Alphablocks (scientific name: Plakasoma grammakephalus ) are a species of Learningblocks from Grammarithmos that are endemic to the Alphaland continent. They are an intelligent species along with their Numberland-dwelling peers and inhabit human-like inteligence. They can be found all over Alphaland, but they're mostly found in the plains where they socialise and make civilisations here. There are 26 different kinds of Alphablocks each representing a letter from the English alphabet.

All 26 Alphablock kinds are still alive and thriving today. However, there are fossil records of Alphablock kinds that are now extinct today, like the Thorn and Eth Alphablock.

Anatomy

Alphablocks have cuboid-shaped bodies, mitten-shaped hands consisting of a thumb and a wide singular finger, and toeless feet with the legs being centered to the body. The 'skin' of the Alphablock acts as an 'exoskeleton' and is uniquely coloured and patterned depending on the kind of Alphablock, with the vowels having striped skin coloured with a bolder shade of their main colour, while consonant skin vary in colour and patterns, ranging from monocolour to multicoloured with unique, beach ball-like patterns. Alphablocks also have a physical sexual dimorphic feature, with the males having round or wide eyes, while females have slanted digon-shaped eyes, although the importance of the varying eye shapes are unknown.  Alphablocks also have noses, except for the Alphablock O, which completely lacks a nose.

One striking feature of the Alphablock is their transparent dome, which houses a letter inside. The letter is very essential for the Alphablock's communication, but how the letter functions is unknown at the moment. The calls of the Alphablock can vary depending on their letter, but it can generally be described as either short 'chirpings' or long sighings of their letter sounds (e.g. An Alphablock D emits unpredictable Duh-duh-duh calls, while an Alphablock U groans an Uhhhhh sound). This type of communication is still used even after their discovery of English and to the extent the creation of the Iaopai language, and the Alphablock O uses it as its main method of communication. 

Alphablocks and their letters have some sort of symbiotic relationship, with the Alphablock providing it with shelter and protection in its dome while the letter in turn gives it its call. Because of this, it is important for the Alphablocks to keep their domes from physical injury to keep them and their letter safe. If a dome is severely damaged, the letter will feel unsafe and leave the Alphablock as a result, leaving the Alphablock with the inability to communicate using their letter sound unless their letter is retrieved. A severly damaged dome is also harmful to the Alphablock, as it not only causes light headedness and makes them more vulnerable, but glass shards can pierce through the body and cause bleeding. Letters can also leave the dome through other factors like collisions and stressful events. When an Alphablock replaces its letter with another letter, it turns into what Alphablock contains that letter. Maybe it's the key to bringing back extinct Alphablocks, if only we have an intact letter which is quite rare...

Alphablock domes are usually filled with nothing but air along with their letter, but in the Alphablock W, the dome is partially filled with water. Alphablocks also decorate the exterior of their domes with small pieces of jewelry or paint to either show their status or simply to enhance looks

Alphablocks can combine with other Alphablocks to form digraphs, trigraphs, and tetragraphs. When this happens, the sides from where they connect stick together and the arms fused together in a way that they could easily separate when they split apart. When combined, the Alphablocks can produce new sounds together, depending on what sequence of letters they combined into (the 'sh' diagraph makes a shh sound, the 'ough' sound make a 'oh' sound, etc.).

Alphablocks have three main body types; the regular body shape, which is the round edged cuboid shape that is common in most Alphablocks, the 'almost-cube' shape, where the body is slim enough to almost resemble a cube, the square-chin body shape, where the middle of the body is protruding from below and the edges are more curved, and the chubby-cheeks body shape, where the 'cheeks' are more pronounced. It is unknown why these body shapes exist, however it is theorised that it may be a similar reason on why body shapes are so diverse in humans.

Diet

An Alphablock's diet mostly consists of fruits, nuts, beans and vegetables. However, they also hunt other animals for food as well as drink their milk. Alphablocks herd livestock like bugbulls and bushbacks and are also huge in agriculture. Besides this, due to their glass dome, silicon is essential to the Alphablocks diet. There are many sources of silicon that they can intake like certain types of ornament berries, but the most rich in silicon has to be the siliceous rocks lying around in the rocky parts of their habitats. Alphablocks either crush the rock into smaller pieces by throwing  or bashing it or have powerful jaws to crush it into pieces. If they don't consume enough silicon, then they will develop a deficiency called 'brittle dome' where the dome becomes weak and can be more prone to shattering.

Reproduction

Aside from their dome, Alphablocks have a remarkable way of reproduction. Alphablocks can both asexually and sexually reproduce. For asexual reproduction, Alphablocks have a specialised gland located at their 'neck'. When an Alphablock feels like mitosing, the gland will release a hormone known as antigrafogen to signal the body to split. Then, the Alphablock will slowly overgo mitosis as it splits into two identical copies. The 'daughter block' will still retain the memory of the original Alphablock and retain the appearance as well. This could explain why they're very successful as they can dominate the continent by simply duplicating itself. 

Mitosis is thought to be only possible to single-cellular organisms, but the fact that a multi-cellular creature like the Alphablock can mitose in a similar manner is really fascinating.

Despite the possible success of cloning, Alphablocks still need to diversify their genes, otherwise cloning could introduce risks like mutations and inability to adapt to environmental changes that will doom the Alphablock species.  This is where sexual reproduction comes in in Alphablocks. In place of external genitalia, Alphablocks has two openings; males have one at the front bottom, while females have one at the center-bottom, right behind their backs.  During mating season (popya), the male will try his best to impress the female, doing things like dancing, enhancing looks with random things he found nice, and even fighting with other males. Once the female is impressed, they get close to each other and perform a gesture known as 'dome-clinking' (kingkkingk), to confirm that the female will love and stay with the male for the rest of their life. Once that action is done 4 more times, the mating begins. The gestation period for the female lasts for 8 weeks.

Stages of life

Alphablocks first started as tiny, helpless babies when they first exited out of their mother's womb. A female Alphablock gives birth to one or two offspring, altough triplets are possible yet very rare. An Alphablock at this stage is called a 'blockling'. After birth, the blocklings will feed from a very nutriotious substance that's secreted out of the mother's back. At the blockling stage, their letters are still developing and they first emit 'chirping' sounds. Because of this, they have to find their sound on their own, while being aided by their parents sometimes. Both males and females take turn raising the young until they became twelve years old where they have to learn how to live for themselves.

Alphablocks between 4-11 years old are where they are now called 'littleblocks', or locally reffered by the Alphablocks as 'yung'. This is where they learn their first words, either by the traditional Alphablock language 'Iaopai' or more recently the foreign Earth language 'English'. First youngling word is either 'auma' (mom) or 'aupa' (dad). Younglings are usually curious about the world around them so parents have to guide them about their safety because the younglings' curiosity also makes them prone to potential threats like predators. This age is also where the yung are taught in Alphablock schools in order to help them grow their characters.

As Alphablocks reach 16 years of age, they are reffered to as 'yeepa' or mid-adult. In this stage, they are now sexually mature, but they will be ready to mate at adult age. They still need to learn about their world, in which the adults would have to guide them through what they need to know. 

Alphablocks finally reach adulthood or 'arfa' at the age of 20. Alphablocks have decently long lifespans, ranging from 120-135. 

Subspecies

Alphablocks have three subspecies, the Common Alphablock (P. g. vulgaris), the Desert Alphablock (P. g. desertum) and the Blind Alphablock (P. g. anophthalmia). The Common Alphablock is the most widely distributed subspecies due to how commonplace their habitat is and is the most developed subspecies out there. The Desert Alphablock looks similar to the Alphablock except for a few physical changes like larger pupils and uneven-surfaced feet as well as their change of diet, which is primarily bugs and small lizards. The blind Alphablock is a more recently discovered Alphablocks that dwells inside the deep caves and is well known for their extremely small eyes. More information about the subspecies can be found here.

Culture

As the sophonts of Alphaland, Alphablocks certainly have their way with they culture. One good example is their ranking system in their society. Vowels are placed at the top, semi-vowels are placed in the middle, and consonants are placed in the bottom. Despite a few instances of discrimination due to their ranks, Alphablocks usually go well within each other. 

Alphablocks are highly social creatures, and due to this, socialisation is heaviy prioritized and many social events are made. One of them is an event called 'liauka' or 'couple ever-staying'. This event can occur elsewhere, but is more common during 'popya'. During 'liauka', a couple will due certain rituals, like dome-clinking,  in order to promise each other to stay with eachother as a happy couple for the rest of their lives. After that, they will be pronounced as 'yahko' (married). Another, more common, social event is word magic. During word magic, two or more Alphablocks hold hands and spell out a word, either in Iaopai or in English. In word magic, each Alphablock partaking in it will say out their sound, and say the spelled word altogether. Word magic only works in words with a defined meaning. During this event, their letter will release tons of 'magic spores' that will accumulate in the air and do something depending on which category that spelled word fits into. If a noun is spelt, then the magic spores will clump together and become said noun. If an adjective or verb is spelt, then the magic spores will enter the Alphablocks' body and manipulate their movement or appearance.

Alphablocks also form complex societies within each other. Alphablock civilisation first started as small villages, with houses made out of phier trunks and plant matter, as well as early, primitive forms of agriculture. Then it evolved to stone brick houses, then kingdoms ruled by vowels that lasted for centuries. The Alphablocks, at their vowel-dominated age, used to be very violent, as leader conflict, especially in the Erithaos and Iathos kingdoms, oftenly occur, and wars break out that could last for a decade. That is until the Alphablocks realise that all of those conflicts and wars are sort of petty and decided that they will live their lives in peace. After that, civilization continue to develop into what we have today, with big cities like Capital City housing large amounts of Alphablocks. More details about their history is in a seperate page.

As active and societal creatures, Alphablocks tend to create various sports and activities, which are usually hosted on large stadiums. One of the activities exclusive to Alphablock culture is 'team-spelling', a type of competitive word magic where 2 teams of 5 Alphablocks compete with each other to see who can spell out the most words. Other sports like archery and races are also common to see in stadiums.

Alphablocks also adore fashion. Artifacts suggest that clothing were first made around 12 000 years ago, and that the earliest forms of clothes are made out of stringleaf. Modern Alphablock clothes are made out of bushback wool but stringleaf clothes are still being made today. The art of threading stringleaf into various items is called Strungka and is still being practised by generations of Strungkaetas. Aside from clothing, Alphablocks also tend to decorate their domes with paint, dome accessories made from stringleaf, or even bits of jewelry. Dome customisation used to be exclusive to the vowels to show status and strength during the Kingdom era, but nowadays anyone can decorate their domes regardless of status.

Mysteries surrounding the Alphablocks

Alongside their uniqueness, both as a species and a society, many questions start to pop out of the minds of many Zontouvlakologists. One popular question is how they discovered the English language in the first place. English is a language that is thought to only be on Earth, but it is baffling to see a foreign species from a planet that may or may not be similar to Earth have this language. Many theories started to pop up on this phenomenon but one popular theory states that a book containing a guide to the language, probably a dictionary of some sorts, dropped out of a spaceship and fell into Alphaland completely unscathed, and then later a group of Alphablocks discovered it and then spreaded the knowledge everywhere. However, Numberblocks have also been recorded to use the English language even before they met the Alphablocks, so it's still a mystery unless someone comes up with a possible explanaition or find new evidence of how English is discovered in Grammarithmos.

Another mystery has something to do with mysterious artifacts that zontouvlakologists somehow stumbled upon. There are multiple artifacts featuring extraterrestrial beings visiting Alphablocks and have friendly interaction and even stories made about friendly alien encounters. The same type of artifacts can be found in Numberland as well. A speculation about this phenomenon is that encounters with extraterrestrial life is fairly common in Grammarithmos, as Learningblocks see these foreigners as harmless settlers. Who knows, maybe they could be the key to discovering extraterrestrial life in this wide universe.