The Nadders

An Introduction

NADDERS (naga epicuria) are a middle-aged species, having had civilization for the past 764,000 Standard Years, and the fifth and youngest Patrons in the Nexum.

Homeworld

PARNASSUS, the ancestral planet of the Nadders, orbits around a P-binary pair of stars, translated from the ideoglyphs as "Prometheus" (a red dwarf) and "Epimetheus" (a yellow sun). The planet has more manganese than is regular for an Earthlike world, but otherwise is quite normal geologically. It orbits at 1.02AU but has a shorter year than Earth, at 332 Terran days. It does, however, have three moons—Thalia, Aglaea, and Euphrosyne—which cause some quite large and rather complicated tides. It is these tides more than anything else that have guided the history of Parnassus and its intelligent species.

Like all Genesis Worlds in the Nebula, Parnassus was placed under strict observation by the Morphai at the outset of the Lonely Empire, and for over a hundred million years was left largely intact. The Heralds briefly attempted to terraform (or ziraform) the planet, causing a fairly significant mass extinction, but this was thankfully left unfinished thanks to the Heralds' defeat and the Morphai's efforts to clean up the place. Later, after the Morphai's retreat into relative obscurity following the obscene loss of life during the War of the Heralds, the planet fell under the protection of the Predecessors, who never really bothered to set foot on the place but did plant a monolith or two for the sake of it.

Today, Parnassus is a thoroughly modernized world, the six space elevators active and functioning for several hundred thousand years. (Teleportation is possible, certainly, but most Nadders don't really enjoy the sensation and it's considered showing off.) A great many archaeological and palaeontological sites are preserved under forcefields, while modern cities tend towards arcology models, usually with an organic component to them.

biology

Basic Structure

The Nadders are hermaphroditic, snake-like individuals, notably different from snakes on Earth or Ajjamah in three ways physically. The first is the horns grown on either side of the head, used for detecting vibrations in the air (while in the air) or for aligning themselves while in water. (They are also mildly erogenous zones; locking horns with someone is considered quite a definite display of affection, grasping them with one's hands mildly scandalous.) The second is the double set of eyes—two (inner) which see light on the "regular" spectrum, and two (outer) which see in infrared. Each has its own eyelid, with a secondary nictating membrane for both. The third is the presence of a "hand"—six prehensile, opposable digits—surrounding both the mouth and the tail.

Nadders grow fairly constantly throughout their lives; the largest thus far is eight metres long and three-quarters of a metre wide. Most, however, start quite small, perhaps the length and half the thickness of a human arm.

Nadder coloration differs from individual to individual and subgroup to subgroup. Typically the colour of the scaleskin proceeds in bands of red, black, white, and yellow. Which colours in particular, and in what combination, depends largely on a few particular genes. (It should be mentioned that white-and-yellow Nadders are something of a genetic rarity, of approximately the same profusion as redheads on Earth. Black-and-red Nadders, on the other hand, find themselves quite suited for desert climates.)

Behaviour & Psychology

Nadders are tree-dwellers by nature and wetland-dwellers by nurture; regardless of habitat, it is incredibly difficult for a Nadder to do much besides slithering. (They can, it should be noted, swim extremely well, and can even manage a near-vertical cliff-face if they have sufficient handholds, or, well, body-holds.) They cannot breathe underwater fully, although they use something termed digital breathing (extending membranes from their "fingertips" on either end of the body) for emergency oxygenation, and can remain submerged for over half an hour at a time. (The most experienced divers can stretch this to nearly two hours.)

Nadders are naturally gregarious; most of their relatives hunt in packs, and dam-building is by nature a collective activity. They also tend to be more forgiving of strangers than most in the Nebula, doing all they can to incorporate them into their own collectives. In contrast, they view those who leave the dam on their own (without a definite partner or partners in mind) as being practically traitorous. This has led to a fair few issues within Nadder society, as occasionally children in abusive households have been unable to legally remove themselves unless adopted quite quickly by another family. (Fortunately, this too is quite common.)

Because all Nadders are hermaphrodites from young adulthood onward (indeed, the development of eggs is considered a mark of physical maturity in several Nadder cultures), there is little in the way of "masculine" or "feminine" ideals or mores. Instead, people tend towards group living, with several potential partners under one roof, all of whom are technically capable of impregnating any others. Any Nadders born from the same dam are considered related in polite society, and there is a strong incest taboo that has developed over the years.

Key to undestanding the Nadder psyche is their view of all events in life as a balance of pleasures. Most Nadder philosophies tend towards the Epicurean side of things, trying to make things as comfortable as possible for oneself and for others. On the one hand, this has led to a fair few sybarites; on the other, some of the most altruistic people in the known universe have been Nadders. Key to this is the general belief that pleasure should not be shameful. This attitude towards pleasure extends into their romantic escapades as well; people might be mildly surprised to find a couple or group locking horns or even holding hindhands in public, but not particularly so. (It is generally expected that the age gap between adults and children be respected, however; there's little point in engaging in pleasure with another person if said other person cannot actually engage themselves.)

Language

The Nadders are not precisely silent—although to those who do not understand them their interactions with one another seem unusual, curling around each other and extending thin filaments from their mouth-fingers like silk strands seemingly at random. But in fact Nadder communication is based on a series of organs all along the body, which are used to generate a strong electric field. Most of the creatures of their family can generate a pulse—usually to ward off predators—but the Nadders have fine-tuned their fields to accurately convey data from one individual to another. Starting with mimicry of their natural predators and prey (usually in specific bursts before reverting to their original signal) and particular emotions indicating readiness to mate, the signal modulations grew more complex over time, patterns developing through frequency modulation (between around 20 and 8000Hz, although the Nadders can "hear" slightly higher and lower). Increased tactile sensory apparatus across their bodies allowed the Nadders to communicate intentions to one another in person much more clearly, leaving electrocommunication to develop its own way.

Nadder languages, as a general rule, tend to break a few rules seen in human languages. Syntax is rather different; Nadder languages usually communicate objects and actions using the same pulse-combination, joining together various concepts in a manner similar to reading an encoded message through multiple smaller and apparently unrelated ones. Tense markers tend to be minimal as well, or encoded in the movements. Even a sentence as easy as "the suns will set" might be translated to another Nadder as three synchronous observations: "the two eggs sink (in freshwater)", "the signal about to dim due to an individual (species unknown) slowly dying", and "the temperature is dropping". All of this may be communicated through pulses in less time than it takes to repeat the same sentence in English, or in most other human languages for that matter.

Naturally the metaphors differ from culture to culture, and even some basic terms (things like "batfish in haste" or "thirteen") are not universal—but the Nadders have tended towards relatively constant images even when separated by continents, and certain terms ("north", "currently female", "fast-approaching electric steel") are instantly recognizable.

The fact that Nadders tend towards cuddling while they "speak", and for that matter tend to like sitting in shallow water at the same time, means that communication with aliens is often seen as a rather detached and clinical affair.

Nadder writing straddles the line between ridiculously simple and utterly incomprehensible. The earliest systems were largely pictographic, but more modern representations prefer "phonetic" transcriptions—in practice, marking modulations in pulse, which is tricky with an ink pen. Subtlety is appreciated in the metaphors of the Nadders, and that often means some very particular pulses in combination to mark interactions with the environment. The most common system used in the Nexum today, variations of the Telemachian script, uses three parallel lines to mark amplitude and frequency both through squeezes and stretches; to other species it's rather like looking at a hospital monitor being mapped by a drunken spider.

Society

The basic social unit is the DAM, in olden days quite literally a pile of sticks built next to or within a personalized area of wetland. Typically dams were segregated by generation; one group of Nadders and their children would live in a dam until the children were grown up, at which point the children were expected either to find a new dam to be part of or to stay behind and take care of their parents and new siblings. This is still the most common settlement pattern on various Nadder worlds today, although dams have mostly been replaced with apartments or houses.

As a whole, Nadder society is mostly built on a fusion-fission model, allowing for relatively easy movement from settlement to settlement as one sees fit. Planetary governments are typically run by moot, be it base moot (each individual voting for various bills as they see fit—these tend to have fairly rigid judicial branches of government to compensate for the executive branch's focus), layered moot (individual communities select representatives, who in turn select representatives, right up to something resembling a Security Council which has the potential to veto any lower-level bills), potted moot (each trade has its own representation, and people are permitted to vote in multiple professions—with the caveat that their votes are also judged by rank), or some combination of the three. Within the individual groups, however, usually comprising several dozen multi-generation clan-households, choice of leader depends on one's point of view.

The average Nadder age of maturity was about eighteen local years ("the third hand") during most of their early history. Over the past 764,000 years or so this has increased to around 50, with lifespans extending to 4,000 years at least. This is not to say maturity isn't reached, physically; it's simply that one isn't considered fully ready to participate in galactic society until one has managed a certain amount of emotional growth. Generations, too, tend to be longer—often one expects to produce a functional egg only every one and a half thousand years or so.

Ombrism

OMBRISM emerged as a religion sometime around 750,000 years ago, a decent way into the development of civilization. The name, like all Nadder names, is difficult to translate; the closest equivalent in English would be "joy-in-rain", although usually this represents only a fraction of the true name. The priests, known as Skydancers, are trained carefully in magic; they teach outsiders that the universe flows like water, shifting shape and changing temperature and eventually falling back into the Primordial Waters. Avoiding this is futile; letting the universe flow more freely, so that the final fall is delayed, can be done through living a virtuous life that aligns as best as possible with cosmic harmonies.

Ombrism is the most prominent faith or group of faiths that Parnassus has ever produced, and is still prominent in the Nexum today.

History

Evolving from a tree-dwelling ancestor, itself a descendant of an amphibious serpentine creature stranded in the highlands of Delphi during a fairly hefty ice age, the early Nadders built and lived in dams, caught various aquatic and shore-dwelling creatures, picked fruit, and played pretend by mimicking the electrical signals of other creatures. This would eventually develop into a full language, rich in subtlety and metaphor. Sharing of particular resources via connections to new bands (each generation was expected to start its own to raise their children together) created an ever-expanding network of trade and resources, eventually stretching most of the way across the planet. (Parnassus has no particularly isolated continents; sooner or later, everyone knows everyone, and knew everyone even when the world population was relatively small and scattered.)

Nadders are not particularly bellicose by nature, but occasionally conflicts arose over resources or ill-treatment that not all the alliances in the world could repair, leading to the construction of ever more impressive fortifications and the development of weapons beyond electrocution. Spears, in particular, were quite useful in the early days, as were blow-pipes (which naturally could be held by the head-hand and blown into at the same time). In the meantime, oral histories continued to evolve; a few more enterprising Nadders on the Oracular Plains trained a species of serpent (usually called the parrotworm) to mimic particular modulations in a certain order in exchange for food, a rather complicated process resulting in the little snakes being eventually worth more than their weight in gold. Eventually would come metallurgy, industrialization, the colonization of various landmasses, and finally exploration beyond Parnassus—first to the other planets in the binary system, and then out into the Nebula at large. Like most new spacefaring species, they were contacted by the Predecessors directly; unlike most species, they were informed that they were to be direct Clients of the Predecessors, technically equal in rank although not in seniority to some of the known universe's most powerful beings. Fortunately, few of them got particularly big-headed about this, and were largely content with settling other planets and building alliances with the four other major corporeal species in the Nebula: the Morphai, the Miser Crabs, and (eventually) the Zealots and the Selkies.

For the past nine and a half thousand years, Nadders have been accorded the Fifth Patrons of the Nexum, an impressive honour for a species so relatively young. (Even the Miser Crabs as a species are more than twice as old as they are, and a number of their Clients actually predate them.) They received this ability because of a species-wide interest in and adaptability to the various kinds of magic across the Nebula, which allowed them certain powers of regulation over age-old enemies of the Predecessors like the Croni or Meanwhile. Alliances were also made with the Phoenixes, whose empire of the Ten Thousand Suns is situated in hyperspace, and the Drifters, directly playing a part in the deconstruction of the Prosopony.

Today, the Nadders are divided into five general spacefaring empires over fourteen systems: the EMPIRE OF RESISTANCE (three systems), the CELESTIAL BOND (two systems), the KINGDOMS OF THE FAITH* (four systems, including the Ophia binary), the GRAND PACT (two systems), and the CITADEL EMPIRE (three systems). Overall population is around 140 billion individuals, 113 billion of which live on various worlds in the various Nadder Imperiums; the remaining 27 billion live on other worlds or in other systems within the Nebula.