Thanatan
The Thanatans are a species of spider-like sapients contacted during the Second Interstellar Period. Possessed of great physical strength and fearsome natural weapons, many served as soldiers and mercenaries during this tumultuous era.
A Celestial Union expedition discovered it in the Second Interstellar Period, and the loss of an entire surface team to local predators lead the captain to give it its present name.
The Thanatan head, roughly triangular in shape, possess four glass-like eyes, the brain, and most of the light-producing organs which drive their fiber-optic nerves. The myriad predators and foraging challenges their ancestors faced gave them tetrachromatic vision with high attention to detail and responsiveness to motion.
Ingestion is done through a mouth under the eyes, flanked by sets of sharp pincer-fangs, and respiration through spiracles on the sides of the main body. While they can make a variety of screeches and sounds through these, most Thanatan speech is done through stridulation, by rubbing together antenna on their heads or spines on their legs. Training, and special scraping surfaces tuned for the right range, can produce a passable version of human speech.
Unlike most other sapients, Thanatans are r-selected. Species such as humans are K-selected, meaning parents only have a relative few offspring into each of which they invest a great deal of effort and care. Among r-selected species, like Thanatans, the opposite holds: many offspring are produced but recieve minimal care, the parents relying on the laws of probability to ensure at least a few will reach adulthood. Thanatan reproduction is thus legendarily prolific; average clutches number in the dozens of eggs, and given enough resources can expand by an equally large multiple every few decades or less.
The downside of this is the inhuman neglect, at least by the standards of other species, to which their young are consigned. The average Thanatan baby, translucent in color and small enough to stand on a tea saucer, hatches from a massive brood fully capable of movement and foraging, and is expected to survive almost entirely on its own. Among most ancestral Thanatan cultures, children are only considered to gain personhood once they attain the ability to speak, attempts to introduce more human-like views are often opposed on the grounds it will limit the ability of natural selection to weed out the weak.
Homeworld
The Thanatan home planet, Thanatos, is a harsh world characterized by high gravity, toxic atmosphere, and vicious wildlife. Similar to Terra in the Carboniferous period, Thanatan bacteria has not yet evolved the ability to break down compounds found in its plant life, and so its continents are covered in layers of biomatter tens or even hundreds of meters deep, with vast networks of tunnels which form habitats for entire species.A Celestial Union expedition discovered it in the Second Interstellar Period, and the loss of an entire surface team to local predators lead the captain to give it its present name.
Biology
To humans, Thanatans are said to resemble six-limbed spiders made of sharp-edged brown glass. This glass-like material is the building block for most Thanatos life, surrounding an interior of muscles, bones, and fiber-optic nerves. Four are legs, adapted for walking, running, or climbing through tunnels in the underbellies of forests. Each ends in a sharp "blade" powerful enough to decapitate a man in a single sweep. The forward two limbs are manipulators, dividing into fingers at their tips.The Thanatan head, roughly triangular in shape, possess four glass-like eyes, the brain, and most of the light-producing organs which drive their fiber-optic nerves. The myriad predators and foraging challenges their ancestors faced gave them tetrachromatic vision with high attention to detail and responsiveness to motion.
Ingestion is done through a mouth under the eyes, flanked by sets of sharp pincer-fangs, and respiration through spiracles on the sides of the main body. While they can make a variety of screeches and sounds through these, most Thanatan speech is done through stridulation, by rubbing together antenna on their heads or spines on their legs. Training, and special scraping surfaces tuned for the right range, can produce a passable version of human speech.
Unlike most other sapients, Thanatans are r-selected. Species such as humans are K-selected, meaning parents only have a relative few offspring into each of which they invest a great deal of effort and care. Among r-selected species, like Thanatans, the opposite holds: many offspring are produced but recieve minimal care, the parents relying on the laws of probability to ensure at least a few will reach adulthood. Thanatan reproduction is thus legendarily prolific; average clutches number in the dozens of eggs, and given enough resources can expand by an equally large multiple every few decades or less.
The downside of this is the inhuman neglect, at least by the standards of other species, to which their young are consigned. The average Thanatan baby, translucent in color and small enough to stand on a tea saucer, hatches from a massive brood fully capable of movement and foraging, and is expected to survive almost entirely on its own. Among most ancestral Thanatan cultures, children are only considered to gain personhood once they attain the ability to speak, attempts to introduce more human-like views are often opposed on the grounds it will limit the ability of natural selection to weed out the weak.
Civilization and Culture
History
Thanatans evolved from sub-sapient ancestors several tens of thousands of years ago, long enough they had spread across most of their homeworld by the time of its discovery. Fires cannot burn in Thanatos' thick atmosphere, so they remained at a stone-age level.
The arriving humans were seen differently by each culture. To some they were gods, to others evil spirits, or forces of nature. Only a few were quick to accept scientific notions of cosmology and alien life. But the interlopers were not interested in simple science: the hungry militaries of the Second Interstellar Period saw in the Thanatans a source of fearsome, easily-replaced shock troops, willing to fight and die on just about any battlefield for whatever reward of technology or precious materials was dangled in front of them. Despite this, recruitment proved no issue as many a Thanatan warrior signed up for a chance at riches, or because their enemies were doing it too. Several conflicts were even fought between humans over access to Thanatos and the right to recruit from its population.
Though outclassed in battle against the drone-based armies of superpower militaries, Thanatans saw astounding success at irregular warfare and colonial "pacification" operations, and as mercenaries hired by poorer nations unable to afford the latest tech, all of which entrenched their image as tools of death and oppression. Several supersoldier programs, such as the Spartan project of the American Federation, have their genesis at least partially in efforts to make human combatants capable of standing toe-to-toe with Thanatans.
Thanatans who completed their terms of service were often returned home, where they used the technology and money they were paid to set themselves up as warlords, whose conquering sprees often displaced even more people to become recruits. Towards the end of this era, recruitment from Thanatos dried up as its population was decimated by the various weapons of mass destruction handed out as rewards, and nations established their own Thanatan colonies.
The arriving humans were seen differently by each culture. To some they were gods, to others evil spirits, or forces of nature. Only a few were quick to accept scientific notions of cosmology and alien life. But the interlopers were not interested in simple science: the hungry militaries of the Second Interstellar Period saw in the Thanatans a source of fearsome, easily-replaced shock troops, willing to fight and die on just about any battlefield for whatever reward of technology or precious materials was dangled in front of them. Despite this, recruitment proved no issue as many a Thanatan warrior signed up for a chance at riches, or because their enemies were doing it too. Several conflicts were even fought between humans over access to Thanatos and the right to recruit from its population.
Though outclassed in battle against the drone-based armies of superpower militaries, Thanatans saw astounding success at irregular warfare and colonial "pacification" operations, and as mercenaries hired by poorer nations unable to afford the latest tech, all of which entrenched their image as tools of death and oppression. Several supersoldier programs, such as the Spartan project of the American Federation, have their genesis at least partially in efforts to make human combatants capable of standing toe-to-toe with Thanatans.
Thanatans who completed their terms of service were often returned home, where they used the technology and money they were paid to set themselves up as warlords, whose conquering sprees often displaced even more people to become recruits. Towards the end of this era, recruitment from Thanatos dried up as its population was decimated by the various weapons of mass destruction handed out as rewards, and nations established their own Thanatan colonies.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
The use of Thanatan soldiers during the Second Interstellar Period left lasting animosities. Many humans retain cultural prejudices and fears developed then, stereotyping them as bloodthirsty fanatics with zero sense of morality. On the other side, many Thanatan resent the replacement of their ancestral cultures with warfare and the customs of their human overlords. Still others, the descendants of elite Thanatan mercenary companies, are careful to keep their wealth hidden from the International Court and its ongoing reparations program.
Comments