Mirrubani
 | ||
| Mirrubani | ||
|---|---|---|
| Biological classifications | ||
| Designation | Marsupials | |
| Subspecies | 4 | |
| Physical characteristics | ||
| Height | 0.7m-2.6m | |
| Mass | 12kg-160kg | |
| Distinctive traits | Always including:
Sometimes including:
| |
| Lifespan | 30-90 cycles | |
| Socio‑cultural characteristics | ||
| Homeworld | Mirruban | |
| Habitat | Extreme | |
| Diet | Mostly omnivorous | |
| Language | Largely dominated by whoops and chitters | |
Physical Description
The Mirrubani are a species-complex of six related but widely varying species. All of them feature a nursing pouch of greater or lesser size, as well as a metabolism that features an autonomic toggle between modes of growth and of quasi-hibernation; Mirrubani in conditions of nutritional excess will continue to grow in height throughout their adult lives, albeit usually at a slow rate. While height therefore is not always a sign of age, it is however a sign of plenty and age together. This also means that obesity is a very rare condition for any Mirrubani species.
Mirruban is not precisely dry in climate but has no major oceans, with water being more commonly distributed in a network of lakes and rivers. Because it has a dramatic axial tilt, its seasons are wild climactic extremes. The Mirrubani are social symbionts with one another, and nearly every disparate Mirrubani community in their recent evolutionary history has been composed of more than one of the planet's native sophonts; since each is best adapted for its own season, this was practically a prerequisite for the development of civilization. These communities were traditionally semi-nomadic, and moved from one biome to another in time with the seasons. This is less the case today with modern climate control, but is still sometimes practiced.
Heritages
Valli: The Valli most closely resemble Terran kangaroos. They naturally grow to be the largest of the Mirrubani species; an average young-adult Valli easily reaches 2m tall, and by middle age is usually closer to 2.5m. The Valli are best adapted for the long and hot summers on Mirruban's central plains, with short, heat-reflective fur and a ruminant ability that allows them to digest grasses and weeds just as well as meat, although traditionally they would spend their summers subsisting purely on plant matter as meat was being preserved.
The Valli are traditionally the hierarchs and historians of the species, stereotyped as even-tempered but authoritative. Although the species became only semi-nomadic over the course of its recent evolutionary history, the Valli have the largest natural range of all Mirrubani, and typically if they feel they aren't sufficiently respected, they tend to isolate themselves either literally or in some personal pursuit until their presence is missed.
Durri: The Durri most closely resemble Terran opossums and gliders. True omnivores with a love of fruits, their height can vary wildly but is the closest to the galactic average at around 160-180 at the age of majority. The Durri are best adapted for Mirruban's spring, and traditionally were most active when a given community of Mirrubani would move into its forests, where in ancient times they would use the abundance of new growth to craft garments from soft new-growth fibers. Prolific as either climbers or diggers, Durri generally still prefer either high places (in the case of glider-like members) or something reminiscent of dens or warrens (in the case of opossum-like members) as their dwellings today.
Durri are traditionally scavengers and craftspeople, and are frequently stereotyped as having short attention spans and a love of novelty or acquisition. They are also seen as notorious gossips.
Rasshi: Most closely resembling Terran Tasmanian devils, the Rasshi are on the larger side of the Mirrubani spectrum but tend to grow stockier and shorter than the Valli. Average height at the age of majority is also around 2m tall, but their height grows more slowly than their breadth and by middle age they're often no taller than 2.2m. While the Rasshi are omnivorous, they're adapted to prefer meat, and with their extremely robust gut biome it doesn't necessarily have to be fresh. They also tend to have a very strong bite force for a sophont. The Rasshi are best adapted for Mirruban's autumns, when its strong seasonal storms and earthquakes give the planet a harsh mortality rate requiring expeditious corpse "removal" and the other species are busy with the harvest. Autumn was the season for them to depart for raids and other forms of warfare, when the Rasshi could operate best as self-sufficient packs in the scrublands between different communities.
Gulthi: Most closely resembling Terran mustelids, the Gulthi are smaller on average than the other Mirrubani species, typically 1.2-1.6m at the age of majority and still often only 2m at best by middle-age. Gulthi have insulated and tightly-growing, oily fur that affords them great resistance to cold and wet. While they traditionally hibernated during the hot summers, in the long and harsh winters of Mirruban they alone could supplement dwindling food supplies by cracking lake or river ice and diving for fish.
History
Mirruban's erratic axial tilt has for tens of millions of years created a seasonal cycle with extreme and prolonged summers and winters, and shorter (though still lengthy), drastic springs and autumns. Perhaps because these seasons differ so greatly from those of most other planets, even in Common they are often referred to descriptively as tactile or visual concepts: summer is Arid, autumn is Wet, winter is Ash, and spring is Green. While the sophonts native to Mirruban evolved as separate species, they have operated in ecological cooperation with one another, it is thought, even before the emergence of speech. It is generally held today that by the time sharpened bone, stick, and rock came into use, a migratory band that utilized members of all four species would have outcompeted monomorph packs by a factor of three or more.
Modern archaeology has found that roughly a millennium ago, a particularly harsh and decades-long Ash season devastated surface flora far beyond the usual, and local legends corroborate this with cautionary and celebratory tales of ancient days of starvation when the rivers ran dry. It's said that in those days, the Durri, who should have been in hibernation until spring, woke and began to grow the fungus that would later develop into the first deliberate agriculture on Mirruban.
Traditional oral histories documents that around this time, the Durri began to organize among themselves into a monomorphal social unit smaller than a full band, in order to jealously protect the secret of agriculture. In these stories, the other species then each are granted discoveries of their own; the Gulthi acquired precious bronze and gold while cracking ice for their dens and smelt it in their winter fires, and they too follow the Durri model to protect their monopoly on metal; this monopoly is broken when the Rasshi discover bog-iron; and just as all the species are at their most insular and mercenary against each other, the wise and placid Valli, as the only ones with no monopoly at all, offer to arbitrate neutrally for the benefit at all, and that all species saw the wisdom in this and agreed.
While these stories are likely truncated and highly symbolic, it is nevertheless true that the development of metallurgy and agriculture occurred in close proximity to one another, and was shortly followed by the establishment of semi-settled civilization. Under this model, each band (which at that time could mean a society of as many as several thousand individuals administrated out of a central city) would be made of a combination of species, but within each band, each species would operate as a separate social unit, which would be in contact with other social units of the same species across different bands to form something like a species guild that spanned multiple city-states. Each local group of Valli, in addition to their active period in the summer would also perform most of the planning for the coming year, and also serve as Arbitrators who would negotiate and oversee transfers of goods and people from one band to another as requested or paid for by the Valli of other bands.
Without any major oceans separating these bands, technological innovation, social or otherwise, was rapid in spreading across Mirruban. This worldwide network of migration and trade saw remarkable success as a social model, and under it rapidly came the advancements of writing, architecture, mathematics, bureaucracy, and even some examples of rudimentary pneumatic and hydraulic machinery when an automated survey drone of The Alganna Eternity entered orbit and began transmitting telemetry to New Alba.
In the Terran year 1747, an exploratory fleet set up its base camp on the second moon of Mirruban and its sociologists began evaluating it for the process of Alighting. They could not have arrived at a more dynamic time, for shortly after the establishment of their research base, loyalty and even love for one's city-state over one's species became the prevailing model. Over the following century, advancements on Mirruban occurred at a breakneck pace. Conflict in the form of raids had already existed, but now war and conquest came, and then concepts not of city-state but of country, and pride in it, and then empire, and pride in that too. As technology advanced commensurately, the scientific method was discovered, and then science fiction, and much of what was written in that genre to some degree resembled the as-yet-unknown reality, though it largely had a utopian and hopeful attitude about it. By 1881, the politically-united planet had advanced technologically by leaps and bounds, and the central government was finally contacted by the Eternity and offered the world its dreamed-of place in an advanced and cosmopolitan space empire.
