Selamid

Adapted to survive in fluctuating gravity, selamids are creatures of complex, flexible protoplasm. Though selamids can eat nearly any organic matter, their diets usually consist of material sloughed from other oozes on their home world. At the end of its 40-year life span, a selamid divides to “birth” new selamids.

Civilization and Culture

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Almost the entirety of the selamid species lives in the megadoplexes roaming the more gravitationally stable regions of Silselrik, with only a few iconoclastic groups eking out their living as wandering tribes. The remainder of the race has progressed from these migratory roots, building cities and increasingly stable societies.
These more advanced selamid settlements retain a central element of communalism, extrapolated from the fundamental need to live in harmony with their megadolorid symbiotes. Each megadoplex is a tight-knit community with a strong relationship with its host, making it rare for selamids to move between megadoplexes. The well-being of these behemoths is the selamids’ primary concern, and so every aspect of society revolves around the megadolorid’s needs. In order to provide these hosts a constant flow of kinetic energy, selamid society operates around the clock, resulting in a highly productive, but often low-tech, economy.
The construction and repair of city structures is a common group undertaking; most selamids excrete a calcifying slime that hardens into an iridescent, translucent material they use to construct nautiliform structures. The material is relatively fragile, however, and so any given megadoplex sees a constant cycle of building and rebuilding—much to the megadolorid’s delight. As more offworld interests have taken an interest in the world’s rich diamond deposits, a thriving diamond-processing industry has also arisen in most settlements. The crushing, grinding, and other physical forces involved in the industry further feed the megadolorid hosts while providing a valuable trading commodity.
The need to provide constant movement for their hosts also encourages selamids to emphasize athleticism in a way that surprises most offworlders. Gymnasiums see activity at all hours, and most selamids have active pastimes. The oozes’ anatomy is appropriate for sports that members of other species often find bizarre and have no hope of participating in, such as compression mazes, competitions wherein a team of oozes seeks to collectively envelop members of the other team, and a peculiar throwing game called boshich, in which selamids hurl objects as far as possible by forcibly expelling them from within their protoplasm.
Selamids are relative newcomers to the larger intergalactic community, having been “discovered” by a team of Starfinders. The oozes have largely welcomed the opportunity to trade and learn from other species, though offworlders are still rare on the planet. Some settlements are more welcoming to visitors than others, but only Midios, as the primary spaceport, maintains a small community of offworld residents and visitors.