Skrell

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The Skrell (skrel) are a species of amphibious humanoids, distinguished by their colorful gelatinous appearance and head tentacles. Skrell come from the world of Qerr'balak, a humid planet filled with swamps and jungles. Currently more technologically advanced than humanity, they emphasize the study of the mind above all else.

Additional Information: Qerr'balak, the Skrellian home world. Harr'qac, Qerrna-Lakirr and many other colonies. Ue'Orsi and other refugee flotillas represent the Skrellian counter-culture.

Overview

• Skrell have their own language which can be used in game by typing say “#k
• Given the way Skrell name themselves on human stations, it is not recommended to use the random name generator to name your Skrell.
• Headwear can be uncomfortable, but their head tails do not prevent them from wearing most equipment on their head. However, they are not able to wear non-Skrell hardsuit helmets.
• Skrell are similar to humans in most ways, and have little physical disadvantages or advantages compared to them.
• Animal protein is poisonous to Skrell and alcohol more potent. (Meat allergy disabled on Vorestation, but canonically, they still don't like it.)
• Skrell are able to breathe underwater.

Naming

Skrell names either consist of chosen human names or rough transliterations, as their own language is largely inaudible to humans.

Transliterations vary widely when converted to human language, so there is a wide variety of names possible. The structure of Skrellian voiceboxes lends itself to names heavy in Qs, Ks, and vowels.

Biology

Skrell appear gelatinous, but are opaque, with moist pliant skin covered in a layer of mucus. Skin color varies, including colors such as black, red, green, blue, pink, purple, orange, and teal. Where a nose would be on a human are slits.

Their eyes are completely black, making judging emotion by the eyes alone very difficult. They are able to see much better than humans underwater, and slightly better in darkness. Their hands and feet are similar to those of humans, with five fingers and toes, but are slightly webbed.

On the head of each Skrell is their three large head tails. They are are limp tails, not tentacles, and have no muscles. Skrell missing a part of a headtail, let alone an entire one, are seen as disfigured and usually do their best to cover or restore the wound. They serve two purposes, one of which is largely antiquated.

The first purpose is keeping eggs in the moist, dark, sticky places between the headtails. While popular with nomadic primitive Skrell tribes, modern Skrell, with much more structured childrearing than their ancestors and a much less aquatic lifestyle, prefer to keep their egg sacs in specially prepared nests near bodies of water.

The second use is ornamentation. Metallic chains, cloth wrappings, and even piercings are popular accessories, and can be used to signal richness and good taste.

Skrell skin dries out uncomfortably if removed from water for more than about twelve hours. Skrell in human space take frequent showers if not afforded accommodations. They prefer to sleep in small watery pools with a layer of fine sediment on the bottom and will often retrofit a human bathtub as a bed when in human space.

Their brains are similar to frog or salamander brains evolved to the same level as human brains, and are compatible with most Nanotrasen technology.

The average height of a Skrell is 5'10” to 6'0“ for males and 6'0” to 6'2“ for females. Raskinta-Katish Skrell tend to be taller and Kanin tend to be smaller

Racial slurs towards Skrell include 'Frog', 'Salamander', 'Squid head', and various other amphibious creatures. The Skrell find the usage of such remarks childish and immature.

Birth and Reproduction

Skell have no external reproductive organs and use external fertilization. They have a very minimal nudity taboo and view the obsession many species have with covering themselves as slightly comical.

The average Skrellian clutch is fifty eggs, most of which successfully hatch into small tadpoles. Due to their weak immune systems, less than five usually make it to maturity. While these tadpoles are not legally considered children, most Skrell find the idea of killing them deliberately quite offensive.

Skrellian fertility rates are incredibly low by human standards. Skrell experience the adverse effects of overpopulation on fertility much earlier than other species, and the modern Skrellian arcologies and space habitats are usually close enough quarters to trigger this response. Skrell in environments like new colonies have much better fertility rates, and for those in the species' core worlds adoption is a popular choice.

The Skrell are best described as serial monogamists. They find romantic human notions of long-term fidelity and “soulmates” risible, although they have some pull among young Skrell raised in human space. However, for the purposes of childrearing, Skrell form close companionate bonds with a coparent, called a Kala-Qua, and remain together for the children's most important formative period. Skrell generally remain lifelong friends with former Kala-Qua, and continue to act together as parents for most of their children's childhood.

While historically parental pairs were designated along biological lines, adoption within one's caste is common among modern Skrell. Decoupling the emotional role of co-nurturer from the genetic role of coparent is, after all, only reasonable to the logical Skrell, and appeals to their interest in genetic fitness. Adoptive parents need not be of opposite sex, and Skrell find human notions of homophobia almost impossible to understand.

Relations between two litters who share one or both parents are quite distant : At best, they will see each other as something akin to cousins, but generally, siblings and half-siblings outside of one litter are viewed as mere acquaintances outside of any compelling reason to associate further. They have no special legal rights of inheritance towards each other.

Skrellian legal genealogies are monolateral. Children are attached to the lineage of a primary parent, called a Qarr-Maqa, usually the older or more distinguished of the Kala-Qua. The Qarr-Maqa bears the responsibility for raising children, as their performance will reflect on the Qarr-Maqa more than anyone else. The secondary parent, the Qrri-Maqa, has a more diminished role in childrearing, but generally assist both materially and emotionally. It is not terribly uncommon or stigmatized for one Skrell to be raising two liters at a time– one as a Qarr-Maqa and one as a Qrri-Maqa

A traditional Skrellian family is composed of:

• The Qarr-Maqa, as explained earlier. The main parent figure, tutor and caretaker of the children.
• The Qrri-Maqa, secondary parent figure, financial and material support. On an emotional/relational standpoint, they might be compared to a very close human uncle or aunt.
• The Qarr-Baqa, siblings from same clutch. Because of the monolateral family structure, Qarr-Baqa are often closer than human siblings.
• The Qrri-Baqa, children from another clutch of one or both the parents. Somewhere between cousins and strangers, depending on the family's structure.
• The Maqa’lak, Qarr-Baqa of one of the parents. Because of the close bonds between Qarr-Baqa and the intellectually intensive nature of Skrellian childhood, they tend to take a more involved role in childbearing than human aunts and uncles, especially in castes with large numbers of clutches.

Gender Differences

It is extremely difficult for most non-Skrell to tell the gender of a Skrell from appearance alone, as body shape and general appearance does not change between them. Female Skrell usually talk in a higher register, though this is not a fool-proof way of telling. The most noticeable difference is that a female's headtails are slightly longer than a male's, though the difference can be difficult to tell for non-Skrell crew and pales in comparison to genetic caste differences.

Skrell abolished gender roles before humans invented the wheel. Although they have some clothing styles considered to be “for” men or for women, these are based on how they interact with the average male or female Skrellian body and are more suggestions than rules. The average Skrell refrains from using gendered honorifics and finds human gender customs strange and difficult.

Lifespan

Normal life expectancy for most Skrell is 100 human years. Through technological enhancements, some may live until about 135 years old. 20 years old is considered an adult.

Diet

The preferred food of the Skrell is fungi, although they are capable of eating most plantlike substances they come across, where as meat does not agree with their bodies. Because of their herbivorous diet, many plants that would be toxic or hallucinogenic to humans or other omnivores are a Skrellian delicacy. While capable of eating meat, they are usually incapable of digesting it, and sulfur-rich animal protein complexes are often toxic to them.

Skrell have found ways to augment the ecology of their digestive systems to better handle meat, but this is only done for scenarios wherein a supply of meat is far more readily available than plants. For example, most visiting desert worlds like Virgo-Prime will undergo such augmentation. However, most still do not enjoy eating meat.

The densely-folded Skrellian brain uptakes alcohol five times faster than the human brain. A cheap beer is even repugnant to a Skrell, and many border-world bars host young Skrell drinking wine out of shot glasses. Adult Skrell tend to find being drunk extremely unpleasant and stick to fruit juices.

Behavior

The Skrellian media portrays themselves as peaceful scientists who wish for nothing more than a harmonious galactic community, where the strong help the weak to advance and war is a sad, distant memory. The Skrellian media is also controlled by ambitious, powerful, secret-keeping Qerr-Katish who have certainly not shared all their technologies with humanity. Most races struggle to keep on good terms with the Skrell, as their secrets are many and their industrial and technological bases enough to turn the tide of any war.

Relations

Humans have the closest relationship with the Skrell of any independent species, born from hundreds of years of memetic conflict and cultural co-evolution. It it a particularly toxic friendship, however, as both races are known to interfere with each other's politics.

The long-lived Unathi still remember the crucial role of Skrellian interference in losing the SolGov-Hegemony war, and find Skrellian arrogance infuriating. Relations are cold but not particularly likely to turn to a shooting war anytime soon.

Tajarans find the Skrellian foreign policy belittling, reminding them of the shame of being given bluespace travel by humanity, but also know that it is a key factor in belaying human aggression. On a personal level, the average Tajaran and Skrell get along, both being collectivist monarchists with a keen understanding of the value of technology.

Skrell view positronics as an extension of humanity, although they condemn the reckless use of scavenged Singularitarian technology. While less fond of drone intelligences than humanity, they have very little issue producing them for export.

The Teshari are essentially Skrellian vassals, working unpleasant jobs on Skrellian stations, facing discrimination, and being hedged out of meaningful interstellar politics by their more advanced “big brothers”. Teshari attitudes towards Skrell vary widely by the individual, but Skrellian attitudes towards the Teshari are almost universally condescending.

The Akula are another Skrellian vassal, but unlike the Teshari, the attitude toward the Akula is far better. The Skrell even recognize and actively protect the sovereignty of a few Akula systems.

Most of the galaxy views the Dionae as another Skrellian vassal species, but Skrell understand that the close relationship between Diona and Skrell is held together by nothing more than convenience.

Language

The Skrell language is a series of hums, warbles, or croaks, impossible for Unathi, Tajaran, and humans to hear or produce without computer assistance.

With other languages such as Sol Common, Skrell take on the accent of the person who taught them the language, often with lilting changes in pitch. Tonal languages like Sol Common are easier to learn than guttural language such as Gutterspeak.

Skrell are naturally sensitive to very small changes in tone when speaking, and can come off as a little flat to observing aliens.

Skrellian written language is, similarly to the spoken language, hard to understand for a non-Skrell. Based on logograms, it contains thousands of different signs, leading to homonyms differentiated only by context and complex visual puns many Skrell find delightful and many humans find obtuse.

In practice, however, someone wishing to have a non-specialized, common conversation in Skrellian can reduce this number to a few thousand words, the rest of them being related to precise parts of Skrellian society, sometimes to a caste, sometimes to more restrained groups (the psychiatric vocabulary, for example, contains nearly a thousand different words which are useless outside of that context). This form of U/non-U distinction has sometimes been described by human linguists as hundreds of related sub-languages, although Skrellian linguists maintain that it's all Common.

Should the non-Skrell learner overcome these first difficulties, they would be confronted to a much deeper problem, which is the influence of emotion in Skrellian written language. Indeed, no consistent punctuation can be observed in a Skrellian text : the rhythm, intent and sometime the literal meaning of a word is conditioned by the way in which it is written. The last word of a sentence might be indicated by a sharp logogram, whose extremities are prematurely ended, in the case of a formal text, while in a more sentimental context the same character would be elongated, slowly fading on the same extremities. Skrellian literature is often too ingrained in particularly Skrellian idioms and practices for lay aliens to understand them.

This particular method of writing makes Skrellian literature quite different from its human equivalent. The visual presentation of a work is often more important than the words it contains, with many modern Skrellian writers eskewing semantics entirely to focus on visual appeal. Skrell works tend to contain visual references to other well-known works, and a particular spattering of an character can become a cultural idiom if the book is well-regarded enough.

Skrell employ a simpler script for ease of interface with computers, but tend to find more than punctual experience with this interface depressing, like a human forced to stare at a screen of monospaced capital letters all day. Drone intelligences capable of rendering computer output in a more aesthetically pleasing way are a common Skrellian import from human space.

The modern state of Skrellian language is a result of thousands of years of careful upkeep by Skrellian language academies, who are also responsible for Common Skrellian being the only widely-spoken Skrellian language. The academies' focus on interesting nuance over practicality bled into Tradeband, indirectly complicating the lives of billions of human grade scholars.

Job Preference

Skrell can take any job and are not discriminated against by humans in higher-paying fields like other aliens, owing to the close relationship between Humanity and the Skrell. While viewed as intellectuals by outsiders, and found often in scientific and medical fields, the existence of entire castes of warrior, laborer, and artist Skrell suggests a much more even distribution of labor.

Background

Home Planet

Species on Vorestation
Station Crew Akula - Angels - Demi-Humans - Demons - Dionae - Humans - Nevreans - Promethean - Rapala - Sergals - Shadekin - Skrell - Synthetics - Tajaran - Teshari - Unathi - Vasilissans - Vox - Vulpkanin - Xenochimera - Xenomorph-Hybrids - Zorren - Alraune - Custom Species