Reasons The Teruvar Let in People

The Seven Open Teruvar let people into their interiors for specific reasons. The Teruvar are ancient, and their reasons for doing various things are very long sighted. These are some reasons they might have:

1. They are lonely. Speaking with other Teruvar is hard on the creatures of their interiors, and they can quite easily chat with interior people.

2. They are curious. The people in their interiors are mayfly like. Evanescent. Their lives are over in a blink. How can they sustain themselves?

3. They wish to acquire some technology for long range reasons: * Radio - to lift their loneliness without bothering their internal creatures. They can talk to anyone with a radio, instantaneously. * FTL - to jump to other systems. To travel. To see new things. To spread their seed in new systems. * Fusion Reaction Jets - for the same reasons as FTL. It will just take longer, and that is no problem to a creature with tens or hundreds of millions of years to live.

4. They want the short-life tiny ones to spread their seed around other stars for them, carrying it as cargo.

5. They eventually want to make Humans and Jeshen part of their default internal creatures, each seed carrying the genetic blueprint of them internally. Eventually these tiny people will be inside every Teruvar, everywhere.

6. People are entertaining, and the current internal creatures are boring. They enjoy the antics of the newcomers, and love to meddle.

7. They want to add the intelligence and sapience of these people to their default animals, by stripping and analyzing their genetic makeup, and incorporating analogous genes into some of their internal creatures.

8. They like being worshiped like gods.

Any and all of these reasons could apply to any given one of the Seven.

A Dream LARP

Last night I had a dream. Not my usual boring fly-on-the-wall slice-of-americana- life dream, though! No "Honey, I got the potatoes!" "Good! Put them in the kitchen dear!" dream about people I didn't know!

I dreamed I was part of a group of larpers - I've never larped in my life, btw - and my smaller bunch was humans from a merchanter exploring a gigantic abandoned alien space ship. There were five or six other groups - aliens of various types - also exploring the ship. We were scavenging anything small, and hoping to eventually take the entire ship.

The game was set in an enormous empty office building, and the only furniture in it was props. There was no system - we were using laser tag pistols and collapsible knives - but we all had characters we were playing. We captured a girl - the player was maybe 18 - who was playing some dinosaur species, by hitting a button on the back of her neck, signifying a knock-out.

We were carrying these big poster board things signifying the members of the other groups we were against, with a quick sketch of each of those members we had taken out. We questioned the girl we captured, and got her to give us information about her saurian group - who the leader was, how many there were, etc. - and filled in the blanks on our posters. I have no idea why they were so big, or why they were not electronic,but it made sense in the dream. I think it was because they really were electronic. They wiped clean with a swipe, and the stylus/pen painted like a brush, and could change colors. Why they were that size and why we carried one for each opposing group I don't know. In any case, dino-gal switched sides joined us for the rest of the dream.

Then a bell rang and we stopped for the night, intending to return the next day. The premise was very interesting for me - usually in scenarios like this it is all exploration, or going up against the ship's automated defenses. The added complication of numerous small parties from other ships was a great addition. 

Kerea, a Teruvar Worldlet

Data page for the Teruvar world Kerea. Look up my last few posts for more on the Teruvar. Let me know what you think!

A Teruvar From the Outside

More on Teruvar, the Sapient Worldlets of Jeshen Space

The fully adult size of any given Teruvar varies widely, depending greatly on the size of the initial asteroid or moon. The more mass, the greater the fully grown size of the Teruvar. Generally speaking, the mass of that rock *is* the mass of the Teruvar, though there is some small accretion of rocks, ice, and dust over the immense lifespan of the creature. Of course, the size of the the Teruvar is far, far larger, due to the great gas bubble within.

Because the gravity of the worldlet within the Teruvar is artificial spin gravity, as one moves toward the central spire, gravity becomes less and less, though the air pressure is constant. The back wall of the Teruvar, opposite the clear membrane, and from which the spike protrudes, is covered in vegetation, with strange zero and low gravity creatures abounding. The rim, on the other hand, is home to more normal ceatures, who walk about, rather than brachiating or flying or crawling through the vegetation.

The amount of spin gravity depends on the diameter of the Teruvar and the speed of the spin. Since even the smallest Teruvar is many tens of kilometers across, the coriolis effect at the rim is seldom great enough to be noted. As one ascends the back wall, of course, the diameter becomes smaller and thus the coriolis effect becomes more and more powerful, and may become difficult. The variation at the rim is a continuum between a third of a G in the smallest and something over a G in the largest. In the seven Teruvar accessible to Humans and Jeshen, all fairly large, the variation is between 0.77 and 1.05 G, all perfectly healthy for both species. This is probably not coincidence.

Generally, the central spire glows from reflected sunlight at a level uncomfortable to look directly at, though it will not permanently blind. Light levels inside are lower than a sunny day on planet, more like a cloudy day, and the source is far more diffuse, but there is plenty of light to power photosynthesis. The rapid light changes that occur when Teruvar are communicating can be disconcerting. Most inhabitants close their eyes when this is happening, standing or sitting still until the communication is over.

Water circulation within the Teruvar is constant. The water is pumped up the back wall through tubes, and out into the central spire, from which it falls periodically as rain. There is some purposeful leakage along the back wall, surfacing as springs. The total amount of water in the Teruvar is determined by the amount of ice in the original asteroid or moon, plus whatever ice the outer surface captures.

Scientific opinion is divided on whether the changes over time in the flora and fauna of the interior are controlled by the Teruvar to some extent, or are entirely driven by natural and sexual selection. Some in the "Control" party suggest the seven Teruvar open to Jeshen and Humans are experiments of the Teruvar as a whole, so they may create their own sapient animals by copying what they like.

Teruvar: Sapient Worldlets in Jeshen Space

One of the ten systems in Jeshen Space is the home of the Teruvar, a gigantic sapient species who live in free fall. They face their sun in orbit in the Goldilocks Zone of that star, soaking up and utilizing the solar energy. When a free-falling Teruvar egg lands on a rocky body, it burrows into it, consuming and changing the rocks into part of itself. Over time it begins rotating and expands out into a thick, hollow, rounded disc, with a transparent membrane keeping air inside, and letting in the sunlight.

There is a spire in the center, reaching almost to the membrane, covered with reflective 'leaves' which scatter the light around into the interior. Living things have evolved in the hollow interior, an individual ecology for each Teruvar, which work as sort of intestinal flora and fauna for the host. No two Teruvar are alike, though they are similar enough to know that the root creatures everything evolves from are a part of each egg. They communicate with each other by reflecting light in flashes out the membrane.

There are many Teruvar in the "shell" orbiting the star, but seven of them have invited Jeshen and Humans to live inside them. They are curious and intelligent, and enjoy the company. These seven have each extruded a dock opposite the spike and membrane window, at the center of rotation, to accept Jeshen Space ships.

Inhabitants of the seven can speak with their Teruvar host by addressing any natural place by the Teruvar's name. The Teruvar's internal sensors can hear and reply. It is oddly like addressing a real living god, though the Teruvar have not asked for worship.

Jeshen Species Sheet

Worked on the Species Sheet for the Jeshen of the Jeshen Space setting for StarCluster 4. I am keeping a certain design aesthetic here, pioneered by Levi Kornelsen - single page, graphically oriented, everything together for easy reference. Have a look!