Huerustler

A race born of corruption

When the land warps because of the Oversaturation (geographic anomaly), something weird starts to happen to the trees. Their bark becomes soft, and transparent, resembling the cell membrane. It loses its leaves completely and turns into a single cell organism with multiple large glowing nuclei. Most of those warped trees stop changing at this point. However, under the right circumstances, for unknown reasons, they can awaken as sapient beings called huerustlers.
First huerustlers showed up long before the Humans set their foot on the continent for the first time, but long after Rockwings and Beteclaw were here.

Morphology and growth

The bodies of huerustlers consist of their transparent skin, a cytoplasm-like soup filled with Colors inside and various organelles, each having various functions in their bodies. For example, their nuclei start to serve as their brains. One or more (the record was 15) photoreceptive organelles become their eyes. They can feel pain, heat (can survive up to 50^oC and cold (although they are very resistant to it), remember and learn, and speak.
Their skin is soft, almost jelly-like to the touch, and any harder press can change its shape only for it to spring back once one stops applying the pressure.
Huerustlers don't have any ability to reproduce. The only way to increase their number is through the way they awoke.
After their "birth", they are still mostly shaped like trees. Instinctively, they pull out their roots and start to move by contracting the lower parts of their bodies, similar to snails.

Shapeshifting

Every single individual of this race is able to shapeshift. When they do so, they can't change the color or the structure of their bodies, just its shape. Additionally, the shapeshifting takes a very long time. Taking on the shape of a specific individual could take 8 to 16 hours.

Mimicry

Once a huerustler meets the first individual of another sapient race, they start to mimic them. Their shape, the way they move, speak or act. If they lose contact with the person they mimic, they start to look for another person to imitate. Because of that, the end result can be a mixture of looks of various races.
When they reach 1-2 years old, they finalize their looks. They still can shapeshift afterward, but they consider this final look their original one and tend to return to it after any changes.

Huerustlers and Colors

As opposed to other sentient races and most of the living beings, huerustlers don't possess the Color Nests. Instead, all of the Colors are stored within the "soup" inside of their body. Somehow, those Colors don't mix, often giving a rainbowy color to their bodies. This phenomenon is currently studied by many different scientists as such traits could save many people from suffering from Oversaturation (condition) and give mages the ability to mix more than three Colors into their spells.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Huerustlers are a really social race when it comes to interactions with other races. They try to learn as much as they can about the communities they enter. Their culture consists mostly of taking the ideas of other races and mashing them together in various unusual ways.
Huerustlers rarely encounter each other, however, if they do, they tend to get really happy. After that, they will share what they have learned with each other. If they live together in the same community, they'll start to gossip together quite often. If they meet each other on the road, they'll probably move on really fast, probably never encountering each other again. Otherwise, just like during their first meeting, they'll share any new things they discovered.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

There are three ways a huerustler gets their name:

• They are named by someone during the mimicking stage.
• They take on the name of the one they mimic.
• Once they grow up, they start to search for a name for themselves.

As such, just like their looks, the names of two individuals of this race can vary a lot.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Although for a long time other races found their constant curiosity to be quite tiresome, and their origins dangerous, by now the sight of a huerustler becomes more and more common. On the other side, huerustlers tend to get along pretty good with members of any race. Their "childhood" ability to mimic others leaves them tolerant to all of the other races.

Origin/Ancestry

Oversaturation (geographic anomaly)

Average Height

Between 1.4 and 2.5 meters. Their branches tend to get smaller during awakening.

Related Myths

• "Everything was Gray"

Perception:
They can perceive colors and hear sounds just like the races they mimic.

Lifespan

On average, huerustlers live about 30 years. Because they lose their Colors slowly throughout their whole life, they need to find sources of them (such as Pigments or oversaturated lands) to prolong their life. Most of them manage to do that only for 30 years, but it is possible for them to live way longer.
Some decide to root themself back into the ground they came from to recharge. This, however, is risky, as the longer one of them is rooted, the bigger the chance that they will fall asleep and become normal (but warped) trees again. Doing so, it is possible for them to live indefinitely.

Intelligence

After finding their own shape, their ability to perceive and learn grows drastically and is similar in progress to that of a human.

Gender

Huerustlers don't have any gender, however, if they spend a lot of time of their mimicking phase with members of one gender, they will tend to act like them once they "grow up".

Magic users

Due to the amounts of Colors that get stored inside huerustlers' bodies and the rate at which they are able to absorb them, it would seem logical that they can be one of the strongest magic users out of all sapient races. However, Colors are their lifeforce, even more than for the other races. Huerustler mages tend to age way quicker than their brothers and sisters, their bodies getting wrinkly and less transparent with every spell they use.
There was one known Witch huerustler, however, she didn't live for too long. She is a reason for at least one oversaturated land far to the north.