the subspecies. There is a subspecies of plains hunters, for instance, that is nomadic rather than territorial. Their males are segregated permanently into separate clusters from the females. They also have an extensive history and lore that they celebrate in intricate bone carvings. My culture sells them cheap starships in exchange for authentic pieces of traditional bone artwork, and many of them now roam far beyond the borders of our explored space. We are often surprised by how much they thrive once given an entire galaxy to inhabit, and some of them have returned from the far corners of the galaxy in ships far greater in size and capabilities than the ones we sent them off in.

 

The various marine subraces also possess their own cultures, always unique to the parts of the ocean they inhabit. Not all of their tribes have been extensively studied, but many of them herd flocks of prey fish and have been known to help their terrestrial cousins to shore after shipwrecks.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Kobold King

[Kobold King he/him]

Then what did you mean when you said, "We needed to become more clever if we were to out-compete it and take our rightful place as the Jewel's apex predators."

 

 

Tssss. Annoying human insistence on clinging to meaningless turns of thought. There is no significance beyond bias for my own species' welfare. "Rightful" is subjective.

 

If you seek greater meaning: it is unlikely that the predator we outcompeted would itself have evolved sapience. The Jewel would have been without beings capable of understanding its true splendor. But that is Glory doctrine, very subjective and imprecise. Perhaps Glory doctrine has contaminated my speech...

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

How much does your culture dislike laziness? If someone is lazy, for instance, would you see that as an annoying infraction, as evidence of a deep character flaw, or as something far more sinister than that? Are their any other human vices you particularly hate? 

[ChickenPlague he/him]

Does/Did your kind use melee weapons? I have simply heard of other species of sapient species never developing melee weapons due to having natural weapons such as claws or arm-blades.

[Datan Nomlibash]

Have the water subspecies achived space exploration?

[Kobold King he/him]

How much does your culture dislike laziness? If someone is lazy, for instance, would you see that as an annoying infraction, as evidence of a deep character flaw, or as something far more sinister than that? Are their any other human vices you particularly hate? 

 

 

Laziness is symptomatic of not caring for one's cluster enough to labor. It is offensive for a member of one's cluster to act that way; when one of my siblings display laziness, I am sure to lash my claws or teeth across their flanks in communication of my irritation. It is a thing that provokes temporary wrath, but not a thing worth holding a grudge against a fellow cluster member over.

 

By and large our sins and viceful qualities are the same. There are some differences, largely pertaining to the fact that feelings like pride and envy could not be concealed even if we wanted them to be; we do not look down on pride unless it swells to the point of absurdity, and we feel envy as a natural sensation that needs little moderating.

 

 

 

Does/Did your kind use melee weapons? I have simply heard of other species of sapient species never developing melee weapons due to having natural weapons such as claws or arm-blades.

 

 

I have never heard of such a race. That is simply not how warfare works; while our claws and fangs are quite adequately suited for the job of slicing one another open, there were ways of improving upon their function. Spears in our earliest epoch helped warriors extend their reach in combat, fending off enemies before they could get into range with their own claws. Later, metal weapons like scimitars and cutlasses improved cutting power for cleaner, more efficient killing. When it comes to war, there is nothing in nature that cannot be improved upon.

 

 

Have the water subspecies achived space exploration?

 

 

Oh no. Such development would be quite impossible. They spend the entirety of their existence underwater unless beached; without fire they could never so much as reach the bronze age, much less the space age. The only marine Supernalians to have left the homeworld are the ones my own culture have decided to bring into space.