The Nadders

Biology

On Parnassus, where hydrostatic skeletons are the rule rather than the exception (muscular hydrostats notwithstanding), the earliest nervous systems developed in jellyfish-like creatures as on Earth. But instead of nerve fibres in the mesoglea, they cut out the middleman and used PERCHETS (per-SHAYZ) or “flood cells”, which would float around in the zootic jelly that formed the “middle layer” and release waves of hormones to nearby cells upon being stimulated from the outside via the radical pair mechanism. This in turn could allow for basic movement and direction-sensing thanks to cryptochrome proteins on the skin, the hydrostatic skeleton expanding and contracting without any technical neural network at all. These waves of chemicals became increasingly complex, with networks of ECTOPLASMIC RETICULUM developing to channel combinations of different hormones across the body.

The nadders on Parnassus today have improved on this system tremendously. Muscles have developed, hydrostatic but strong, allowing more complex and delicate movement than the first Ape-o-Wrath jellies. The EIAR running through the body in discrete channels has the triple purpose of oxygenation, signal conduction (still via specific hormones in MESSENGER PERCHETS instead of direct electrical current), and a pseudo-skeletal composite of collagen and OSSEATIN (a calcium-silicon protein) that when necessary snaps into place to provide extra rigidity. (There’s at least one dedicated channel for this at all times, meaning that nadders technically have up to three potential backbones.) Six livers purify the eiar; the eiar itself is pumped across the body in a constant cycle by the FOREHEART and the HINDHEART. Both of these “hearts”, by the way, also function as brains; encased in a bone-like shell called the CARDIAC LOBE, specialized cells called COUNSELLOR PERCHETS function as a chemical computer of sorts, receiving sensory input and releasing hormones to the messengers. Said sensory input is received from the visual, chemoreceptor, chordoreceptor/auditory (specialized sensory muscles for touch and hearing), and electroreceptor systems across the body, which send signals along one-way ion channels tended to by GUARD PERCHETS. The foreheart handles most of the work, but the hindheart shouldn’t be discounted; it controls the tail-fingers, provides an additional source of circulation (with its own small “lungs”), and protects the gametangia.

From these two hearts arose the intelligence the nadders are known for, but it was derived primarily from those parts of thought that humans might call the limbic system, which manifests in various ways. Their preferred senses are smell and electroreception. Nadders are passionate beings on the whole, dedicated to enjoying the moment and life in their (fairly large) families. Their whole existence, and for that matter their cultures, are based on a balance of pleasures. Ills now, after all, might mean gains later. Above all, they are driven by the belief thwt, fundamentally, there's always something to be happy about.

The gametangia, with an opening hidden in the palm of the "tail-hand", are adaptable, capable of switching between the production of eggs and sperm relatively quickly. Nadders are protandrous hermaphrodites; all nadders start as male, and remain as male during a brief "puberty" phase wherein they are capable of reproducing but not of switching. In the ancestral species, this would normally lead to a period of competition, where the most powerful male would switch to become female and select any number of potential partners, but in modern nadders the choice is a personal one between couples. Courtship is a delicate matter, and holding hands—at least, holding tail-hands—is a sign of either utmost trust or uncontrolled lust. Possibly both. Several nadder languages have references to "brushing fingers" in reference to a tacit romantic encounter, and "gripping the hand" is tantamount to a declaration of rape. By whom and for what purpose remains to be seen; nadder gender conceptions naturally differ from those of humans, and the aggressive partner, not the penetrating one, is seen as the more likely threat.

Nadders lay eggs, of course, and these are tended to and hatched collectively as part of one's family group. There have been times where eggs have been kept in "hatcheries" instead, to serve the purpose of some greater collective, religious or political or economic or what-have-you. Nadders tend to pair-bond, at least for a good while, but also to live together with other couples and raise the eggs communally.

The Nadders are semi-aquatic; they do not breathe underwater, but they are excellent swimmers nonetheless.

History

Archaic Era (764-752kya)

Generation Age: 15 years

At this period in time, the nadders were still largely divided between wetlands on the northern part of Delphi. Although the construction of dams was an essential part of their livelihood, the nadders had few other technologies. Tools, certainly. Aquaculture? It was their very livelihood. Fire, not as much; the use of fire within a crowded pile of wood built in the middle of a river was…less than appreciable. Clothing, also only on occasion; like many serpentine beings across the galaxy, the nadders prefer to shed skin and to keep themselves relatively unencumbered by clothes. "Oral" traditions, passed on via chemical scents and electromagnetic pulses through the bodies, had the capability to place a nadder with their eyes closed right in the thick of the action. And with a skill like that, who needs writing?

Curiously, then, it was through the making of pottery that the nadders gained their first initial jump into technology. Clay had been used in prior millennia to patch up dams, but the making of containers from that clay—which could be dried in the sun and used to store things like fish—represented a major leap forward in terms of technology. Weaving baskets came shortly after, their dextrous hands given extra work. Spears and (more importantly) spear-throwers came next, allowing the nadders to hunt both invasive predators and nearby land-based prey. (Bows and arrows, for a few reasons, have never really caught on on Parnassus, although there is a rich history of blow-pipe usage.)

Legends from this time-period—of which there remain a few—speak of a Time of No Tides, perhaps a brief sashay into an ice age proper. During this period, the sea level seems to have dropped considerably, stranding many nadders "high and dry" inland while a land bridge emerged on both sides of Delphi where they lived, with Naxos to the west and with Macedonia to the northwest and in the east. The fisher-folk took advantage of this new opportunity as best as they could and travelled across the seas to a new continent. Many others took to a riparian lifestyle on the plains and highlands, clustered around rivers and in many cases using complex irrigation systems to create artificial wetlands.

Eventually "the tides returned", the glaciers melting and the seafloor dropping into the gloom as the land shrank again. But the nadders were never completely isolated from one another. The close nature of their continents meant that there were no Americas, no Australias, certainly no Antarcticas; it was incredibly easy for them to stretch across the globe, and easier still to recognize the presence of others who might easily float by on the current one day.

Prophetic Era (752-750kya)

Generation Age: 15 years

During this time we see the formation of six distinctive cultural areas on Parnassus.

1. Nadders on the Oracular Plains at the centre of the continent of Delphi developed an agricultural society based around the maintenance of large irrigated wetlands crisscrossing the Cleic River Basin. They also developed a series of canals and lochs by which it was possible to travel more smoothly, and rafts by which to float cargo upstream and downstream.

2. The Low Veldt on Naxos was somewhat drier, although this was less of an issue than one might think; despite being semi-aquatic, Nadders can go several years without swimming, although it is somewhat uncomfortable. Instead, they settled around the oxbow lakes carved by the meandering rivers, maintaining settlements of wood and dried grass ringed with stone to keep away fires. Sometimes these only lasted for a few years before the community had to move on again, sometimes decades, but there was always a constant sense of impermanence, reflected in the local religions.

3. The Pytho Highlands are tropical, with cloud forests and plenty to eat and drink but not much in the way of large rivers. Instead, Nadders on these slopes began cultivating coral trees for themselves and their families, hollowing out the stone over generations while eating both the fruits and the smaller creatures which fed on them.

4. The Giona Highlands, on the other hand, were always rather cold, being in climate closer to a mixture of Scotland and Switzerland—quite humid but not always best for agriculture. Still, the streams ran pure, and although the Nadders tended not to swim too much—poikilothermic beings like themselves are less suited for those waters—they did construct a curious network of hypercausts through much digging, creating perfectly-maintained saunas and "sweat lodges" (Nadders don't sweat but they like the heat). They also took to mining, and procured much of the earliest obsidian on the planet.

5. The Philippine Forests are found in the northwest of the continent of Macedonia, reef-trees creating limestone structures tens of metres high. Nadders in these woods became horticulturalists again, much like the inhabitants of the Pytho Highlands but on a much larger scale. They also congregated around the large lakes there.

6. Nadders living around the Hellespontic Ocean had the one minor issue that, while they could swim in saltwater, they could not drink it, and as such needed some supply of freshwater to maintain themselves. The earliest settlements were therefore along the coasts of the three continents, and on the islands, although many made the crossing from one continent to another with considerable ease. Still, the invention of larger boats—particularly those with rainwater tanks aboard, tended as sacred spaces by specific families—was a boon to all travellers.

7. The Alexandrian Forests stretch across much of southern Macedonia, ranging from xeric cactus-corals to tropical stonewoods and fibrewoods with palm-like leaf-trees (each one a single massive leaf), with a number of rivers and lakes linking the place together.

Classical Era (750-749kya)

Generation Age: 14 years

At the end of this time period arose a new faith in the Alexandrian Forests, centred around a lineage of sorcerers who treated the living world as if it were a pool of water. Indeed, the name of the faith roughly translates as "Joy-in-Rain", or Ombrism. The Skydancers, as they are still called, teach that all of creation is like water—shifting and changing all the time, creating interesting shapes, eventually spiraling back to the primordial oceans from which the world was made. Their job, and the job of all true believers, is to allow the flow of the universe to remain balanced, not to warp reality...although this is a pressing and ever-present issue.

Monks—for monks they must be—are separated by speciality, but in a pinch a monk can serve as a soldier, a peacemaker, a judge, a counsel, a technician, or indeed a performer. Their bodies and minds are kept in peak condition, and they are taught to use dual blades carved from shadow to protect themselves. In the last days of the Vritran Concord, they were established as an extension of the Cult of Kooremah, but quickly surpassed their predecessors in popularity. Not because of their openness to conversion, although this was part of it, but because of the fundamental equality between Nadders that they preached and tried to bring into practice.

Ombrism has continued to the present day; there have been many lineages of monks, and an unbroken lineage dating back to the founder, Sky-Brothers-As-One, with over eighty-seven thousand inheritors of the title of "Master". Note that this is not (usually) a direct genetic link; celibacy is not required but parenting is not considered suitable for monks, so either they all take on a male part in relations (a sign of subordinate status in Nadder culture) or their eggs are given up for adoption and watched for potential in skydancing.

Revolutionary Era (749-748kya)

Generation Age: 14 years

Horticultural Era (748-747.3kya)

Generation Age: 16 years

Transformation Era (747.3-746.5kya)

Generation Age: 19 years

Information Era (746.5-746kya)

Generation Age: 28 years

Exploratory Era (746kya-744kya)

Generation Age: 70 years

Divisive Era (744-738kya)

Generation Age: 78 years

The First Empire (738-696kya)

Generation Age: 152 years

The Stagnation (696-677kya)

Generation Age: 270 years

The Second Empire (677-541kya)

Generation Age: 400 years

The Plague (541-532kya)

Generation Age: 400 years

Diseases are not uncommon across the Nexum, even now. There are always minor variants of ancient plagues that emerge every now and again, and even a few major ones that occasionally kill dozens to hundreds of individuals in earth-shattering plagues. But they are limited by the genetic differences between worlds. Very often, a bacterial, viral, prionic, or parasitic infection simply cannot make use of their host's alternate genetic material, because it is too far removed from the species with which they started. This, for hundreds of millions of years, actually made it safer to be treated by an alien doctor as opposed to one from your own species.

The first Infinity Plague changed all of this. It may even have been the Nadders' fault.

Studies into xenopathology have fascinated scientists from across the Nebula for millions of years, but the Nadders now sought a way to recreate the bodybands designed during the later years of their Empire. According to medical records on the planet Athos, attempts were made to produce what is best translated as "multicells"—cells which contained, within a magical field, the genetic codes of several species, and could flip back and forth between them when they entered a morphic field around a body. These have great use even today, particularly for interspecies couples who wish to have children of their own. But at that time, it also led to something a tad more deadly.

A variant of dryscale virus infected a lab where such a cell was being created. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone knew about this, and the head scientist Wriggling-in-Warm-Sand-on-a-Long-Beach, who resigned her post, swore in his later life that nobody in the lab had acted in any way suspiciously. Unfortunately, the virus did break out—and somehow, before it did, it infected the multicells Warm-Sand was working on, and gained the properties of their morphic field. As expected, the lab workers were placed under quaratine, with Miser Crab physicians living on-planet attending to them. And then they went back to their compounds, and one took a multi-shuttle to the world Staccato.

Overnight, Staccato developed a virus which debilitated hundreds of thousands within the first few weeks, and with just how unprepared they were nobody realized that the virus bore similarities to dryscale until fifty thousand had died. Horrified, the Nadders quarantined all their planets and tried to segregate alien visitors to specific areas, but it was too late. The virus escaped Staccato, passed on to the rest of the Defence Confederacy…and then moved on to the Sacred Dominion, killing hundreds of thousands of Zealots before they knew what was happening. And then it made the rounds, even with the blockades enforced by the Predecessors on infected worlds, and, fortified by mutations meant to affect the populations of other species, it returned to Parnassus.

The effect was almost immediate. A total death toll of five hundred million was recorded, a substantial percentage of the population regardless of the other ramifications. These, in turn, were a period of stagnation, as although the Predecessors linked the worlds of the Nadders together they were petitioned by the Nexum Concourse to blockade them from other worlds until their own safety could be determined.

To this day, it is unclear whether or not the release of the virus was intended. Many have taken the opportunity to blame it on all sorts of individuals—anti-Nexum radicals within the local population, Ghost tricksters, a lone Ark-Builder with a grudge, and many others. The truth of the matter is that, regardless of the cause, the effect was the isolation of the entire region for nine thousand years.

The Recovery Age (532-319kya)

Generation Age: 600 years

The Alternate Alliances (319-187kya)

Generation Age: 850 years

The Second Empire (187-32kya)

Generation Age: 1,020 years

The Seminary Age (32k-9,400ya)

Generation Age: 1,350 years

Tutelary Era (9,400ya-Present)

Generation Age: 1,500 years

The introduction of the Seminaries to Nexum society was enough to catapault the Nadders into becoming the fifth Patron species—and their first charge was, of all the species in the Nebula, us. Perhaps it is unfortunate that they were unable to remain so; their optimistic attitude might have done us some good. But ultimately, for reasons unknown, about six thousand Nexum Standard Years ago, the Nadders were relieved of their patronage of Ajjamah, which was given to the Miser Crabs. Nobody is entirely certain why, especially given the status of the Nadders; as direct Clients of the Predecessors, they ought to have been quite secure. Their Patron status was not revoked, however, because of the actions of a Nadder known to history as Pressure-Beneath-the-Earth.

The Drifters are a race—four races—of shapeshifters, established as space travellers for nearly four million years by the present day. Older than the Miser Crabs, they nevertheless did not join the Nexum, preferring to remain masters of their own espionage-heavy empire. Their homeworld of Asphodel was afforded neutral status, while the collective conglomerations of single-cell organisms used an adaptation to their bodies to travel through hyperspace, intruding on the domain of the Predecessors and Ark-Builders. Green Drifters are a gentle people, Red Drifters gentler still, but White Drifters have somewhat volatile minds and have occasionally been brought across the Nexum as assassins and political doppelgängers. They are uncomfortable with too much oxygen, and burn very easily, but this is not necessarily a hindrance. For three million, seven hundred and fifty-four thousand years they remained isolated players in the nebular community. At least, until Pressure-Beneath was able to convince them to join the Nexum, with a promise that their magical prowess would be respected and lauded instead of abused. To this end, he even travelled to Asphodel, developing a spell which allowed him to replicate some elements of the Drifters' powers and slip into the "space between atoms" and visit the living cities thriving within the bedrock. The effort was a success; the Red, Green, and White Drifters petitioned to join, and became the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Full Members of the Nexum, equal to any of the other four Client races in nebular accords, nine thousand one hundred years ago. And the Seminaries gained access to a tradition of magic millions of years old—and one whose practitioners had had long experience adjusting to fit the powers of other beings.

Lifespans now extend into the range of centuries; by this point the oldest Nadder is about 4,500 years old. Likewise, since the beginning of the Transformation Era, time between generations has lengthened from sixteen Nexum Standard Years to 1,500. This has somewhat diminished the importance of having children, and it is rare for a Nadder on a more populous planet to lay an egg for a child more than once in a half-millennium. It keeps the population relatively stable, at least, at 140 billion over 35 worlds, but it does mean that society is far less focused on children than once it was. (As a corollary, the children in question tend to be very well looked-after, avoiding a number of potential psychological issues along the way.)

Nadders retain their hermaphroditism, and remain a species very comfortable with physicality.