Civago: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
|||
| (8 intermediate revisions by one other user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
[[File:DirectorateApproved.png|frameless|500x500px]] | |||
{{Species Infobox | {{Species Infobox | ||
| name = Civago | | name = Civago | ||
| Line 19: | Line 20: | ||
| language = Primarily clicks and hissing; many subspecies are capable of approximating mammalian speech | | language = Primarily clicks and hissing; many subspecies are capable of approximating mammalian speech | ||
}} | }} | ||
''"There are four stages of bargaining with a Civago: first, they up-sell. Second comes the haggling. The third... well, depends on how the haggling went. Don't give 'em an excuse to get physical, basically. Fourth? Oh, right. The fourth is when you're walking away, after the deal, where you realize it got everything it wanted for about half of what '''you''' wanted.'' | |||
The '''Civago''' (Common: [sɪˈvɛɡo̞]) are a widely differentiated species of arthropods. They were introduced to interstellar civilization | ''-Ezo Ardat Celleni, Directorate Scrap Merchant'' | ||
The '''Civago''' (Common: [sɪˈvɛɡo̞]) are a widely differentiated species of arthropods. They were introduced to interstellar civilization over a thousand years ago by the Kimmigan during the Foremarch, and became the first civilizational partners of said Kimmigan during the early formation of the [[Alganna Eternity]]. Today, most of them live in the various Great Houses of the Eternity, but over the centuries many have also left it for various reasons. | |||
=== '''Physical Description''' === | |||
Civago are extremely physically diverse, having long ago purposefully bred many different heritages for many different purposes across many different hives. The unifying biological and aesthetic traits are that Civago are all insectoid in appearance with compound eyes, antennae, redundant organs (usually inside an insectoid abdomen, but not always.) They come from a cold planet and naturally have fur along various parts of their exoskeleton, though many choose to remove it for aesthetic reasons, or style it similar to hair that other species in the galaxy have. If they have any wings they are vestigial from prior stages of evolution and cannot achieve flight on their own power. They come in various shapes, sizes, and may have any number of limbs. Civago with a more specialized hive ancestry may not even be bipedal. | |||
==== Heritages ==== | |||
Too many to list. '''Extreme''' biological and morphological diversity. | |||
=== '''History''' === | |||
Hailing from what was once an arid and tropical homeworld, their early history is rife with war amongst themselves. At this time warring states fought each other for control, different Civago staying in strict roles in their hive structures fighting to the point of absolute world ruin, eventually causing their homeworld to become cold and dark, covered with snow and little sunlight. It was at this most dire point, when the Civago may have expended its last generation in those tunnels that something inexplicable happened. A mass psionic event, wherein two collective realizations rippled through the entire species at once: if there wasn't immediate and lasting change in the direction of peace and cooperation, their species would die; and that in a particular hive near the equator, alien life had made contact. | |||
In the Terran year 1026, another species that had suffered similarly devastating ecological catastrophe, the [[Kimmigan|Kimmigani]], were then more than 300 years into their nearly millenium-long Foremarch, having slowly traveled at near the speed of light to several promising worlds on which to permanently settle. The Kimmigan fleet had detected Civa as a potentially lush and verdant world, but by the time it arrived this was no longer so. After several chaotic months spent navigating the vast cultural and biological differences between the two species, both eventually came to a mutual understanding on the points of commonality between them: the Kimmigani, too, had come from a shattered planet; had an inherent appreciation for hierarchy and order; took a pragmatic-minded survivor's viewpoint from the scarcity of resources; and were most certainly of a similar martial mindset, although they were significantly more polite than the average Civago of the time, and placed much more emphasis on honor. While it was out of the question to build an entirely new fleet for the entire Civago species, the two eventually negotiated a deal: the hives would act as a collective to repair, supply, and contribute towards new ships to fill out the dwindling Kimmigan fleet, and in return, some of those new ships would be populated by Civago in order to guarantee the survival of the species should Civa ever again reach such a dire state. | |||
Once the Kimmigani left, Civago society on Civa slowly began to change as the ramifications of first contact were reasoned through. Other alien life, it was argued, might not be quite as reasonable as the Kimmigani had been. It was also not enough to trust that the Civago sent with the fleet would survive and propagate. Moving forward would require doing so into a new age of unity and progress. That is not to say that the Civago species would necessarily come to love peace, but rather that it would need to learn to be at peace with itself, if it hoped to ever contend with others. Over the next several centuries, the old system of hive kings and queens was slowly and subtly dismantled by an international oversight body that cited as justification a semi-religious interpretation of the psionic event that had taken place during first contact. Some monarchs were openly killed in carefully orchestrated revolts, some abdicated after shadowy actors explained what would happen if they did not, and some were deposed in meticulously plotted military actions. By the year 1507, the worldwide conspiracy had achieved truly global reach, and Civa was ruled by a council of 9 who claimed to represent the ideals of societal cooperation within the teachings of The One Spirit. To this day the council has never had a decision made that wasn’t unanimous. | |||
The council steadily pushed for further development of technologies that would aid the Civago in the event of a hostile alien contact. Hives had already largely moved underground during the age of wars, but now infrastructure was developed to further fortify them, and to add life support systems that would later be applicable in space. Advancements in rocketry (both for transport and weapons) were followed by a defense-minded orbital infrastructure that would ultimately see its first real test in 1692. | |||
The new Kimmigan fleet appeared out of nowhere; the space-oriented threat detection grid hadn't picked up their approach (since that approach had been through underspace). The ships they flew now were sleek, without much visible mass dedicated to fuel storage, as the nomadic ships had been. The council briefly debated, and ruled that they would mount a probing attack disguised as the skittish reaction of a single lower-level officer. Small Kimmigan screening ships retaliated by erasing from reality the missiles, the station that had fired them, and two of its neighbors. Negotiations then commenced with the squadron of [[Alganna Eternity]] ships, and over the next several decades the council was integrated as one of the Great Houses of the Eternity. | |||
Ever since, the Civago have acted as civilizational partners to the Kimmigani. The citizens lost in that probing attack weren't mourned by society at large, but elevated as an aspirational ideal of self-sacrifice for the sake of progress. Civago nature has suitably adapted into something less openly martial and more cautious. The strict biological hierarchy of old has been supplanted with one based on meritocracy, in keeping with the Eternity's cultural norms. | |||
=== '''Society''' === | |||
As a star-faring society the Civago crave natural resources, a strong focus on trading, merchants are their most common profession seen among other races; they think everything is within reach and eventually should belong to them. There is a deep societal fear of extinction having had a history of near self-destruction already. As a society they are cautious and try to avoid direct conflict when they can, preferring to get others involved on their behalf. On an individual level they love conflict and fighting on a biological level, though it is looked down upon to show it outwardly in civilized society. | |||
Crime is taken very seriously on a cultural level with criminals who harmed a fellow Civago being traditionally seen as less than trash for breaking the unity of The One, though the severity of punishment varies from colony to colony. These criminals, including outliers on the fringe of civilization like mercenaries or Civago who have joined the Directorate or League are referred to as “returning to the old ways.” | |||
Civago often have what appear to be single names with apostrophes, if it sounds alien and strange in Common it is probably a Civago name. Names like Xel’nat, Yr’balak, names that invoke the mental image of an otherwise strange creature. The first part of a Civago name is their earned name, an accomplishment that had the name bestowed on them, with the second half of the name being a family or clan name. A Civago who has no accomplishments will always start with “An”, such as “An’nat.” | |||
Example Names: | |||
=== '''Beliefs''' === | |||
The cultural revolution of “The One Spirit” is an objective fact in their history, though there is debate to its nature. Their default religion praises The One Spirit similar to how a 21st century human might praise God, believing the entire Civago race to possess one unifying singular soul that they are all fragments of. Though Atheists and other religions are just as common as you would expect. Red and Blue are considered to be favorable colours for The One, with religious members favoring red clothing, and blue eyes being seen as being born closer to The One. | |||
=== '''Style Guide and Character Creation''' === | |||
What became of the various phenotypes of insectoids on the cold rock was they moved beyond their hive roles, no longer constrained by the hive’s expectations, and with many centuries of inter-hive breeding changing them physically over time. It is not a strange occurrence in the modern era to see a huge warrior-like Civago in a scholarly debate, or a stick-like Civago with tightly woven muscle fibers who can punch as hard as his larger neighbor. This has only led to further extreme divergence with access to the Eternity's genetic manipulation technology. | |||
Making a bug avatar is really hard in SL, and nobody really does it the same. With their species evolving in this way and having many different origins from their pre-change society it means any player can be a Civago with just a few unifying features. | |||
Latest revision as of 19:24, 17 June 2026
 | ||
| Civago | ||
|---|---|---|
| Biological classifications | ||
| Designation | Arthropoids | |
| Subspecies | Many | |
| Physical characteristics | ||
| Height | 0.9m-2.5m | |
| Mass | 14kg-170kg | |
| Distinctive traits | Extremely diverse, usually including:
| |
| Lifespan | Extremely variable; 2-200 cycles | |
| Socio‑cultural characteristics | ||
| Homeworld | Civa | |
| Habitat | Extreme cold | |
| Diet | Omnivorous | |
| Language | Primarily clicks and hissing; many subspecies are capable of approximating mammalian speech | |
"There are four stages of bargaining with a Civago: first, they up-sell. Second comes the haggling. The third... well, depends on how the haggling went. Don't give 'em an excuse to get physical, basically. Fourth? Oh, right. The fourth is when you're walking away, after the deal, where you realize it got everything it wanted for about half of what you wanted.
-Ezo Ardat Celleni, Directorate Scrap Merchant
The Civago (Common: [sɪˈvɛɡo̞]) are a widely differentiated species of arthropods. They were introduced to interstellar civilization over a thousand years ago by the Kimmigan during the Foremarch, and became the first civilizational partners of said Kimmigan during the early formation of the Alganna Eternity. Today, most of them live in the various Great Houses of the Eternity, but over the centuries many have also left it for various reasons.
Physical Description
Civago are extremely physically diverse, having long ago purposefully bred many different heritages for many different purposes across many different hives. The unifying biological and aesthetic traits are that Civago are all insectoid in appearance with compound eyes, antennae, redundant organs (usually inside an insectoid abdomen, but not always.) They come from a cold planet and naturally have fur along various parts of their exoskeleton, though many choose to remove it for aesthetic reasons, or style it similar to hair that other species in the galaxy have. If they have any wings they are vestigial from prior stages of evolution and cannot achieve flight on their own power. They come in various shapes, sizes, and may have any number of limbs. Civago with a more specialized hive ancestry may not even be bipedal.
Heritages
Too many to list. Extreme biological and morphological diversity.
History
Hailing from what was once an arid and tropical homeworld, their early history is rife with war amongst themselves. At this time warring states fought each other for control, different Civago staying in strict roles in their hive structures fighting to the point of absolute world ruin, eventually causing their homeworld to become cold and dark, covered with snow and little sunlight. It was at this most dire point, when the Civago may have expended its last generation in those tunnels that something inexplicable happened. A mass psionic event, wherein two collective realizations rippled through the entire species at once: if there wasn't immediate and lasting change in the direction of peace and cooperation, their species would die; and that in a particular hive near the equator, alien life had made contact.
In the Terran year 1026, another species that had suffered similarly devastating ecological catastrophe, the Kimmigani, were then more than 300 years into their nearly millenium-long Foremarch, having slowly traveled at near the speed of light to several promising worlds on which to permanently settle. The Kimmigan fleet had detected Civa as a potentially lush and verdant world, but by the time it arrived this was no longer so. After several chaotic months spent navigating the vast cultural and biological differences between the two species, both eventually came to a mutual understanding on the points of commonality between them: the Kimmigani, too, had come from a shattered planet; had an inherent appreciation for hierarchy and order; took a pragmatic-minded survivor's viewpoint from the scarcity of resources; and were most certainly of a similar martial mindset, although they were significantly more polite than the average Civago of the time, and placed much more emphasis on honor. While it was out of the question to build an entirely new fleet for the entire Civago species, the two eventually negotiated a deal: the hives would act as a collective to repair, supply, and contribute towards new ships to fill out the dwindling Kimmigan fleet, and in return, some of those new ships would be populated by Civago in order to guarantee the survival of the species should Civa ever again reach such a dire state.
Once the Kimmigani left, Civago society on Civa slowly began to change as the ramifications of first contact were reasoned through. Other alien life, it was argued, might not be quite as reasonable as the Kimmigani had been. It was also not enough to trust that the Civago sent with the fleet would survive and propagate. Moving forward would require doing so into a new age of unity and progress. That is not to say that the Civago species would necessarily come to love peace, but rather that it would need to learn to be at peace with itself, if it hoped to ever contend with others. Over the next several centuries, the old system of hive kings and queens was slowly and subtly dismantled by an international oversight body that cited as justification a semi-religious interpretation of the psionic event that had taken place during first contact. Some monarchs were openly killed in carefully orchestrated revolts, some abdicated after shadowy actors explained what would happen if they did not, and some were deposed in meticulously plotted military actions. By the year 1507, the worldwide conspiracy had achieved truly global reach, and Civa was ruled by a council of 9 who claimed to represent the ideals of societal cooperation within the teachings of The One Spirit. To this day the council has never had a decision made that wasn’t unanimous.
The council steadily pushed for further development of technologies that would aid the Civago in the event of a hostile alien contact. Hives had already largely moved underground during the age of wars, but now infrastructure was developed to further fortify them, and to add life support systems that would later be applicable in space. Advancements in rocketry (both for transport and weapons) were followed by a defense-minded orbital infrastructure that would ultimately see its first real test in 1692.
The new Kimmigan fleet appeared out of nowhere; the space-oriented threat detection grid hadn't picked up their approach (since that approach had been through underspace). The ships they flew now were sleek, without much visible mass dedicated to fuel storage, as the nomadic ships had been. The council briefly debated, and ruled that they would mount a probing attack disguised as the skittish reaction of a single lower-level officer. Small Kimmigan screening ships retaliated by erasing from reality the missiles, the station that had fired them, and two of its neighbors. Negotiations then commenced with the squadron of Alganna Eternity ships, and over the next several decades the council was integrated as one of the Great Houses of the Eternity.
Ever since, the Civago have acted as civilizational partners to the Kimmigani. The citizens lost in that probing attack weren't mourned by society at large, but elevated as an aspirational ideal of self-sacrifice for the sake of progress. Civago nature has suitably adapted into something less openly martial and more cautious. The strict biological hierarchy of old has been supplanted with one based on meritocracy, in keeping with the Eternity's cultural norms.
Society
As a star-faring society the Civago crave natural resources, a strong focus on trading, merchants are their most common profession seen among other races; they think everything is within reach and eventually should belong to them. There is a deep societal fear of extinction having had a history of near self-destruction already. As a society they are cautious and try to avoid direct conflict when they can, preferring to get others involved on their behalf. On an individual level they love conflict and fighting on a biological level, though it is looked down upon to show it outwardly in civilized society.
Crime is taken very seriously on a cultural level with criminals who harmed a fellow Civago being traditionally seen as less than trash for breaking the unity of The One, though the severity of punishment varies from colony to colony. These criminals, including outliers on the fringe of civilization like mercenaries or Civago who have joined the Directorate or League are referred to as “returning to the old ways.”
Civago often have what appear to be single names with apostrophes, if it sounds alien and strange in Common it is probably a Civago name. Names like Xel’nat, Yr’balak, names that invoke the mental image of an otherwise strange creature. The first part of a Civago name is their earned name, an accomplishment that had the name bestowed on them, with the second half of the name being a family or clan name. A Civago who has no accomplishments will always start with “An”, such as “An’nat.”
Example Names:
Beliefs
The cultural revolution of “The One Spirit” is an objective fact in their history, though there is debate to its nature. Their default religion praises The One Spirit similar to how a 21st century human might praise God, believing the entire Civago race to possess one unifying singular soul that they are all fragments of. Though Atheists and other religions are just as common as you would expect. Red and Blue are considered to be favorable colours for The One, with religious members favoring red clothing, and blue eyes being seen as being born closer to The One.
Style Guide and Character Creation
What became of the various phenotypes of insectoids on the cold rock was they moved beyond their hive roles, no longer constrained by the hive’s expectations, and with many centuries of inter-hive breeding changing them physically over time. It is not a strange occurrence in the modern era to see a huge warrior-like Civago in a scholarly debate, or a stick-like Civago with tightly woven muscle fibers who can punch as hard as his larger neighbor. This has only led to further extreme divergence with access to the Eternity's genetic manipulation technology.
Making a bug avatar is really hard in SL, and nobody really does it the same. With their species evolving in this way and having many different origins from their pre-change society it means any player can be a Civago with just a few unifying features.
