____ People
Feb. 12th, 2011 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaCefnir, if you think about it, are kind of weird. Cefnir's distant ancestors were a fully aquatic species, venturing occasionally onto land for short seconds to move between tidepools and eat the things living there. But terrestrial places had a lot of advantages. Even before they were advanced enough to be tool-users, food stored on land could be preserved better than in the water. And the further away from water, the better it worked. Even today, simpler relatives of cefnir like wrok will sundry food on beaches in shifts and then cache it under the dry sand! Of course, unlike cefnir they can't remain out of water for more than a half hour, and sunburn easily. This is because they are still primarily aquatic.
Cefnir have numerous adaptations to land. The most obvious is having two sets of tentacles. Originally, cefnir's tentacles were all very similar. Now, though, there are the four thicker, more durable ones for moving around and the four thinner ones for everything else. It's possible to use one set for the other use but it doesn't work very well. Unlike all the other species in cefnir's family tree, the thicker tentacles are robust enough to hold cefnir off the ground completely. Just look at how wrok move sometime then try it yourself and you'll see how big a difference it makes! They look very elegant, but that kind of thing gets uncomfortable fast on land.
There's a lot of debate about if clickspeaking is because of land or if it's something cefnir had underwater too. None of the other species have a real language as far as we can tell. So it may be that cefnir were always the more talkative ones. Or, it might have evolved on land because sound travels differently up there and the scent cues used underwater don't work right above. Today a nir's scent cues barely work at all. They haven't been used much in a long time. Anyway clickspeaking probably started off as a broad warning. The frimg have an echolocation ability that doubles to send alarm calls. So a nir would call out and the others would come over to see what the problem is and help. Over time, clickspeaking began to be used to mean another nir wanted to talk about stuff other than danger so the nir should look over at it and chat. And slowly clickspeaking became more and more complex, because it didn't require being as close so cefnir could talk to a lot of people at once.
Part of why people think cefnir were always more talkative is that other species have the same primary speech ability, but it's really simple. The color patterns just mean simple stuff, a handful of words, as well as being used for camouflage, which is how it probably first evolved. Trained wrok can be taught as many as four hundred words, but can't understand even the simplest forms of grammar. Very smart ones can combine verbs with nouns, but that's all. And they can't learn clickspeech at all.
But recently scientists have found that that almost all terrestrial animals use something clickspeaking as their primary way of communicating! A lot of them just do at sound ranges we can't perceive. And that is why some think that clickspeaking might have evolved as cefnir became amphibious.
In a lot of species the young are less adapted and can give an idea of what things used to be like for the species, and cefnir are no exception. Cefnir eggs have to be kept submerged at all times. Even after they hatch, the babies look and act more like wrok than people. Their lungs are nowhere near developing, only working as an air bladder, and their tentacles are undifferentiated. During this time they are very vulnerable. After several months their lungs become good enough to let them leave the water but they still have to be kept in high humidity as their skin toughens up and they can only crawl around. Only at six months do their tentacles develop enough for moving upright. From then on they can stay on land all the time and don't have to worry so much about water, although they're still a little delicate. But by ten cefnir are practically the same as adults physically! Just smaller. And they are much smarter too.
Probably there would be a lot more changes but because cefnir are sapient evolution isn't such a big thing anymore because we focus more on new technology instead.
My peers liked how academic it was, the way it inserted a new species into our world, and raised questions about how the human scientist had met with cefnir originally. I resolved that the half hour I spent on this was clearly more than they deserved.
The more I think about it the more I'm not sure if octopus people are actually the way to go. Looking over the Nestbound thread, the best bits are the comics that are about human-equivalent bugs who happen to be playing the game like devoted RPG fans, with almost all the weird backstory shit people invent about their doomed culture being interesting worldbuilding but at right angles to what's useful for a sburb story. And the octopus people seem to invite that sort of thing. I was thinking about making their speech involve color changing surfaces (which would allow for the equivalent of stammering or yelling ow by losing control over those surfaces and flashing simpler patterns) with vocalizations being there to get attention when not in line of sight (that being the big issue with having no sound-based communication) followed by realizing either all the sburb NPCs have to use the same thing which conflicts with the whole one-color thing Derse and Prospit have and requires major alterations to the consorts OR that their vocalizations function as a complete language as well, which is redundant and introduces the issue that they'd be able to talk privately around NPCs using the color thing which I dislike for the same reason I generally dislike telepathy, it makes things too easy. There's situations where it'd work for a story but it's really not something I want to insert without having a specific reason. (Also being in the pokemon fandom already I would like to not have to keep track of different forms of speech for once.) And so on. And then fridge logic starts kicking in and I wonder why if they're so weird they'd make good diplomats because a lot of that is being able to find common ground, which would make sense if, say, half of sburb was underwater but again, the focus here would be Derse/Prospit and I don't think the carapace people should vary that much between sessions.
So maybe crocodile people would work better.
Cefnir have numerous adaptations to land. The most obvious is having two sets of tentacles. Originally, cefnir's tentacles were all very similar. Now, though, there are the four thicker, more durable ones for moving around and the four thinner ones for everything else. It's possible to use one set for the other use but it doesn't work very well. Unlike all the other species in cefnir's family tree, the thicker tentacles are robust enough to hold cefnir off the ground completely. Just look at how wrok move sometime then try it yourself and you'll see how big a difference it makes! They look very elegant, but that kind of thing gets uncomfortable fast on land.
There's a lot of debate about if clickspeaking is because of land or if it's something cefnir had underwater too. None of the other species have a real language as far as we can tell. So it may be that cefnir were always the more talkative ones. Or, it might have evolved on land because sound travels differently up there and the scent cues used underwater don't work right above. Today a nir's scent cues barely work at all. They haven't been used much in a long time. Anyway clickspeaking probably started off as a broad warning. The frimg have an echolocation ability that doubles to send alarm calls. So a nir would call out and the others would come over to see what the problem is and help. Over time, clickspeaking began to be used to mean another nir wanted to talk about stuff other than danger so the nir should look over at it and chat. And slowly clickspeaking became more and more complex, because it didn't require being as close so cefnir could talk to a lot of people at once.
Part of why people think cefnir were always more talkative is that other species have the same primary speech ability, but it's really simple. The color patterns just mean simple stuff, a handful of words, as well as being used for camouflage, which is how it probably first evolved. Trained wrok can be taught as many as four hundred words, but can't understand even the simplest forms of grammar. Very smart ones can combine verbs with nouns, but that's all. And they can't learn clickspeech at all.
But recently scientists have found that that almost all terrestrial animals use something clickspeaking as their primary way of communicating! A lot of them just do at sound ranges we can't perceive. And that is why some think that clickspeaking might have evolved as cefnir became amphibious.
In a lot of species the young are less adapted and can give an idea of what things used to be like for the species, and cefnir are no exception. Cefnir eggs have to be kept submerged at all times. Even after they hatch, the babies look and act more like wrok than people. Their lungs are nowhere near developing, only working as an air bladder, and their tentacles are undifferentiated. During this time they are very vulnerable. After several months their lungs become good enough to let them leave the water but they still have to be kept in high humidity as their skin toughens up and they can only crawl around. Only at six months do their tentacles develop enough for moving upright. From then on they can stay on land all the time and don't have to worry so much about water, although they're still a little delicate. But by ten cefnir are practically the same as adults physically! Just smaller. And they are much smarter too.
Probably there would be a lot more changes but because cefnir are sapient evolution isn't such a big thing anymore because we focus more on new technology instead.
My peers liked how academic it was, the way it inserted a new species into our world, and raised questions about how the human scientist had met with cefnir originally. I resolved that the half hour I spent on this was clearly more than they deserved.
The more I think about it the more I'm not sure if octopus people are actually the way to go. Looking over the Nestbound thread, the best bits are the comics that are about human-equivalent bugs who happen to be playing the game like devoted RPG fans, with almost all the weird backstory shit people invent about their doomed culture being interesting worldbuilding but at right angles to what's useful for a sburb story. And the octopus people seem to invite that sort of thing. I was thinking about making their speech involve color changing surfaces (which would allow for the equivalent of stammering or yelling ow by losing control over those surfaces and flashing simpler patterns) with vocalizations being there to get attention when not in line of sight (that being the big issue with having no sound-based communication) followed by realizing either all the sburb NPCs have to use the same thing which conflicts with the whole one-color thing Derse and Prospit have and requires major alterations to the consorts OR that their vocalizations function as a complete language as well, which is redundant and introduces the issue that they'd be able to talk privately around NPCs using the color thing which I dislike for the same reason I generally dislike telepathy, it makes things too easy. There's situations where it'd work for a story but it's really not something I want to insert without having a specific reason. (Also being in the pokemon fandom already I would like to not have to keep track of different forms of speech for once.) And so on. And then fridge logic starts kicking in and I wonder why if they're so weird they'd make good diplomats because a lot of that is being able to find common ground, which would make sense if, say, half of sburb was underwater but again, the focus here would be Derse/Prospit and I don't think the carapace people should vary that much between sessions.
So maybe crocodile people would work better.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 04:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, that makes sense. It's a cool idea, though; I hope you find something else to use it for!
Why crocodiles?
no subject
Date: 2011-02-13 06:31 pm (UTC)Crocodiles and related things take care of their young and get along with each other decently enough, which seems a good starting point for a social species. They're also evolutionarily pretty far from the rest of the reptiles. Cerebral cortex!