Race: Phoronoids

Summary

The Phoronoids are an insular species hailing from a fringe system, beyond the reaches of most civilized space. A few daring individuals have set out to explore the galaxy at large, to learn, establish trade, and bring back new knowledge and technology to assist in development of their own.

They appear little more than phoron-coloured skeletons covered in a thin layer of muscle, and require special environmental protection to survive in the oxygenated atmospheres favoured by most respirating species.

Phoronoids are a newcomer to the galactic stage: many governments have only tenuous and shallow relations with them, and most individuals aren't likely aware of them at all. However, their advanced technology and natural adaptability has caught the eye of many, and the more enterprising groups in the galaxy have begun to hire migrants and pioneers in hopes of learning their secrets.

Timeline Summary

Around 3000 years ago, an industrial, barely-spacefaring race was hit by a precusor terraforming probe, which converted most organic matter to phoron and phorogenic compunds. It also transformed the native hairy bipeds into Phoronoids.

This was an apocalyptic event: it took around 2000 years for the Phoronoids to re-develop spaceflight, and eventually colonize their system. They eventually developed strong STL and short-ranged FTL that relies on gravity wells, and colonized their nearest other star system via STL ship.

Culture

Individual Phoronoids tend to be quick-witted, adaptable and practical, but they have difficulty working together as they form large groups. As such, Phoronoid organizations tend to resemble a loose collection of aligned workgroups, committees and task-forces, with communication between elements and division of responsibilites typically facilitated by synthetic intelligences.

While generally superstitious, Phoronoids are quick to discard superstitions when unwieldly or troublesome, and are equally as quick to create new ones when convenient.

Naming

Phoronoid names take the form of (chemical element or compound) (roman numeral). The chemical element is picked by the individual upon reaching maturity, but number is usually assigned from birth.

Older phoronoids trend towards using periodic-table elements, whereas younger individuals prefer compounds to stick out from older generations and express themselves better.

The element/compound they choose is meaningful: they pick it to describe themselves. e.g "Carbon MMDCCXIV" may consider themselves common, unoriginal but exceptionally useful (like carbon), or may see themselves as exceptionally strong, resilient and capable of getting along well with other people (like graphene).

Associations are typically based on Phoronoid's views of elements, not anyone else's. For example, gold does not have intrinsic value in Phoronoid culture (unlike, say, for humans), but is still industrially useful as a conductor and for its ductility.

Language

Phoronoids have two main languages: Echorus and Conlang (often referred to as Phoronoid Conlang).

Echorus consists of melodic, flowing vowels interspersed with rattling and clacking. It has the unusual quality of lacking dipthongs, with all vowels being pronounced individually. It's typically used for most communication, especially where conveying emotion and subtext are important.

Phoronoid Conlang is a constructed language based on logical principles, designed to minimize obligatory categories and ambiguity in communication. It's typically used for technical communication and is the primary language used by Phoronoid computing systems (and some artificial intelligences).

Most Phoronoids will grow up speaking both.

Biology

Phoronoids are a primarily phoron-based lifeform, and only need to consume phoron (in any form) to sustain themselves.

Phoronoids do not biologically age after reaching maturity. While most older Phoronoids tend to become heavily-specialized cyborgs over time, it's not unusual to see even 500-year-olds wandering around.

Physically, they're quite fragile, especially to blunt-force trauma and minor cuts as they don't have skin.

Inhalation of certain noble gases (krypton, xenon) causes mild intoxication, but otherwise they're not susceptible to poisons or toxins.

Their active phorogenic biology causes them to combust in presence of oxygen at a partial pressure of greater than ~10kpa. Lower concentrations still cause damage, but aren't enough to sustain a flame.

Phoronoids can greatly accelerate their biological processes if provided with large quantities of phoron, but this necessarily causes severe tissue and organ damage if maintained for too long. In this state, their overactive biophorogenic processes may cause them to explode outright if exposed to oxygen, or even without exposure if they maintain it for too long.

Technology

Phoronoid technology is exceptionally advanced compared to that of most other species, and their expertise in certain areas is rumored to outstrip even the Skrell.

Their society is heavily dependent on their innovations: computers and synthetic intelligences are used for most applicable tasks, given a significant amount of oversight and used to coordinate between groups. Their advanced gravitic manipulation forms the backbone of their spacecraft design, and has allowed them to achieve impressive feats of construction.

They also posess natively-developed FTL technology in the form of the Thulium Drive. Its operating principles are poorly understood in the greater galaxy, but it appears to be short-ranged and dependent on strong gravity wells for targeting and operation.

Cybernetics

Phoronoid cybernetics are crude, featuring little in the way of direct neural feedback, but tend to be robustly built and specialized. Full-body prostheses are exceptionally rare.

Synthetics

While Phoronoids never developed the positronic brain, they still utilize synthetics to a great degree. Most are sub-sentient drone-level intelligences utilized for menial data-processing based tasks, but more advanced sentient and sapient drones are used for piloting spacecraft, liasing between organizations and groups and other roles.

Spacecraft

Phoronoid spacecraft design philosophy appears quite eclectic. Some ships are narrowly purpose-built, some are built for a wide range of tasks, and very few are identical.

Energy

Phoronoids trend towards singularity-based Hawking radiation reactors for large installations, antimatter-annihilation based reactors for large installations with very high power requirements and inability to fit a traditional singularity-based unit.

Fusion reactors are typical for smaller craft, and solar panels still see some use.

Unique Technologies

Gravitic Manipulation

Phoronoids possess some of the most advanced known gravity-manipulating technology in the galaxy. Rudimentary gravity manipulation is commonplace throughout the known galaxy, but due to its simplicity it is almost exclusively applied to provide artificial gravity. Phoronoid gravitic technology appears to have significantly fewer limitations, and as such forms a core component of both their sublight drives and spacecraft systems in general.

Gravitic manipulators are found in many applicationd across Phoronoid space, including for gross tasks such as asteroid mining and moving large objects, as well as small, fine tasks such as precision assembly. The range of these manipulators is generally quite short, and even the largest ones mounted aboard starships can rarely provide meaningful effect beyond a kilometer or so.

K-sink

The K-sink, or kinetic sink, is a poorly-understood device that directly converts kinetic force imparted on it into heat. Placed at key locations in a starship's structure, it can absorb the brunt of heavy impacts and augment the protective potential of traditional shields. Typically only present in Phoronoid craft expected to be exposed to heavy impacts, such as military, mining or engineering craft.

Only so much kinetic energy can be dissipated for a given length of K-sink, and so in most applications they are designed to only take stresses along a single axis.

Portable Phorogenic Life Support Systems

Developed from less-sophisticated pressure suits, Portable Phorogenic Life Support Systems form the first line of defense against the hostile oxygenated environments typically found across most of known space.

Two types are common: integrated systems, which are exceptionally capable but require skeletal reinforcement to utilize to the fullest degree, and self-contained systems, which are little more than puncture-resistant voidsuits with some integrated environment and health monitoring devices.

Territory

Phoronoids currently officially lay claim to only two systems: Nexus and Counterweight.

Nexus

Their home system. Consists of a G-type main-sequence star, three rocky planets, one gas giant (with a plethora of moons) and one distant phoron giant.

Bleak

Large rocky world, around 18,000 kilometers in diameter and massing slightly heavier than Earth. It has no atmosphere, having been stripped away long ago by solar winds. Bleak was the only planet in Nexus untargeted by precursor probes.

Some quantities of metals and ores alongside its close location to the system's primary means that most extractable resource deposits have been earmarked for future projects destined around the star.

Coin

Coin is a rocky world, but quite small, being only 8,000 kilometers in diameter. It has a tenuous atmosphere of carbon monoxide and nitrogen. Exploitable quantities of metal ores and phoron deposits saw significant mining early in the spacefaring history of the Phoronoids, but most metals now tend to be imported from the Counterweight system.

Foliot

Foliot is the homeworld of the Phoronoids. A super-earth, 15,000km in diameter, its atmospheric oxygen alongside most organic compounds were completely exhausted by a precursor probe and converted to phoron. Only phorogenic life forms, like the Phoronoids themselves, as well as a few microbial and colonial organisms, can survive on its surface.

Foliot is heavily industrialized and developed, and features a significant quantity of planetary industry, as it is one of the few bodies on which Phoronoids can live on naturally.

Monument

Monument is a massive gas giant, massing about 14x heavier than Jupiter with a diameter of 350,000km. Like most planets in Nexus, it was not spared from terraforming activity. An atmospheric probe is still active on Monument to this day in the eye of a massive storm, still converting trace compounds in the atmosphere to phoron.

Monument's significant mass, large quantities of ore-rich moons and proximity to Paragon have made it a prime location for orbital industry, and what little quantities of goods are destined for export are typically produced in Momument orbit.

Paragon

Paragon was a methane-ammonia ice giant, around 10-15% larger and massier than Neptune. Its atmospheric gases have been almost completely converted to phoron compounds via terraforming. Phoron exists in gaseous form in atmosphere, and as a liquid and solid deeper into the planet. Paragon is heavily exploited as primary source of phoron for life support + phoron-based technologies.

Paragon features the second-highest number of orbital habitats in the system, only falling short in comparison to Foliot.

Counterweight

The only system colonized by Phoronoids before first contact with the greater galaxy. A fairly unusual system, Counterweight consists of an O-Ne-Mag white dwarf previously surrounded by four gas giants, as well as a few small metallic planets (actually, the scorched cores of rocky planets that survived Counterweight's red giant phase).

Counterweight-001

Earth-like planetary core remnant: iron-nickel-chromium core with traces of various useful chamicals such as cobalt, vanadium, niobium, tantalum, phosphorus, sulfur and silicon.

First exploited for resources to construct fusion candles in system, now heavily exploited by mining fleets. Significant orbital industry.

Counterweight-002

002 is a light-element planetary core, likely from a planet with extremely large core relative to its radius. Exploitable resources include oxygen, silicon, aluminium and calcium, but heavier trace elements are also present. Iron, nickel and other heavy elements are suspected to make up the inner core, but so far no known comprehensive studies have been performed.

Lower mining activity and industrialization compared to 001 due to its lower mass and less important resources.

Planets Link-N1-C4, Link-N2-C3, Link-N3-C2 and Link-N4-C1

Gas giants of varying size but similar mass, ranging from smaller than Saturn to Jupiter-sized. All were moved via fusion candle over the course of a few hundred years to interstellar space between Counterweight and Nexus to support faster-than-light travel between the two systems.

Government

Phoronoid space is controlled by the Mandatory Nexus-Counterweight Administration (MNCA), as a result of the Two Systems Mandate signed after establishing FTL travel between the systems of Nexus and Counterweight.

The Mandatory Administration is a strange hybrid of a democracy and a technocracy: anyone is free to apply for a role in the government, but the exact role and position that one is placed in is typically decided by computer assignment based on one's personality and proficiencies.

Particularly-knowledgable or specialized individuals are occasionally called for MNCA service, in either a temporary advisory or permanent 'ministerial' position. They're free to decline, but this rarely happens. Most are happy to serve the interests of their government, as it rarely interferes in their lives otherwise.

There are two types of Phoronoids which apply for government positions of their own volition: those with a talent for politics and/or an ambition for power, and those who seek to work on in-government projects.

Economy

The Phoronoid economy is best described as an interaction of its two seperate markets: a centrally-planned system tightly controlled by the MNCA, and a lassez-faire free-market barter system that extracts resources from locations not earmarked by the Administration.

The first system maintains the various Phoronoid megastructures, the Phoronoid Territorial Integrity Maintenance fleets, and various other orbital infrastructure, while the second operates makes everything people might want but not necessarily need.

Interspecies Relationships

Phoronoids are new to the galactic stage. Most species have been aware of them for a few months, at most, and even spacefaring individuals are unlikely to have seen, heard of or interacted with a Phoronoid.

Conversely, Phoronoids are at least somewhat aware of the other galactic races, and what to expect from them.

• Skrell
  • Have a close, friendly relationship, having met after first contact. Longevity, strict heirarchies in structure and a tendency to move slowly in large scales endear the races to each other collectively; individually the ponderous, deliberating Skrell find the quick-thinking, fast-acting and irreverent Phoronoids to be somewhat unpersonable.
  • Their low need for- and general unwillingness to accept- Skrellian interstellar aid is the only other sticking point in their relationship.
  • Limited technology transfer, typically providing their developed metallurgy and organic chemistry research in exchange for advanced Skrellian biotechnological developments.
  • Most Skrell will have a passing familiarity with the Phoronoids.

• Humanity
  • The Phoronoids have a relatively distant but cordial relationship with the Orion Confederation.
  • They possess no direct trade routes, and little actually happens between the two species other than the minutae involved in maintaining a diplomatic relationship.

• Teshari
  • Phoronoid-Teshari relations exist but are limited, owing to the Phoronoid preference of dealing with the Skrell primarily. Still, official diplomatic channels to the Vikara Combine permit contact with the Teshari.

• Unathi
  • Phoronoids have no established relationship with the Unathi. Only a few diplomats amongst the Hegemony are likely aware of their existence to any significant degree, and may or may not be working to establish contact with the MNCA.
  • Unathi outside of Zaddat spheres of influence are unlikely to have seen, heard of or interacted with a Phoronoid.

• Naramadi
  • Similar to the Unathi, the Naramadi Ascendancy has limited awareness, let alone contact, with the Phoronoid species. Due to the insular nature of both groups, it's unlikely that any diplomatic relationships will be established anytime soon.

• Zaddat
  • The only member of the Hegemony that have any established diplomatic relationshi with the Phoronoids, the various Zaddat fleets and colonies tend to maintain sparse but cordial contact with the Phoronoids. Limited technology transfer and cross-species placements exist. Phoronoid-Zaddat work-exchange programs expose significant numbers Phoronoids to the greater galaxy.
  • Most Zaddat are aware of the existence of Phoronoids, and typically bond over the life-support equipment both are required to wear in most space-habitat atmospheres.

• Auril

• • Relations between the MNCA and Synodus's Ministry of External Affairs are friendly. Auril media is a popular cultural import, and there exists a burgeoning market for low and mid-grade managerial drones of Phoronoid manufacture in Daedal.
  • Most Auril will have at least a passing familiarity with Phoronoids, and may have some knowledge about their cultural and personal stereotypes.

• Dremachir
  • Due to bilateral trade agreements with Synodus, some Phoronoid technology finds its way from the rest of Daedal to Drema. No official relationship exists, however.

• Tajaran
  • The Tajaran Confederate Commonwealth has initiated diplomatic overtures towards the MNCA, but no concrete agreements have been made.

Trans-Stellar Corporations

They don't have any. Essentially no large-scale 'private enterprise' exists in Phoronoid space due to their general unwillingness to form large groups, lack of official currency and the small overall size of their territory and population.

Many smaller enterprises exist producing anything from trinkets and games to ships and stations, but these are typically consumed locally and not exported.

Galactic Species
Common Species	Humans, Synthetics, Skrell, Tajara, Teshari, Unathi
Uncommon Species	Akula, Alraune, Auril, Dremachir, Naramadi, Zaddat, Dnin-Nepids
Whitelisted Species	Adherent, Dionea, Phoronids, Proteans, Shadekin, Vox, Xenochimera, Xenohybrids
Misc Species & Data	Minor Races, Scori, Changelings