Aesthetics and Anatomy
On the appearances of the Third Kin as differentiated by family, and additional writ on visually-apparent anatomical differences between them.
There wasnât an easily accessible resource for what the members of the Great Families look like, beyond the distributed writ in their own docs, addendums and the like. As such, this has been penned. It is worth considering this document as something of a written reference should one ever want to adequately mentally visualize characters in Samsara canon, or even create artistic renditions of them as the case may be.
The Dawn of the Dancirah, SB_Physiology and Birthing and Being are recommended reading for this section.
General Notes on the Appearances of the Kin
General preliminary notes relevant to all kin of the Switchboard.
Lifespans And Life Stages
Age Classes of the Kin
A tabular representation of the lifespans and life stages of kin in the Switchboard. The immense discrepancy of lifespans between families is often a source of contention among them.
Link to original
Stage Humans The Fel-Arcad The-Silâkhan The Lancasters The Vahnkin Child 0-10 (10 years) 0-40 (40 years) 0-5 (5 years) 0-15 (15 years) 0-10 (10 years) Youth 11-25 (15 years) 41-100 (60 years) 6-20 (15 years) 16-25 (10 years) 11-40 (30 years) Adult 26-70 (45 years) 101-300 (200 years) 21-60 (40 years) 26-95 (70 years) 41-140 (100 years) Senior 71-100 (30 years) 301-400 (100 years) 61-70 (10 years) 96-130 (35 years) 141-200 (60 years) Elder 101-120 (20 years) 401-500 (100 years) 71-80 (10 years) 131-150 (20 years) 201-270 (70 years)
pNarrat: What Draws the Outlines
The kin of the Switchboard are largely identical to us humans. Though differing considerably in the physiology that makes them possible, they adopt rather overtly the silhouette we ourselves possess, being bipedal humanoids with opposing thumbs, forward-facing eyes, the like. Of course, this is a conscious worldbuilding decision.
That being said, it is worth discussing what is the cause behind why they differ from each other in the ways that they do. Why the Silâkhan have halos, the Fel have horns and tails, the Vahnkin sharing a rather fascinating quality with insects, and the Lancasters being largely the same as us. All these are handled in far greater detail in the headings to come, but a general overview of what truly drives the shape of the kin - what draws the outlines - is warranted.
All kin walking the Switchboard are descendants of an original stock that arose from the great chalk deserts of the Astrolabic Spheres of the early Switchboard. A product of astrolabic resolution - grand calculus that ensures the perpetuation of existence in a forward direction - it is perhaps accurate to say that the fact they look like us is entirely a product of coincidence, especially when considering that the First Thinker Minds and Second Thinker Vermeils differ vastly from them. In a sense, the resolution spat out the shape needed for the Switchboard to continue to exist, and that shape happens to be akin to ours. Beyond that, there is little more to say on the matter.
Where differentiation began is a far more interesting topic. Though largely identical, the original stock had quite a bit of variation among them cognitively, having taken up the residual weft in the Current left behind by both the First and Second Thinkers prior. Like-minded individuals paired off however they felt led, forming larger groups that would collaborate and mingle among one another, pursuing shared ends and reinforcing the ideas that drove them in a manner that would produce the original Great Families, which would in turn form the Families that exist today. Whether they looked to the stars and thought of conquest, or to the earth and thought of understanding, or to the gaping maw of the Deep and thought of apotheosis, the kin would soon spread across the dimensions of the Switchboard, and would come to be subject to the contexts of âwhereâ and the nuances of âwhatâ they would call their own.
Their calcic natures meant that they spoke the same language as reality around them, but some were given the power still beyond that; power to shape that reality as they saw fit. Inescapably, what they cast out into the world was repaid in kind, as just as the kin shaped, they too were shaped in turn. A baseline skewed by the actions of conscious actors, mild disturbances compounding and cascading outwards, and being reinforced in the backbone - the blueprint by which all new kin are formed in either wombs or conjugate, perpetuating outwards into space and forwards into time. The Switchboard devoured them, and they devoured it in kind, a symbiotic nourishing process the ramifications of which they now wear as the various elements that differentiate one kin from another, and the world of now from the world of yesterday.
The answer then, is that they did. The kin themselves drew their own outlines. As they carved the world into the shape they desired, they too had to be carved into the shapes that were needed. And the result is the Great Families that exist to this day. That both they and the Switchboard have survived for as long as they have speaks to a having reached a threshold; a pause of welcome stability after the fires of iterative evolution.
The shapes the kin have are the ones they need to, and there exists little to disabuse them of this notion.
The Silâkhan (& Old Danseers)
On the appearance of the Silâkhan, descendants of the Danseers.
As a foreword, it is worth mentioning the core anatomical differences between the Silâkhan and their Danseers ancestors - or rather the lack thereof. Essentially, the differences between the bodily features of the Silâkhan and their predecessors are negligible, and much of the difference that does exist is merely that the Danseers were more exaggerated than the Silâkhan in terms of shape; they were larger.
Silâkhan - Shape, Face and Color
Order and Proportions Descendants of the Old Danseers, the Silâkhan very much exhibit the aesthetics of divinity. By and large they stand taller, broader and sturdier than all other Families of the Dancirah, inheriting baseline instructions for the construction of their lattices from their Danseer ancestors, a product of their birth in the Felâs sembleworks vats from the liquified remains of their forefathers.
They subscribe ardently to natureâs old doctrine of the largest being the strongest, this proven by how they dwarf all other kin in anatomical metrics. It is rare to a Silâkhan below six feet tall, with most who are being a product of intermingling between kin genetics or aftermarket modifications via Fel sembleworks. Most Silâkhan are taller than most, broader than most and are physical representations of the idealized human physique, appearing distinctly superhuman, or at least immensely trained and refined at absolute minimum. In particular their hands and feet are somewhat disproportionate with the rest of their frames, their larger size suspected to be a product of adaptation towards flight and combat.
Facial Architecture Though lacking in conventional skeletal systems, the writ of Silâkhan genetic backbone favors pronounced, sharp dimensions of the face, lending them a distinct angularity like carved stone. Despite immense variation among them, Silâkhan faces are reputed for a noticeable amount of constancy between them; how they are all seemingly engineered with perfect awareness of both the laws of proportion and by how much they can be skewed to produce variation and uniqueness without delving into inadequacy. They exude definition and purpose, every crevice and dimple being the product of deliberate adherence to artistic principles born from the understanding of âwhat worksâ. By and large they are considered the most attractive among all of the Switchboardâs kin.
For the Silâkhan, what is better curved, is curved, what is better straight, is straight. Hardness where hardness is best, softness where softness is best; a Silkâs facial features are a mirror of a seemingly innate understanding of proportion and shape written into every kin, such that a mere glimpse of a Silâkhan face strums at primordial chords, telling the observer that yes, this is what near-who hshperfection is, attained via the employment of preternatural measuring tools.
Pigmentation and Texture The Silâkhan favor colors fairly uncommon in nature, and yet not. While body hair on the Silâkhan is generally a nonoccurrence, they all profess voluminous hair from their scalps, and it favors colors typically exhibited by metals and metalloids. Gold - of course - is among the most common Silâkhan colors, with white, silvers and greys following suit. Pale blues, deep reds and golden browns are slightly less common, but occur all the same, with pale yellows, rose golds and creamier shades of white emerging recently, particularly among female Silâkhan. Conversely, darker greys and ashen hues occasionally crown the heads of males. Immensely noticeable about Silâkhan hair is its distinct luster that gives it a metallic air, as though their hair were made of metal wire rather than soft lattice.
Their eyes use a similar color palette, though the sclera of those eyes is commonly âfleckedâ with âglitterâ, giving the appearance of gold dust sprinkled on white canvas. They differ from the baseline circular pupil favored by much of the Switchboard, favoring many-sided polygons and many-pointed stars.
The color of their skin tends to vary considerably. The first kin to rise from the chalk deserts were rumored and suspected to have been a fair-skinned people, but the Danseersâ frequent activities near the armillary stars slowly âburnedâ their skin darker, until much of the Danseers and their progeny, the Silks, came to have skin ranging from tan to dark. Geographically they most resemble the peoples of Africa on one side of this spectrum, and the peoples of the middle east on the other.
Relative to the rest of the Switchboard, their skin professes an almost marble smoothness, and many Fel grafters and the like exhibit a correlated enthusiasm to work upon them.
Silâkhan - Digression from the Mean
Extraneities #1 - Halos The Silâkhan differ considerably from the rest of the Switchboard in a singular key way, that being their halo. A holdover from the Danseers, Silâkhan as they grow form a disc-like structure from their bodies, often a sign of maturity both physically and calcically.
Unlike how halos are depicted typically as floating, ethereal and thus intangible constructs of light, Silâkhan halos are much more like a protruding bone. They form on hard âstalksâ that grow from various locales on the body, non-exhaustively;
- Atop the head, towards the rear
- Back of the skull
- Base of the skull, right above the neck
- Behind the neck
- Mounted on, and perpendicular to, the shoulder blades
- Down the spine
- On the lower back, right above the waist
Once these stalks form, the halo tends to grow outwards from its apex in opposite directions, typically curving back in on themselves to meet and fuse, forming a complete circular ring. Silâkhan tend to heavily interfere with this particular aspect of their physiology, however, as it has become something of a cultural norm to reshape the halo in means that appeal to the owner, such as stopping it from growing prematurely, and thus leaving an incomplete ring, or bending it such that it grows into curved shapes. Sometimes, the body produces paired double stalks, such as one on each shoulder blade, or a line of them, such as down the spine, and paired stalks tend to only grow half a halo, while lines of stalks will have links of connected rings on them.
Some also choose to transplant their current stalks from where they currently are to other sites on the body, so that they may grow there, split their existing stalks so as to get half or double halo morphs, or inherit stalks from other Silâkhan, so as to have more halos.
Being products of the lattice, they are calcic constructs, and thus are subject to some ribbon-level control. For one, Silâkhan can âdismissâ their halo, in which the physical ring and stalk construct is dissociated into dust and reabsorbed back into the subject, thus hiding it from view. They can also âsuspendâ their halos, where - during moments of immense calcic fervor - can make their halos change shape and levitate away from their person. As outlined under Apotheosis, Silâkhan and any denizen of the Switchboard that exalts themselves may earn Spokes as testament of doing such. Spokes taken by Silâkhan manifest on their halos as juts sticking outwards, giving the rings the appearance of having âspikesâ. This is purely cosmetic, and while on that aspect, the colors of Silâkhan halos are generally a flat white, gold if they have taken spokes, or the color of the subjectâs eyes or hair.
Extraneities #2 - Inscrit A second distinguishing characteristic of the Silâkhan is the inscrit; relief carvings into the superficial crown layer of their lattice that depicts various things. Inscrit tends to be only skin deep, inflicting nothing by way of structural or physiological weaknesses upon the subject bearing them, and exists almost wholly as an aesthetic quirk in the latticeâs blueprint.
Silâkhan are typically born with inscrit, though very undeveloped. As they grow and mature, it stays so, usually manifesting only as a long ring around the forearm, or a dot on the back of the hands. As the Silâkhan strides however, the path of the journeys they take is slowly dug into their flesh as though with a chisel, and with time, entire starmaps are carved in this way. Typically, the first traceable route across these starmaps is how to navigate to the subjectâs place of birth from every star or noteworthy position in space that is at most one jaunt away.
As one gets older, it is possible to have a sembleworker disable this automatic inscrit carving function so that the subject may do it themselves. Silâkhan use the skin of their arms from a few inches up their elbows to the back of their fingers for carving inscrit of their choosing, usually starmaps and constants for charting their way to commonly visited locations, or carvings of other things altogether, such as ritual writ, impressionist renditions of things, places or events of note (such as powerful artifacts or great battles). Inscrit tends to be colored white, contrasting with the typically darker shades of Silk skin, though those who are truly dedicated to the craft tend to inlay the relief carvings of the inscrit with their hair, lending it the appearance of being the result of molten metal poured into troughs.
Extraneities #3 - âAurkitsâ While the Danseers were not necessarily a winged people - the Fel far more commonly live this truth than the Danseers of then - wings were a common part of their culture, stemming both from their appreciation of winged creatures and the appearance of wings on themselves when undergoing Apotheosis.
In keeping with this, seemingly, Silâkhan often observe the formation of wing-like growths on various parts of the body, most commonly the harder parts of joints of the limbs, typically at the regions where we have our ankles, wrists, knees, elbows, and knuckles. These growths - these âaurkitsâ - are off-shoots of the lattice and dud chalk, and so can be removed in much the same manner as one would clip a fingernail. Some have made it a pastime to collect them, as it is rumored no two are the same, and a few more do so for the purpose of hardening into beads, which then tend to be used as adornments. Silâkhan funeral practice involves a step of harnessing aurkits from the deceased as they tend to spawn more rapidly on corpses, with the witnessing parties taking them to be used as they see fit, serving as a memento of the Silâkhan returned to the Current.
As a bit of trivia, aurkits take their name from the âaurkyteâ, a consecrated avian among perhaps all the Third Kin - but the Danseers then and Silâkhan now most of all - noteworthy for being the only animal at the time that seemed able to survive in the chalk deserts of the early Switchboard. Wherever the kin went, the aurkyte had been there, surviving - thriving - in the harshest pockets of the world. Known for their gold color and ensemble of wings, theyâre a prominent figure in Danseer mythos, and the chalk growths that form on their skin - resembling the wings of these legendary beasts - is viewed as no coincidence.
While harmless, allowing them to grow is general a sign of poor hygiene, and they tend to be removed and disposed of once sufficiently formed. Their presence is synonymous with the Silâkhan themselves, as such. While one would imagine that something with the significance it had to the Danseers would preserve that significance with the Silâkhan, such is true only in passing. Many Silâkhan still preserve them as habit, but just as many are inclined to treat them as a bodily annoyance, one to be dealt with in private after bathroom sessions, on personality tests, but never where oneâs repute might matter, lest someone risk imagining theyâre in the company of similarly lax-minded in reverence to custom, only to find themselves sharing air with zealots.
Adaptations The Old Danseers were a people engineered for the context of their birth. They were born in a cradle of hard chalksand under the scorching newborn suns of the early, then-nameless Dancirah, and scrounged for something of a living in the dust only to learn their nature was anything but. From the scorch and dust they rocketed upwards and outwards into space, where the stars were fiercer, vacuum colder, and every metric from the fangs of beasts to the impact of physics was torqued to killing extremes. Culling was swift - evolution only slightly less so - as the Danseer shape was filed down to machine precision. What came out the other side and then went on to defeat the First Thinkers and take the stars for itself was the amalgamation of many things, but curious and noteworthy amongst them is as such; very, very good feet.
Strider Protocol flight is fundamentally predicated on the feet, after all. Striding of course is a bodily task, but the flaring of velocity is done with the feet. As a nomadic people, the early kin and the Danseers chief amongst them were veteran pedestrians, and thus much was asked of their feet. Those who could answer the demands went on, perpetuating that pattern into the Danseer final shape, while those found lacking fell by the side. The early Switchboard and the Strider Protocol were for those with good feet, and the Danseers had the undisputed best of all.
Beyond being larger, they were better suited to the flaring of rule out into the cosmos. They had better balance, were more resilient, more suited for somatic gestures even in ritual casts. They become instruments, in a sense, by which the subject interacted with the world around them, picking up changes in chalk and the hearts of other kin. The Tomic Stomp is this used in reverse; a praximechanical cast demanding of a specific instrument used in a matter opposite of convention, and the discrepancy being the trigger for further ritualism.
Consequently, the Silâkhan would inherit the same, and come to have feet slightly larger than perhaps they should be, and definitely larger when compared to the proportions of the rest of the Switchboard. Quite a lot of custom and culture would come to surround both the feet and hands for their exaggerated largeness and coincidental (or perhaps not) significance to flight and weaving.
Modifications The Silâkhan, after all, were made.
Perhaps the Felâs hands are simply doomed to stain all they touch with their patterns of thinking, but the Silk are quite as inclined as the Fel are towards the modification of the lattice.
At base the Silâkhan are terribly simple. They employ modification of internal reverse unravelling systems to disable autonomous functions in some places and transfer them to manual control. They carve inscrit, tune their halos, lighten and darken places and others, and get tattoos - often of wings on their backs and arms, pending when they get their next real set from Apotheosis. For them, it is merely correcting a mostly perfect calculus, and takes on nothing of the rich, philosophical overtones the Fel insist exists within the practice. They are utterly forgiving of the entire thing, and perhaps such a feeling is owed as the process recast them rather fittingly. Almost perfectly.
Silâkhan more inclined towards the process are usually so as a product of wanting to fix some fundamental, such as their larger size or the wings that form from Apotheosis. Much more advanced Silâkhan semblework is often to make them smaller, often in keeping with some fancy of theirs, or dealing with the problem of latter-stage Danseer Metamorphosis. More specifically, the problem of being given wings that arenât exactly conducive things to have. Many have the materia of the wings implanted into their person, so that they live within them, assimilated onto the straits. And some still simply give themselves wings - constructs of spun donor lattice-flesh and replichrome that stretch upwards and outwards and rustle and beat in a shower of dust gold. They fold neatly away when appropriate, and spread, beat dramatically when occasion demands. Halos are given similar treatment; those less talented have the ability provided to them by Fel tinkering.
Silâkhan - And Furthermore
Sexual Dimorphism Cursed with a strange, unique brand of sexlessness, really only the aesthetic differences that calculus deemed fit to make coincidental with âmaleâ and âfemaleâ aided the Silâkhan in understanding an inherent part of existing among the cultures of the Switchboard. Consequently, their presentations tend to be borrowed from both what is expected of them and what is not, leading to a societal gendering defined by two distinct sets of commonalities, and then immense branching across and away from both.
The Silâkhan are not necessarily androgynous, and especially not in the state-enforced, from-the-cradle manner in which the Fel are, but they do give the immense sense that they are immensely uncaring of the rules, preferring instead whatever permutation of color and shape picks their fancy. They are god-children in that way; unperturbed by the affairs of lesser kinds. In dressing, they take to whatever they feel defines them, working from what they like inwards, rather than from what is assigned to them, outwards.
Aging Characteristics The Silâkhan are cursed with a youth that comes from never getting old rather than looking young even as you do. Worse - or better - still, they possess a vitality akin to the Danseers, and thus their lattice holds firm from internal operational terrors far better than most. Essentially, the Silâkhan will never truly look old, and will instead suffer a swift descent from their peak to their coffin in under a decade. All the better then, that they are so fond of reincarnating almost perfectly, such that they might come back and finish whatever great work they mightâve started.
And theyâll look pristine every step of the way. The glitter in their sclera will dull a little, and their hair will lose some of that god-kin luster, and they might get curves where angles wouldâve done, but theyâll hold together far, far better than most, and only the ravages of the outside Switchboard will be able to knock any of the pristine sheen off their face.
The Fel-Arcad
On the appearance of the Fel-Arcad, the Switchboardâs elf-eared, arcology-dwelling, fleshcrafter thinkers.
The Fel-Arcad document is an exhaustive breakdown of the Fel-Arcad. It is highly encouraged to read it for even greater detail both related to and outside the scope of this document.
Fel-Arcad - Shape, Face and Color
Order and Proportions The Fel are a terribly diverse lot.
For one, it is arguably pointless the table the matter of a singular âFel-Arcad shapeâ, as every single Felâs shape is a product of a very unstable baseline backbone skewed by the grafting and baselines of all prior ancestors, and further skewed by any grafting and modifications undergone by the individual Fel in question. For this reason, the most apparent indication of a Fel is that they look quite like nothing and no one else. It does not help that this is something of a point of pride for Fel-Arcad culturally, and it can be argued that there is even an amount of social pressure for one to modify their lattice, even to extreme degrees.
That being said, there are enough relatively unmodified Fel with enough commonalities between them to begin establishing a âbaseline Fel shapeâ. The early Arcad differed greatly from the Old Danseers and the kin in general, lacking the immense inclination their siblings had to launch out into the expansive, untreaded world of the Switchboard and come to an understanding of where they had been born. The Arcad of the time were far more content with picking through whatever it was their siblings brought home, studying and making their own sense of it beyond the superficial qualities on it that made it interesting enough to bring back. As such, their lattices were subjected to very little rigor, and thus grew rather svelte and slender.
It lent them a strange ethereal quality, as they soon earned a repute for being the Switchboardâs reclusive knowledge-keepers and wielders of the newly-emerging power of chalkweaving. They cultivated an undeniable gracefulness as they did, appearing almost like spun glass that would shatter if one peered too hard. They were the opposite of the Danseers in this way; while their own attractiveness came from development and definition - seeking to meet the fierceness of the Switchboard and match it in stride, the Felâs came from an alternative path, cultivating a more inner, delicate shape. The Danseers wanted to be the Switchboard at its most riotous, while the Fel wanted it at its most soothing. The Danseer baobab to the Fel willow.
In practice the Fel tend to be fairly tall and thin, easily the thinnest of all of the Families. Their limbs are somewhat spindly, fingers like spun glass, and heads that sit atop their frames as though added as an afterthought, only meshing with the rest of the ensemble due to their appropriately slender faces.
Facial Architecture The Felâs faces maintains much of the motifs of their bodies, favoring a slender, triangular silhouette with quite a bit of distinction given with lattice analogues to sharp chins and high cheekbones. They âdroopâ in a sense - they bear elongated faces - seemingly carved with a method that favors chisel blows from top to bottom, tapering their looks.
Some have come to describe their look as âaristocraticâ, as it tends to share some similarities with certain clans of nobly-born Vahnkin in the Challenger Dark. Their features are smaller and more delicately arranged, favoring smaller, straight noses, thinner mouths and shapely eyes.
It is incredibly rare for Fel-Arcad to have facial hair of any kind, as both in body and shape do the Fel exhibit an uncanny androgyny, emergent within them as product of their favoring the Conjugation as a means of producing progeny, which can be performed without regard for the sexes of the parents. From their faces, it is hard to tell Fel males from Fel females unless one is a Fel-Arcad themselves, and they tend to be terribly unconcerned with the entire affair.
Pigmentation and Texture The Fel-Arcad are a terribly colorful people by design. The utopic living conditions of the first arcology and subsequent daughter arcologies were a product of a harmony achieved between kin and nature, this harmony itself being a product of various early philosophies forming at the time. The ability for those who could weave to shape the world as they saw fit was in some ways mirrored back onto them, producing the driving Fel ideals behind their extensive lattice modifications. Alternatively, grafting was simply a tool waiting for a cause, and once the Fel had solid grasp on how to reshape themselves, they began in stride.
Drawing heavily from the flora of the early Switchboard, the Fel soon rewrote their lattices to produce nearly any color or combination of them they saw fit. They favored the vibrant floral hues that dotted their arcadias and altered their hair and eyes to match; rosy reds and pinks, deep blues and purples, verdant greens, radiant yellows, warm orange, the list continues ad infinitum. No color was any harder to induce than the other, and so imagination was the sole limit. Many Fel then and now were fond of exotic two-tone and even three-tone hair, picking smooth gradients or complementary contrasts to their tastes. Their eyes underwent similar, with both pupil and sclera ripe for repigmentation as their owners saw fit.
The Fel-Arcad would end up being far more conservative with skin tones however, a choice believed to be a product of not wanting to be too ardently different from the rest of the Switchboardâs kin. There was also the fact that the armillary stars would constantly interfere with any particularly exotic skin recoloration, such that the wearer would have to undergo recoloring fairly frequently to maintain their preferred hue. Of course, the Fel are anything but bound by convention, and there are plenty of Fel who consider it an unforgivable waste that the largest canvas the body offers would be left indefensibly blank.
Texture, expectedly, is a consequence of the will. While most modern arcology-dwelling Fel have perhaps concerningly soft forms as a product of immensely conducive living conditions, those who find even that insufficient need only speak to a grafter to be tuned to their liking. Non-arcology Fel such as the Feljourn tend to suffer far more exposure to the harsh light and friction of the Switchboard, which in turn manifests in their skin. But even at its worst, there is the indisputable awareness at even the slightest touch that they are - and I concede this is quite the word choice - terribly cuddly.
Fel-Arcad - Digression from the Mean
Extraneities #1 - The Ears The Felâs various extraneities are entirely the product of deliberate lattice engineering performed by their predecessors - the Arcad - in the early Switchboard. While the Old Danseers were far more gifted with the Strider Protocol and the immense, overt power it granted, the Arcad were gifted in the Weave Protocol, and used to soon begin forming a robust understanding of the workings of the world.
A product of this was learning just how malleable their own lattices were, and thus the Arcad began inquiry into just how far the envelope could be pushed. In the end, they realized that the true limits they faced was singular; imagination. Nearly anything that one sought to realize - should they be sufficiently gifted - could be achieved via the manipulation of chalk.
The Arcad of the time took quite a lot of inspiration from the Switchboardâs fauna when beginning the first practices that would come to be known as Semblework. Even long before they understood the tangible evolutionary advantages provided by any given part on any given animal, they were motivated by an elementary understanding of aesthetic pleasure, and took on a number of grafts merely because they found them appealing.
The Fel-Arcadâs pointed or âelfinâ ears are perhaps the most notorious example of this, a feature inspired by various prominently-eared animals and honed and refined over processions and generations of Fel tinkering and genetic reinforcement. It is perhaps a Felâs most immediately distinguishing trait, being fairly difficult to hide and immediately visible once one glimpsed a face. It does not help that the ears of Fel are rooted into far more motive weft than the ears of any other family, and thus emotions and expressions tend to make themselves known via the Felâs ears as well; changing color, drooping, or perking up as the case may be.
Extraneities #2 - The Second Thumb The Fel-Arcad have six fingers, bearing a second thumb mirroring the first on the blade of the hand. This was placed by the early Arcad grafters, and has come to be a permanent fixture in the Fel backbone.
It was a response to the fundamental workings of chalkweaving; it is an immensely tractile practice, and dexterous hands can take a practitioner very far. Seeking to grow more proficient, the Arcad of old tuned the workings of their hands to make them more exact; trimming away the weft gifted to them by the Astrolabe in place of refined weaving engineered on their looms. But when âbetterâ wasnât sufficient, they opted for âmoreâ, and thus the second thumb was born.
How distinguishing a characteristic this sixth finger is becomes obvious once one clasps a Fel hand in a handshake, and feels an errant phalange weaving between their index and middle, clasping over the rest with minimal issue.
Extraneities #3 - The Tail All other denizens of the Switchboard have ears - even if not honed to triangular outlines - and fingers - even if not six in number - but only the Fel have the tail that extends from their spines downwards and outwards. Similar to the ears, the Fel were inspired by the biosphere of the early Dancirah, and sought to align themselves more with what existed in the world by taking on their more obvious, appealing traits.
Tails tend to be terribly varied among the Fel-Arcad, with variance among them plottable on spectrums of cosmological locale and traceable ancestry. Furred, smooth, prehensile or rigid, long or short, curled, forked, striped, scaled, plated, feathered or tapered, considerable variety exists, and the Fel are rather proud of that fact.
That being said, the Fel do have something of a baseline tail encoded in their backbone, and unsurprisingly it is simian in nature; long, lightly furred and prehensile, capable of serving almost as an additional limb. For Fel whom care less for aesthetics than usual, they tend to prefer this model of tail and even improve upon it, valuing the immense utility it provides both as a tool and as an element of social signaling in much the same manner as the ears.
Extraneities #4 - The Horns The Arcad of old were struck rather irreparably by the cranial adornments worn by the various quadruped herbivores that stalked the early Dancirah. Bestowed with a primordial mastery, they wore their branching horns like crowns and ruled the forested plains of the spheres lucky enough to escape the curse of being entirely barren chalk desert. For the Arcad, the decision was a terribly simple one to adopt similar adornment atop their own heads, and it became yet another defining characteristic of both them and the Fel-Arcad that would follow.
Soon becoming a fixture of the Felâs genetic backbone, newborn Fel would emerge with soft nubs atop their heads, which would grow larger alongside them as they matured into adulthood. The roots of these horns tend to vary, with some growing from the base of the skull, curving upwards and outwards from behind, to behind the ears, atop the head, or even outwards and upwards from the forehead. Their colors have maintained a similar palette as their fauna counterparts, preferring earthier colors. They can split and branch, curve, and grow asymmetrically, leading to quite a bit of variation among individual Fel. Growing speeds tend to vary from Fel to Fel, and those with horns that grow rather quickly often have to trim them as one would trim fingernails or hair.
Being mostly aesthetic in function, Fel tend to adorn them further, using anything from jewelry to pigments to ribbon. They can be carved into new shapes, with relief carvings - much like the Silâkhan inscrit - being a rather favored practice. Over time, the Felâs horns would come to have some social relevance as well, as wearing them in certain ways could be indications of rank, and natural changes to them brought on by various contexts can speak of the Fel who owns them, such as how the horns of a Feljourn, one who has spurned the arcologies, tend to darken and taken on white spots, reminiscent of pinpricks of stars on the void backdrop of space.
Adaptations No discussion of the Fel would be complete without mention of their arcology homes; replichrome constructs capable of being âgrownâ from metal seeds and programmed to form shapes and patterns as needed, even in three-dimensional space. The overwhelming majority of the Switchboardâs Fel dwell in arcologies, as has been the case since they were called Arcad, and the idea of the harmony between nature and kin living spaces was even proposed.
There exists something of a conundrum however, regarding the relationship between the various extraneities of the Fel lattice, and the unique nature of arcology living. At the crux of the conundrum is whether the Felâs extraneities - specifically the ears and tails - were a product of merely aesthetic attraction, or grafted into them as a response to the demands their living context placed on them, in much the same manner as the second thumb.
To elaborate, the first arcologies ever built were not made of replichrome as the material did not exist at the time. Instead, the first arcologies were more so the product of immensely clever growing and harnessing of fauna. Massive hollowed-out trees stretching multiple times higher than even the greatest arboreal giants of our own canon formed the first Felâs living spaces, and while they proved suitable habitats, the Arcad of the time realized that while they could bend the world to their ends, they could bend themselves similarly. As the argument goes, the Felâs ears and tails were grafted on to them to make them better suited for their arboreal living spaces; tails being suited for climbing and balance in tree canopies as well as an extra limb for when the hands werenât or needed to be free, and ears necessary for distinguishing both the origin and directions of various sounds, made possible by their honing into shapes more suited for catching audio.
Where the contention arises of âIt was done to please us,â versus âIt was done purely out of utilitarianism,â is in how the Fel believe they should exist in the Switchboard. The Old Danseers, Fishers and Vahnkin were all fundamentally driven by a desire for conquest, and they were more than willing to subject their lattices to anything necessary for achieving this end. The Fel wanted to be different, driven by less destructively influences; wanting to be beautiful rather than merely effective. The second thumb has become something of a finger on the scale in favor of the Felâs ears and tails being the result of the utilitarian ambition to thrive in the early arcologies, but the Felâs horns - taken on wholly for their aesthetic value - in turn tip the scale in the opposing direction, favoring an interpretation of the Felâs lattice as one created from differing ideals from the rest of the Switchboard. By and large however, the modern Fel are considered to be far more driven by aesthetic considerations due to not having to live in the much harsher world that was the early Switchboard, though debate still rages to this day.
In true Fel fashion, something of a compromise was attained, in which it was conceded that their ears and tails did the double-duty of being effective tools as well as pleasing additions to their form in the mirror. But those who still argue in favor of a utilitarian Fel manner of being are often swift to point out how the ears and tails the Arcad possessed came to be useful in the modern replichrome arcologies, with tails being well-suited for various tasks that require a limb, as well as balance in the high-altitude environments of the vertically-inclined structures, while their ears were well suited for distinguishing the various new kinds of sounds that emerged following the advancement of Fel civilization down the technology trees.
âAre our ears pointed because we thought it was cute, or because theyâre better at distinguishing echoes?â remains a common topic of Fel debate. Unsurprisingly, most Fel care little for it, and do as they feel pleases them, taking grafts because they are pretty or useful as the case may be.
Modifications
The only thing more robust than the Felâs relationship with bodily modification - perhaps - is how exhaustively the subject has been tackled in other documents. For this reason, those interested in the subject are encouraged to seek out the various documents that tackle it. The Fel-Arcad On Shape
The Fel by far are the Switchboardâs greatest practitioners of lattice modification, having pioneered the practice long before even having founded the arcologies. Virtually nothing about the lattice that can be tuned hasnât, with the exception of the Five Straits - and even this isnât a concrete rule. Color, shape, material; all are clay in the Fel hand, and they have made extensive usage of their plastic forms to satisfy even the slightest displeasure they might have towards their forms.
While the above is also true to an extent for much of the rest of the Switchboardâs kin - disregarding various ideological oppositions some parties might have - where the Fel truly set themselves apart is in their both willingness to, and having rejected the humanoid shape entirely. Essentially, a âpersonâ in the Switchboard is their Five Straits. All else is malleable chaff that merely insulates the straits and facilitates easier interaction with the outside world. Once one has this in mind, it is easy to understand how there isnât truly a singular Fel-Arcad shape, as anything that can play host to a Fel-Arcadâs straits is - by Fel metrics anyway - a Fel-Arcad.
Fel-Arcad - And Furthermore
Sexual Dimorphism Of all the Families, the Fel are the ones with the least discernable differences between male and female. Overtime, the Fel pool of genetics has become terribly well-mixed, and thus any trait a Fel has can be viewed as a product of random chance pulling from a single list of outcomes, rather than two distinct ones. As such, it is quite difficult to tell Fel male from female, as every modern Fel draws from fundamentally the same pool at the moment of conception.
It doesnât help that this only reinforces itself more strongly generation over generation, and it is widely suspected that the Fel may one day become virtually genderless in appearance and sexless in practices, an outcome already well underway due to their favoring the Conjugation and general refusal to assign gendered signifiers to any particular role, entity or concept.
Aging Characteristics The Fel - through extensive work on their lattices and optimal arcology living conditions - live very long lives. Any and all aging characteristics that do appear do so terribly slowly, and grow over the course of literal centuries, such that it is mostly negligible. They do share the Lancasterâs trait of losing color as they age, but due to their fondness for bodily modifications, any aging-induced imperfections are more than easily covered up or outrightly nullified.
Indeed, perhaps the greatest tell that a Fel is old is how different they look from how they were when born. One can change a fair bit over a human lifetime, to talk less of a temporal period nearly five times as long, and most Fel mark their passing years with how much more frequently they find themselves visiting the Sembleworks, unable to wholly oppose the gradual decay of their lattices, and needing more and more visits to maintain, repair, correct and redo.
Visually, it manifests as a sort of fuzziness, where colors lose their vibrancy, hair loses its straightness or curls, ears round off slightly and become far less cooperative in expression alongside the rest of the face, and the tail losing much of its dexterity, becoming almost a flag trailing behind them, bound at the waist.
It is a this point that some Fel-Arcad make the decision to strip themselves of a lattice altogether, and take on new, exotic forms. But that is beyond the scope of this document. If I am to leave any comment on it at all, it is that what the Fel-Arcad consider âa Fel-Arcadâ is determined using requirements far, far less stringent than what we would use to determine a human, and quite a number of considerations and accommodations exist for Fel-Arcad that donât exactly fit under the designation of âhumanoidâ any longer. More things can be considered a Fel-Arcad than one would previously assume, entirely a product of the command the Fel have over the malleability of the lattice.
The Vahnkin
On the appearance of the Vahnkin, followers of Vahn into the Challenger Dark.
Vahnkin - Shape, Face and Color
Order and Proportions Cursed by the Void are the Vahnkin. Cursing the Void, do they do in turn.
Sultan Vahnâs move to lead his kin into the depths of the Dark remains a source of contention to this very day, as the ramifications it had would span just about every subject in the Switchboard, from the very anatomy of the Vahnkin as they adapted to this new environment, to the workings of the mechanics of the Switchboard itself following Vahnâs Vows and obtaining power from the Astrolabe to become the Voidâs calculus. We will discuss the former in more detail.
The Vahnkin arose from the chalk desert just like their siblings kin, but soon were led into the Challenger Dark by Vahn. The Void was an environment unlike any other in the Switchboard, sharing only a passing familiarity in its apathetic hostility, and differing in every other manner. The Vahnkin were compelled to gradually adapt to this environment or perish trying, and the existing Vahnkin are a product of the stardrip crucible they were subjected to. Chief amongst the visual differentiators between the Vahnkin and all others is that the Vahnkin are short - much shorter than the rest of the Third Kin. The intense gravity of the Void and its meager food sources meant that the early Vahnkin faced immense opposition even towards elementary, taken-for-granted metabolic processes, the result being that the Vahnkin have become a dwarfish, shrunken people.
Compressed by gravity, their limbs and the rest of them responded in kind. Rather than long, loping limbs, they are shorter and stockier, lattice material packed down tightly to yield materia less suited for mobility, but terribly durable and resistant to damage. Flattened features such as wide feet and palms terminate in stubby toes and fingers, with various locales of the body both hardened against damage and cushioned with spongy weft to mitigate the risk posed by kinetic shock and excessive compression. They can be imagined as almost ball-like in make and thus in appearance, wholly optimized for operating in high-gravity space.
Facial Architecture The Vahnkin are known for hard, flatter faces - a product of the heavy gravity of their birthplaces. Broader and flatter structures distribute gravitational stresses, while the weft that gives their face shape and definition is much harder than most. Their eyes are receded, sunken into their faces under pronounced brow ridges and framed by strengthened motive weft acting constantly to emote even against the downwards pull of gravity. A shorter, wider nose occupies the center.
Pigmentation and Texture The Challenger Dark has no real sun. Instead, light and stellar material from the Dancirah above falls and is trapped in the liquid layer of the stardrip that is the Challenger Horizon. Fluid fluctuations in this Void-spanning layer yield the Voidâs periods of localized day and night with some regularity, and even visitors from outside the Void suffer only mildly disrupted sleep cycles. Noteworthy however, is that the diffused light from the Horizon has virtually none of the browning effect that stars typically have in the Dancirah, and as such, the Vahnkin all tend to be terribly, terribly pale-skinned. Less so pale in the sense of skin lacking melanin, but pale like a corpse or a vampire; utterly drained of even the ghost of color, left with a white broken up in places by patches of grey.
This coloring does tend to change somewhat as Vahnkin get older, with their skin taking on more ânaturalâ color as the effect of exposure accumulates over many years, such that only very young - or very sheltered - Vahnkin still have the sallow white skin. Some Vahnkin prefer to subject the stardrip to a number of archaic processes, converting it to a tincture taken orally that dyes the pale skin a number of colors, ranging from pale blues to purple.
The Vahnkinâs coloration of hair and their eyes is suspected to be a product of stardripâs effects upon them, specifically how it is a slurry of woven calcic matter in liquid form, and thus can be âharvestedâ for some useful weave. Vahnkin hair tends to come in black, white, or various shades of blue and purple, and is often double or triple-toned, that being that the same scalp may produce two radically different colors of hair, their patterning a product of either unknowable calculus or random chance that sees their scalps divided into various sections, each with a given color. Hair styling among the Vahnkin tends to take this into consideration, keeping like locks together, or weaving them into patterns with differently-colored ones. Eyes are similar, though with an immense rarity of white eyes in favor of black and shades of purple. White-eyed Vahnkin are typically noteworthy figures such as nobility or other similarly-highly born. Purple dominates much of their population, with black being regarded as lesser to an extent.
Speaking on texture, the Vahnkin have rougher skin than most, scored and pockmarked by the mildly corrosive stardrip atmosphere of the Void. Reduced exposure to the Darkâs air allows for this to heal, giving the Vahnkin skin roughly equivalent to the average of the rest of the Switchboard.
Vahnkin - Digression from the Mean
Extraneities #1 - The Crystallosk The Vahnkin differ visually from the rest of the Switchboardâs kin in a number of ways, but the most noteworthy after their diminished stature is the Vahnkinâs unique partial exoskeleton.
Called the crystallosk, this structure is instead a collection of distributed modular structures that cover the Vahnkin above their superficial crown. Unique to the Vahnkin is the ability to refine stardrip into amaranthite crystal within their lattices, and this immensely durable crystal is secreted outwards at various locales on their body to serve as armoring and other purposes. Just about anywhere bone would meet bone on our frames, the Vahnkin have an additional armor layer of violet, white-black flecked crystal matter.
Non-exhaustively, the crystallosk covers much of the Vahnkin body, and in particular it tends to dot the face. Thin seams of crystalline deposits worm their way into their faces, following contours and running parallel with where bone would traditionally be, giving the Vahnkin elaborate facial distinction that differs from person to person. Their placement has something of a hereditary component to it, and as such, progeny tends to have a similar âcoreâ patterning inspired by the Vahnkinâs genetic backbone, followed by âfringeâ patterning that is unique to them as an individual. Vahnkin families and orders tend to know their members via this means.
On the rest of the frame, crystallosk armoring covers the knuckles, sheathes the wrists, caps the elbows and double-layers the shoulders, and does similar to the legs, resulting in nearly a full suit of natural armor. Beyond the protection it offers - and other utilities discussed later - the Vahnkin have a decidedly unique appearance because of it, with some likening them to various similarly-exoskeletonâd insects or even to the Second Thinkers - the Vermeil - who were described as having âstony, crystalline bodily makesâ.
Adaptations #1 - The Crystallosk Though being made of crystal, the crystallosk is hardly inert, and quite a bit of physiological control over it is available to the Vahnkin.
It is suspected that the crystallosk first began to form on Vahnkin bodies prior to when they had figured out how to get clean drinking water from the Amaranth Sea of the Challenger Dark, and instead drank the stardrip native to the locale. Beyond a mildly citrussy burn as it goes down the gullet, and the vague sense of taking in something not meant for you, stardrip is mostly entirely processable by Third Kin lattices, but really only by those who have had frequent exposure to it. The Vahnkinâs drinking of stardrip resulted in gradual crystalline deposits forming on themselves as a consequence, and rather than ceasing the practice, they soon realized it was the first core difference theyâd have from their kin in the Great Sky.
Anatomically, the crystal plating of the crystallosk is connected directly to the apical hardshell layer of the lattice, and thus the Vahnkin can be considered to have two layers of skeleton, both within and without simultaneously.
For one, the amaranthite crystal resulting from stardrip passively interferes with spatial curvature - and thus gravity by proxy - allowing the Vahnkin to finely control how strong or weak the effect of gravity is on their immediate person. While not exactly able to use it to fly, tuning the crystal allows for counteracting the immense gravity of the Void, granting the Vahnkin the ability to operate virtually unchallenged in this environment relative to other kin who lack such an adaptation.
It also helps considerably in the very marine lives the Vahnkin live. Much of the Void is the Amaranth Sea, a supposedly endless expanse of caustic stardrip formed from the liquefaction of chalkweave falling from the Dancirah, and thus the Vahnkin are extensively a sea-faring people, ships being responsible for much of the Voidâs travel, logistics and military endeavors. The crystallosk essentially allows Vahnkin - in the rare instance when they are flung overboard - to float. Other kin swiftly discover that stardrip is much unlike water with regards to swimming within it, and soon find themselves victims of a very undesirable fate.
As the crystallosk is chipped, damaged and generally shorn from the Vahnkin, liquid stardrip or amaranthite deposits within the lattice are depleted to replenish the crystal plates. Vahnkin outside of the Void have minimal issue doing so, as stardrip is present in the very air. Outside of the Void however, this regeneration is much slower, and in some cases outrightly impossible, due to the absence of external stardrip to absorb, or local effects preventing the formation of stardrip or the activity of anything that interferes with space curvature.
Adaptation #2 - Claws and Armor As an extension of the crystallosk, the Vahnkinâs nails - both fingers and toes - tend to be made of amaranthite crystal as well. Itâs common practice for Vahnkin living in the Void to sharpen these crystal growths, giving them razor-sharp natural tools for a litany of purposes. The early Vahnkin in particular benefited from such on their hands and feet, as much of the early Void was defined by immense variations in altitude stemming in turn from how entire planets could fall into the Amaranth Sea, and be filed down to conical edifices by gravity and wind. Ready access to sharp claws allowed the Vahnkin to conquer the early Voidâs terrain via climbing, as immensely sharp and tough amaranthite was incredibly suited for digging into rock and gaining solid purchase upon which considerable weight could hang.
In the modern Switchboard - and perhaps it is better to say âamong polite societyâ - Vahnkin find themselves filing away their sharp claws due to the inconvenience they pose to day-to-day, more mundane activities, such as handling soft materials like cloth, or dealing with other kin. Some Vahnkin elect to wear gloves instead, preserving their claws inside metal-tipped fingers, ready for whenever - quite literally - the gloves need to come off.
Far more capable Vahnkin are able to have the best of all worlds, as they have obtained the ability to finely control the crystallosk, and thus produce amaranthite crystal rapidly as the case may be. Immediately growing crystals on the hands, followed by meshing the fingers and splintering the crystals against each yields more than capable improvised claws capable of considerable damage and utility.
Similar can be done for rapidly armoring a section of the body against incident attack, and doing so was terribly useful in the early Void as the fauna - Amaranth Chimeras - were masters of bestial ruthlessness, and easily tore the fleshy, bipedal newcomers to the Void long before they used their command over weft to soon equalize the advantage. Amaranthite shatters upon sufficient impact, distributing the force and acting almost as natural reactive armor plating, giving the Vahnkin a considerable durability advantage compared to others.
It begs mentioning, however, that the crystallosk borne by Vahnkin must be maintained, this being done by semi-frequent consumption of the Voidâs stardrip, as it serves as the raw material from which amaranthite is extracted.
Modifications Ancient enmity with the Fel, coupled with the teachings of the Amaranth Sultan, has made the Vahnkin terribly disinclined towards bodily modifications of any kind. Though there are quite a lot of Vahnkin who arenât terribly fond of their short and stubby statures - often earning the deeply insulting descriptor of âcuteâ by other families - most consider it the height of treason to go, cap in hand, begging the Fel to reshape them in a manner theyâd consider more befitting. The Vahnkin have come to value the shapes that they have as they show they have been touched by the Void, something that - despite its unforgiving nature - has taken on something of deep spiritual importance to them.
Much Vahnkin âmodificationâ then, is entirely non-conscious or deliberate, and instead the product of removing the context within which the Vahnkin live; the Void. Vahnkin who travel to the Dancirah, for example, find themselves exposed to much lighter gravity and much stronger suns, allowing them to grow taller and take on more natural skin coloration. Vahnkin who are born in the Dancirah - an increasingly common occurrence in the modern Switchboard - differ immensely from their Dark-born kin, lacking the heavy weight of gravity to keep them short and compact, the absent sun that makes them pale, and the ubiquitous stardrip that forms their crystallosk. Instead they more commonly resemble Lancasters, though with far more vivid and uncommon shades of hair and eyes.
Vahnkin - And Furthermore
Sexual Dimorphism Contrary to the rest of the Switchboard, the Vahnkin exhibit a very prominent example of differences between sexes in the form of female Vahnkin growing considerably larger than their male counterparts. Vahnkin society was irreparably set on a matriarchal course following the Night of Long Veils, and the ramifications of it perpetuated themselves through praximechanical space down to the material. Vahnkin society is structured somewhat similarly to that of honeybees, something that will be elaborated upon in greater detail in later documentation.
In practice, though physiology hardly works this neatly, one can imagine Vahnkin women to be 1.5x as tall, while only marginally larger in other relevant dimensions, with limbs, head and other bodily parts scaling proportionately as is appropriate.
Aging Characteristics Vahnkin aging is defined rather curiously by gaining color rather than losing it. Stardrip is liquefied information in a caustic slurry, filled with errant weft of all kinds, from ritual schema to the raw fold permutation of color. Imbibing of stardrip is common Vahnkin practice - deliberately or not - and the superficial bits of weft in stardrip tend to get lodged in the bodily systems - slipping through the cracks of various inefficiencies in strait computation - and taken up root in the subjectâs lattice. Most commonly, itâs color, and older Vahnkin observe their skin becoming rosier, or other colors entirely, and similar happening to their hair. The eyes often resist this gradual change, and are thus last to remain obviously Vahnkin.
Lacking the uncanny vitality of the Silâkhan, the Vahnkin age observably. First to begin slow deterioration is the crystallosk, the amaranthite crystals formed having weaker mineral hardness and occasionally even being aerated; saturated with air pockets. In very old Vahnkin, they are mostly unable to form this essential carapace, and thus they are subjected to the blunt end of the Voidâs high gravity to a much greater degree. Over time, as the lattice of the limbs weaken in turn, they can become hunched, buckling under their own exaggerated weights. Many use engineered braces at this point - essentially an artificial exoskeleton - to reinforce the limbs.
The Lancasters
On the appearance of the Lancasters - once Fishers - the Switchboardâs people most like ourselves.
Lancasters - Shape, Face and Color
Order and Proportions The Lancasters have had an interesting time in the Switchboard. Cursed - perhaps - with the inability to either stride or weave, they are denied an otherwise ubiquitous quirk of being a thinking entity in the Switchboard universe. That they have survived for as long as they have at all speaks to their immense grit and resilience, cultivated over processions and generations.
The greatest informer of the baseline Lancaster shape is two-fold.
The first is a hardiness grown within them over the time they have existed in the Switchboard. Everything is fundamentally harder for the Lancasters; to do anything, they must give more than any other family. Gravity weighs upon them heavier, stars burn them harsher, water and wind sway them more easily. They were subjected to an evolutionary crucible far more fiery than any and all other kinâs, and the product is a lattice model that stands at the absolute precipice of what is achievable without command over protocol. Should a Silâkhan suffer a blow, the raw praximechanics of their placement above all else that moves and thinks will soften it long before factoring in all other layers of defenses. A Fel taking the same blow will suffer it far better due to their cultivated optimal lattices. And a Vahnkin has their crystalline exoskeleton to protect them. But a Lancaster taking that blow levies the pure intrinsic material strength of their lattice, and nothing more.
Confirm from Birthing and Being and SB_Physiology if this isnât contradicted in the canon.
The second is a quirk of the Lancaster backbone lattice. Strangely, should a Lancaster and a member of any other family produce progeny, the result will inherit traits from both parents. But it will be majorly red nectar in their veins. The Lancaster backbone is unique among all others in its ability to readily assimilate the various quirks of other kin without it itself changing too greatly, such that the modern Lancaster that currently exists is a product of boons âstolenâ from the other families, while never exactly becoming them. And so the Lancaster fares better under crushing gravity and corroding stardrip than the Silk and the Fel, but not the Vahnkin. He stomachs the burn of stars better than the Vahnkin and Fel, but not the Silk. And he takes to grafts far more easily than the Silk and the Vahnkin, but not the Fel. They are jacks-of-all-trades; immensely adaptable, versatile and component.
As such, while the Lancasters are very much the amalgamation of averages - and look every inch like us - they are skewed in a favorable direction just a tad bit more than we are, in that they are just a little taller, a little broader, a little stronger, than we are. Relative to other kin, they are bigger than the Vahnkin, smaller than the Silâkhan, and more consistent in shape than the Fel. By all metrics, they are terribly, terribly ordinary, but they are ordinary in the context of the Switchboard canon, and as such, they are skewed by mechanics that ensure only the most capable come out the other end.
Facial Architecture In keeping with the above, the Lancasters are very non-descript. The face of any given Lancaster is far more so a result of the kin in their lineage prior than it is a result of any baseline encoding present in the Lancaster backbone.
Much of what differentiates Lancaster faces from the rest of the Switchboard is their cultural disposition towards their own mortality and aging by proxy. The Fel and Vahnkin live the longest in the Switchboard, while the Silâkhan live the shortest. The disposition of all three towards death do differ tangibly from each other, but they are somewhat united in their shared conviction that death is something to be defeated, and aging something to be curtailed. The Lancasters think differently - perhaps as a product of their placement in the Switchboard, lacking the powers that distinguish the others from them. For the Lancaster, aging is an inevitability, and death is a respite.
And so while much of the rest of the Switchboard appears youthful either as a product of their lattice or their own interference with natural processes, the Lancaster embraces them. They wear beards, wrinkles and scars with pride, covering nothing that betrays what they truly are. For them, they are signs that they have survived in a world seemingly cut out for those far greater than they are, that they acknowledged, met, and defied the odds, day after day. A sagging, aging face, a thick, voluminous beard, pimples, thinned skin, folds between the nose and mouth, uneven color, hollows under the eyes; all these are points of pride for a Lancaster kin, and distinguish them considerably from their cousins.
Pigmentation and Texture The Lancasters have mostly wholly inherited the same palette as us with regards to coloring of the hair, skin and eyes. For hair, they vary from black and brunette to varying shades of brown, blond and red, with red in particular being a fairly rare and noteworthy color. Eyes are similar; black and brown, as well as blue, green and grey. Colors such as red, pink and even violet may appear as a product of albinism, and amber is an immensely rare color often found in Lancasters who can trace their lineage back to the early Switchboard and an Old Danseer.
Much of the differentiation between individual Lancasters is a product of their root families, and the features of those in turn are a product of a solidification of certain traits and the recession of others over generations. These differences tend to be regional as well, and so one may observe Lancasters with much lighter or darker skin depending on where in the Switchboard they are. In a sense, Lancasters are sponges; anywhere they survive, they do so by assimilating their environs into their physiology. Where the stars burn brighter, darker-skinned Lancasters are found. This trait is written into their lattices, and perpetuates into their progeny.
Deviation from this is usually a product of other kin in a Lancasterâs family line. An ancient Silâkhan parent may reappear generations down the line as gold eyes in a newborn, just as vibrantly-colored hair may be inherited from a Fel-Arcad ancestor. These traits tend to be recessive, and thus rare, usually only occurring in there rare instances where a Lancaster is born able to weave or stride.
With regards to texture, the hard living of their ancestors lives on as a roughness of skin immediately obvious from the very first touch. This trait tends to worsen or improve based on the living conditions of individual kin.
Lancasters - Digression from the Mean
Extraneities The Lancasters have none.
They are very much human in this regard, lacking any kind of distinguishing quirk of their lattice. Beyond an intrinsic hardiness, the Lancasters have no visually apparent distinguishing trait. Of course, this in and of itself is a means of identifying them.
Adaptations #1 - Internal Gyroscope The Lancasters were once called the Fishers, so called due to their nigh-exclusive profession of âfishingâ things lost in space. The burns from armillary stars only affect Lancasters superficially, and so the Fishers of that time were uniquely suited for operations near stars. Similarly, stardrip barely affects them as well, and so they were only slightly less capable than Vahnkin - and far, far more capable than Silks or Fel - at operating both in the Void and at its boundary.
A commonality between both of these contexts is gravity; its behavior, misbehavior, or absence altogether. Very early on the Fishers proved terribly capable at operating in environments with either tumultuous gravity or none at all - often even surpassing Silâkhan in proficiency - due to an uncanny ability to orient themselves mentally relative to all six directions. Almost like an internal gyroscope, a blindfolded Lancaster will be the most able at identifying where they are facing, how they are oriented, the like.
This trait passed on from the Fishers to the Lancasters, and it has given them an edge in perhaps the foremost Lancaster discipline; operating in space. Being the most numerous in all the Switchboard, the Lancasters pad out the free spaces in the Switchboard between places and objectives, and it is often the case that an endeavor in the Dancirah or elsewhere requires one to launch out into the void of space. It is in these instances that the Lancaster is most capable.
Modifications Though the Lancasters take to lattice modification second only the Fel-Arcad, they are particularly opposed to doing so. Part of it stems from the fact the Lancasters generally regard the other families, particularly the Silâkhan and Fel-Arcad, with an amount of distaste, for reasons ranging from the âstrangenessâ intrinsic to their natures to the fact they tend to look down on them due to their lack of command over Protocols. Most Lancaster modification tends to be fairly superficial as a result; tattoos, piercings, and rarely anything more.
Lancasters do lack the robust reverse-unravelling ability possessed by those with the Weave Protocol, and so the exception to the above rule is the usage of prosthetics to replace maimed limbs. Chromegrafts are also used among the Lancasters - even if rare - and rarely ever for cosmetic reasons.
Lancasters - And Furthermore
Sexual Dimorphism The Lancasters exhibit identical sexual dimorphism to us humans.
Aging Characteristics Similarly, the Lancasters age in much the same way we do, undergoing a very visible aesthetic degradation permeating their entire lattice. Noteworthy is that older Lancasters tend to lose their hair color first, lightening more and more until becoming bone-white. All other changes that humans undergo while aging are similarly exhibited in the Lancasters.