Introduction

The genesis of the Pelted involved humanity wanting to seed space with friendly aliens. In this, it reflects Young Jaguar’s intent with the setting. When I started developing the Peltedverse (over twenty-five years ago!), my goal was to create a future that people would love to visit and participate in. There would be hardship, crisis, challenges to overcome—even war—but for the most part, the Alliance is an exciting place full of fascinating people, boundless opportunities, and the potential for adventure and friendship just about everywhere you look.

While I’m not all ponies and rainbows, I think it’s fair to say there’s more glitter in me than grimdark.

The Peltedverse, then, is intended to invite people in… and I think on the whole it is successful in that aim. People often tell me they wish they could live in the Alliance, or like to imagine what their lives would be like if they did. And because so many fans expressed that sentiment, I decided a couple years ago to run a fluff Kickstarter so people could get themselves drawn as their Peltedverse self, whatever form that persona would take. Some folks went for the straightforward choice (engineers who decided they would end up engineers in the Alliance, just with fur), and others went exotic, choosing to be portrayed as Phoenix or Naysha or Chatcaava in exotic far-future careers. Over a hundred people showed up for the fun, and in order to help them make their choices, I wrote a separate essay about the species of the Alliance every day of the project. They’re excellent overviews, and the only recent worldbuilding articles I’ve written for the Alliance. It seemed a pity to let them molder on Kickstarter’s website.

You’re about to read them now.

Because of the situation that inspired them, these articles are idiosyncratic: they take each species in pairs and contrast them against one another, historically and culturally, and then explain reasons why you the reader might want to pick them as your avatar species. When I was sorting through them I thought about re-writing them to remove the “you’re making your character” bias, but doing so would remove a lot of their charm and energy. And honestly… this invitation to come live in the Alliance is at the heart of every Peltedverse story I write. Why not own that?

Here, then, are the nine original articles, plus a bit of additional information at the end, like a map and a reading order. Go on. See who you’d like to be. And keep your choice in mind, because you never know when I might decide I need to draw another hundred portraits of people’s Pelted avatars…

The Seersa and Karaka’A

The Seersa and the Karaka’A are in some ways the “oldest” of the species of the Alliance, because they closely resemble the original creatures gengineered on Earth in the very beginning for Project Homefront. Those early Terran experiments were short, digitigrade, and had more animal-like faces, and that template carried on into the Pelted who segregated into the races of the Seersa (fox-like) and Karaka’A (catlike). Unlike their taller, more humanoid Pelted kin, these early individuals chose to embrace their original heritage, and some of them claim to trace their DNA back to Holly or Joy, the very first individuals ever made on Earth.

The Seersa and the Karaka’A have many similarities in cultural personality, because the individuals who would become these races were responsible for the Exodus and the political and cultural decisions that resulted in the Alliance. Thanks to this early history, the Karaka’A and Seersa are the de facto leaders in galactic politics. They’re light-handed, but these two had the management of the early Alliance and they still think of themselves (and mostly remain) the stewards of the body politic. This was no doubt abetted by their being the first to settle new planets: they’ve had longer to turn their views outward. That the two planets they chose were in a rare double-world system only made their ability to work together that much easier. It’s a good thing that for the most part their biology promotes phlegmatic, agreeable, and hard-working personalities, because otherwise they’d probably be insufferable.

In terms of splitting the responsibilities of governance, the Karaka’A preferred to deal with the internal politics of the Alliance, with the Seersa being more active in foreign policy, language and diplomacy, and the military. You find a lot of the Karaka’A and Seersa in those fields still, hundreds of years after the Alliance’s founding: the Seersa produces almost all the premier linguists of the Alliance and have many individuals in the upper echelons of the military, and the Karaka’A field more career politicians that most of the other races—combined!

If I talk about these two races in the same breath, it’s because they’re fairly similar—can even interbreed, though couples who do end up together tend to genefix children into one race or the other to maintain the genelines. They share a great deal of their genetic template because of their relatively clean history leading back to the engineer who made the first “models” of the Pelted on Earth, and so have avoided most of the reproductive problems that plague other Pelted. They do have some “errors”, most notably a problem with their sweat and oil glands and body temperature control. Plus, they grow hair with seasonal changes and they shed (much to their irritation), though this has given rise to a healthy industry in fur- and hair-styling salons. Their uniformly digitigrade stance (standing bipedal on their “toes” rather than the entire foot) also gives them some joint issues in old age. But for the most part, they are handsome, healthy, well-adjusted people, who have what they consider to be a proud history, and a secure role in the Alliance.

From a physical perspective, both races tend to be short: 4’ to 5’5” is a good general range, though there are outliers (Alysha Forrest of “In the Line of Duty” comes to mind, at a staggering 6”, a height she will be the first to tell you is more of an annoyance than a help). Of the Alliance races they are the most likely to have muzzles or demi-muzzles. They have three fingers and a thumb per hand and four toes per foot, and have retractable claws rather than nails—the Seersa as well as the Karaka’A. Because of the mélange that went into their making, they can have a wide range of unusual coat patterns: domestic cat and wild cat coats, as well as fox markings, and that goes for either species; it’s not unusual to see one of the fox-like Seersa sporting the rosettes of a leopard, or a cat-like Karaka’A with the points of an American red fox.

Do You Want to Be a Karaka’A or a Seersa?

So how can you tell if you want to be one of these two races? If you like the idea of being the member of a group highly regarded for its connections to history, its stewardship of history and the future, and its influence on the galaxy in the present, you may want to be a homeworld Karaka’An or Seersa. If you like politics, community maintenance, and history (and also cats), the Karaka’A should appeal to you; a homeworld edition if you want to be in the center of things, or a colony/starbase/merchant child if you prefer being out in the world and a little more at the forefront of new policies. If you love languages and diplomacy, like military or foreign politics, or would love to be in an embassy or a delegation to new worlds, the Seersa might be for you!

From a physical perspective, your choices then are “short cat with domestic/wild cat markings or fox markings” for the Karaka’A, or “short foxlike creature with domestic/wild cat markings or fox markings” for the Seersa. You’ll have a coat that grows rapidly (and you will probably trim, style, shave, or dye it according to your whim), along with “head hair” (like humans) and possibly cheek ruffs (if you like those). You can have a muzzle, a demi-muzzle, or a humanoid face, and for the most part, you will have a solid frame; there are slim/thin Karaka’A and Seersa but they’re rarer than the short, solid types.

Well-known Karaka’A from the canon include Alysha Forrest of Either Side of the Strand and Alysha’s Fall; Taylitha Basil from “Second;” and Kellen Grove from “Broken Chains” (previously published as “A Distant Sun”). Well-known Seersa include Pelipenele from “Rosettes and Ribbons” and Laniis from Even the Wingless.

The Asanii and the Tam-illee

Next up, the Asanii and the Tam-illee, two more races known for their ubiquity throughout Alliance space. Unlike the Seersa and Karaka'A, the Asanii and Tam-illee formed their races via segregation on board the Exodus ships, cleaving together mostly via physical characteristics (and some political and job-related ones). The Asanii separated from the Karaka’A and became the taller, more humanoid of the felid races; the Tam-illee separated from the Seersa and became the taller, more humanoid of the vulpid ones. Both races saw much to admire in their human creators, and while the Seersa and Karaka’A wanted to remember and enshrine their own creation and history, the Asanii and Tam-illee wanted to remember and emulate their creators, choosing to set aside that segments of humanity enslaved them.

Some of this difference in focus remains to this day, centuries later. Both Tam-illee and Asanii are among the most human-looking of the Pelted, and are frequently born without fur (though their skins often still have the coloration of their animal ancestors). Some can even be mistaken for human if their ears are hidden.

But these races aren’t human, and choosing to segregate based on those characteristics brought many of the incompatibilities between the DNA mélange into the forefront. The Asanii and Tam-illee have more problems reproducing without aid than most of the other races of the Alliance, and while the Asanii were willing to take advantage of the Alliance’s superior medical technology to ensure the continuation of their families, the Tam-illee remain stubbornly committed to one day solving their problems naturally, and their internal politics is riddled with factions arguing about just how to do this, and rid themselves thus from the last ugly legacies of their creation.

In the Alliance, you will find the Tam-illee overwhelmingly dedicated to maintenance and technology. Their society inspires the sort of mindset that’s good with wrenches, schematics, and urban planning. Tam-illee engineers and mechanics are watchwords in those fields... and many Tam-illee are scientists in the pure sense as well. They are also well-known in the medical and reproductive sciences, where their internal politics give them added incentive to specialize. They are affable people, and less reserved culturally than their Seersa and Karaka’An compatriots, and make good teammates, coworkers, and friends. They also, culturally, have the custom of FoundNames; unlike many members of the Alliance who use a personal name and a family name for identification, Tam-illee have a personal name and a second they choose based on their intentions and purpose. Until they decide on that name, they use the surname “Unfound”.  FoundNames are usually compound words or phrases: TouchTheStars, HealingWord, etc. Even if you weren’t making assumptions about a Tam-illee’s job on meeting them, their name will usually remove all doubt.

The Asanii, on the other hand, are the ultimate shapechangers. They adapt well to any environment they’re put in, and are eclectic in interests and abilities. One sees a Tam-illee and makes assumptions: “Probably an engineer, or a doctor,” or a Seersa: “Probably a linguist or politician.” But Asanii are found in every field and are ubiquitous throughout the Alliance, doing whatever jobs need doing and fitting in wherever they need to fit in. Something about their global culture has made it easy for them to “go with the flow” of wherever they end up, and being an Asanii gives an individual an unparalleled amount of freedom from expectations, both from other members of the race and from the Alliance at large. Some posit it has something to do with their religion, which revolves around the sun and moon and seems to emphasize polarities and the ability to move between them; the Asanii themselves will tell you it’s just the way they are. Everyone has the Nii and the Ana in them. It’s just a matter of channeling it.

Physically, the Asanii and Tam-illee are almost uniformly the most human-looking of the races. They tend toward height—over 5’7” is common—and have five fingers and toes with nails. Their faces are almost always either human-flat or at most demi-muzzled, and most of them don’t even have particularly pointed canine teeth. They stand plantigrade, like humans, and may or may not have fur at all, though all of them have ears and tails—vulpine for the Tam-illee and feline for the Asanii. For the most part, Asanii are either plain-coated or have domestic cat markings; in the taller races, the wild cat markings are the province of the Harat-Shar. Tam-illee will have plain coats or fox markings, and no other weird species patterns. (Tam-illee also, oddly, have a limited ability to sense electrical fields; no one’s sure where that came from.)

Do You Want to Be an Asanii or a Tam-illee?

If you self-identify as an engineer, mechanic, doctor, or scientist, you’d be very much at home among the Tam-illee; everywhere those specialties are needed, you will find a lot of Tam-illee participating, and their culture lionizes these fields. You will inherit with that profession the ability to choose your own name to announce your purpose and passions to the world (your FoundName) and a radical opinion on family and children—that opinion could be “we should be using medical technology to fix this and stop being so focused on it” or “we should be reclaiming our mangled creation from humanity by doing this naturally,” but there’s no escaping having some investment in it, even if it’s to be annoyed that you have to have an opinion about it at all.

If you are good at fitting in everywhere, or feel like you have no driving passion but you can do whatever needs doing; if you want the freedom of complete individual choice without a culture encouraging you to be this or that; if you want to be spread uniformly over the Alliance but not really feel deeply connected to anyone else of your race, then the Asanii might appeal to you. You can be anything as an Asanii and no one would be surprised, least of all your fellow Asanii!

Well-known Asanii from the canon include Laelkii Takara Lifeweave from Alysha’s Fall and Either Side of the Strand and Professor Edisse from “Rosettes and Ribbons.” Well-known Tam-illee include Carevei Lifehawk from “The Elements of Freedom” and the Queen’s Tams from the Her Instruments trilogy.

The Harat-Shar and the Hinichi

And now we move on to two of the more memorable races of the Alliance: the Harat-Shar and the Hinichi. Like yesterday’s races (the Asanii and Tam-illee), these two races are the product of segregation during the Exodus, this time based on characteristics relating to wild-cat-ness and wolf-ness. (These might seem superficial reasons to band together now, but when the genetics particular to the Terran experiments were more poorly understood, choosing to group together based on physical characteristics often gave better results when reproducing). Thus, the Harat-Shar became the race most likely to evince “wild cat” looks (and behaviors), while the Hinichi became the most wolflike of the Pelted.

They could not be more unlike, culturally. The Harat-Shar are infamous for being the hedonists of the Alliance. They are gregarious, outgoing, and sensual people, notoriously libertine (and practical) about sexual arrangements, and their homeworld boasts multiple styles of family, the most common of which is polygamist and (often) incestuous, the latter abetted by the Alliance’s ability to reliably prevent conception in almost all of its members. Harat-Shar are open-hearted adventurers who dive into almost everything: experimentation is good! And have a casual attitude toward relationships that many of their Pelted brethren find alien. Even their most common religion is polytheist: a griffin-like “angel” of battle for every intrarace of the Harat-Shar, these intraraces being specific types of wild cat-patterned Harat-Shar (lion, tiger, etc). Their warm-weather planet of choice seems to encourage what outworlders call indolence and Harat-Shar insist is “a healthy respect for relaxation.”

The Hinichi, on the other hand, are people of the Book: literally, having adopted and adapted Christianity into a form that bemuses those who still practice on Earth. They are reputed throughout the Alliance for their faith, their emphasis on family, and their commitment to duty. Being Pelted, they are missing an inbred respect for authority or tradition—Pelted have few of those—but their wolf-like natures lead them to far more complex and stable social networks than their Harat-Shariin brethren, whose solitary-predator leanings influence their far more laissez-faire approach to relationships. The Hinichi homeworld tends toward the cold and craggy, and their mountain society is distinctly feudal in tenor, while the lowlands tend toward the more egalitarian. They are excellent people to have at your back in a pinch: once they give their loyalty, it’s hard to shake them loose again.

Because the Harat-Shar and Hinichi segregated based on what the physical characteristics of “wild catness” and “wolfness,” they are less homogenous in form than the other Pelted. Both races can be either digitigrade or plantigrade; can have humanoid faces or true muzzles; can have four fingers and claws, or five fingers and nails. These traits are linked: the more humanoid one looks, the more humanoid one’s characteristics; but one can have short, feral-looking Harat-Shar and Hinichi, and tall, human-like ones. Hinichi can have all the pelt patterns of their lupine ancestors (and name those patterns according to seasons, with reddish and blond Hinichi being ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ colored, while gray and black and pale Hinichi being fall and winter-colored). Harat-Shar can be almost any wild cat pattern. Cheetah-patterned Harat-Shar are rare, have a specific phenotype (gangly, delicate, or rangy), and because of arguments during the Exodus are subject to some discrimination—they pushed for monogamy and even forked the main polytheist religion into a monogamist one with a Christ figure involving (of course) a cheetah. To this day, there’s some bickering about that.

Do You Want to be a Harat-Shar or Hinichi?

If you are a fun-loving extravert (or an introvert who loves people) and feel more comfortable in a society with open relationships, among other people who don’t place any greater meaning on sex than ‘it’s something fun to do with people you like,’ you almost certainly belong among the homeworld Harat-Shar. The Harat-Shar are the Alliance’s libertines, and play as hard as they work—but they’re often not taken seriously, and many people dismiss them as incapable of forming more complex/deep attachments. (Their brethren are right: it’s much harder for them, though they do.) They’re the ‘party people’ of the Alliance, with all the good and bad that comes with that reputation. You might also want to be a Harat-Shar if you want to place yourself in opposition to these beliefs: colony-world Harat-Shar (and the cheetah intrarace) often fight these stereotypes and have frustration based on having to prove themselves because of the assumptions made about them.

If you believe strongly in duty, or have a strong core of faith and belief, and if you are comfortable in a complex and often broad social hierarchy/network, you may want to be Hinichi: from the mountain cultures if you feel a strong connection to the feudal sense of obligation between vassal and liege, or from the lowlands if you are more interested in the broader society of the Alliance. If wrestling with faith is a strong theme in your life, you may want to be one of the rare Pagan or agnostic/atheist Hinichi—they do exist, but they struggle to define themselves against the backdrop of the unshakable faith of their fellows, who use religion to come to terms with having been created by humanity.

From a visual perspective, then, your choices are more varied than with the other races: you can have a flat face, a demimuzzle or muzzle with both of these races; you can be plantigrade or digitigrade, have four fingers and claws or five and nails. Hinichi will want to choose a pelt color and markings appropriate to the common wolf species of Earth; Harat-Shar can choose from any of the wild cats, though the larger ones are more common than the smaller ones.

Well-known Harat-Shar from the canon include Sasha and Irine from the Her Instruments series and Lucretia from Mindtouch; well-known Hinichi include the mysterious Night Admiral (head of Fleet black ops) and Branagh Mariengard from “Stormfront.”

The Aera and the Malarai

Now we take on two of the lesser known first generation Pelted: the Aera and the Malarai! Both these races were originally created on Earth in very small numbers, and exist today because they managed to survive the Exodus long enough for reproductive technology to save their genepool. The Aera started out with a broader base, and are more numerous in the present day. The Malarai, however, remain a small population, and while they leave their homeworld there simply aren’t enough of them to go around. Even so, you’re as likely to see one or the other in the more populous zones of the Alliance, simply because of their temperaments!

The Aera are nomads. Even on the planet they settled, they like to move from place to place, and like the Ciracaana (who modeled themselves loosely on the Aera), they have a faction that’s embraced a quasi-aboriginal lifestyle. Most of the population of the Aera homeworld is engaged in this lifestyle, which they take far less seriously than the Ciracaana do. It’s a bit of a game to them, but one they often take to deadly extremes: they can be prickly people, and proud, and quick-tempered. Aera who prefer a more modern lifestyle ply the interstellar waters of the Alliance as merchants, explorers, miners, and anything else that requires being on the go. There are some few Aera in the military, but most of them dislike authority, and even the loose discipline of the Alliance’s Fleet is often too much restriction for them. They are a vibrant and vigorous people, with broad experiences conveyed by their frequent travels, but it’s hard to get them pulling in tandem; even more than the felid Pelted, they prefer to work alone or in small family groups, and treat outsiders with some skepticism.

The Malarai, meanwhile, are an insular people. For most of their history they’ve felt crushed by their biology and their struggle to survive. They were created with feathered wings too small for flight, and early Malarai had significant neurological and physical hip, leg, and feet problems, probably a side effect of attempting to graft extra limbs to a body accustomed to only four. These issues, together with their small population size and the attendant challenges overcoming them, have left their marks: even stable Malarai are given to introspection and quiet, and the less fortunate among them are plagued with melancholy and self-esteem issues, even hundreds of years after their creation. Their religion revolves around sacrifice and grief, and while the centuries have softened the blows that shaped their culture, they are still a solemn people.

These two races are among the easiest to identify in a crowd of first and second generation Pelted. The Aera are tall: over 5’8” is usual before the ears, and the ears are enormous, tufted and shaped like a hare’s. Most Aera have muzzles or demimuzzles, short brush tails like a fox or wolf, and some number of them have winged ankles. The rationale behind the winged ankles was never fully discovered; the Pelted assumed it to either be decorative or a genetic experiment (“Who can graft on the most useless modification” is a common remark). As the Aera have reproduced naturally, fewer of them have the winged ankles (leading to “who can graft the most useless modification that also fails as a heritable trait” comments—the Pelted can be caustic about early Terran experiments). This has generated an endless range of fashion trends in shoes depending on who’s mimicking whom at the time. They stand plantigrade and have the five fingers/toes and nails of the humanoid stance. Coat patterns tend toward the canid, with a light ventral and dark dorsal, and many Aera have “points”. The colors are often more vivid than a Terran animal’s, and no one’s sure where those colorations stemmed from.

Because of the size of their initial genepool the Malarai are fairly homogeneous in height, between 5”5 and 6”. They have pointed triangular ears (some argue catlike, others wolflike), and are uniformly flat-faced or demimuzzled, and the latter is rare. The tail is distinctly catlike, as are the coat patterns, though the Malarai tend toward plain coats, when they have coats: many of them have very short fur or none at all, which exposes the dark skin leading from the tear ducts to the mouth. Almost all Malarai have these cheetah-like tear marks, though they can vary in intensity and some Malarai have them surgically removed. (Some Tam-illee also show these marks, leading to speculation about early interbreeding during the Exodus.) The wings of the Malarai are feathered and spring from their backs, near the shoulder-blades, and almost all of them are shaped like songbird wings. While most individuals are born with pale wings of uniform color, modern Malarai do paint and bleach their feathers to suit their sense of personal style. Early Malarai left their wings “unretouched” out of a nearly unanimous hatred of their useless appendages, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that Malarai even became willing to use their wings in low or null-gravity environments.

Like the Aera (and their human creators), Malarai are plantigrade, five-fingered/toed, and have nails.

Do You Want to be an Aera or a Malarai?

If you love to travel (and like being your own boss/hate other people telling you what to do), you might enjoy being one of the Aera,where “everywhere is home.” The Aeran homeworld culture is tribal, sensual, ribald, and unabashedly rife with honor and dominance contests; the offworld culture roves in single ships or convoys, going from port to port or exploring strange and distant worlds. The Aera are often well-off, have broad experience (and the perspective that comes with it), and see more of the Alliance than the typical individual of almost any other race…but with those advantages comes passion and pride and a certain insularity that can be offputting to others. They are fierce with their affections within their family units, but are not often in one place long enough to form deep attachments to other races. People tend to romanticize their lifestyle while not particularly trusting it, which suits the Aera fine; they get to keep the glories of the galaxy for themselves. People choosing to be Aera will rarely be seen in more populous parts of the Alliance, and almost never in any organization that requires regimentation or a rigorous schedule.

If you are an introvert, or feel disconnected from a broader, more colorful universe (while still wanting to take part in it), and if you feel that you struggle against handicaps that wingclip you, you might prefer to be one of the Malarai. Their struggles have made the Malarai a strong but reserved people, and since those struggles have been internal and individual and personal (the crippling biology) as well as racial and cultural (the small genepool), they tend toward compassion and perspective—emotional perspective, as opposed to the social/cultural perspective of the well-traveled Aera. The Aera have seen a great deal and learned from it; the Malarai have felt a great deal, and learned from that. These struggles define the Malarai, so make completely sure you want them to be a part of your personality before you decide for this often-melancholic race...but be assured that the rest of the Pelted feel protective of you and you’re likely to inspire more aid than a random passerby. Unlike the Aera, who are more commonly found on the fringes of settled space, the Malarai prefer to stay near the bright and densely populated Core…which is why you’re as likely to see one of them as you are an Aera there, despite their far smaller population.

Physically, as an Aera you will be tall with long ears (and good hearing!), an animal-like face and a humanoid body, with or without decorative ankle wings. As a Malarai, you will be somewhat shorter, with small feathered wings, almost entirely humanoid features, and pointed ears and a feline-like tail. You’ll also have the tear streaks (unless you’ve decided to remove them).

Famous Aera from the canon include Du’er and his troublesome mate from “Rosettes and Ribbons” and Ra’aila from Rose Point; Patience, a Malarai, can be found in the novel Mindline.

Also, please note: it’s ‘ah EER ah’! There’s a diacritic there that I’m always too lazy to type!

The Ciracaana and the Glaseah

Now we leave the realm of the first and second generation Pelted (with one exception which we’ll discuss later!) and move forward through the Pelted’s history, past the Exodus and the settlement of the Alliance Core. Our races today are members of the third generation, the species created by the Pelted themselves. A historical digression, then. The creation of the three races (species, really) of the third generation Pelted was controversial. Having secured their liberation (and left Earth and humanity far behind), many of the Pelted wanted to concentrate on their own societies. Some number of them were paranoid about the possibility of being followed and dragged back to Terra, and wanted the industrial capacity to field a defensive navy; others wanted to sort through the multiple social mores left to them by their creators, throw out the ones that didn’t work for them, and build themselves a unique and healthy culture. Still others were concerned about their genetic legacy, since reproductive efforts were failing for a large number of the population, notably among the Tam-illee but also among other low-population, at-risk races like the Aera and Malarai.

But some number of Pelted wanted to try their hand at the same tinkering done by their creators. They had a variety of reasons: they thought the goals of Earth’s Project Homefront (to create alien allies that would be friendly to them) were more achievable by them than by humanity; they wanted to delve into the science in the hopes of finding solutions to their own problems; they wanted to understand why they’d been made by undergoing the process from the viewpoint of the creator, rather than the created. Some of them just wanted to play God. All of them wanted to “do it right”: no slavery, no waiting around for gratitude from their new “children.” Their creations would be given a language, memories of a society and culture that dated back to a “fake” evolution, and a planet of their own, and they were to be left there to develop as if they were real species.

It was an ambitious project, particularly the parts involving seeding the new histories and planets… but it was perhaps because of that ambition that the imaginations of enough Pelted were captured to greenlight the experiments. Many, many Pelted wanted to be involved with rewriting their own history and giving the gift of sentient life to creatures who would actually be allowed to enjoy it, rather than being born into indentured servitude or worse.

Three species were the result of this experiment: the Glaseah, the Ciracaana, and the Phoenix. All of them were “failures” by the standards of the grand plan, which required the species to be born free of the influences of their creators. But the aim of Project Homefront—designing aliens friendly to their makers—that part worked out better than anyone expected. These species became the third generation Pelted and live far more amicably with their creators than many of the Pelted do with humanity to this day.

Today, we’ll talk about the two centauroid races of the Alliance, the third generation Pelted the Ciracaana and the Glaseah.

These two races developed around the same time, with the Glaseah leading; this perhaps explains one of the biggest flaws in the Glaseah, which is that they are almost entirely asexual, thanks to a choice made to dial down their natural hormone levels. The Pelted, remembering the abuses done them by humanity (and the shame, perhaps, of their bodies not always being theirs to command), wanted to inoculate their first species from ever suffering this problem. In the process, they created people who, given a choice, will forget (or decide not to) pair off, mate, and reproduce.

This is a shame, because the Glaseah are wonderful people. Despite, or perhaps because of, their low hormone loads, they are among the most stable personalities in the Alliance, practical, thoughtful, and phlegmatic. Little fazes them (or excites them). They don’t even startle easily. They work well in groups, both Glaseah-only and with aliens, and keep their heads in crises both physical and emotional. Their makers settled them on a warm and humid planet where the habitable zones are dense with colorful jungles, gave them a brisk, hard-to-the-tongue language, and designed them a history that they promptly disbelieved, because some accident of their genetics also gave them esper abilities.

No one among the Pelted knows how this happened, and no one has been able to reproduce the effect. Espers are rare among the Pelted (and their creators—more on humanity’s lack of espers later), and no one was even trying for this result. But the Glaseah can read minds and speak mind-to-mind, and they saw their real histories in their makers’ minds and… didn’t mind. Because they are calm and easygoing sorts. They abandoned the language so lovingly crafted for them by the Seersa linguists and stuck with Universal among other Pelted, and speak a mix of Universal and mind-to-mind with each other. It is this esper ability that led them to their religion, a belief in the Mother, Aksivaht’h, who thought the universe into life. Because they have these powers, the Pelted sometimes wonder if they know something the rest of them don’t about the truth of God(dess) existing.

The Glaseah arranged society to encourage reproduction, a dutiful and either religious or technology-based choice, and returned to the Alliance to join their creators. Though less populous than some of the first and second generation races, there are still a lot of Glaseah among the Alliance’s greater society.

Seeing the problems of completely removing a species’s sex drive, the Ciracaana team left their experiments some desire, if more muted. They built their race to be rangy plains-types, imagining them as hunters following migratory herds for food. They even found a likely world partway through the process and made sure the Ciracaana would be able to eat the native beasts. Unlike the unforeseeable mistake that revealed the Pelted creators to the Glaseah, what happened with the Ciracaana was a preventable accident: some of their number “woke up early” while their creators were inducing their artificial memories and language. The mess only got more tangled and less easy to recover from. The Ciracaana are clever and not easily distracted, and once they had the prey in sight they harried it to its end and discovered that they weren’t native to Ciracaa at all, but made-creatures with a botched language and false dreams of how they might have lived on their not-native-to-them world.

This resulted in some discussion—between the Ciracaana, who ignored their makers’ apologies, pleas, and explanation. Some of the Ciracaana wanted to join their makers and investigate the high-technology lifestyle that had created them; others were fascinated by the false dreams of a life on the plains and wanted to be those aboriginal nomads. They agreed, with the mostly good-natured bickering of siblings, to split up. Since more of the Ciracaana wanted to recreate that nomadic lifestyle than wanted to go into space, they claimed most of the planet for their tribes, leaving the remainder to settle in two cities they could use as launch points for visiting offworld. To this day, the majority of Ciracaana are found on Ciracaa, chasing the herds. They are using the seeds of the language and lifestyles suggested to them in dreams as springboards to create something new and entirely theirs, and anthropologists are fascinated by what they’re doing. The remaining Ciracaana can be found in those two cities (one per hemisphere) and in the Alliance, where they are rarer than the Glaseah but still considered excellent company: also stable but more capable of emotional engagement and passion, with a long-viewed predator’s eye, and a pack’s sense of working in teams for the betterment of the group. They are affable but more aggressive than their Glaseah counterparts, but they lack the quick and violent tempers of the Aera, who helped provide the pattern for their falsified history.

Physically, both races are centauroid, with a four-footed lower body and a humanoid torso grafted at the front. Designing working centauroids was a challenge undertaken by the teams in order to advance their understanding of genetics, and it worked: medical research at this time accelerated and resulted in many of the technologies still in use in present day. Other than that they look very different: the Ciracaana are very tall, rangy, and built for speed, with the tallest individuals topping out at almost nine feet. The Glaseah are short, stocky, and built for endurance, and it’s rare for any of them to grow over 5’4” or so. The Ciracaana have foxlike faces and ears and catlike tails and paws with retractable claws… but five fingers and nails on their hands. Their coat patterns are wildly variable, from zebra stripes to big cat rosettes, piebalds and paints, random spattering and plain.

The Glaseah are always skunk-patterned, either with the dorsal stripes or dorsal spots of a skunk, and are either brown, black, or gray. The very occasional rare golden Glaseah has been known to happen, but it is rare. The Glaseah also have paws with retractable claws, but they also have four fingers, not five, and someone gave them batlike wings on their lower backs and feathers to cup their ear holes. Most people consider these additions decorative—in truth they were an attempt to understand the neurological wiring required for additional limbs, and how far it could be pushed on the existing cardiovascular system. The wings, anyway. No one’s sure what’s up with the feathered ears, particularly since they cause some degradation in hearing compared to the Pelted norm.

It’s important to note that even though the Glaseah have skunk-like patterns, their faces and bodies are more leonine than mephit.

Do you want to be a Ciracaana or Glaseah?

Both of the centauroid races are easygoing, friendly, and inherently stable. If you are practical and assertive when need be, good at working in teams, capable of passion on the right topics, and have the sort of easy confidence that very large individuals have among shorter/smaller people, you may enjoy being a Ciracaana. If you are intrigued at the thought of helping to create a tribal culture, complete with language, traditions, and living history, you may want to be one of the plainsfolk Ciracaana, who mostly keep to themselves but who are deeply involved in making their race’s destiny: all the Ciracaana, no matter how far-flung, look back to the tribal Ciracaana for cues on how they should behave and believe. If you prefer the technology and bustle of the Alliance, you can choose to be one of the cityfolk on Ciracaa, or one of the Ciracaana offworld, who are well-regarded for their unruffled temperaments and their size, power, and grace. Many offworld Ciracaana work in security, construction, or in the military—but there are also notable Ciracaana dancers and acrobats who travel with troupes. They are unparalleled runners and extremely flexible, and if they were more interested in copulation they’d be in high demand in those industries as well… as it is, they crop up in romance novels more often than one would think plausible.

If you are asexual, calm, smart, and practical—or if you’d like guaranteed esper abilities in a species where you’d be able to use them freely with family and friends—you may prefer to be one of the Glaseah. The Glaseah get things done without fuss, and reserve what rare passions they have for abstractions like science and community. Many Glaseah are excellent teachers, scientists, and analysts; their level-headed approach to matters, and their ability to avoid distraction, is much sought after everywhere they go. They make excellent friends and horrendous lovers; for the most part, Glaseah still reproduce as a matter of duty, either donating reproductive material to their temples or deciding to marry a friend. Glaseahn couples, if they choose to marry, usually have enormous families, producing each child on a regular schedule: nine to fifteen siblings isn’t unusual. Most Glaseah will be the product of one of these families, and have grown up tussling with, cuddling with, communicating mind to mind with, and bickering with an enormous number of siblings (they share this, interestingly, with the Harat-Shar, who otherwise could not be more different from them). Small families are rarer than temple-raised infants, who tend to become the next generation of priests. Their esper abilities make them compassionate…but also distant and perplexed by the messes of ordinary relationships among people without the ability to read minds, which suffer from (to the Glaseah’s point of view) a crippling lack of transparency.

Physically, if you are a Ciracaana you are a tall furred centauroid, with nearly infinite choices in coat pattern, a plains hunter’s lean flexibility and speed, and a cat’s liquescent backbone. You will tower over everyone around you, with rare exceptions. Glaseah will all be short and tend toward more solid body types, with skunk patterns and black, brown, or gray coats (hair color can be more varied, however, or can be dyed). Most Glaseah have the winged lower back—you can choose to be one of the rare Glaseah born without them (called “sef-Glaseah”).

Well-known Ciracaana from the canon include Jasper from Laisrathera and Ylriasna from “The Elements of Freedom” and “Brass Candy Girl.” Well-known Glaseah include Vasiht’h from the Dreamhealers series and Kis’eh’t from the Her Instruments series, and yes, all Glaseah will have those awkward names as a legacy from their abandoned and stop-and-fricative-littered language.

The Phoenix and the Akubi

On now to the quasi-avian species of the Alliance, the Phoenix and the Akubi… and very different species they are! The Phoenix are the last of the third generation Pelted, created by other Pelted in an attempt to seed intelligent life in the galaxy; the Akubi really are intelligent life found in the galaxy, true aliens. While both species look like birds, only the Akubi lay eggs. The Phoenix are actually mammals; the Pelted, creating them, did not want to make such extreme modifications to the reproductive cycle. Since one of their aims was to understand their own genetic problems, they retained the mammalian template so they could continue their studies and applied what they felt to be cosmetic alterations: the wings, the tail, the long-billed head. The engineers for the project found a low-gravity world and began tailoring the species so that it could fly there, and they succeeded. Everything they’d learned from examining themselves and then making the Glaseah and Ciracaana paid off handsomely. Of the three third generation races, the Phoenix are the most polished in design, and are as viable as a naturally evolved species.

Once again, however, the seeding of the race failed, and the Pelted couldn’t understand why. Unlike the Glaseah, whose esper abilities made the revelation of their creation inevitable, and the Ciracaana, who blundered into the truth, the Phoenix experiment was carried through without mistakes. It should have worked. They should never have known.

Except that from day one, the Phoenix have been more alien than some of the aliens the Pelted have met. They rejected everything implanted in them and spontaneously evolved a completely original culture and belief system. They rejected attachment—not emotion, but attachment—and developed a religion and culture around the concept of the Eye in the Center of the Void. One must remain clear, like water, so that one’s purpose can be divined. And then one must serve that purpose. In these things, the Phoenix are implacable…and tranquil. They are like arrows loosed at a target: there is only flight. One is in motion, one with the target, one is the target, one is the completion of the flight.

If the failures of the first two engineering projects dismayed the Pelted, the failure of this one flabbergasted them. They knew they’d created the Phoenix, but the Phoenix didn’t recognize that creation. The Alliance found itself in the bizarre position of sending delegations to the species they’d created to believe itself natural… to explain that they weren’t.

The Phoenix didn’t care. As far as they were concerned, focusing on how they were created was irrelevant to who they were. They served the Eye. The Pelted were welcome to continue discussions with them, so long as they understood the Phoenix had other priorities. So, helplessly, the Pelted did, and welcomed into the Alliance a species they honestly didn’t know at all.

The Phoenix remain ciphers to this day. They seem to glide through the Alliance, detached from its convulsions and emotional distresses in a way even the stolid Glaseah can’t emulate. While they participate in the greater culture, they are enigmatic; no one is sure why they choose their companions, their jobs, or their paths, and it’s hard for most people to even tell if they are friends with a Phoenix. Some have likened the Phoenix to real birds of prey, with the same wildness and the same lack of affection. But people who know the Phoenix well will tell you their loyalty when they give it is more satisfying than affection, somehow, and that a Phoenix will see hard truths more clearly, and tell them to you more often, than any other species in the Alliance. And they’d be right.

In contrast to the Phoenix, the Akubi are gregarious aliens, natives of a planet with enormous trees who see the Alliance as an expansion of their skies. They greeted the revelation of sentients off their world with great pleasure, and as often as they can they travel the Alliance for the fun of mingling with the little mammals, so busy, colorful, and fascinating. Their clever throats and tongues are capable of mimicking almost any noise, so they speak every Alliance language they learn with facility, and their curiosity and bonhomie are legendary. If more of them could leave the world, they would probably be more frequently seen. But the only individuals who have the luxury are almost always the neuters, and the biological window for those individuals to travel is narrow.

Akubi are born neuter from the egg and differentiate into sexes depending on the ratio of male to female Akubi near them. When there are few Akubi, more individuals become female, and then a smaller proportion become male and fertilize the ‘harem.’ But when there are too many Akubi in one place, most neuters become male, and compete for the less populous females. Though an individual can only differentiate once in their lives, the social arrangements, and the history of families and communities, can become very complex, and sexed Akubi often end up migrating elsewhere if circumstances where they were born change abruptly.

It is unclear whether this biological change is induced, chosen, or automatic, and the Akubi aren’t telling. But most sexed Akubi have responsibilities that make it difficult for them to justify leaving their world for long, which is why so many of the Alliance’s visitors are neuter.

Little is otherwise known about the Akubi; they do not share much about themselves with outsiders, being far more interested in enjoying the company of their new, small mammal-friends. There’s no evidence of heavy industry on their world, but they are remarkably sophisticated thinkers in their chosen arenas, and while it’s clear they’re hunters from their maws, no one is sure whether they remain hunter/gatherers or have moved to farming their food. In some ways they are as inexplicable as the Phoenix, though with—the Pelted think—far greater reason.

In appearance, both races look somewhat avian. The Phoenix, designed by the Pelted, are digitigrade bipeds with bills and flexible crests and tails. Their wings sprout all along their arms; they do have hands, but the bones of the smallest finger have been extended to form the leading edge for those wings. They come in most metallic shades, mostly copper, gold, silver, and bronze. There are rare paler or darker Phoenix, as well. The sheen off those feathers is a result of a compound engineered into them to make them tougher… this has accidentally made them resistant as well to the Alliance’s most common distance weapon, the palmer. They are tall people, elongated by their low-gravity world, usually over 5’8”.

The Akubi, though, are enormous, with small individuals starting at nine feet and larger ones over twelve. Unlike the bipedal Phoenix, they are bird-shaped, with enormous, predatory feet equipped with two thumbs, one on each side. Their faces have long, heavy, serrated beaks, accented with two long tendrils, one on either side, and they have curling horns and a long skull plate. Akubi have feathers, fur, and skin, and colors are deep and vivid: browns, purples, blacks, rusts and deep oranges. These match the forest shadows where they evolved, among trees as tall as buildings and as wide, and canopies that spread and joined until they formed ceilings beneath the skies where the Akubi fly their mating dances.

Do You Want to Be a Phoenix or an Akubi?

The belief that there is value in a life lived with fewer attachments, and dedication to a singular purpose, are the single most important attributes of the Phoenix, and cannot be avoided if you wish to be one. You may fail at the perfection of attachment, but you will hold it to be paramount, and your biology will be predisposed to aid you in that—the Phoenix are not naturally choleric or temperamental. They just… are. Martial artists might also find the Phoenix agreeable, as Phoenix who do well in their meditations are sometimes selected to learn them in furtherance of tranquility of spirit. Also, if you would love to fly, and if you think that just being able to fly would strip you of most of your emotional disturbances and leave you clean and quiet on the inside, you will probably enjoy being a Phoenix.

If you are naturally curious, gregarious, and have an acute sense of the absurd (because talking sentient mammals are absurd and fascinating!), and if you are a great mimic, and are very socially intelligent, you might want to be an Akubi! People choosing to be Akubi will end up friendly flying predators from another world, who are born neuter and are used to thinking of gender as something influenced by circumstance, rather than chance. (Akubi will also think of gender as something to be assumed in order to help their communities—it’s not personal. It’s just not as important.) Akubi in the Alliance appear to be conducting a constant anthropological survey… just one they’re not afraid to interrupt by participating.

Physically, as a Phoenix you will be tall, lightweight, and lean, with wings and a flexible crest and tail that you might choose to paint. In color you will be some metallic shade of brown, gray, gold, silver, bronze, or copper. Eye color can vary but is almost always brilliant: fluorescent shades are not uncommon. Akubi will be enormous, heavy birds, dark-hued, also with brilliant eyes, if more unlikely shades: mauve and orange and teal.

Famous Phoenix from the canon include Bryer from the Her Instruments trilogy; there are no famous Akubi, though Jahir and Vasiht’h did treat one in one of the Livejournal case studies.

The Humans and the Eldritch

Skipping around a little this time brings us to the human race and the Eldritch, at which point I get to put up big signs that say SPOILER SPOILER. If you hate spoilers, skip this update! Go read the series that begins with Earthrise instead. But if you like spoilers, or you’ve already read that series, then you’re good to continue.

We already know a little of Earth’s history: that they engineered the Pelted and that the Pelted fled Earth. The events that led to the creation of the Pelted on Earth are, as one would expect, riddled with political and social complexities. The initial project was a government-sponsored attempt to seed the universe with friendly aliens (Project Homefront), but the companies contracted to undertake the work were allowed to capitalize on the research and development, which meant that in addition to the government’s goals and efforts (and oversight), there were competing goals and efforts and oversight, with personalities clashing over the science, the ethics, and the practical aspects.

The Pelted were able to flee Earth successfully in part because the project was already imploding beneath scandal, lack of funding, and loss of the minds needed to successfully spearhead the scientific advances. This mess was representative of where Earth was heading with everything else at the time. After the Pelted made good their escape, humanity didn’t have long before they were embroiled with their next big problem, and it was game-changing: the Martian colony, which up until then had been one of the few economically productive parts of the solar system, decided it no longer wanted to bear the burdens of Earth’s failing economy. They sued for independence, and when Earth refused them, they started a war. At the end of that conflict, Mars was free… and the whole solar system was wrecked. A destitute Earth had no money to pay for its own repairs with Mars no longer contributing to its coffers… and Mars found itself facing the necessity of rebuilding almost from scratch after the ravages of the war…with a reluctant, embittered, and impoverished Earth as its only significant trading partner. Predictably, the relationship did not begin amicably, and resentment on both sides crippled the efforts to restore the Terran solar system to a space-capable society. The joke is that they bombed themselves back into the industrial age, and the joke isn’t far off the mark.

Roughly two centuries after their creation, the Pelted returned, cautiously but armored by their newborn navy and industrial power, to the solar system of their creators and found Earth in desperate need of help. Humanity was incapable of recovering from the war, both economically and politically, and the arrival of a rich new trading partner willing to help bootstrap them out of their hole was an enormous relief… or would have been, had that partner been anyone else. To have their former creations reappear with technologies they’d consigned to the realm of fiction was a severe blow to human morale. They had made the Pelted, and in no way remained their masters, and to this day the humiliation of having to beg for help has scarred the culture, politics, and psychology of humanity as a whole.

Entire books could be written on how delicately that Rapprochement was navigated, with competing psychological issues on both parties’ sides, made more fraught by the economic and technological disparities and humanity’s terrible need. That it was brought off at all is something of a miracle. Humans joined the Alliance then, as a member—it didn’t have the power or the resources to do so as an ally—and has been hard at work on its own renewal ever since. But even with the Pelted’s help, Earth, Mars, and its settlements remain a “second world” solar system, and while humans are numerous enough that they could be a sizable population in the Alliance Core, few of them travel. The history that binds humanity and the Pelted makes it too difficult for many people to embrace the Alliance.

On the bright side, having the Pelted for neighbors has given Mars and Earth a common point of resentment, and while relations between the two planets remain prickly they are far more united now than they were before the Rapprochement.

The Pelted, however, were not the first people to leave Earth. That distinction belongs to the Eldritch, who escaped two centuries earlier, using technology even less trustworthy to flee what they perceived to be human persecution of the talented. In this case, the psychically talented. Modern humans have such a miniscule incidence of esper abilities that it’s considered impossible to be born with them, and the reason for this is that the Eldritch took all the talented offworld and left the rest of humanity to rot. On their long flight to a better world, they did what they could to strengthen those powers and lengthen their lifespans, and succeeded, if not with the methods most people assume when seeing the broader patterns in the Alliance, with its scores of engineered creatures. The Eldritch found themselves a likely world, settled on it, and got to work differentiating themselves as much as possible from the race from which they’d spawned.

But their tampering was not without costs. Amping up the esper abilities resulted in some sociopathic and immensely powerful individuals, and the first of these sociopaths resulted in such a traumatic war—if it can be called a war when one person is pitted against the remaining populace, and wins battle after battle—that the Eldritch developed a near hysterical response to any inordinately strong talent. This was a particularly counter-productive urge because the world they’d landed on was not a friendly one. In addition to problems adapting human crops to grow there, the world was plagued with monstrous creatures that could mesmerize with their auras. (In retrospect, no one thought to question whether people without esper abilities would have been as susceptible to these creatures: all the Eldritch could sense the auras, and be petrified by them.) The Eldritch spent many of its male members clearing its settlements, and these dual priorities began the stratification of Eldritch society into nobility (those strong enough in ability and rich enough in male family to chase down the beasts) and everyone else. As a group, the humans who left Earth to become the Eldritch were fantastically rich, something that is reflected in their initial architecture and the luxuries they brought with them. It didn’t take long for them to lose the capacity to maintain the lifestyles to which they’d been accustomed.

By the time the dust had settled, the Eldritch were in very poor straits. Their crops had continually failed, leaving them with little food for their populace; many of their men had died defending them from beasts; and they followed up these twin winnowings with a war against one of their own gone mad. Their genepool had shrunk to dangerous levels, and unfortunately the ancient technology that had gotten them to this world was not adequate to lifting them again and taking them somewhere new. Nor did they have anyone left with the technological know-how to build new ships, or novel solutions to their problems.

Learning of the Pelted’s existence was an unequivocal blessing—to the Queen of the Eldritch, anyway. In the fact of the constant challenges to survival, the Eldritch culture had calcified into an insular and xenophobic one, a trend only accelerated by the need to justify their exodus from Earth in the face of the disastrous results of having done so. They knew they were on the brink of extinction, but admitting it was beyond them. The pride that had driven them to abandon humanity for dismissing their abilities as fantasy would not permit them to ask for help, and so they could not allow themselves to acknowledge their crisis.

So it was fortunate that the Queen was willing to prioritize the survival of her people over their pride. When Maraesa, the successor to the first Queen of the Eldritch, Jerisa, discovered evidence of a large spacefaring community nearby, she seized the opportunity. It didn’t take long to negotiate a treaty, and the Eldritch became the Alliance’s first allied power. Access to the Alliance’s markets allowed the Eldritch monarchy to ensure the survival of their people, though the radical xenophobia that afflicted the overwhelming majority of the population made it critically important that no one on-world ever know. The queens of the Eldritch have paid for their world’s ignorance, secrecy, and autonomy by giving up their own, for they pass to their heirs the details of the treaty and the covert arrangements that keep the Eldritch from starving. Each queen has invested more in those arrangements than the next, and so the Eldritch have stumbled on, stubbornly proud, unwilling to discuss their origins, and for the most part not wanting anything to do with aliens. Though given the choice, they’ll take aliens over humans any day.

While humanity looks much the same as it does today, with its varied ethnicities and races augmented by the addition of the Lunar and Martian phenotypes (very tall and thin, and shorter but still lighter in build, respectively), the Eldritch are uniform in appearance. They are all albino-pale, with light-colored eyes, and white-haired, tall and lithe to reflect both their lower-gravity world and the peculiarities of their biology, the revelation of which would constitute a spoiler for completely unwritten books. Eldritch tend to start at the 6’ mark and get taller, and their small genepool has given them a homogeneity in facial structure and build that humanity doesn’t have. (They also have a consanguinity that would appall cultures without the ability to fix genetic abnormalities.) All Eldritch also have esper abilities, and because of the paranoia fostered by that first war, have been trained since birth to tightly constrain them. Since touch facilitates the use of these abilities, Eldritch do not touch one another without permission, and sometimes not even then.

Ironically, lack of use among the populace has caused the atrophy of the very abilities that caused the Eldritch to leave Earth. Which is a pity, because while the only other esper race in the Alliance, the Glaseah, can speak mind-to-mind and have some empathic skills, the Eldritch range of powers is broader: they can be capable of precognition, and can affect at a distance the minds and bodies of their targets, and their empathy and telepathy are capable both of more depth and longer range than a Glaseah’s. But since the use of these powers is strictly proscribed, and the stronger talents aren’t allowed to develop, the Eldritch remain a crippled people: in their talents, their society, and their viability.

Do You Want to Be a Human or an Eldritch?

Some people may ask ‘why would I be a human in a setting where I could be something else?’ Particularly since in the Pelted setting, humanity doesn’t have the stereotypical racial advantages they do in RPGs: ‘humanity, endlessly adaptable jacks of all trades!’ In the Alliance, humans consider themselves to be second-class citizens from a world that used to be a starfaring nation of consequence and power, but that has fallen so low it has had to accept its children’s aid just to bootstrap itself back out of the solar system. The Pelted have a complicated relationship with them: no longer fearing or distrusting them, but forced to acknowledge that the gods that made them are flawed creatures, just like anyone else. The Pelted don’t think of humanity as second class citizens, but there is ambivalence there, and every member of the first and second generation Pelted races has to face his or her feelings about interacting with humans.

But fortunately for humanity, the Alliance is more than its first and second generation Pelted races. The third generation has no prior relationship with humanity, and the aliens none at all. And that leaves any human participant in this setting with a rich and complex backdrop against which they can live and strive and improve. For human willing to embrace it, the Alliance is the land of opportunity, and arriving there they find themselves surrounded in fascinating and friendly aliens. It can be a very rewarding place to stake a claim, no matter how small. If the idea of walking into the Alliance is exciting to you—right now!—then you might find being a human very comfortable. Your background will be complex with political and social issues, not just between yourself and other aliens and Pelted, but between yourself and your fellow humans: Martians and Terrans remain uneasy neighbors.

If you are emotionally reserved, proud, and old-fashioned in mores and attitudes—or if you consider yourself psychic—you might find yourself at home as an Eldritch. The Eldritch are beautiful and long-lived and refined, very much the “elves” of the setting… but they are hamstrung by their own fastidiousness, their lack of practicality, and their xenophobia. Individuals who manage to rise above those flaws are often punished for it, unless they are lucky enough to be rescued by the queen. People who dislike touch and find the thought of a culture where excessive touch is prohibited might also find the Eldritch a good fit. Theirs is not a sensual society, but one motivated almost entirely by duty and rigorous social rules.

From a physical standpoint, humans can be any shape, color, size, and race that they are now, with the addition of the Lunar and Martian colony’s changes to build. Eldritch will be uniformly white-skinned (literally: not pale, but bright white) with white hair, almost always straight or at most with a slight wave. All Eldritch are tall and thin, and have light colored eyes.

Famous humans from the canon include Reese Eddings from Earthrise and Matthrew Brighthaven from Alysha’s Fall. Famous Eldritch include Jahir Seni Galare from Mindtouch, and Hirianthial Sarel Jisiensire from Earthrise, along with Lisinthir Nase Galare from Even the Wingless.

The Naysha and the Platies

Let’s step back a moment to Project Homefront and the engineering of the Pelted. That’s where we need to be to discuss the Naysha, the final species created on Earth. The only aquatic species of the initial batch Naysha are a special case because they were not made “on the clock.” The lead scientist of Project Homefront, Joseph Shandlin, “doodled” the specs for the Naysha on his own time because he wanted to experiment with uplifted marine animals, something the government project couldn’t afford to greenlight because of the difficulty placing the future aliens on other worlds, and because they required a different environment for development than the other land-based Pelted, doubling the expense.

But Shandlin loved water, so he did the research and ran the models, and came up with a template he thought, regretfully, would work. Because of legal issues with the contractors, he never reaped the financial rewards of his genius, and the modest salary he drew while working on Project Homefront wasn’t sufficient to renting the contractors’ equipment to make his Naysha a reality. After the political problems drove him from the project, he left the specs behind. And someone decided to try to create the creatures, because the market for genetically engineered pets was still high enough to justify having something novel to launch. They knew that anything Shandlin touched was guaranteed to work, unlike the projects his colleagues worked on, so they went with it.

Unfortunately, by their standards the Naysha were a complete failure because they couldn’t speak. It was assumed this was an error in the template, something that removed their vocal cords… but in actuality, Shandlin was equipping them to communicate underwater using the system that works for dolphins and whales. The Naysha can hum, click, and “sing” like their marine brethren, but typical human languages are beyond their ability to articulate. A speech therapist was hired to address this issue, but the best she could do for the Naysha was develop a sign language they can use with their webbed five-fingered hands…something they took to with gusto.

Learning that the creator of these magnificent people didn’t know about them, the therapist introduced their pod leader to Shandlin, creating a friendship that endured past the Exodus, for Selena, that Naysha, choose to remain behind when the other Pelted fled Earth.

The Pelted found the Naysha a likely world to keep for their own during the Exodus, but the Naysha did not like the idea of abandoning their Pelted kin. Most of them scattered themselves in the oceans of the other Pelted “homeworlds,” and while there’s a large concentration of them on that original water-world, they don’t consider it their homeworld. This desire for company mystifies the Pelted, because the language barrier often makes the Naysha seem inscrutable. They aren’t: they are playful, curious, gregarious people who nevertheless live to the rhythm of water. They have water-people’s sense of perspective, and the good humor that their well-designed biology and their life of constant exercise and travel provides.

As creatures, the Naysha are considered handsome by some, though their hairless heads, built on a quasi-Pelted base, strike some as falling into the Uncanny Valley. They are mermaid-like, but with dolphin-inspired lower bodies with twin sets of flukes and the horizontal tail of mammals, which they are. Naysha nurse from teats at the lower body, and while females can have breasts on their upper bodies they tend to sublime away beneath the constant exercise of their lives beneath the water. Naysha males and females tend to look similar, thus. They have the frictionless skin of sea creatures, and some of them are born with hair on their skulls, though it’s not usual. And like sea creatures, they have senses not finely developed by animals on land, like the ability to sense electrical fields.

One might assume that such aquatics would eschew technology, but the Naysha find a high tech lifestyle pleasing, since it allows them to interact with the rest of the Alliance. It’s not at all rare to find Naysha everywhere from a starbase’s water environment to a starship’s, where they interact with air-breathing crew via airlocks, pools, and interfacts that translate sign for Pelted who don’t know it. Waterproof consoles allow Naysha who want a stronger connection to modern life to partake in it, and the Naysha are indispensable in the realms of aquatic science and engineering: they themselves are responsible for many of the technical breakthroughs that allowed them to join the Alliance more fully, and if they can’t machine their own parts, they are more than capable of designing and modeling them and having the Pelted’s on-land facilities manufacture the results.

As engineered creations go, the Naysha are the most flawless of those made on Earth… nothing like the true aquatic aliens, the Platies, who would never have been discovered had it not been for their engineered cousins. The Pelted, discovering an almost entirely aquatic world, had sent a team to explore and thought it sensible to bring some Naysha scientists to join them. The water of this world intrigued them: dense and thick with alien chemicals—“like a womb,” one of them famously likened it—and through this soup flew enormous creatures that resembled flatworms the size of shuttlecraft.

And these creatures, the Naysha instantly knew to be sentient, and could communicate with them no land creature could duplicate. Not by talking, but just by a mutual water-sharing knowing.

Unsurprisingly, the Pelted questioned this, until the Naysha led them to miniature versions of the flatworms and insisted they were the same species. Consequent examination proved this out, and the Pelted allowed that the Naysha could apparently communicate with these aliens, and asked them to do so.

That particular mission was an adventure. By the end of it, the Pelted wanted the Platies (named because of their resemblance to members of the Platyhelminthes, the “flatworm” phylum) in the Alliance badly. Because it appeared that the Platies had senses even more extraordinary than the Naysha’s: they appeared to extend into timespace, and could in fact fold it to travel. Since the Platies seemed amenable to the friendship, the Alliance inducted them into its membership at the suggestion of the Naysha, who said that the Platies would welcome the protection of membership status, and prefer it to the responsibilities of being an allied species instead.

The Platies, then, sometimes join the Naysha in the water environments of the Alliance, though not as frequently. They do best in their dense, soupy world, particularly as they grow larger. Small Platies are more likely to be found offworld; large ones tend to stay home, or serve terms in Fleet’s military, folding space to improve the speed and performance of starship engines. They can communicate only with Naysha—computer translation has failed, since the Pelted aren’t even sure where to begin—so where there are Platies there are always Naysha “tenders.”      

Biologically, the Platies remain near complete mysteries. The small Platies are all female, and have a very small territorial range, where they shepherd their young. The large ones are all male and have a broad range they patrol for predators. But the mechanism by which the Platies grow is unknown, though the Naysha insist that the smaller Platies “grow into” the larger ones, at their behest. They eat microscopic creatures by sifting the water they live in, or at least the smaller ones do. No one quite understands how that works with the larger ones, who don’t seem to be capable of ingesting enough material to sustain their bodies, which can become enormous.

That the Platies exist delights the Pelted. But most of them will confess to complete confusion as to what the Platies want out of life, or what they derive from the Alliance beyond, perhaps, the protection of the Fleet. Except why would they need that when they could probably fold themselves through space onto another world?

Do You Want To Be a Naysha or a Platy?

If water calls you, and you have the curiosity and playfulness of a dolphin with the serenity and perspective of someone who lives his or her life in the embrace of the ocean, you may enjoy being a Naysha. There are challenges associated with this choice: you will always need to live somewhere with provisions for sea creatures; you will only be able to talk via sign language (which will lead some people to believe you to be less intelligent, even in the mostly enlightened Alliance); and there will be jobs that are inaccessible to you. Finally, there will be some who are disturbed by your not-quite-Pelted face with its enormous eyes and hairless skin. But you will belong to the water, with all that implies about the freedom of movement, the inevitable strength of a body that spends all day exercising, and the beauty of the undersea world. You will have a perspective entirely different from your land-bound friends. Plus, you will be one of the only people who can “translate” for the even more alien Platies, and from them you will gain a deeper and more unusual perspective still: some Naysha claim that the Platies can manipulate time like they do space, and impart some of that uncanny wisdom to those who can communicate with them.

I… don’t know why you’d want to be a Platy! But if the description of the Platies appeals to you, and the weirdness of it, and the timespacey-ness of it, then by all means… be a Platy! But have a Naysha friend at hand to act as tender!

Physically, Naysha will be between 6 to 9 feet long (with males being larger), and be mermaid-like in structure, with torsos, heads, and arms of a biped and an elongated but dolphin-like lower body, with two sets of flukes. Naysha have very large eyes that come in any number of fluorescent colors. The Naysha can be any number of surprising colors; much of this exotic shading was lifted from tropical fish. Their lower bodies are often bright colors, blue, violet, neon pink, yellow, red, striking green, peach and many other colors in many combinations of stripes, spots, 'eyes', or other patterns. They can also come in shades of gray, black, and white, often countershaded like orcas. Their upper bodies will tend to continue those colorations and patterns, but the occasional Naysha is a mash-up of orca-like austerity and tropical fish fluorescence.

Platies also come in every color, from muddy greens, browns, and blues to fluorescent shades, with all sorts of patterns. They look like flatworms, but unlike flatworms have no visible eyes or mouths, and seem to ingest and sense their environments entirely through their frictionless skins. Small Platies are very thin; larger ones can be as thick as 3-4 inches in the center, tapering out at the edges.

Famous Naysha include Paga, the physical therapist, from Mindline. The novella “Only the Willing” features one of the first Platy protagonists, the navigator Hood.

Final Note

Those who’ve read the entire Pelted canon will note I’ve left one of the aquatic races out. Because they just debuted, I’ve elected to leave their particulars a mystery. But if you’d like to learn more about this newest alien species, I encourage you to check out Either Side of the Strand!

The Chatcaava and the Faulfenza

And in our (almost final) chapter on the species of the Alliance, we come to two alien races, one friendly, the other... not so much.

The Alliance discovered the Chatcaava in space, while the latter were on one of their many “explore and expand” missions and the Alliance was (typically) exploring for the pleasure of discovery, and to find friends. Having run into this new species, and not immediately been fired upon, the Pelted assumed they could make friends of them, and while they were bemused that the Chatcaava weren’t interested in becoming an allied power, they did secure an amicable treaty. The Chatcaava, it seemed, wanted to be sure the Alliance understood where its space began, and the Pelted saw no reason not to accommodate them, being the accommodating sorts they were.

What they didn’t know was that the Chatcaava had taken their measure immediately and seen that the Pelted were naïve pacifists despite their enormous, well-armed ships. They’d signed the treaty to lull the Alliance into passivity so they could continue advancing their own aims, which mostly concerned the expansion of their empire and the funneling of the universe’s resources and riches into their coffers. In this, they can be much like the dragons they resemble. The Chatcaavan definition of wealth might change depending on the individual, but they all believe they deserve to have it. And since they are impressed only by the ability of other individuals to wrest that wealth from them, they were predisposed to find the Alliance toothless and weak.

For centuries, then, the Chatcaava used their “treaty” to keep the Alliance fat and happy while they expanded in every direction that pleased them. It was only when they began to want what the Alliance had that they began fomenting the internal and external strife that would result in the events of the novel Even the Wingless.

Needless to say, the Chatcaava are not inherently evil. They pursue their agenda for much the same reasons any individual does: to secure for themselves (and for those who still believe in such things, their heirs) the best possible advantage. Their governmental system, which evolved too quickly from a feudal base, did not in their case map well to a space-faring society’s; more importantly, the shapechange, while intriguing to a species aping non-sapients on their homeworld, became existentially threatening with the arrival of alien species. A Chatcaavan shapechanged into a bird was just a Chatcaavan borrowing a bird’s shape. But a Chatcaavan shapechanged into a human or a Seersa—was he still a Chatcaavan at all? Or something lesser?

It was perhaps unsurprising that the Chatcaava defined themselves so strongly in opposition to (and as superior to) the ‘wingless freaks’ they encountered that fateful day on the new Alliance border.

The same behavior that caused them to cast themselves in that superior mode began working on their own society, in the division between sexes. The ability to shapechange is linked to wings—and wings are linked to sex. Ordinarily all male Chatcaava are winged and can shapechange, and all female Chatcaava have four arms, and can’t. It was a short step from ‘we shouldn’t shapeshift into aliens because they aren’t Chatcaava’ to ‘anyone who can’t shapechange like us are inferior’ to ‘females can’t shapechange, therefore they are inferior.’

(This is tragic because it’s not clear that females were always unable to shapechange. Some females are born even now with wings and the ability to shift, leading some Chatcaava to wonder if the four-armed females aren’t an unnatural creation, or to question which version of the female form evolved first.)

Whatever the case, the Chatcaavan society is poised at the brink of revolution (or evolution, depending on who you ask). Since their culture has narrowed into a spearpoint of aggression, territoriality, and outright dissolution, it’s no surprise that things are ripe for change.

The Faulfenza, on the other hand, are the gentlest and best loved of the aliens the Alliance has discovered, and though not many of them have traveled off their worlds, they are welcome sights when they do. These heavyworld bipeds are beautiful inside and out, with a faith that informs their natures. Their long lifespans (at 800 years, they are the closest to the Eldritch in longevity) give them a unique perspective, and their culture makes them a good fit for the Alliance: unlike the Akubi, who are friendly but odd, and the Platies and Flitzbe who are completely inscrutable, and the Chatcaava who are actively hostile, the Faulfenza can hold conversations with the Pelted without the latter needing to consult a translator.

The Faulfenza, then, are the children of the god of fire, who gave them the gift of the mindfire so they could defend themselves from predators, and then streaked them in the colors of ash, fire, and smoke so that all might know them for his. They are dancers, and in fact have a complex dance language where each “pose” represents a word, which they interpret because they are capable of breaking movement into discrete frames through some neurological process inexplicable to the Pelted (and of no interest to most of the Faulfenza). They are likewise uninterested in deeply exploring the root of the mindfire, the ability to heat things with their hands to dangerous temperatures without burning themselves, or the biology of Entwining, which is when two Faulfenza, encountering one another, know one another for their true mate. This process completes the sexual maturation process; no Faulfenzair develops secondary sexual characteristics, or completes the growth of the primary sexual characteristics, until they have Entwined.

They have their own deep history, which involves prophets leading them to distinct stages in their lives as people: out of animal-like innocence into sapience, out of the destruction of their first homeworld into the colonization of their second, and then from there into the acceptance of other sapients in the galaxy. It was this final messiah, Zafiil Paidiiza Qodii, who made it possible for the Faulfenza to join the Alliance.

Physically, the Chatcaava are short, lean creatures who have some hollow bones. Their dorsals have hide, like an alligator’s, and this hide thins to skin on their ventrals. Females are born with two horns and usually with four arms instead of two arms and two wings; males will sprout horns all along their necks (and a cluster on the skull), and have two wings and two arms. They have talons on their fingers, and a tail like a dragon’s (but without any finial), and they all have manes. Colors are broader in range than one might guess: from white to black with all the shades of gray in between; from bisque to sable brown and all the shades of gold in between; with blueish and greenish and reddish casts over those shades possible, and metallics as well. Patterns are unusual but tend to spotting; the occasional piebald Chatcaava is seen. Eyes tend toward the fluorescent.

Shapechanging Chatcaava Touch a sapient species and “take” the sense of their pattern, after which they can Change to become that species. The first time a Chatcaavan Changes after Touching, they will fuse that alien pattern with their own and produce a unique pattern of their own: they will not look like duplicates of their donors, but like a fusion of themselves and that donor. The fidelity of the Change depends on natural talent, how clearly the Chatcaavan was able to concentrate on the Touch, and how much practice the individual’s had Touching other species. It’s typical for the first few patterns a Chatcaavan learns to be distinctly ‘off’ in some way (the pupils are wrong, or the nails, etc).

The Faulfenza, on the other hand, are tall and strongly muscled digitigrade people, built on sixes: six fingers, six toes, six strands of muscle in what we’d call a quadriceps, etc. Their elongated faces have elegant muzzles and long, back-swept ears with two tips. Their long, tufted tails also have two tufts. And their patterning is distinct: every individual has an ash color, a smoke color, and a fire color. The ash color (darkest: usually black, dark gray, or brown) is dorsal, coming to a cap over the face; the fire color (red, orange, peach, etc) is ventrally applied, and tips the ears and tufts. The smoke color (white, light grays, creams) runs between the two. Eye colors are vivid and are usually blue, violent, red, orange, amber, or green. More subdued colors, like brown and gray, are rarer.

Do You Want to Be a Chatcaavan or a Faulfenzair?

Who wouldn’t want to fly? The Chatcaava can fly like falcons, swift, maneuverable, and utterly free. And to change shape! People who want to be Chatcaava probably will have these traits in mind when they choose to join this otherwise very difficult species. The strife of the current political system, and the ravages done to its populace, its philosophies, its culture and history, by its own expansionist and xenophobic tendencies are overdue for healing... but before that wound can be healed, a great deal of strife and work will have to be done. People who want to be Chatcaava will probably want to take part in this rebirth—while acknowledging that this phoenix will have to live through its own immolation to reach that triumphant finale.

People choosing to be Chatcaava will either be winged males capable of the Change, or four-armed females incapable of either flight or shapechanging (and so defined by their inability, in contrast to those who have power in their society). Or you can decide to be one of the very rare winged females; know that if you make that choice, you will be reviled and live a very difficult life. (Maybe a life difficult enough to inspire you to defect to the Alliance!)

Those who wish to be Faulfenza will probably choose it for the deep history and deep wells of wisdom of that species. To call the Faulfenzas dancers is to encompass them as a species: they don’t walk, they dance, with grace, for gratitude, and consider it their first form of communication: to make beauty, and to have it effortlessly interpreted. The Faulfenza are deeply religious people, generous and thoughtful, and very long-lived; individuals choosing to travel the Alliance will probably do so because their religion encourages them to embrace the Others as a sign of their god’s plan for their growth and development.

Famous Chatcaava in the canon include the Emperor and the Slave Queen from Even the Wingless; famous Faulfenza are a little harder to find, but Lune from Laisrathera is one of them, and another is slated to arrive in the fifth Princes' Game book.

Flitzbe

And finally... the Flitzbe.

This is the only species for which there is no document from the Kickstarter, for the obvious reason that I doubted anyone wanted to be one. They are in some ways the most alien of all the aliens in the Peltedverse: quasi-vegetal creatures that bud to reproduce, eat via photosynthesis, communicate via neural 'fur,' and roll around in "clods" that hook together to share thoughts, such as Flitzbe have thoughts. More than one character has wondered what the Flitzbe derive from their participation in the Allianced. Sometimes things can't be easily explained, though. There's a pleasure in that... I think, anyway, and I'm fairly sure the Flitzbe would agree.

The most famous Flitzbe in canon is, of course, Allacazam, from the Her Instruments series, though several unnamed Flitzbe make appearances elsewhere, like in the Alysha novella "Who is Willing."

The Alliance Map

One of the number one things fans request of me is a map of the Alliance. I've had one forever, I just hadn't converted it from a messy sketch to something people who aren't me can read. Fortunately, a Kickstarter stretch goal got me off my tail and I have produced the following star map. Some notes:

1. Yes, space has three dimensions! The worlds on this map are "up" or "down" from one another in a way I might have been able to capture had I tried for a 3d edition. I... am not that ambitious.

2. If you'd like to measure out the "Bright Belt" mentioned by Na'er in Only the Open (Princes' Game 4), put a finger on the word 'Coreward' and draw a (more or less) straight line down to the words 'The Frontier.' That gives you the corridor of all the major Pelted homeworlds, settled (as one might expect) on the vector leading away from Earth up at the top right.

3. Starbases are always named after their sector. So Starbase Veta would be in the Veta sector, with the homeworlds for the Tam-illee and the Aera.

4. Finally, it doesn't take great powers of observation to see that the Chatcaavan Empire is a big blank. There is a map of the Chatcaavan Empire, I just haven't prettied it up yet. Maybe another Kickstarter will get me off my tail again....

The Pelted Universe Reading Order

The Stardancer Stories

Alysha’s Fall (Book 0, prequel, collection)

“Second” (Book 1, novella)

“Who is Willing” (Book 2, novella)

“In the Line of Duty” (short story)

Either Side of the Strand (Book 3, novel)

“Dark Lighthouse” (short story)

“Season’s Meaning” (short story)

The Dreamhealers Saga

Mindtouch (Book 1, novel)

Mindline (Book 2, novel)

“Family” (Book 3, novella)

The Her Instruments Series

Earthrise (Book 1, novel)

Rose Point (Book 2, novel)

Laisrathera (Book 3, novel)

A Rose Point Holiday (Book 4, novel)

The Princes' Game Series

Even the Wingless (Book 1, novel)

Some Things Transcend (Book 2, novel)

Amulet Rampant (Book 3, novel)

Only the Open (Book 4, novel)

Other Pelted Books

Claws and Starships (short story collection)

Final Note

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the cover of this Guidebook specifically calls out the edition. That’s because I imagine this document as something that grows as you all ask for information and I find the time to put it in a format you can consume. For this reason I’m not intending to sell the Guidebook... I figure whenever I have a new edition I’ll make it available (via newsletter and Patreon or whatever venue I’m using at the time) and you can clear out your old copy and have a look at the new.

Of course, this assumes a certain amount of participation on your part—not that I’m worried about that, given how enthusiastically you’ve shared your questions and requests for more information! So tell me what you’d like to see in future editions of the Guidebook. Language info? More maps? Breakdown on Fleet info? More artwork? I’m not sure if it will ever be large enough or comprehensive enough to stand in for the RPG handbook y’all keep telling me I should write, but who knows? It might get that big!

Whatever the case, thanks again for your enthusiasm. You help make the Peltedverse a richer place.

—M

About the Author

Daughter of two Cuban political exiles, M.C.A. Hogarth was born a foreigner in the American melting pot and has had a fascination for the gaps in cultures and the bridges that span them ever since. She has been many things—web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist—but is currently a full-time parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens, both human and otherwise. She is the author of over 50 titles in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, humor and romance.

This guide supports the Peltedverse stories! For more information, visit the “Where Do I Start?” page on the author’s website. You can also sign up for the author’s quarterly newsletter to be notified of new releases. Fans who like behind-the-scenes peeks and daily art and writing updates can check out the author's Patreon.

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