Vorans

/ˈvɔrənz/

Stats

Voran (drone)

XP Available at puberty: 180

Attributes: CHA +1 BOD +4 REA +1 AGI +1

Body class: A

Included Qualities: Carapace (1), Eidetic Memory, Asexual

Voran (male)

XP Available at puberty: 165

Attributes: CHA +1 BOD +1

Body class: B

Included Qualities: Carapace (1)

Voran (female)

XP Available at puberty: 180

Attributes: BOD +1

Body class: B

Included Qualities: Carapace (1)

Voran (queen)

XP Available at puberty: 115

Attributes: INT +3 PER +1 BEA +1 BOD -1 REA +1

Body class: C

Included Qualities: Carapace (1)

Physiology

Vorans have three sexes: males, females, and drones. In addition, females late in life may metamorphose and become queens, often thought of as a fourth 'sex'.

Vorans have eight limbs. Four legs are used for walking. Two limbs end in large crablike pincers; they have a relatively large areas on the side of them used for communication (see Chromalingua, below). The last two limbs are similar, but more prehensile, smaller, and softer - the closest they have to hands (albeit hands with a single finger). Their shells are segmented. The head is one piece; the thorax is a series of 10-20 plates; and the abdomen is a single, softer shell.

Females and Queens

The mature female, or queen, is a large insectoid entity, ranging from 10 meters up as high as 50 meters long (growing larger with age). A queen consists largely of a hollow carapace which is used as shelter by the immature females, males, and drones she has spawned or is mating with. A queen and her drones will often dig either a pit or, in the case of older, larger queens, a more complex underground hive, to be able to support more individuals inside.

Though her carapace is ostensibly a part of her body, her main body (containing all her vital organs) is much smaller, and located near the "front" of her carapace, which will have grown from the fusing of her wings. The queen's main body contains all vital organs, and must support a thin "skin" just inside the carapace, which in turn maintains the carapace itself. Due to this support, the queen's main body size is predictable relative to the size of her carapace - the volume of her main body will always be directly proportional to the surface area of her carapace. The queen will also have many larval sacs which may be fertilized by males, and the number of these sacs grows with the female.

The sheltering effect evolved due to the conditions of the Vorans' home planet, Varhanna. The star has periods of radiation storms, which trigger sulfur storms which males and immature females cannot survive on their own; they seek shelter inside the queen during these times. Depending on the size, a queen can shelter up to 100 others, and she is selective; her offspring and drones take up most of the space, and aside from that, she only allows in males she wishes to mate with. Any other Vorans that attempt to come inside during the sulfur storms are rejected and often die outside.

A juvenile female is very similar to the male, morphologically speaking. Different females grow and mature at different rates. When the female has reached a certain age (somewhere between 15 and 30 years old, depending on a number of environmental factors) she then enters metamorphosis, shedding her old shell and growing much larger, becoming basically immobile on her own - she changes into a Voran queen. If the female does not undergo this metamorphosis by the age of roughly 30 years, she dies of old age. Only about 30% of Voran females successfully grow into queens.

The queens have the same limbs and wings as other Vorans, but they are so small relative to their bodies that they are no longer mobile. In a pinch queens can be moved with the help of their hive, but it is time-consuming and, unless the queen is accustomed to movement, dangerous (case in point: space travel; see below). Queens may live a very long time if not killed by illness or accident; the oldest known is 150 Voran years (600 Earth years) old. Their outer shells continually grow larger as they age.

During metamorphosis, the queen's two chromalinguistic claw surfaces separate: one faces inward to communicate with her own hive, and one faces outward to communicate with others. Both grow much larger than they were before, and they lose their functionality as claws. Her other limbs actually shrink slightly, becoming almost vestigial.

Reproduction

A queen continually generates egg cells throughout her life; usually, they sit idle in her egg sacs. At any point, she may trigger an egg to grow into a drone. The gestation period for drones is short, only about two weeks; while a queen cannot survive longterm without caretakers, in the case of a calamity, she will usually survive long enough to spawn a few drones, which can then clean and feed her and get her back on her feet, so to speak.

Male and female larvae are conceived in a slightly more traditional way - a male will deposit genetic material into one of the egg sacs, which grows (randomly) into a male or female.

Males

Male Vorans are about 1.5 meters tall, and about 2 meters in length. They have eight legs and 3 body segments. Like Earth insects, they are soft-bodied with exoskeletons. They have two wings, primarily used for jump assistance; a male or female Voran's base jumping distance is (AGI × 2 - BOD) × 10 meters (drones, being smaller, can fly). A male spends much of his early life acting much as a drone for his mother, either foraging or defending for her. As he matures, he enters a period where he searches for a new queen to mate with; at which point he becomes part of the new queen's hive, raising his own offspring and serving the queen as needed.

Drones

Voran drones, like the workers of some Earth hive insects, contain only one set of chromosomes (from their mother). They exist as servants to their mother/queen, and are much smaller than males and juvenile females (about half a meter tall). A typical queen will have 5-10 drones supporting her, but the largest of them may have many more, well into the hundreds.

Drones are dependent on a queen's milk for nutrition and lack the digestive organs of the males (and obviously, the reproductive organs); most drones have smaller abdomens than males. However, they do have a storage sac, accessible through their mouth, as part of their abdomen that can grow larger if stretched, which is put to use by food-gathering and cleaning drones. (This storage sac does not digest its contents; quite the opposite, it keeps them dry and safe.) They are capable of flight. Drones live up to about 30 years.

Sentience & Cooperation

As the Vorans evolved sentience, their interactions became considerably more complicated. All three genders are sentient; though queens (by necessity of their role) have a more advanced awareness than the other genders, they are all capable of intelligent thought, language, free will, and decision-making. Modern Vorans tend to live in clusters of queens living close to each other, which could be thought of as either super-hives or cities. These range in size from only a few hives (with one queen for each, of course), up to the largest city (whose chroma name translates to River Cluster, thanks to its placement at a major river delta) which has about 30,000 queens, 1.2 million males, 100,000 females, and 3 million drones. River Cluster's unusually high count of drones is due to its community of independent drones; only about half the drones of the cluster are part of a hive, and many of the rest work to maintain the cluster itself.

A Voran's first instinct, typically, is to cooperate with others for the good of the hive. As sentience was achieved, cooperation became a fundamental part of their moral code; a modern Voran is taught to cooperate with everyone, including those outside its own hive (though naturally, the hive is prioritized). When contact with the other races is established, this makes the Vorans essential to the peace of the Arm: they are natural-born negotiators skilled at finding common ground and mutual benefit. It's not all peace and rainbows, though, as Vorans believe in this kind of cooperation to a fault; they are likely to try to put together different sides that might be better off separate, and they may use extreme means to encourage cooperation.

Culture

Rights

All Vorans, from queens to drones, have basic rights, including freedom to travel, freedom of speech, freedom of occupation, and rights to due process. Though about 95% of drones choose to remain and serve their respective queen, some choose to serve another queen for some reason or another or leave the hive society entirely (which was only possible when synthetic nutrient broths were invented; without it drones are dependent on a queen's milk). They are not shunned or persecuted, as long as they find a queen willing to take them in, or work for themselves (often in an accepting cluster like River Cluster).

Likewise, queens typically choose to breed normally, but some prefer to spawn only drones with no females or males at all; queens may spawn drones without a male to mate with, so choosing only to have drones is a simple matter of not mating. (It is not possible for a queen to survive with no offspring at all; she is physically incapable of cleaning and feeding herself.) Queens may behave any way they wish towards their hive; most of the longest-living queens are benevolent and wise, serving as effective organizers of their own social groups. However, some alienate their own hives through their behavior and, in extreme cases, do not survive due to lack of caretaking.

Fighting

As with any race with a complex social organization, fighting between Vorans sometimes breaks out. If infighting were to occur inside a hive, a frequent result is the incidental death of the queen (after all, they are fighting inside her). Drones and other young are dependent on the queen's milk. After such a fight, no sane queen would dare take in the drones that may have been responsible for their own queen's death; the subsequent starvation of the drones and young male offspring is virtually guaranteed. For this reason, infighting is extremely rare, as it is tantamount to suicide. Males and drones with disagreements among them are far more likely to leave the queen to find a new one than to stay and fight.

Ground battles between Vorans are a unique spectacle. Voran chromalingua is extremely efficient in a combat situation; if the claws are turned to face the attacker edge-on (and they usually are) their shape makes it easy to communicate between each other without being "heard" by the other side. Vorans put their jumping abilities to good use; one Voran weak point is the back of the neck, so melee battles often involve one trying to jump over the enemy and attack this point.

If attacking an enemy hive, the goal is always to kill the queen (or come close enough to killing her to gain a surrender to terms), which involves puncturing the shell to get inside. A female's shell has supporting "crossbeams" running through it, which can be used as footholds, that allow drones and males to climb on or jump to any given spot on the carapace. A typical offensive strategy is to find a weak spot in the shell and have every attacking Voran jump directly to that spot, trying to punch a hole. Once through, the attacker crawls inside and goes directly to the queen's soft, defenseless inner body.

For defending against such an attack, the combat-capable males and drones will typically climb on the queen's carapace, essentially covering it. As it can take one to five minutes to puncture the carapace, depending on its thickness and the effectiveness of the attackers, this typically allows the defenders time to attack the intruder before he can get through.

More modern combat will involve projectile weapons, either in the form of tough spears or armor-piercing rounds. However, the effectiveness of this is limited for several reasons. One, it is very different to puncture the shell with projectiles. Even if you succeed, you may or may not actually hit the queen's inner body, which is very small compared to the carapace; depending on your goals, you may want the queen to be dead or, more likely, alive but at your mercy, neither of which projectiles reliably provide. A more common strategy is to damage the carapace around the edge (where you can reliably not kill the female), and use that damage to puncture the shell much more quickly.

Genetic Modification

Vorans have long been practicing genetic modification. Females tend to avoid modification - the metamorphosis process is especially sensitive to small genetic changes, and it simply is not worth the risk. However, retroviral modification is common in males, and in utero modification is common in drones. In utero gene resequencing to remove genetic diseases is ubiquitous among all the genders, however; as a result, hereditary diseases among Vorans are almost unheard of in the modern age.

When male Vorans get modified, they tend to sequester their reproductive system from the changes so that female offspring would be unaltered (for the same reasons that females avoid modification). In addition to the common utilitarian modifications, males often get Chroma Skin to help attract queens.

When drones are modified in utero, their alterations are almost always in the interest of the hive - better workers, better fighters. Drones that are part of a hive rarely undergo retroviral modification, but those which are independent of a hive will seek it out for many of the same utilitarian reasons males do.

Retroviral modifications for males and in utero modifications for drones each have a -3 modifier to the Rarity of the modification.

Space Travel for Queens

A female's interior is hermetically sealed during the storms. This makes female Vorans an ideal natural spaceship, lacking only the propulsion. Their interior can hold an oxygen recycling system of symbiotic algae, chromatophoric information displays, and a hermetically sealed space. Their shell needs only a treatment to shield her from radiation and an artificial propulsion system, and she can fly males contained within into space. The shell is tough enough to survive reentry as long as it is given enough time to heal in between reentries. This is only a few days for smaller females and increases with age; the larger females can take up to a year to regenerate. For this reason large spacebound queens tend to have smaller queens accompany them which are used like shuttles.

Propulsor

Though the queens may be naturally hermetically sealed, they are not quite spacecraft. Obviously they need propulsion, and the queen (along with anyone they bring with them) must breathe and eat. These needs are served by a device called a Propulsor. The Propulsor unit is generally solar or nuclear powered. The female excretes a methane waste, which the Propulsor uses to power its navigational thrusters; primary thrust is handled separately.

Hubs

Large collective ships with dozens of females attached, called Hubs, are used as motherships.

Space Combat tactics

A Hub will fly to the combat area, where some or all of the Propulsors will detach. Propulsors have small arms, while the Hub contains larger weapons. Using these tactics, a small fleet of Hubs can easily and suddenly overwhelm an enemy with numbers. Propulsor are maneuverable enough to dodge or intercept weapons fire as necessary.

Combating queens are generally paired with a single male or drone to help pilot, though they are able to hold more males/drones or to fly on their own if they wish; the pilot is the one who makes decisions and takes in the information while the female focuses on flying. Swarms of Vorans are renowned for intelligent swarmlike behavior in flight; since the pilot does not need to expend any concentration flying, he can focus on being a strategist and stay focused on events going on outside.

Language: Chromalingua

The Voran language is referred to as chromalinguistic communication - a series of flashing colors and patterns that appear on the Vorans' bodies. Specifically, they appear on the side of the Vorans' claws. The shell is equipped with chromatophores, with the ability to flash color patterns and, with some concentration, even images. As they developed sentience, these cells became concentrated most densely on their large claws, which are their primary means of communication. In fact it is essentially their only means of communication; they can make a buzzing sound by rapidly clicking their claws, but this is only used to draw attention or add emphasis.

The queen has these cells additionally on her inside carapace at extremely high resolution with a high degree of control; they are, effectively, biological viewscreens for the outside world. The female is also able to control this information to show anything she is capable of understanding, and has a greater degree of control over this than the lesser genders.

Patterns are flashed on their claws like words forming sentences. Direct translations between the native Voran language and verbal language is difficult and imprecise. It frequently includes visual cues that must be described if translating. Vorans who are in contact with other races have developed a sort of pidgin Voran dialect that avoids complex visual cues and is easier to machine-translate to verbal language. This also has an effect on proper names.

Because there is no way to convert a pattern of colors into an audible sound, Voran names (including names of planets and people) translated into a spoken-word language tend to be translated using the nearest chroma equivalent of the true name. As a result, anything named by Vorans tends to be translated as common words, sometimes ones that make sense in context (like the planet Ember, whose chroma name came from its proximity to their star in the first place), and sometimes not. Incidentally, the word "Voran", itself, actually comes from the Bactaran word for "insect"; the Voran word for Voran would likely simply be translated as "the People". Voran names as seen by other races will be along the lines of Running-River, Bright-Fire, and so on. Prior to first contact, the names Voran queens chose for their offspring did not take such translations into account, so the first Voran names encountered by other races were often translated into something nonsensical, such as Cooking-Vision or Drink-Couch-Blue. As relations with other races become more and more a factor, later generations of Vorans would generally choose names for their offspring that translate into more sensical phrases.

Vorans have two claws, and a chromalingua "word" typically only uses one claw to convey its meaning. When speaking straightforwardly, both claws will display symmetrical words. However, in more informal, personal conversations, a Voran may use a second word to augment the meaning of the first. For example, he may flash the signal for the word "travel" on his dominant claw, and the word "air" on the other claw simultaneously, to indicate flight. There are specific combinations of words that have explicit meanings and subtler connotations than their constituent words imply, often etymological descendants of what used to be straightforward word combinations. These dual-claw words are always considered to be informal and personal in tone.

Voran body language is used to indicate the level of intimacy of a relationship. A Voran will face a person while talking to indicate a more personal relationship, though this does not necessarily indicate a positive or negative one; a Voran facing you could indicate that they are fearful or wary of you, angry at you, friendly towards you, or simply trustful of you. The Voran may indicate hostility by spreading its claws (making it more difficult to see/understand the chroma being displayed on them, while looking larger and more threatening), or indicate closeness and trust by drawing the claws in towards its torso.

A Voran will stand facing sideways against someone with whom they share a professional, cooperative, but impersonal relationship; in accordance with the symmetrical communication described above, the use of informal double-claw language is not possible in this position, as only one claw can be clearly seen. Thus, only full, straightforward words are used in this context, and a professional tone is conveyed. Because a Queen cannot move enough to accomodate changes in body languge, they almost always use the formal, professional tone when communicating.

Language Families

Chromalingua has two families, but only one is in use: Modern is in active use today, and the more complex Matriarchal language exists only in records from thousands of years ago, when only the Queens were sentient. There are six major languages, more or less regional, and are named as such (at least when translated to speech): Northeast; Northwest; East; Central; West; and South. East is most prominent among spacefaring Vorans, followed by West and Central. (Notably, most Voran Queens are adept at translating among all six, so language barriers tend to only affect the lower genders.) Dialects are more specifically regional, and bear names like River Delta, Northeast Mountain, Central Foothills, etc. It can be more or less expected that any two queens will have different dialects, unless they have specifically come from the same area.