The Kleklax
The Kleklax are a human tribe native to the world of Kleklax in the Kleklax heliosphere. Their society has grown up around what they believe to be other-dimensional neurospatial godforms, with which their sacred sites allow communication.
These sites are cave systems housing deposits of baddeleyite and hafnium which feed a variety of indigenous fungus whose spores are highly hallucinogenic—thereby facilitating the Kleklax bonding with their godforms.
The Kleklax communicate in a monolect taught by these godforms, a language comprised of one word: kleklax. Rather than being simplistic, Kleklax possesses spectrums of nuance that few within the Hundred Suns can claim to have mastered.
Their sacred sites are deeply fogbound. As such, a Kleklax may be identified by their vestigial eyes, evolutionarily compensated for by advanced senses of smell, hearing, and taste. (Further study is needed to determine if this is an effect caused by some characteristic of the fog itself, or the volume of their imbibing of subterranean spores, or something else entirely.) Fog-tasting is primarily how they maintain their keen awareness of their surroundings.
Disputes are resolved in the conflict style of the instigator’s choosing: physical slights are resolved with physical conflict, insults are addressed with verbal jousts, and so forth. The aggrieved may nominate a champion in their stead, but the instigator may not. The Klekax have been known to hire offworlders, with the aid of a translator, as champions for an aggrieved party to help resolve a dispute. Beyond that, no assistance may be given, for to do so is to interfere with the will and judgment of the godforms. In this manner, it is believed, the godforms pen the flow of Kleklax destiny with a pen dipped in pure cause-and-effect and interconnectedness.
Kleklax numbers are somewhat swelled by offworlders seeking to commune with something greater than themselves. Thus, those with working eyes are easily marked out as non-native. Few newcomers last, however, as the language barrier proves insurmountable for most. Those that remain are valued for their eyes and their function as translators with the outside universe.
Indeed, all Kleklax pilots are—with the very rare exception—offworlders.
