YGG

species

The ygg are the only natural sophonts indigenous to the Embla sector, originating from the planet Hoddmimis. They are noted for their unique biology combining traits typically marking plants and animals, such as autotrophy and heterotrophy, as well as historical and archaeological debate over to what extent, if any, their evolution was influenced by the satyans. They were also the first alien sophonts encountered by parahumans.

Ygg undergo a series of metamorphoses in their lives. The form most parahumans will encounter is in truth the adolescent state, for it is only then that ygg are motile. This form is bipedal and spindly, covered in a hard white-and-black exoskeleton resembling both bark and a pineapple’s rind, adorned with leafy, lavender-colored frills, and equipped with four thin, tentacle-esque manipulators, two on each side. These “striders”, as they are called, are in effect walking, sentient seeds or fruits, whose purpose in life is to explore the world to acquire enough resources, knowledge, and a good location to plant themselves and metamorphose into the “elder” form, which has much resemblance to Gaian trees. This resemblance is what led to initial parahuman surveyors naming them after the Nordic world-tree Yggdrasil.

Striders are conceived through pollination of elders; in ancient days this was carried out by large insect-analogues, but now is more commonly done manually by striders themselves. They gestate from the combination of an elder’s more than a thousand flowers, whose fruits combine into one organism. After around 20 months, the gestation is complete, and the strider will drop from the elder’s branches, awake and alive. Many humans have reported discomfort walking through fruiting ygg forests, as the gestating striders can look very much like hanging bodies. Striders are usually a bit over 1 meter in height, and don’t usually change in size until they plant.

The process of planting and metamorphosis lasts, on average, 260 hours, though this can vary with environment. Additionally, if the environment is ill-chosen, or the ygg attempts to join a forest of elders which rejects them, they may find their metamorphosis difficult, their growth stunted, and their lifespan shortened. Most ygg will plant into a pre-existing forest of elders, allowing them to contribute to and benefit from a subterranean root network which facilitates the sharing both of nutrients and of thoughts. In some senses, an elder forest constitutes a hive mind, though individuals do maintain distinct personalities, and forests can even disagree. Elders average around 3.5 meters in height, and are capable of growing further over time.

Ygg cultures vary on if a strider ought to return home to join the forest that fruited them, or if it is better for them to find another forest to join. In most cultures, however, pioneering a wholly new forest is rare, usually being the result of either forests hitting their planting grounds’ carrying capacity, or a strider becoming socially or politically outcast in some way.

Both striders and elders evolved to communicate using scents and pheromones, released from a set of buds encircling their trunk, and so most ygg language is exceedingly difficult for parahumans to understand or repeat. By happy coincidence, however, striders also evolved to both perceive sound, in order to detect potential threats, and to produce sounds, to intimidate predators. To the ygg, sound-based language is similar to what sign language is to parahumans, and while even these languages are strange and alien, they are key to parahuman-ygg relations.

Even a freshly-dropped strider may walk, and it takes only a Gaian Standard Year or two for them to reach a mental state comparable to a mature parahuman. Ygg typically remain striders for only a few decades, though some never choose to plant and others do so very swiftly. In most ygg cultures, it is considered quick to plant before around ten years, and slow to do so after about thirty. Striders who do not plant, which may be due to wanderlust or simply never finding a suitable forest to join or new planting ground, tend to die after a bit less than forty years from their fruiting. Once they metamorphose into elders, however, ygg are able to live for centuries; the oldest known ygg is Tva Ir, with an age of 1,329 years. Tva Ir is also the oldest sophont ever encountered by parahumanity, though the satyans are believed to have lived even longer, as are some tutelaries.

Though ygg have settled across the sector, and had long before making contact with either the Interstellar or the Celestial Harmony, there is no overarching authority for the ygg species. They are divided politically into a patchwork of states ranging from lone habitats to networks of systems. This has been a leading cause of tensions and conflict in the sector, as newcomers must negotiate with several conflicting communities. For similar reasons, intergovernmental legal frameworks, like the Hoddmimis Concordat or the Treaty of Houyi, have not been as successful as their drafters might have hoped. The three largest ygg states are the Drasyllic Commonweal, the Domain of Zasitur, and the Aligned Branches of the Kospos.

The evolution of modern ygg is estimated to have occurred around 190,000 years ago, and signs of agriculture and complex settlements appear roughly 10,000 years ago. Xenoarchaeological evidence shows a rapid increase in technological development around 4,000 years ago, leading some scholars to propose Refulgent influence in the time prior to the Absence. Critics of this theory point to the distance from Hoddmimis to the nearest Etheric Gate and the absence of major pieces of the satyan technological package, such as projection drives.

Regardless of its ultimate origin, this technological leap fueled generations of on-and-off war, as various polities sought to wield their new machines to dominate all Hoddmimis. When this ended, the last state standing looked at their unified homeworld and realized that industrialization and atomics had devastated it beyond recognition. Guided by religious visions of heavens in the night sky, this last state constructed and launched a series of slower-than-light seedships to find new homes for the ygg. This established the ygg diaspora, and set the stage for the modern sector’s continued political disorder.

Not all ygg were able to leave Hoddmimis, and in the end it was not completely beyond salvation, though the environment was rendered very harsh. Post-apocalyptic societies clung tightly to life, however, and the Hoddmimis biosphere has begun to recover, a process which picked up speed with the help of both Interstellar and Harmonic planetary engineers after the Concordat declared it under joint administration at the end of the Contact War.

Ygg are known for their tendencies toward collectivism and clannishness, as the striders follow the instructions of their elder-forests. They also have a reputation for skill in both conjuration and championship, with their root-networks and communal thinking both lending themselves to the creation of egregores.