Asyll Bestiary: Urai

taylor skaalrud

Asyll Bestiary: Urai

Biology

Physically the urai are myriad, their potential variations unbound, and the only limits on population are the abilities of the augur caste and the resources they require. The most common caste designs include: the urai, the augurs, and the cyclopeans. The standard urai are versatile, featuring a hollow waist allowing for both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion, digitigrade legs and tail inspired by the Murīd for flexibility and stability, and limbs with three digits each. The augurs liken physically to the urai caste but focus on mental aptitude and psychic prowess over their more balanced counterparts. Paragons of honor, the cyclopeans, named for their great psychic eyes, possess by far the largest base form, combining a heavy arthropodal carapace, several armored legs, and a pair of complex forelegs that function both as raptorial claws as well as chelae. These immense anenurai act as aegis for their more fragile counterparts, protecting others and augmenting themselves with their psychic abilities – they also find utility in physically demanding tasks

ill-suited for urain telekinesis. Other features common to most, if not all, urai are: pastel and selectively porous skin that acts as a complex circulatory system eliminating the need of lungs or a stomach, external ear drums that provide basic audience, and a cyclopean eye covered by a nictitating membrane that provides similarly basic vision and which also belies the ‘psychic lens,’ the use of which causes the eye to glow and provides the urai with their primary psychic vision of the world.

Ecology

Unbidden recipients of worship in an alien overworld, the once subterranean urai were forced to the surface by a tectonic extinction event brought on by the Rivening. Their awestruck Murīd disciples–the first sympathetic beings encountered by the urai–inspired curiosity and admiration. Communication with the surface-dwelling Murīd proved difficult, however, as they employed a sonic language– primitive, vague, and confusing to urain consciousness– attempting to convey signifiers with signified sounds. Whereas the Murīd vocalizations confused the Urai, the urain projections overwhelmed the Murīd: their explicit memories and vivid concepts, so cast, proved well beyond Murīd comprehension. As anenurai explored the surface they permitted the presence of the reverent murīd, protecting and attempting to convey their thoughts and needs to their new disciples.

The urai possess no language of their own, though they were instrumental in the development of the Murīd language. Communicating via the psychic projection of an

enurai’s very memories, thoughts, and emotions, each form distinguishable by other urai: memories are pure, clear, and vivid; thoughts are abstract and isolated from a larger continuity; and emotions overlay memories or ideas as a synesthetic sense of color, texture, or even feeling imposed on the receiver. Intuitively aware of the difference between memory, thought, and emotion, the concept of a lie is foreign to the urai who each remember their own history, as well as that of their ancestors. Secular and of a unified will, urai are each borne of a single shared ancestor, the Progenitor, whose consciousness still lives on in every living individual of the collective. This oneness inspires a sense of unity amongst urai who embrace the progress of, and betterment to, the enclave. Interlocutors typically converse by imprinting their own minds upon others – though it is possible to scan another’s mind. Such an imposition between urai betrays the trust fostered in their collective memory: each enurai is honour-bound to participate in the collective historical record and as such there should exist no secrets demanding an imposition of consciousness. Intellect is revered amongst the urai, and much of their culture is based on the preservation of knowledge, history, and nature by psychically retaining memory through generations and cultural attunement to their environmental biomes. They now, empathic in the shadow of the Rivening, seek the permanence of all creation.

Culture

For the urai, reproduction includes the replication of knowledge. They do not exchange biological material to produce young. Rather, Augurs (the most integral of the urain castes), utilizing organic and inorganic materiel,

telekinetically design and forge vessels into which they replicate consciousness. This artificial immortality has granted the short-lived urai many lifespans, eliminating maturation and education processes, and cultivating the culture and populace by replicating their most prominent personae. Integral to this process are transference and marriage.

Every member of urain society is honour-bound to routinely transfer their memories to a member of the augur caste to contribute to historical record. The vast quantities of memory stored by any one enurai–let alone an augur–are staggering, but an augur’s carefully crafted mind can accommodate and compartmentalize knowledge deemed unimportant in such a way that it is only accessible to a desiring augur, which streamlines the history immensely.

In marriage, augurs can combine disparate personae of different lineages into a single consciousness during replication. This serves to merge skill sets and memory and create more complex minds. Augurs can also marry various related experiences to create an aggregate continuity; this helps streamline events experienced by many individuals. With a living history contributed to by every member of society, urai hold each other accountable to their shared history; holes in the history, such as those caused by death premature to transference, are considered anathema. It is for this reason that the urai are averse to sudden conflict, which risks the loss of individuals before their memory can be preserved with the augurs.