Approved Species Zer'kul

[Trexlyn Antilus]

Images:

[Edited down from Europa Trooper by Koryface http://koryface.deviantart.com/art/Europa-Trooper-386457947 ]
A Zer'kul removes his rebreather due to trace amounts of Chlorine gas in an atmosphere.


Name: Zer'kul
Designation: Sentient
Homeworld: XXXXXXX (On a technicality)
Language: Galactic basic, other learned on an individual basis
Average Lifespan: 450-500 years
Estimated Population: 100,000 - 250,000

Average height of adults: 5'8" - 6'4"
Average length of adults: N/A
Average weight of adults: 155lbs - 190lbs
Skin colour: Human range, rare mutations may allow others.
Hair colour: Human range, rare mutations may allow others.
Distinctions: Have to wear rebreathers on most worlds, smell faintly of Chlorine

Breathes: Type 2 and 3 (due to requiring chlorine gas)

Strengths:

Long lived: The Zer'kul live extremely long lives, approximately 500 years.

​Poison Immunity: Many of the substances lethal to humans have no effects on the Zer'kul, however any particular potent or unique mixes will only have a lessened effect at in a best-case scenario. Thier bodies simply do not absorb most toxins and they just pass them like normal waste.

Weaknesses:

Chlorine breathers: Due to their mutations and adaptions they require chlorine gas to survive, they can go at most a standard hour or two before risking damage with what naturally lingers within their body but doing so will leave them exhausted and requiring an extended rest in their normal chlorine environment or a short time in a high chlorine environment. Attempting to go any longer than 24 hours without chlorine gas risks death.
​
Dying race: Many do not reproduce or have very few children, although their base genetic material is human if they attempt to breed with humans any offspring will turn out fully human, only breeding with another Zer'kul will pass on the mutations.

Sodium allergy: Due to how readily sodium bonds with chlorine the Zer'kul must avoid ingesting any sodium pure sodium is leathal in very small amounts and sodium bound to another element is ingestable but still must be limited to less than 20 grams within a 24 hour period before getting sick and 40 grams brings the same risks as pure sodium.

Races: N/A

Diet: Human normal, however many foods that are lethal to humans are minorly included, and sodium is avoided.

Communication: Spoken language, usually galactic basic.

Culture: The Zer'kul are split into two distinct groups the nomads, and the settlers. The nomad's lifestyle tends to never stay on any planet for longer than a year and tend not to have a group of people they associate with changing often as they hop planets. The other half are the settlers, they find an area or planet that they enjoy and settle down, usually permanently and attempt to make friends with other long lived races, this group tends to do all of the race's reproduction.

Technology level: Galactic Normal

General behaviour: About half of Zer'kul are solitary and nomadic, the other half settle down in a planet and form a small group with other long lived races, they fall into these camps as many can not handle the stress of losing those that have come to love repeatedly. Those who do try end up either very jaded or melancholy after a few of these "cycles"


History:
In approximately 2650 BBY during a time of relative peace during the old republic a large group of colonists were sent to Katarr to repopulate the planet assess the biosphere rehabilitation or if air tight cities would be required. Due to the now toxic atmosphere and the extreme time required to start the task of transforming Republic scientists set to work and growing genetically modified humans. The idea being that work would go faster if safety issues with a toxic atmosphere and if there was no retraining required as members were rotated off planet of various reasons. The initial group of 50,000 was sent, however due "human error" the single large ship was crashed rather than gently set down destroying most delicate technology on board.

It was quickly discovered that due to a navigation error they were sent to another world, XXXXXXX. During the period of time they were stranded the Zer'kul got to work preparing the world for colonisation as was expected of them after all, how long would they be there? Several years had passed and there was no ship from the republic, nor had the makeshift radio gear that they were able to manufacture able to alert anyone of their predicament, it was to be assumed that their expedition had been buried, intentionally or accidentally, by the bureaucratic juggernaut that was the senate. A few years later with still no rescue in sight a split was beginning to form one group wanting to stay with the ship and the others wanting to spread out looking for a way off planet.

Eventually, after a few hundred year and all of the original colonists dying off, the group that had spread out stumbled on a small smuggler base, this enabled them to reconnect with the galaxy at large, due to them being forgotten they needed a name, they choose Zer'kul after the ship that initially brought them there.


Notable Player-Characters: N/A (one planned, will add upon approval)

Intent: To create a race with human aesthetics with an interesting background that has unique atmospheric requirements and strong force potential for use as a nomadic character.

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

Under Review

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

Good afternoon, [member="Trexlyn Antilus"]. I'll be your Codex Judge for this run. Please note, although I'll invariably offer a critique on your work, do be aware that it's all with the aim of getting this submission Codex-worthy and ready to use on the site!

First thing that jumps out at me is the lack of recorded deaths, and the incredible lifespan of the species - 3,500 years is a LONG time!

With regards to your estimated population, it actually requires an estimate: "Very low" won't suffice, since that could be an individual, or it could be a hundred or even a thousand. I'd prefer if it you ball-parked that for us - that noted, never use '1' in these circumstances, because that makes it highly problematic should other writers wish to use your species!

Let's look at strengths:

Your first strength is an absolute non-starter for me. Force strength isn't a racial trait: an entire species can certainly be sensitive to the Force, but there are no circumstances under which being so would make them naturally stronger than a non-Zer'kul. Please remove this. I'm willing to acknowledge that the entire race is Force Sensitive, but nothing more than that.

I'm dubious of the lengthy lifespan, honestly - none of the background you've given is reason enough for that, to my mind. Force Sensitivity does not extend life the way that you've described, certainly not for thousands of years! A natural Force User might live a little longer than the average sentient, but that wouldn't extend more than a few decades at most, unless unnatural methods were used - and those methods would have a far bigger downside than requiring them to breathe chlorine!

I'll let the poison immunity pass, since it's not a big deal, but again, it would be a very unusual mutation. I am curious as to the mechanism involved here, though: technically one could count high-levels of oxygen as a poison, and yet their systems would deal with toxins differently to the absence of chlorine? I hope you see where I'm going with this...

As for the weaknesses, the two you have are good, but not particularly weaknesses for the individual members of the species: their low birth rate will have very few consequences for an individual character, and having to use a chlorine rebreather is fairly simple. We have the technology! I think you could do with adding one or two more, to balance things out a bit - particularly since they're mostly (if not all) Force Sensitives (who could easily learn to survive without Chlorine Gas).

The history is a little short, but I guess that's true for the actual species itself. My only big concern here is the means by which the Zer'kul came into being: there's no ritual or technique performable by the Jedi that would let them do that. The level of Force energy needed simply to heal a major injury is sufficient to utterly exhaust an accomplished Jedi, and this goes way beyond that. I can't honestly see it happening - particularly since it would require that the four Jedi and their students had knowledge of an esoteric ritual capable of doing that, which seems to be a massive longshot (particularly since there aren't any!).

I can see that you're going for a good rationale for a major biological mutation, and though the Force seems like a good pathway for this...I don't buy it. Radiation could trigger a mutation, but there'd need to be a lot of it (think long-term exposure to a Reactor radiation leak, for example), and death would likely be the outcome moreso than a consistent group-wide mutation of that caliber. It's problematic, quite frankly.

I do like the idea of what you're proposing, but I honestly think it's a little too flawed to work effectively without some serious changes. I'm willing to work through them with you, though - I've found that Species submissions tend to be a lot of work to get right. We can do it, though! I'm sure of that. So have another look, and then see what you come up with. We'll go from there.

Thanks for your submission!

 

[Trexlyn Antilus]

Hi, I'm currently in the middle of a powe outage and on a rapidly dying cell phone, I'll fix what I can and explain some of my rationale.

First the population amount, I had just been looking at another submission as a guide and I guess standards have changed since then I was thinking somewhere in the ballpark of 100,000 to 250,000.

Thier long lives was a bit of 3 am genius (as you pointed out with my lack of explanation), that was intended explain to the nomadic lifestyle of many of them.

The force sensitive thing was my attempt at filling in a hole I had made with "If they are so long lived and have a very low birth rate how would they gain any force users" dropping the life span to a few hundred years should fix this, it removes the hole and remove the first strength and replaced it with something more appropriate or just remove it.

The immunity's initial idea came from the fact that there would be more then just one harmful chemical in an ship, especially one intended for scintific purposes, but it could be explained as thier bodies simply don't absorb them and since it wasn't perfect they did start absorbing the chlorine and eventually developed more like an addiction than a genuine requirement for it.

When you spoke about the force not being able to do what I needed it to the issue is that I didn't know anything that would do that but I couldn't think of anything that would allow for a uniform change over such a short time. I could go for the genetic engineering route and start explaining everything as intendeding to adapt them to a specific world of that would be preferable, how they can into existence isn't important, it's where they ended up by now. In my experience a first draft like this almost never looks similar to the end result.

[member="Tirdarius"]

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Trexlyn Antilus"]

Bearing in mind that you still need to make the changes we've already discussed, I wanted to comment on your thoughts, having discussed your sub with my Codex colleagues.

Regardless of the lifespan you stick with, we'll need actual numbers for an average - 'Unknown' simply won't work for us, I'm afraid.

100k-250k seems like a reasonable number of individuals for this species, given that it's been roughly 3,000 years since they came into being, and that their birth rate is staggeringly low. We're fine with that!

You're very much correct that this will definitely not look the same as it started out, once we're done with it! Please let me know when you've got your next draft ready, so we can go through it. Thanks!

 

[Bartic Myth'rand]

Edits now added to original post.

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Trexlyn Antilus"]

Just for reference, we ask all our submitees to only ever post the one submission - when you make edits, just amend your original post, rather than re-posting them, please! You should always use the same character account to do so, too. Keeps things consistent!

Going through your edits, I still feel that the weaknesses are insufficient compared to the strengths. Trust issues vary from person to person, and while it might be a cultural trait, it is not a racial one, and thus could easily be ignored by anyone trying to write a character of this species. That especially counts on an RP site, where being social is a necessity, for the most part!

That said, I'm happy with the adjustment to the lifespan: 500 years is much more reasonable, so I think we can say that one's locked in.

As for the history, this part makes absolutely no sense to me:

The initial group of 50,000 was sent, however due to a miss calculation in the hyperspace coordinates the single large ship crashed and due to an administration error the initial check in was set for 50 centuries rather than 50 days.

I don't imagine that an administrative error would make anyone forget a ship big enough to carry 50,000 people (which is bigger than a Star Destroyer), the resources attached to such a mission or, of course, the costs involved. I just don't see that happening. Also, a ship coming out of hyperdrive close enough to a planet to crash would not survive - and neither would the people aboard it. They'd burn up in the atmosphere, since the ship would fail to decelerate in time to save itself. The reaction time of the crew on realising that they'd made a bad jump wouldn't be sufficient - not to mention that standard Hyperdrives and Navicomputers are designed to pull a ship out of hyperspace in the presence of a gravity well - that's how Interdictors work!

Also, 50,000 people isn't an exploratory group - it's a colony!

I'd also note that, for a species, we'd ask for a good deal more history than that - a single paragraph doesn't do much to describe what they've been doing while stuck on that planet (aside from a note that says they were reproducing!). How did they survive after the crash? What society did they build thereafter? What cultural identity has emerged? That sort of thing.

Not to worry, though - you're getting much closer with this draft. Good work

 

[Trexlyn Antilus]

[member="Tirdarius"]

I made an update to history and put a place holder for an additional weekness

 

[Trexlyn Antilus]

[member="Tirdarius"]

Added a third weakness

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Trexlyn Antilus"]

If I'm honest, my friend, I don't think you quite understand how a racial weakness works. 'Being single-minded' is not a weakness: it's an aspect of cultural psychology, and isn't inherent to their race so much as their society. If I wanted to describe English people (I'm English myself), I might say the word 'reserved'. This is not a racial trait: it is a stereotype. Not every English person is reserved, indeed, such may well be a minority, but something we associate with English people nonetheless. Much like the tea drinking! None of that constitutes a weakness.

When we're talking about weaknesses in a species, we're looking primarily at physiology: the Hapans have very bad low-light eyesight, for example, and cannot see in the dark. That's a weakness: a physiological trait that every single member of the species possesses, unequivocally, and which provides some actual disadvantage to them. Not something ambiguous, of a strength-masquerading-as-a-weakness (for example, "This race is highly arrogant as a result of their intelligence," which is pretty common, but actually ends up being used as "this race is intelligent").

On another note: Communication is listed as 'Spoken language'. Is this Basic, or a language native to them? That's something that definitely needs clarifying!

I'll be honest, I still don't buy the story that 50,000 colonists, their ships and resources just 'disappeared' and were forgotten. You'd figure the ones paying for all of this might have at least wondered where their credits disappeared to - the idea that the Republic would simply up and forget such a thing is utterly absurd. Somebody would notice. And, again, a navicomputer error would have one of three consequences: it would either drop the ship somewhere other than the intended destination, it would pull the ship out of hyperspace before it crashed (since the system would detect a gravity well, and be pulled out of hyperspace safely) or, if the safety mechanisms were busted, it would mean the ship crashed into the gravity well and would be flattened like a pancake. No survivors in that last scenario!

For your purposes...I'd go with engine failure, forced them out of hyperspace at a planet they had not intended to arrive at (which means they're essentially lost - meaning that they'd not be found by a search party sent by the Senate!), but wasn't ideal for supporting life (as you note, gaseous atmosphere not appropriate to supporting human life without some form of support!). Hyperdrive malfunction could not be repaired, the ship was forced to land on the planet as resources became low, invariably causing the other problems you've noted in your submission. It'd be a neater write-up, and far more technically appropriate.

Also, now I think about it, you might want to submit your planet as a separate submission - it's not on our galaxy map, insofar as I'm aware, so might be worth adding it to the Codex.

Hope that helps

 

[Trexlyn Antilus]

[member="Tirdarius"]

Swapped "One track mind" weakness for "Sodium allergy" weakness

Also Katarr is on the map to the "north" of the Hydian Way

Added a placeholder for another planet, which would be the planet they actually landed on, I will create that upon approval of this species.

The whole accident was actually two parts first they were sent to the wrong planet and that they screwed up putting the ship down, they are not part of the same accident.

 

[Teynara Jeralyr]

[member="Trexlyn Antilus"]

Oh, you're right. I thought I'd heard that name before, and there it is. That planet choice is fine - it's uninhabited, or used to be.

Splitting that into two accidents works (though the term is 'on board', not 'on bored'), even if the statistical likelihood is shocking.

If you're going to submit the new planet, you'll need to push through an edit to add the planet name into this sub later on.

The Sodium thing: have you ever ingested pure Sodium? I haven't, and neither has anyone else I've met. Sodium Chloride, sure, because that's table salt. Just a thought.

I'll push this over to [member="Silencia"], so she can look through it, and either feed back or approve it. Thanks for your time on this submission.

 

[Trexlyn Antilus]

[member="Tirdarius"]

I just looked at it and pure sodium is dangerous as hell, my bad, I'm just gonna change it to very small amount (I couldn't find a leathal dose and pure sodium does not naturally occur). Also I do a lot of typing from my phone so autocorrect probably swapped board for bored with out me noticing.

 

[Quietus]

Thank you for working so diligently with my Judge. Good work.

Approved.