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Description
The Selenites are sentient
beings who have evolved in a very different environment. Their
bug-like appearance makes them quite repulsive to the human eye. The
lesser gravity of Luna has made them rather weak by human standards.
As their intelligence is quite low, their community organization
does not require tremendous personal initiative.
Selenites are roughly 1.5
meters long from head to bottom-most feet, and stand about 60
centimeters high when on all their limbs. They mass only about 15
kilograms on the Moon, or about 30 kilograms on Earth, since much of
their outer skeletal structure is hollow. The Selenite face has two
saucer-sized, multifaceted eyes and a large vertical mouth. The
teeth are not for tearing or cutting, but for grinding, since their
chief source of food are the brown and gray fungi. Their six limbs
are identical, each with three "elbow" joints and a bony hand with
three fingers.
Selenites are
hermaphroditic; that is they have both female and male sexual organs
in each individual. Individuals give birth in a cell of the hive
when the community needs additional drones, custodians, or
specialists. The incubation process takes three weeks until a new
young Selenite is ready to emerge from the hive. Once it emerges,
the young Selenite must be nursed for three more weeks until it is
ready to function on its own.
A Selenite is likely to
live for no more than 10 Earth years before its body eventually
gives out, and it dies. It will spend all of that time performing
its function for the community -- Selenites have no sleep cycle.
Selenite Society
The Selenites, though
physically indistinguishable to human eyes, all perform distinct
tasks within their group which are predestined from the time they
emerge from the hive. There are three broad classifications of
Selenite: drone, custodian, and specialist.
Specialists:
These Selenites are rare, so much so, in fact, that sometimes only
one or even none of a particular specialist type exist in a given
community. They include such things as hive builders and retainers
of knowledge. Apparently the community knows when it needs a
specialist, and on is immediately produced in the hive.
Selenite
Civilization
The Selenites have evolved
virtually no technology of their own.
The only history of the
Selenites is a remembered history passed down by the retainers of
knowledge. If a retainer dies without being replaced in advance, all
that knowledge is lost, since other Selenites do not have the memory
capacity necessary to carry on these historical traditions. All
history is lost, and the community must start virtually from
barbarism.
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