Introduction to Zaee

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Alicorn
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Introduction to Zaee

Post by Alicorn »

Zaee, hailing from the planet Adwavi and its colonies, are sort of humanoid, except for the wings and tails. They have weak but dexterous hands with two thumbs and three fingers each. Their tails are strong and can support their weight alone for extended periods; they're not really grasping appendages, but can be used to clumsily manipulate objects the way a human might use a foot, if they're not being sat on. Zaee feet are weak and toeless, and Zaee cannot stand on their legs alone for any significant amount of time. The typical gait involves pushing off with the the tail, landing on the feet, sweeping the tail forward between the legs to push off again, and so on (this is called "lolloping"). Zaee can walk in a conventional manner with something to hang on to, such as a banister or a cane, but this is not very comfortable.

Zaee have wings, which consist of powerful, tapering tentacles that emerge from the shoulders and have tough membranes stretched between them and parallel lines down the back and part of the tail. These enable prolonged flight, given adequate room - Zaee-friendly architecture which spans multiple floors usually has corridors stretching around a large open center, or landings on each floor open to the outdoors, and occupants fly from balcony to balcony. Hospitals, infant daycare, and other locations expected to be hospitable to Zaee who can't fly make use of ramps (stairs are impractical, but the ramps can be quite steep before an average Zaee has trouble lolloping up). The wing tentacles are strong, flexible, and sensitive, with better reach than the arms, and for any purpose for which the membrane itself wouldn't get in the way, they can be used to manipulate objects or pick things up. Zaee have a clear, hard extra eyelid under the outer opaque one; the clear lid is shed and regrown once every Adwavi year (1.2 Archipelago years) to protect the eye. The eyes have a double, concentric iris, the outer ring often a different color from the inner: the inner functions much like a human's, but the outer can contract on the inner enough to completely close the pupil, temporarily blinding the Zaee but protecting the eye from bright light more than the outer, opaque eyelid can alone. Zaee have long, movable ears, which perk up when the individual is agitated, excited, or alert, and droop when he or she is calm, tired, or unhappy. They are not a very sexually dimorphic species, and humans often cannot tell the difference between their males and females when they're wearing clothes unless the individual they mean to identify is pregnant; however, as a species Zaee have no nudity taboo (using clothing only for decoration, as humans use jewelry) and they often lollop about in the nude.

Zaee skin colors range through a variety of reddish-browns, and their hair is generally some shade of red or pink. Their irises (either) come in miscellaneous shades of blue, gold, red, and gray. They live about 250 Archipelago years given adequate healthcare, and are considered adults at roughly 45; they become able to fly when they are two or three.

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Alicorn
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Re: Introduction to Zaee

Post by Alicorn »

About Zaee Tech:

Zaee tech has not spread beyond the Zaee themselves. This is because (a) the ship, Kwa Mevwan, was a colony ship, not a research vessel, and contained no one who understood how to build most of the items, (b) reverse-engineering has met with little success because the tech is made with materials not readily available on Archipelago, and (c) the individual machines that were on the ship when it crashed belong to individual Zaee and are still in the possession of the original owners or their heirs, not their human neighbors. As the Zaee population grows, the odds that any given person has access to any given sort of tech is shrinking, but most of the machines that weren't destroyed in the crash itself have proven hard-wearing enough to still be usable. They are almost universally solar-powered, and so lack of fuel is not a problem.

Zaee have the following interesting technological advantages:
- Computing power (and miscellaneous computer peripherals). Mevwan humans do not have computers, but the Zaee do, and they have successfully networked them into a small-scale version of the "Koeen" (the interstellar information network that their civilization, and the others with which it was in contact, used). The expectation that they would be able to connect to the greater Koeen on landing means that they came with comparatively little information actually stored aboard, although there was some (mostly saved in ambulatory robots) and the colonists and crew promptly all wrote down as much as they could about their respective areas of expertise when they realized they were stuck.
- AI/robotics. The Zaee can program artificial intelligences which are, to all appearances, as clever and adaptable as people (but not significantly more apart from the inherent advantages of modularity, due to hard-wired safety limitations), and they have assorted robot chassis into which they can upload such software.
- Landscape alteration tools, intended for Adwaviforming, which can adjust terrain in numerous ways and are mostly used for suiting land to farm Zaee food on in the present day.
- Medicine. Zaee physiology is sufficiently different from humans' that their techniques have no translatable value, but the use of equipment and medicinal plants that survived the crash enables them to produce items that are highly useful for maintaining their health. Zaee can patch their wings, cure minor ailments with readily available herbaceous compounds, and expect to survive serious illnesses by the use of techniques and substances that they brought with them.

By comparison, Mevwan's humans are at a post-electricity but otherwise low level of tech. There are occasional archaeological hints that they lost some interesting tech when the apocalypse occurred, but most of that is lost to history and they are working nearly from scratch, albeit rapidly and with psionic help speeding things along.

Adelene
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Re: Introduction to Zaee

Post by Adelene »

Zaee ages:

Zaee live about three times as long as humans. Compared to humans, their infancies are relatively short and their childhoods are relatively long, but every stage of their development takes longer than the human equivalent.

To calculate a Zaee's age given their maturity in human years:

If the human-years age is 5 or less, multiply by 1.6 to get the Zaee age.
If the human-years age is more than 5 but less than 11, multiply by 3.5 and subtract 10.
If the human-years age is 11 or more, multiply by 3.2 and subtract 6.

To calculate a Zaee's maturity in human years given their age:

If the age is 8 or less, divide by 1.6 or multiply by 0.625
If the age is more than 8 but less than 30, add 10 and then divide by 3.5
If the age is 30 or more, add 6 and then divide by 3.2

A 5 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 3 year old.
A 10 year old Zaee is nearly as mature as a human 6 year old.
A 20 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 8-9 year old.
A 30 year old Zaee is a bit more mature than a human 11 year old.
A 40 year old Zaee is a bit more mature than a human 14 year old.
A 50 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 17 year old, and has been considered an adult for 5 years already.
A 75 year old Zaee is about as mature as a human 25 year old.
A 100 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 33 year old.
A 150 year old Zaee is nearly as mature as a human 50 year old.
A 200 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 65 year old.
A 250 year old Zaee is as mature as a human 80 year old.

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