"Drassians? Yeah, I know about them, I was junior sensor tech on a merchant cruiser stranded by engineering faults when the invasion hit. Not a one of us were all that unhappy about it except the skipper and the wrench-jockeys; it's a beautiful planet and the Drassians are fun and funny, even if some of them will go a little too far for a joke. If you're ever over that way, don't miss taking in some of their vocal music, too. The males - they're all male as kids, turn into women later. Weird to us, but that's aliens for ya, right? - the teens get up to some crazy violent games and what would be outright riots if not for having a sanctioned league with scoring and trophies, but it's all among themselves and their biology kind of mandates a high homicide rate or they'd be overpopulated in no time, since they've suppressed natural predators and disease as much as any other developed civilization does.
Anyway, the invasion. Let me tell you we were all pretty shook up when the bastards arrived in orbit and started offloading troops... right up until the giant fucking dragon flew up into space and ripped their ship in half. Then the cute, friendly, joking lizards turned their teenagers loose on the ground, and it was all over but the screaming. So yeah, Drassians? Nice people but don't piss them off, and a hundred-thirty light-years is just about enough room for my peace of mind from that Matriarch of theirs."
--Unknown spacer overheard in Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill, on the opposite frontier from Drassia
Drassians are seven-limbed, bilaterally symmetrical, amphibious, endothermic, reptillian/avianoid mammals with blue hemocyanin based blood. Their tongue could arguably count as an eighth limb, as it is long and flexible enough to lick their eyeballs and is equipped with a pair of short, cartilaginous "thumbs" on either side, allowing for fine manipulation of food, easy cleaning of their teeth, and operation of the bellows sac behind the scent-pits on their snout, which are not true nostrils in the sense of being part of the respiratory system. Their lungs connect to the larynx and to breathing tubes in the crest on either side of the head and the nearby ear gills. They have two distinct melanin-analogues generated at different rates in different stages of their life cycle, making individuals tend to red, blue, purple, or darker tones depending on age and lifestyle.
Modern Drassians typically wear a skirt or pants (without a particular gender bias toward either) fastened in the rear to accommodate their tail more easily and an apron or halter-style top cut low enough not to interfere with their ruff or wings to keep the weather off and to provide additional pockets and/or body modesty for those who feel the need for it. Their tough feet require no footwear except in extreme environments. Drassian space suits tend to be an involved affair by human standards due to the need to accommodate wings, a tail, and the large bone and feather crests on their heads. With wide mouths and thin, barely articulated lips they have a difficult time forming the P and B sounds of human languages, and F or V tend to be a bit slurred, though they can also direct sound through their breathing tubes, which resonate like a flute or clarinet. Their mouth is not very expressive beyond being closed or opened to expose some teeth, rather expressions are based on the eyebrows and feather crest. Their teeth are generally similar to a human's aside from having almost three times as many to fit their jaw, and having two prominent fangs top and bottom of each side. (That's eight total, though only the front upper pair is long enough to extend past their lips with the mouth closed.)
Their society is shockingly alien in some respects (most notably the general disregard for the lives of their young, even to the point of commercial fishing and consumption of the pre-sapient stage) but follows generally recognizable lines and a compatible sense of humor allows them to bond socially with humans, laughing off minor offenses that might otherwise build up and sour relations.
They have no natural limit to their lifespan - Great Revered Elder Chrysolanth the Resplendent is over 21,000 years old and estimated to be within three generations of descent to at least a fifth of the individuals on their home world, reckoned genetically. The Drassian notion of family has very little to do with genetics, however, as all family groups are formed by adoption.
The young spawn from a detached pouch like some sharks, pre-sapient and aquatic. They are pale grey with a trace of blue from their copper-based blood, similar to horseshoe crab blood. Spawnlings have book gills on the sides of their head with a quartet of tough but blunt spines to protect them, six flippers, a flat vertical swimming tail like a sea snake, poor vision and very simple brains. About a dozen surviving from the hundreds of fertilized eggs in the pouch. They eat each other and the pouch from the inside until a hole is formed and they swim free, originally into the ocean or pool where the pouch was dropped. Subject to predation from each other, wild animals, and until they begin to turn pink and their scent changes older Drassians.
After about two years a spawnling will begin to produce ferrotonin, the color of the hide under their thin, clear scales rapidly shifting to a dusty pink and continuing to deepen as they begin to develop a more advanced brain, improved vision, specialized limbs (two bipedal legs, two wings, two arms with manipulating hands, feathers, and male sexual organs. They instinctively move from the reef or deep-pond habitat of the spawnling stage to shallows and shorelines, to exercise their new physiology and escape predators specialized for one environment or the other during this awkward transition. Their gills remain present and functional for life, also serving as tympani that provide an exceptional sense of hearing, and the four protective spines develop into proper, hide covered bones, the longest and uppermost hollow to act as a nostril when the passage behind these ears is close to avoid being deafened by their own breath. The new feathers maintain a natural coating of oil like many sea birds which also gives them a slight iridescent sheen.
During the period when their limbs are no longer optimized for swimming but not yet suited to rapid movement on land young males are roughly equivalent to a bright dog or a human toddler mentally and may be adopted by an older female or more commonly a family group of two to five with developed maternal instincts; both the physical care provided and the nutritional and immunological benefits from breast feeding give the adoptees a much better chance of survival than their wilder kin. Male Drassians have a short feathered crest on the top of the head, a much more pronounced ruff around the neck and chest and for some ethnicities on the chin or snout around the scent-pits, typically of a brighter hue than their scales. The crest is articulate like a cockatiel's, and two similar feathered structures form on the sides of the tail to provide added stability in the air.
The scales thicken and harden to provide a significant amount of natural armor by seven years, by which time wild Drassians become extremely aggressive and even those adopted into a family constantly wrestle and compete with each other and their peers. Full sexual maturity usually requires another five to seven years, by which time the number of wildlings have significantly reduced themselves and most of the survivors will have integrated into the peer groups of nearby settlements. Their wings and flight muscles develop slowly, with few able to maintain even a few seconds of flight before this point. Even so, the Drassian word for "war" is the same as "festival" or "tournament;" young males feel a constant urge to fight and engage in dominance displays for the next decade until their biochemistry begins to enter the next stage.
This change is heralded by increasing cyatonin levels that first see new feathers growing in purple or blue, followed by a moult of the heavy red scales to be replaced with a new coat of glossy, semi-flexible ones which are once again translucent, showing the color of the underlying hide as cell growth slowly changes its overall tone. Bright blue stripes commonly form along growth zones while the rest changes color over the course of several years. Within a season of scale moult beginning, the Drassian's penis will be absorbed and their gonads will retract as the developing female organs form, changing over from producing mobile germ cells to eggs. The "beard" or "mustache" extensions of the neck ruff will be lost at this time and the chest part of it will also be somewhat depleted, while the head crest grows out in time with the adult wing pinions. The bones in general also become more avian, with the thick and heavy structure of rough-and-tumble males hollowing and becoming lighter, their typically broad and muscular build lengthening to a more svelte appearance as adult height is reached without adding more bulk. A Drassian female will become fertile within a year of the end of scale moult, producing four to six egg pouches per year whether fertilized or not. The development of breasts and instinctive maternal urges takes another one to two years, as the chemical balance in the brain resettles. A healthy Drassian female at physical maturity can easily carry one or two males of adoption age while she flies.
The final stage of development occurs around the century mark, though the exact age tends to vary widely by circumstances and general health. Speaking in terms of evolution, an individual who has survived so long in the highly competitive environment of their early home world is probably a winning combination of genetics and habits, so with ferrotonin once again rising to roughly even levels with cyatonin and other hormones a Drassian Elder's gonads resume production of limited numbers of sperm, allowing perthenogenic reproduction if no suitable males are available to do the job while still allowing sexually-introduced genetic material the opportunity to fertilize some of the eggs in a pouch to produce new combinations. Drassian Elders gradually turn a darker and darker blue-purple until they eventually become as black as interstellar space with only the occasional glint off their scales or irridescence of their feathers for stars. They resume slow overall physical growth, and also begin to develop active psychic powers including telepathy, telekinesis, and remote sensory perception, though their flight ability is generally recognized to be partly telekinetic in nature due to the relatively small size of their wings and flight muscles compared to what simple aerodynamics would require.
This enhancement effect also increases over time, keeping the increasing body mass from eventually collapsing under its own weight and allowing truly amazing feats for upper tier Elders. Again taking the example of Great Revered Elder Chrysolanth the Resplendent, she is over 500m from snout to tail-tip and has proven capable of engaging in physical combat with a modern starship, withstanding its weapons and puncturing its shields to inflict decisive damage on multiple occasions when space conflict spilled over to the Drassian homeworld, flying through space unassisted at observed velocities up to 0.6c for durations of several hours without apparent distress. Rumors of precognition, teleportation, or innate FTL travel are unconfirmed and regarded as highly dubious; Chrysolanth herself declined to comment with an amused snort when asked.
---
Why? Because I doodled a cute lizard head on an envelope this morning and then backstory just kept on appearing. Also, I am amused by the idea of a young, purple Elder with an eye patch and one breathing tube broken short who is right fed up with needing to explain that no, she and any other Drassian she is aware of do not eat humans, but if they stick around she's about to sing some rock'n'roll music through the horn on her head.
What do you think, sirs?
Anyway, the invasion. Let me tell you we were all pretty shook up when the bastards arrived in orbit and started offloading troops... right up until the giant fucking dragon flew up into space and ripped their ship in half. Then the cute, friendly, joking lizards turned their teenagers loose on the ground, and it was all over but the screaming. So yeah, Drassians? Nice people but don't piss them off, and a hundred-thirty light-years is just about enough room for my peace of mind from that Matriarch of theirs."
--Unknown spacer overheard in Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill, on the opposite frontier from Drassia
Drassians are seven-limbed, bilaterally symmetrical, amphibious, endothermic, reptillian/avianoid mammals with blue hemocyanin based blood. Their tongue could arguably count as an eighth limb, as it is long and flexible enough to lick their eyeballs and is equipped with a pair of short, cartilaginous "thumbs" on either side, allowing for fine manipulation of food, easy cleaning of their teeth, and operation of the bellows sac behind the scent-pits on their snout, which are not true nostrils in the sense of being part of the respiratory system. Their lungs connect to the larynx and to breathing tubes in the crest on either side of the head and the nearby ear gills. They have two distinct melanin-analogues generated at different rates in different stages of their life cycle, making individuals tend to red, blue, purple, or darker tones depending on age and lifestyle.
Modern Drassians typically wear a skirt or pants (without a particular gender bias toward either) fastened in the rear to accommodate their tail more easily and an apron or halter-style top cut low enough not to interfere with their ruff or wings to keep the weather off and to provide additional pockets and/or body modesty for those who feel the need for it. Their tough feet require no footwear except in extreme environments. Drassian space suits tend to be an involved affair by human standards due to the need to accommodate wings, a tail, and the large bone and feather crests on their heads. With wide mouths and thin, barely articulated lips they have a difficult time forming the P and B sounds of human languages, and F or V tend to be a bit slurred, though they can also direct sound through their breathing tubes, which resonate like a flute or clarinet. Their mouth is not very expressive beyond being closed or opened to expose some teeth, rather expressions are based on the eyebrows and feather crest. Their teeth are generally similar to a human's aside from having almost three times as many to fit their jaw, and having two prominent fangs top and bottom of each side. (That's eight total, though only the front upper pair is long enough to extend past their lips with the mouth closed.)
Their society is shockingly alien in some respects (most notably the general disregard for the lives of their young, even to the point of commercial fishing and consumption of the pre-sapient stage) but follows generally recognizable lines and a compatible sense of humor allows them to bond socially with humans, laughing off minor offenses that might otherwise build up and sour relations.
They have no natural limit to their lifespan - Great Revered Elder Chrysolanth the Resplendent is over 21,000 years old and estimated to be within three generations of descent to at least a fifth of the individuals on their home world, reckoned genetically. The Drassian notion of family has very little to do with genetics, however, as all family groups are formed by adoption.
The young spawn from a detached pouch like some sharks, pre-sapient and aquatic. They are pale grey with a trace of blue from their copper-based blood, similar to horseshoe crab blood. Spawnlings have book gills on the sides of their head with a quartet of tough but blunt spines to protect them, six flippers, a flat vertical swimming tail like a sea snake, poor vision and very simple brains. About a dozen surviving from the hundreds of fertilized eggs in the pouch. They eat each other and the pouch from the inside until a hole is formed and they swim free, originally into the ocean or pool where the pouch was dropped. Subject to predation from each other, wild animals, and until they begin to turn pink and their scent changes older Drassians.
After about two years a spawnling will begin to produce ferrotonin, the color of the hide under their thin, clear scales rapidly shifting to a dusty pink and continuing to deepen as they begin to develop a more advanced brain, improved vision, specialized limbs (two bipedal legs, two wings, two arms with manipulating hands, feathers, and male sexual organs. They instinctively move from the reef or deep-pond habitat of the spawnling stage to shallows and shorelines, to exercise their new physiology and escape predators specialized for one environment or the other during this awkward transition. Their gills remain present and functional for life, also serving as tympani that provide an exceptional sense of hearing, and the four protective spines develop into proper, hide covered bones, the longest and uppermost hollow to act as a nostril when the passage behind these ears is close to avoid being deafened by their own breath. The new feathers maintain a natural coating of oil like many sea birds which also gives them a slight iridescent sheen.
During the period when their limbs are no longer optimized for swimming but not yet suited to rapid movement on land young males are roughly equivalent to a bright dog or a human toddler mentally and may be adopted by an older female or more commonly a family group of two to five with developed maternal instincts; both the physical care provided and the nutritional and immunological benefits from breast feeding give the adoptees a much better chance of survival than their wilder kin. Male Drassians have a short feathered crest on the top of the head, a much more pronounced ruff around the neck and chest and for some ethnicities on the chin or snout around the scent-pits, typically of a brighter hue than their scales. The crest is articulate like a cockatiel's, and two similar feathered structures form on the sides of the tail to provide added stability in the air.
The scales thicken and harden to provide a significant amount of natural armor by seven years, by which time wild Drassians become extremely aggressive and even those adopted into a family constantly wrestle and compete with each other and their peers. Full sexual maturity usually requires another five to seven years, by which time the number of wildlings have significantly reduced themselves and most of the survivors will have integrated into the peer groups of nearby settlements. Their wings and flight muscles develop slowly, with few able to maintain even a few seconds of flight before this point. Even so, the Drassian word for "war" is the same as "festival" or "tournament;" young males feel a constant urge to fight and engage in dominance displays for the next decade until their biochemistry begins to enter the next stage.
This change is heralded by increasing cyatonin levels that first see new feathers growing in purple or blue, followed by a moult of the heavy red scales to be replaced with a new coat of glossy, semi-flexible ones which are once again translucent, showing the color of the underlying hide as cell growth slowly changes its overall tone. Bright blue stripes commonly form along growth zones while the rest changes color over the course of several years. Within a season of scale moult beginning, the Drassian's penis will be absorbed and their gonads will retract as the developing female organs form, changing over from producing mobile germ cells to eggs. The "beard" or "mustache" extensions of the neck ruff will be lost at this time and the chest part of it will also be somewhat depleted, while the head crest grows out in time with the adult wing pinions. The bones in general also become more avian, with the thick and heavy structure of rough-and-tumble males hollowing and becoming lighter, their typically broad and muscular build lengthening to a more svelte appearance as adult height is reached without adding more bulk. A Drassian female will become fertile within a year of the end of scale moult, producing four to six egg pouches per year whether fertilized or not. The development of breasts and instinctive maternal urges takes another one to two years, as the chemical balance in the brain resettles. A healthy Drassian female at physical maturity can easily carry one or two males of adoption age while she flies.
The final stage of development occurs around the century mark, though the exact age tends to vary widely by circumstances and general health. Speaking in terms of evolution, an individual who has survived so long in the highly competitive environment of their early home world is probably a winning combination of genetics and habits, so with ferrotonin once again rising to roughly even levels with cyatonin and other hormones a Drassian Elder's gonads resume production of limited numbers of sperm, allowing perthenogenic reproduction if no suitable males are available to do the job while still allowing sexually-introduced genetic material the opportunity to fertilize some of the eggs in a pouch to produce new combinations. Drassian Elders gradually turn a darker and darker blue-purple until they eventually become as black as interstellar space with only the occasional glint off their scales or irridescence of their feathers for stars. They resume slow overall physical growth, and also begin to develop active psychic powers including telepathy, telekinesis, and remote sensory perception, though their flight ability is generally recognized to be partly telekinetic in nature due to the relatively small size of their wings and flight muscles compared to what simple aerodynamics would require.
This enhancement effect also increases over time, keeping the increasing body mass from eventually collapsing under its own weight and allowing truly amazing feats for upper tier Elders. Again taking the example of Great Revered Elder Chrysolanth the Resplendent, she is over 500m from snout to tail-tip and has proven capable of engaging in physical combat with a modern starship, withstanding its weapons and puncturing its shields to inflict decisive damage on multiple occasions when space conflict spilled over to the Drassian homeworld, flying through space unassisted at observed velocities up to 0.6c for durations of several hours without apparent distress. Rumors of precognition, teleportation, or innate FTL travel are unconfirmed and regarded as highly dubious; Chrysolanth herself declined to comment with an amused snort when asked.
---
Why? Because I doodled a cute lizard head on an envelope this morning and then backstory just kept on appearing. Also, I am amused by the idea of a young, purple Elder with an eye patch and one breathing tube broken short who is right fed up with needing to explain that no, she and any other Drassian she is aware of do not eat humans, but if they stick around she's about to sing some rock'n'roll music through the horn on her head.
What do you think, sirs?
--
‎noli esse culus
‎noli esse culus