Chapter #4Make out the cheque to... by: hedkrakka Well, now that we know what kind of station the MC will be serving on, who is the main character of our widening feature? For ease of understanding, all measurements of age, height and weight will be in common human terms.
Chel Nat'yochtli
Species: Naxian
Station Position: Mechanical Department, Foreman
6 adult years, long green "hair", 5'9" tall, 120 pounds
The Naxians are an amphibious species which entered the galaxy around the same time as humanity. As a species, they are very invested in their accomplishments, often to an unhealthy degree. This path was laid for them by the Great Paragon, Anarathustra, the Bridge Maker. By definition, they see a life with no accomplishments as inherently meaningless and wasteful, if not outright destructive to society as a whole. The Path even establishes minimums with regards to quantity and quality of accomplishments over time, and committing suicide to maintain personal honour after failing to meet your minimums is quite common.
WDD, as you might imagine, found the Naxians to be fairly malleable to the corporate mindset. Not only were they fanatically devoted to their personal success and the success of the company, their high birth rate meant that the corp was never lacking for dedicated employees.
Chel is a little unusual amongst her species. She is technically a failure, never truly excelling at school and failing to meet any of the Path's minimums. Most infuriating for her fellow Naxians, she adamantly refused to save her honour via death. Estranged from the bulk of her family, she took this job on Space Station 42 in order to support herself while trying to figure out what she's truly passionate about. Maintenance of slip stream drives was one of the very few activities in which she excelled, so she was promoted to foreman despite her lack of experience, given the lack of anyone else fit for the position on this godforsaken backwater.
Chel has light blue skin, with an assortment of pink spots which change shape according to her mood. Her general body form is fairly humanoid, with only a handful of minor differences. Her hair, however, is not actually hair. It is in fact a symbiotic plant, which can supplement her caloric intake via photosynthesis. Her skin, like earth amphibians, is permeable, and she is vulnerable to absorbing chemicals and the like through her living skin layer.
Xul
Species: Hunniq
Station Position: Station Master
39 years, Hairless, 6'8", 265 lbs.
Many in her Clan said she was mad to ask for this post, but Xul didn't care.
The Hunniq race is, for the most part, only concerned with survival. Their homeworld is the desert planet Hullack. Basic resources like water are extremely scarce, and inter-clan raids and skirmishes were a daily fact of life. It is perhaps Hullack's tough conditions which led to the reptilian species rather low birthrate and high ratio of males to females. To take Xul as an example, her mother had five husbands and six children, of which Xul was one of only two girls.
As you might imagine, there is quite a strong push in their society to take many mates (the concept of marriage being rather foreign to them), so Xul deciding to wait was not well received. Truthfully, she does wish to have a family someday, but she doesn't feel she needs to sacrifice her personal success in order to do so. She hasn't told her mother, but she intends to establish her first Warren-bond once she succeeds at bringing Station 42 into profit, though she merely selected someone she was fond of (the concept of love also being a foreign concept) rather then following tradition and forcing bloody contests between her suitors.
Like most Hunniq, she is a towering and intimidating specimen. Females tend to be 30-45% larger then males, and far more muscular, and Xul is no exception. Her skin is covered with armoured scales like gravel, and her bald head is crested with six towering, curly horns. The Hunniq are exothermic, and her suits inevitably have an environmental mesh to adjust her temperature as needed.
She is quite close with her Clan despite their differences. She exchanges messages constantly with her beloved younger sister, Zhul. She also frequently communicates with her mother, though the two fight more often then not, Khul simply refusing to understand why her elder daughter might not want to merely lord over her own warband. Despite this, it is quite rare that the two will outright refuse to message one another.
A final note of the Hunniq species is that they principally communicate via scent. This led to some severe misunderstandings during first contact, with the humans assuming the Hunniq were totally unintelligent. By their standards, Xul is very chatty and she understands better then most Hunniq the importance of verbal communication. The fact that most species consider Hunniq pheromones to be rather foul smelling is another drawback.
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