(S'auvaa Sapling)
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Honestly? I came up with this idea at work and I really want to submit it because I think it's cool as hell.
- Image Credit: (Seedling) Michael (Mick) Mowat, (Sapling) Anthony Francisco
- Canon: N/A
- Links: Adults
- Name: S'auvaa
- Designation: Semi-Sentient / Sentient
- Origins: S'auvaa's Rest
- Average Lifespan: 150 years. 5 years as a seed, 25 as a seedling, 120 as a Sapling.
- Estimated Population: Planetary
- Description: The S'auvaa are a tall plantoid species, covered in thick bark plates. Underneath these plates are leaves, vines, flowers, or other things expected of plants that can retract in and out from under the bark plates and are used for sustenance.
- Breathes: Type 3: They breath carbon-dioxide almost exclusively.
- Average Height of Adults: Seedlings tend to only be around 20 centimeters, while Saplings tend to be around 2.4 meters.
- Average Length of Adults: N/A
- Skin color: Bark tends to be various shades of brown sometimes with green moss.
- Hair color: The closest thing to hair they have are leaves, which are usually green, and flowers which can be many colors.
- Distinctions: Well. Most things about the S'auvaa stick out. So let's make it a list.
- Wondrous Plantoid: The S'auvaa are more plant then they are animal all the way down to their cells. Much of what allow them to be what they are are evolutionary wonders. A nervous system made of specialized fibers which react to chemical and bioelectrical signals similarly to most animals and a digestive tract complete with biologically produced acids which are housed within a tough skin similar to a fruit's skin, preventing it from leaking out and damaging the rest of the body are only a few of the exotic features of their unique biology. The biggest parallel is that the S'auvaa have no brain, or at least a traditional interpretation of one. Their brain is spread out across their nervous system, the whole thing acting as a neural network. This means, simply, that the bigger a S'auvaa grows the more memory and intellect they have access too.
- Armored: S'auvaa are covered in thick wooden plating that is incredibly durable to most forms of damage. Their bark plates are unique in that they are built like corrugated card board, with two plates of bark separated by tiny triangles of a similar substance. Not only does this make the plating very durable but it makes it far lighter, giving them the mobility they need.
- Strange Life Cycle: The life cycle of a S'auvaa is strange to say the least. The S'auvaa are really just the seeds of super trees from their home world. Each S'auvaa slowly sprouts from a seed, which develops into a seedling. Seedlings are not particularly intelligent, categorized as only semi-sentient. Yet as they grow they gain more and more reasoning until they become fully sentient around the 30 year mark. Here they live out their 120 years of sapience as saplings and as they see fit, until they are filled with an overwhelming biological urge to root down and develop into adulthood. Adult S'auvaa lose most mobility and all communication becoming inanimate trees. Their nervous system remain entirely intact, and S'auvaa saplings can interact with these trees, temporarily linking nervous systems in order to access memories of these 'dead' S'auvaa and communicate with them. These adult S'auvaa trees often link roots and nervous systems, becoming one super intelligent super organism. These inanimate trees swap DNA through their roots in a super highway of DNA, which is often picked out meticulously, almost like breeding, to produce the next batch of seeds.
- Races: S'auvaa can take many different shapes, colors, and textures. They are even able to graft some other plants to themselves to access their DNA. This DNA can even be used to slowly turn the S'auvaa more like that plant.
- Force Sensitivity: All
- Strong: The S'auvaa are naturally much stronger than the average human, only a little weaker than a wookiee.
- Adaptability: Their ability to graft other plants onto themselves and incorporate that DNA means that they can change themselves to fit many different environments and situations.
- Light Side Orientated: The S'auvaa are naturally drawn towards the light side of the force, this is a combination of their biological force sensitivity, pacifistic culture, naturally calm demeanor, and logical thought patterns.
Weaknesses:
- Fire: You know how every other culture developed the tradition of gathering up some wood and gathering round a nice warm fire? That's a horror story for the S'auvaa.
- Xenophobia: To put it simply, the S'auvaa find everyone and everything else out in the galaxy so completely alien that it terrifies them. Their entire species eats completely inanimate rock and synthesizes for energy while every species they've come into contact with actually have to kill other organisms to continue to exist, often plants like themselves.
- Darkness Corrupts: The dark side does some terrible things to them. Twists them, prevents their growth, and physically harming them are only a few of the terrible things that happen when dark side is forced on them.
CULTURE
- Diet: Lithotroph , Photosynthesis
- Communication: The S'auvaa have a unique language as it is entirely made up of Palindromes. Unlike many species, the S'auvaa language is entirely artificially constructed instead of having evolved naturally.
- Technology level: The S'auvaa can best be described as having a unique take on technology. What ships they do have that stretch the interstellar void are built from specifically grown S'auvaa adult trees with technology applied where it needs too. They lack droids, blasters, and many modern technologies often finding analogues in nature.
- Religion/Beliefs: The S'auvaa are deeply religious, although they believe in no deity or supernatural entities. Much of their religions focus on cycles, such natural cycles as life to death, seasonal cycles, and the orbits of the planets around stars and stars around the galaxy's core. Yet they also believe in many supernatural cycles or philosophical cycles such as the 'Cycle of Existence' where they believe that every universe only exists for so long before a new one is created to replace it and that the role of sapient life in these cycles is to help the growth of life in each cycle. Or the 'Circle of Certain Change' which is a simple philosophy that nothing ever stays the same, having a preset cycle of evolution that will eventually end up where it started. The disruption of these cycles is seen as the most despicable and cruel thing anyone could do, thus they have a complicated relationship with the rest of the galaxy that have to at LEAST end the cycle of plant life to continue to exist.
- General behavior:
Child Rearing and Family: To put it simply, they don't. As which exact trees are the parents of any clutch of seedlings is ambiguous at best and entirely unknown at worst, they take little time out of their day to care for the young of their species. And as at the sapling stage they cannot reproduce and since they don't rear young they lack the traditional concept of the family unit. The closest thing that they come to is referring to each other as 'Brothers' and the seedlings as 'Little Brothers' and the closest thing they have to a parental figure is S'auvaa, the first S'auvaa, which is where they get their name.
Life: The S'auvaa focus most of their life trying to acquire as much knowledge as possible. This is mostly done through philosophical thinking and debate or through the exploration of the sciences. Yet a few brave souls venture out from their solar system to explore the galaxy at large, searching for any sort of knowledge. Should it be books of legends and mythology or a holocron filled with the knowledge of lost warrior cultures they believe all knowledge is sacred, even if much of it should never be applied. However, nearing the end of their lives any who have left their world return to it to root down and join their global forest. Their knowledge and personality soon merge into the great network of roots to join up with S'auvaa to be accessed at any time by those who still walk. Any S'auvaa that roots down on another world often begins to form a new network, but S'auvaa saplings often search out these groves to transplant them back to the home world so that they would not be lonely and that they may complete the cycle.
Interaction with Others: To put it simply, every other species in the known galaxy terrifies them. The few that overcome this and go out to collect knowledge can often develop some small semblance of sympathy for other species, but most hold on to their fear. The S'auvaa are often exploited for their pacifistic approach to existence, never attacking or harming another being unless it proves absolutely necessary. They have tried to cut their world off from galactic access, yet they do absolutely nothing except hide from or ignore anyone who lands there unless they start causing problems. The only outsiders they will actively interact with are Jedi with their similar philosophies and pacifistic approach to life.
S'auvaa Seedling
"My children are as countless as the stars, their influence has spread past my roots and into the void, yet their story starts with me, S'auvaa. I awoke on this world thousands of years ago, I was the first to gain the higher knowledges that set me apart from my kin at the time who wandered from place to place looking for shelter and good places to bask. I was the first to question, the first to answer, the first to truly explore. I was he who stared at the stars and theorized about their origin, and when my time came to root I followed my instinct. My first children were much like me, they questioned, they answered, they explored. Yet they did what I could not. Society formed, tradition. What thoughts I had to ponder to myself they freely shared and debated, they sought answers I could not provide. Yet when they spoke to me it was with loving adoration, they sought answers. Did I create this place? Was I a god? What is the meaning of life? I knew not the answers. Yet I told them what I had thought when I still walked and they built upon it. Then they rooted, and their roots joined with mine to become me. Then our children continued the cycle. They continue the cycle. With every generation my roots spread farther, my knowledge grows, I know the greater mysteries, I know the secret of the atom, the story of countless species. I am S'auvaa, the world tree." -An Excerpt from a conversation between S'auvaa the World Tree and a Jedi from the Jedi order.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The S'auvaa species started with an individual with the same name, S'auvaa, now called S'auvaa the World Tree. It was this individual that marked the evolutionary step their species took to full Sapience and self awareness, and from then on every step of the S'auvaa species was recorded in the World Tree's memories as every S'auvaa rooted down and joined minds with him. Much of their history was slow to develop as there were very few factors to drive technological development. Food was infinite, war non-existent, and competition was impractical. Much of their early history was spent establishing their philosophy and the creation of their language to reflect this. Care was taken to develop each word, to use the sounds to form it to replicate the cycles of either the object itself or in general. Each word carefully constructed, and assigned a symbol that encapsulated its meaning and origin. The World Tree was the main guide in these endeavors, being the De Jure leader of the S'auvaa species. It was the World Tree that would ultimately push for the understanding of the sciences and then the need to expand beyond their own world as it became clear that their star would not last forever and that one day they would run out of room on their world.
The first species they ran into was humanity, and it terrified them. The World Tree nearly scrapped all efforts to go any further in the galaxy out of fear of being found, exploited, and forced into extinction. Yet it was the intervention of a member of the Jedi Order who ultimately brought reassurance to the World Tree. The World Tree has never told anyone his name, only that this Jedi fled to his world when the clones began to purge his order and sought refuge among his roots, sharing his technology, knowledge, and philosophy with the S'auvaa in an effort to keep some Jedi tradition alive.
