The Miser Crabs

The planet called Jazz Harmony (locally [leading-mediant diminished]/[tonic]), located 11.34 light-years from Ajjamah, orbits around a middle-aged red dwarf. Not quite tidally locked, it spins about its axis once every ten Earth days--and around its star once every fifteen. Long days, high winds, mountains and lakes scattered across the planet…it's a place where you really have to value what you've got. Hence, the Diminished First Inversion Ascending, also called the Miser Crabs.

Biology

The Miser Crabs come from the class chelonamorpha, creatures with some resemblance to starfish on Earth but with a large, pseudo-skeletal shell. The original ten tentacles of their ancestors—useful in grabbing and digesting food, locomotion, auditory/visual/olfactory/tactile sensation, and reproduction—have by this point specialized to better be of use to the terrestrial creatures.

The shell remains, flexible yet sturdy, constructed of a mixture of keratin, dermal tissue, and hydroxyapatite. From it jut six legs like barbed pincers used both for locomotion and for anchoring themselves to the ground in high winds. The fourth "pair" of limbs are mainly for manipulation, with double-jointed zygodactylous pincers allowing them to hold and alter objects.

The last two of the original limbs have become a head and a "tail". The head has two eyes, a beak (derived from keratin buildups similar to the barbs on the limbs), and four spiracles—two for inhalation and two for exhalation, on a constant cycle. Notably, this also acts as the source of the Miser Crab languages; the larynx in one exhalation spiracle (ES) is larger than the other, and the two working in modulation provide a double source of sound for their language, even if the actual phonology is generally lacking. (Miser Crab languages, for the record, tend to sound like argumentative oboes in long duets.) The tail, meanwhile, is theoretically for balance in the water but more often used for reproduction. All of these are controlled by a muscular hydrostatic skeleton similar to an elephant's trunk or the human tongue, but with a secondary layer of "bone fragments" (intenalized cartilage) which can snap into place and lock to provide extra strength for the muscles through connections to specific nerves.

Excretion of waste, like in most chelonamorphs, occurs through a central hole at the bottom of the shell. Like in most chelonamorphs also, they have the ability to breathe through their skin (specifically the soft skin around their tail) in water if necessary.

Within the shell—which is slightly hollow and thus can receive auditory information much better than any of the remaining "limbs" can—lie the internal organs, including a stomach, five separate cores (lung-heart combinations, allowing for constant circulation of oxygen and carbon dioxide), and a ten-lobed brain. There is an additional portion of the brain found in the head, dealing with short-term memory and fine muscle control, but long-term memory and basic muscle control are stored in the shell.

Miser Crabs are omnivores, digesting both plant and animal matter. Their beaks are not especially well-suited to digesting large pieces, although the chemoreceptors at the ends of all their "limbs" have retained their function as taste-buds within the mouth. Miser Crabs are often foragers, similar to deer or goats, but they also function well as ambush predators—worst comes to worst, they simply drop on their prey from above, but they're much more comfortable in the construction of burrows and camoflaged cave entrances. Indeed, the construction of these was probably what drove the Miser Crabs to sapience, alongside their need for cooperation with one another out in the open.

Psychology

Jazz Harmony's surface is not uninhabitable, but it is (or was) nevertheless incredibly dangerous. Even for animals with physical adaptations that made it easier to keep alive and well, a certain adaptability was necessary to survive, a strong neuroplasticity. The early Miser Crabs had this, of course—but there were consequences.

The lobes of the Miser Crab brain, which are quasi-independent, coordinate movement of the "limbs", store memory and sensory data, and perhaps most important of all allow for higher levels of cognitive development. It is noteworthy, however, that the Miser Crab brains do not actually create emotion as humans would understand it. Each brain produces slightly different interpretations of the same event and compares and contrasts it with the other segments, providing potential reactions and solutions to problems. But the division between "emotion" and "decision-making" per se does not exist.

Oh, the Miser Crabs do have drives, to be sure—largely a duality of what they call acquisition and caution, the necessity of finding new material for oneself versus the potential dangers of the outside world. But beyond that, their emotional responses would, to a human, seem very unusual, almost heartless. A Miser Crab is used to second-guessing any information that comes their way, and because of the high level of neuroplasticity they often come to think quite differently from one another, and so are often rather distrustful of others of their kind. It is difficult, after all, to determine the similarity of someone's thought processes when mentally they mat have developed considerably differently to oneself over the course of a lifetime—as different as Eloi and Morlocks, even, within the space of a few hundred years.

For this reason, common drives—acquisition, caution, and to a certain degree succession (ensuring that one's physical and mental characteristics are passed down)—are incredibly important in Miser Crab society. They may not all think alike, but everyone wants to make money, everyone wants to be safe, and everyone wants to ensure their experiences are not in vain.

There is, however, a very common interpretation of balancing these drives, and that is the principle of sibling compatibility. Owing (for reasons discussed below) to the large number of male offspring a Miser Crab couple is likely to have, there has been a strong tendency among "brothers" to treat a success for one as a success for all. Part of what separates them from their ancestors (and from related species like the rock-hyena) is the inclusion of their hermaphroditic siblings in this arrangement, forming complex matrilineal associations centred around protection of their next combined next generation. This manifests in different ways. Some are the brothers of two unrelated hermaphrodites who themselves are a couple. Some practice polyandrous marriage, or establish a breeding pair of one male and one hermaphrodite. One common setup has been the "fostering" of children by an uncle and their removal from the wider world, keeping the Miser Crabs connected yet in sufficient isolation for general comfort.

Some Miser Crab psychologists have discussed the possibility of a fourth drive, for enlightenment, a desire to learn more about one's environment that involves mimicking others and developing one's own methods from there. Others argue that this is just a subset of Acquisition.

It should be noted, again, that Miser Crabs do not think of these as emotions. Each has a potential logic behind it, but there is a constant cycle of ideas and hypotheses in each of their lobes, and there is no point in feeling something about events, just an opportunity to look for solutions. What humans, and other species like the Nadders and Selkies, would call emotional reactions—joy, grief, rage, and so on—the Miser Crabs call insanity, diseases of a mind no longer able to rationalize solutions or options for itself and simply giving up. Coming into contact with other, more "emotional" species has challenged this preconception, but it's still seen as a sign of mental instability among their own.

Another effect of the ten-lobed brain is that, while the Miser Crabs do have periods of stillness, they are never able to sleep. As many as seven separate lobes may be "dormant" at one time, sorting memories and conserving energy, but the Miser Crab itself maintains consciousness and thought. A point where all ten lobes are active at once represents a Miser Crab in "full thought", instincts and plans working in concert with one another to achieve a desired outcome. This is often the case in battle, for example. Meanwhile there are drugs which can render dormant all ten lobes, leaving the Miser Crab in a state of near-paralysis and their senses open to recombined memories and dreams, which normally occur as fleeting "daydreams" in their lobes and are rarely if ever given much thought.

Reproduction

Miser Crabs have two sexes, which may be translated as "male" and "female", although "hermaphrodite" is more commonly used instead of "female" for reasons of accuracy. Miser Crab genetic recombination depends on a PQ-chromosome system; PP and QQ individuals are hermaphroditic, able to both fertilize others and to hatch the resulting offspring. There is a 50% chance that any union will be sterile, as PP and QQ individuals are physically identical in most cases, and the sexes cannot viably reproduce with one of their own. PQ individuals are male, only able to fertilize but able to produce viable offspring regardless. Regardless, there is a 50% change that a union of males and hermaphrodites will produce males, but a 100% chance of male offspring between two hermaphrodites.

Hermaphrodites tend to be larger, while males tend to be sturdier. While the chance of finding a reproductive partner technically goes up to 66% (compared to 50% for humans with their male-female dichotomy), in practice there are usually a lot more males than there are hermaphrodites. This has not led to sequestering; on the contrary, hermaphrodites more often than not are the natural leaders. It does mean that males have generally been considered more expendable, making up a majority of the population (roughly 75% of offspring) as they do.

Miser Crabs lay, not eggs, but eggsups, a thick, almost gelatinous liquid with temperature control and the developing offspring (usually one per eggsup) being clearly visible as it uses up the fluid. Notably, this allows a greater amount of parental care; the eggsup must be watched, and both parents (are expected to) provide extra toppings of protein until the child is ready to "hatch", which it does by chewing its way out of the eggsup. It also means that multiple eggsups can technically be raised in a group.

Magic

Magic on Jazz Harmony relies on the position and prominence of physical objects. While it is not possible to do very much with said objects per se in terms of transmutation, physical control is possible by linking one soul to another. The Miser Crabs, as a race, believe that there is no such thing as "free" time—that perception and function of time (linear, cyclical, sideways) all depends on an individual being, and that it is possible to "match" the speeds and ratios of various objects but not to overcome them. This, coupled with an inbuilt desire to respect mental "secrets" of their elders derived from migratory instinct, led to the creation of vast treasure-houses and mausoleums where property was buried--and a trade of property could be used to buy the services of their peers.

Miser Crabs rarely bother with all-powerful gods. Most of their religious figures either have been "property owners" on a large scale (being in sync with the cosmos, for example), or else have been those who preached common property for all in the name of restoring the planet to an impossible balance. They're obsessed with lineage (after all, connections pass down in the genes) but not with kinship; what matters is the service you can perform.

History

Bushworld (2.07-2.053mya)

Isolationist tendencies were common among early Miser Crabs. A typical settlement involved bonds of one to six individuals, scattered in the hundreds across settled territories, with shared "markets" where goods and ideas could be traded by hundreds of individuals. Even at this stage, there were a number of "noetic castes" which developed, emphasizing certain skills.

Given below is an example of one of the primitive systems in use even today among some fairly isolated clans in the Bagatelle-in-A-Major Highlands:

• GATHERERS tend towards broad, inflappable mindsets, cautious against danger but more in favour of hiding (along with one's bounty) than fleeing. Childrearing instincts tend to be higher, too, as often such expeditions are easier for children to join in on.

• HUNTERS are more outgoing, and tend to push further in pursuit than they do in determining variety. Meat—especially from the larger animals—also provided one of the first major trade goods. Geospatial awareness is upped considerably, as is hand-eye coordination...and patience. Miser Crabs don't move very quickly as a general rule, but Hunters make the most of ambush sites more often than not, and occasionally will simply drop on a creature from a great height to squash it and/or break all the bone-fragments in its body.

• TAMERS provide various beasts, not fresh from the hunt but raised specially, for food and companionship. This normally leads to spending a decent chunk of their profits on maintaining the animals, leading to them becoming the first (in other societies) to develop complex mathematics to demonstrate their profit.

• CRAFTERS initially were the most developed noetic caste, each specializing in the manufacture of a particular good. Educational developments tended to be stronger, too, but at the expense of food collection.

• SINGERS specialize not in any particular means of production, but in the passing-down of "memes" to the offspring of their group. Again, this group specialized little in food-gathering or even in practical matters, but they have an exceptional ability to compile random information and present it in a logical manner.

• ACTORS were perhaps better called "schizophrenics"; even at this early stage in Miser Crab development, certain tribes and castes were practically unintelligible. The job of the Actors is to think in two (or more) minds, literally adjusting their brains to better fit the characteristics of other castes while simultaneously being aware of doing so and retaining their own personality regardless.This largely only works between related castes, however. They also act as general entertainers for other Miser Crabs, passing down stories and coming up with a few of their own.

Any of these castes may act "community leaders", and any child has the potential to join any caste.

Certain technological elements were nevertheless mastered, albeit at a different rate. Fire was tamed, in underground or cavernous smithies with good ventilation, beginning traditions of pottery and metallurgy alike. Jazz Harmony boasts eight founder crops: yamweed, rinthe, platemeat, ambrosia trees, beannuts, henpeas, whitterberries, and figleaf. All of these were domesticated, inndifferent parts of the planet, during this period of time. A number of animals, too, were domesticated, including the riparian catshail (a source of much aquaculture), the spongenut (actually a creature similar to a smile mould), the distantly-related bank-lobster (a good source of protection, meat, and eggsup), and the avian salmatross. During this time, too, writing evolved—a simple, logographic script, used to record trade deals between families or individuals and inscribed on clay tablets by a caste whose English name roughly translates to "the Observers".

Stoneworld (2.053-2.047mya)

For a long period during their development—approximating 17,000 Nexum Standard Years—the Miser Crabs remained isolated, each within their own family groups and clans even as technology advanced and people moved from settlement to settlement seeking profit. And on Jazz Harmony's two main continents—one in the Northern Hemisphere, one in the Southern—new forms of governance slowly emerged.

A caste sprang up in the Intermedio-in-F-Minor Valley which was able to provide safe places for other Miser Crabs to store their wealth in exchange for protection, and the pattern that started with the "Safekeepers" spread quickly across the Southern Hemisphere. Meanwhile in the Northern Hemisphere a second group, "the Cooks", took on a similar role, but with the addition of deliberately mixing and matching flavours, foods, and intoxicants from other lands which they provided to their clients.

There was hostility, certainly, but the sporadic conflicts were usually handled by castes known variously as "the Warriors", "the Mercenaries", "the Combatants", and so on, who developed this particular niche with the expectation of room, board, wealth, and succession.

Nevertheless, the first imperial caste—known as the "Alienists"—would arise not from the Warriors, but from the Actors. A hermaphrodite who would later be called One People, but whom we may call Draupadi, provided her children (born from five brothers) with her exceptional ability to mimic the mentalities of castes well-removed from one another. The trick was in the balancing of a base mentality, which could be used to unite groups to a common purpose and—just as importantly—pass on knowledge of individual psychologies to future generations. Better yet, they could gain access to secrets more easily through these methods. Draupadi's children would go on to prove themselves as culture heroes in various locales, coordinating for the first time the building not of material or physical bonds but a "currency of honour". In time, the Consortium that formed—the first such consortium in the history of the planet—would come to occupy a third of the Hemisphere, including the entirety of the Southern Polar Tundra.

The Empire of Alienists set up a bizarre system for ensuring tribute and taxes came to them: the Grand Lottery. Originally, it was limited to profit alone—one paid their taxes, then received a number, which would entitle one to a tenfold return on one's investment as well as various services coopted from the different castes. Later, it became more intrusive, determining by means of rational numbers how society would go, with the difference only in which individual would be selected for which task—and which punishment or reward. Still, the Alienists did see the emergence of a number of castes still found even today, including the Pythagoreans (architects and mathematicians), the Doctors (who initially were entitled to the worth of a year's earnings of anyone they saved—and potential death from the families of those they didn't), and the Deathmakers (a caste of nearly-always suicidal maniacs with a fierce devotion to their selected ward). They also invented the ball bearing, used alongside pulleys to extend the reach of their legs and, using a trampoline-like arrangement, to carry goods long distances.

The Empire would come into contact with other societies as well, where different castes had come to dominate. The Empire of Landowners in the northern part of the continent had grown up around a derivative of a local Gatherer caste, who held the land in common trust. The Inheritance on the equatorial Fugue-in-B-Melodic Islands, the private fortune of a particularly tenacious male who sequestered one hundred hermaphrodites from one another and bore over a thousand children, was amenable to trade but not to conversion; their arrogant belief in their own genetic superiority over all other castes was matched only by their fighting and raiding spirit. Enlightenment Country, mountain lands where "the Monks" practiced a form of triad marriage (one male to two hermaphrodites) and drew the excess offspring into the priesthood, the army, the fields, and the merchants' guilds, were particularly averse to colonization. Even the Safekeepers survived, becoming (theoretically) loyal civil servants to the alienists.

In the Northern Hemisphere, meanwhile, the Culinary Imperium had their own internal developments, and came up against their own enemies and allies. The Imperium, anong other things, supported the growth of a caste of Actors that came to be known as the Fools, drawing on different experiences to make their subjects more comfortable. (Miser Crabs don't have a sense of humour.) Most notable among them were the bands led by Hypnotists, a hybrid caste of Singers and Tamers who developed a method of activating more hostile or docile instincts in their subjects based on ritually-consumed powders with various chemicals used previously to enact certain behaviours in the large, vegetarian brontos they raised. For a short time, the Hypnotists could control the neural pathways of their followers, instilling emotional control, through a series of pantomines and songs that forced them to coordinate in what the old texts call the Melodies of Madness. Also prominent were the Minoans, controllers of the oldest city-states in the world. Each city was maintained religiously by the Minoans, a collection of Crafter-descent castes with their own unique specialities, and into which the older castes were eventually subsumed as their descendants were taken away to be raised in one craft or another. The labyrinthine structures are maintained even now, millions of years after their collapse.

For collapse they did, alongside all others. Although the dual civilizations existed together for 3,000 years together, they did eventually succumb to the pressures around them. In the South, this is largely attributed to a society called the Six Suns, dominated by a particular kind of madness that insisted the world be returned to a natural state free of Miser Crab interference. The tendency to masochism and suicide was overwhelmed only by strong xenophobic urges, and a tendency to burn what they disliked. They destroyed themselves, but through deceit and espionage and total unpredictability to the minds of the Alienists they took nearly two-thirds of the emoire wirh them. In the North, at the same time, a hard famine caused by a volcanic eruption known as the Night Millennium (note: about 27 Nexum Standard Years) meant the Cooks, who by that time had been largely replaced by the Samaritans (a Minoan-descent caste specializing in the construction of projectile weapons and long-distance runners), eventually were overwhelmed by the mob seeking access to their stores.

It is during this time that, seemingly independently, two separate castes emerged, the Scavengers and the Thieves, both of which focused on the acquisition of property from others through subtler means. Similar castes emerged during the empires, but were usually quashed quite quickly. Within a post-apocalyptic world such as theirs, however, they thrived. The Scavengers, a descendant of a caste of Actors in the Culinary Empire, were exceptional at reverse-engineering technology and setting up hordes of their own. The Thieves, meanwhile, were better at integrating into societies on their own and effectively parasitizing them for as long as they could, before leaving and starting all over again.

Seaworld (2.047-2.044mya)

The old empires having mostly crumbled, a new form of noetic advancement began overtaking the older societies from the coastal regions. The near-constant oceanic belt around the equator means the ocean remains unfrozen even during the long nights, and the Sea Collective—fishers, whalers, boat-builders, boat-builders, and the like, in several multi-variant castes all across the Threshold Sea—maintained a monopoly on maritime trade. They also, in the last days of both major empires, took in a number of refugees. Their "treasure ships", which functioned as villages, naval bases, and small biomes all in one, developed differently than either land empire. Instead of several castes, each maintained a relatively loose adaptation to any or all positions onboard a ship. Instead of overlapping castes over great distances, the Captains—again derived from a caste of Singers—had only two mindsets that needed to be juggled, that is being a leader and being a member of a confederation, both of which encouraged a "first among equals" mindset. And when, in the aftermath of the destruction of the older states, the Sea Collective expanded north and south and absorbed the primary terrestrial civilizations with increased technological development, they took that mindset with them.

The Age of Landships, this time period is also called. For 1,300 Nexum Standard Years, they developed their own form of nation-state: a return to the extended clan, maintained and protected as a fleet would be. Some states could be treated as vassals, smaller ships in a flotilla. But each one was fundamentally independent.

This was not to say there weren't linking elements. A common ancestry—rebirth from the water—a love of technology and diplomacy—the use of spices—a creole language with three separate registers—all of these they shared. But three other elements were maintained.

The first was the global faith of Dynamism, derived from the traditional beliefs of the Culinary Imperium combined with the practical functionality of the Sea Collective. The faith's creed was quite simple, combining respect for property with a drive for collecting more. It also placed a great deal of emphasis on sharing and exchange as a way to keep mana healthy; one of the sins of the old empires, it was said, was a tendency to hoard wealth. This was propagated by Philosophers, descended from the Captains, trained in the arts of their faith, and sent forth to adapt to the customs of different states.

The second was a system of Thieftakers, a specialized caste derived from (of all things) the last Alienists. Theft, in Dynamism, was the only crime—dignity, property, health, land, life, all of it could be stolen and must be retrieved for balance to prevail. And so, using their control of psychology, Draupadi's descendants went forth to build control once again. The Thieftakers were a law unto themselves, but they still did maintain order on an international level without the need for major conflict.

The third was the evolution of a subcaste of Fools into the Ambassadors, effectively the masters of diplomacy on the planet. They drew on a long tradition of peacemaking to establish leagues and alliances of their own design, and to spread technology. They were responsible for, among other things, the establishment of the Standard Measurement system, the sharing of new resources like nuclear power, and the expansion into space and to other worlds.

Still, this wasn't enough to keep the states, now in theory getting resources from Zelos and Bia, from maintaining a cool attitude to one another for the next Nexum century. And so the colonies rebelled, and created their own states, and the new Panchayats started going after the states they left behind. It took what in Miser Crab history is now called "the Prodigal Discipline" (with a similar sense of irony to the English translation) for the divided states of the Miser Crabs were able to band together properly as one global state, maximizing production and beginning to expand beyond Hephaestus' reach and into the heavens themselves.

But it worked.

Starworld (2.044mya-Present Day)

Miser Crabs have been dominant players in the Nexum for two million years, occupying 108 planets and moons and living on many more. They are currently the patrons of no fewer than six species (including humans). The Miser Crabs as a species are also responsible for the upkeep of the Emolument Equations, the complex calculations necessary to keep the galactic economy running.

Nearly two million years in space have given the Miser Crabs ample time to develop into new subspecies and indeed species, but a reasonable gene flow between the scores of worlds they call their own has prevented (mostly) a lack of ability to intermarry. The majority of off-world colonists descended from Ambassadors, Thieftakers, Thieves, and Fools, groups with a flexible enough psychology that they were able to maintain a relatively cohesive society. A fifth group emerged as well, the Intermediaries, descended from the Thieves—but their function was to learn the mental behaviours of other species, and maintain some kind of alliance with them while still being faithful to their own species' way of thinking.

Of course there has been ample time for various worlds to develop new castes of their own, and physically too they may differ from one another quite tremendously. One finds the "base" model—about a metre wide, red-shelled, leathery-skinned—across much of the Nebula, to be sure. But other varieties have arisen. The "Aeginians", for example, are much smaller and much taller, with spindlier legs, a dark blue shell, and a tetra-brain so compact that it might as well be a single organ. The "Polyphemites" are enormous but quite close to the ground, legs like tree-trunks supporting a white-gold shell with a pure black head and limbs; their eyes have been altered to see not just in red and infrared, but all the way to ultraviolet. The "Circenes" are only a little larger, with a flatter shell, but they've started growing a body covering that's not quite skin and not quite hair but has elements of both, a sort of peach fuzz over their bodies which appears to be a mutation from a beneficial tumour of some sort. These are not anathema to the "base" Miser Crabs from Jazz Harmony, but other "subspecies" do sometimes ski down the slopes of the Uncanny Valley.