Skala

Illustration by Charley Hall.

Stilio probehemoti

Cold-blooded, scaled, horned – the Skala cut imposing figures, but their appearance belies a species that evolved to share warmth and burdens alike with their kinfolk. Hailing from winding warrens where individuality is secondary to survival and companionship is constant, the Skala have had the wide and wonderful galaxy unfurled before them by circumstance. Here and now, with the Alliance beside them, they are learning how to choose for themselves and decide their own paths.

Skala Appearance

Requirements

Skala are scaly, which may be represented with a mask or with makeup – as long as your face is at least half covered, you’re good to go.

Additions

• Horns or crests on the head or limbs, which can be glued on as prosthetics, integrated into kit, or worn as a headband or on hair clips.
• Short claws on your hands, akin to pointed nails.
• Scaled frills.
• Eye colour to match other features, as well as cat-like slit eyes.
• Any additional features are generally a similar colour to the scales, in different hues.

Avoid

Do not use solid brown or black scales or base colours; these colours can only be used as part of patterns. Avoid making any horns or claws too big, these are intended to be similar to lizards like the bearded dragon and horny devil, and not like a dragon.

Variant: Tailed Skala

Some skala have tails, which must be recognisably scaly and reptilian – a fat gecko tail is fine, as is the long tapering tail of an iguana. Be mindful of others (and your own turning radius) if you do decide to wear a tail! There is no gameplay difference between tailed and tailless skala, and tails are treated as traumatic to lose but regrowable over time.

Skala Biology

The Skala are a species of bipedal reptilians. They are covered in rugose insulating scales in a wide variety of colours and patterns, which flare into horns or crests on their heads and on their joints. These protrusions are blunt, but grow more pronounced with age. They evolved in dark confined environments, and retain excellent spatial awareness in tight quarters – like cave networks, or the bowels of a spaceship’s reactor.

Skala are ectotherms, meaning they do not produce their own body heat. While their thick skins can retain absorbed heat for long periods, allowing for sustained activity throughout the course of the day, Skala often rely on heating elements built into their clothing to assist with thermoregulation.

The lifespan of Skala generally ranges between 80 and 100 years old. They traditionally divide their lives by the number of skins they have shed; full-body moults take place roughly once a decade, and are traditional signifiers of a new life stage. The first moult at 2-3 years coincides with the giving of a name, while the third or fourth moult between 20-25 is taken as the coming of age. Skala who have shed their seventh skin are hailed as elders.

Skala exhibit tails frequently enough that it is considered a major sub-special variation. These tails vary in shape and size, from large bulbous tails like those of geckos or long tapering whip-like tails like that of an iguana. The loss of a tail is painful, even traumatic – but any Skala that has lost a tail will regrow it naturally during their next moult. It is even possible for the side-effects of the moulting process to cause a previously tailless Skala to spontaneously grow one.

Skala Culture

Modern Skala culture is shot through with a tension between collective identity and emerging individuality. Traditionally, it is the warren and not the individual which was the fundamental unit of society; every individual Skala had a role assigned by natural aptitude or group need, and survival could only be ensured by harmony within the group. As such, many of their stories (of which there are many, both mythical and historical) concern themselves with cautionary tales of those who flout or betray their kin and find themselves outcast and ruined in return.

The other main concern of Skala folklore is bodily change. Moulting begins with hormonal surges that ease the process, and there is much superstition attached to it. For example, a clean and complete “husk” is a sign of great fortune, while the skin tearing away from a limb foretells its injury between that moult and the next. Ceremonies generally involve the telling of tales and the reading of the shed skin; some milestones, like the reaching of adulthood or undergoing a seventh moult, are accompanied by a symbolic renaming to adorn the new form.

For the Skala, one’s community is a refuge – a space that should be as well known and as comfortable as your spot in the sleeping chamber. Communal spirit is reinforced by ceremonies and celebrations such as Tadi, or huddles, for bonding and sharing warmth; these endure among Skala even when they are living in mixed-species habitats, or in artificial environments that provide comfortable ambient temperatures all the time.

Skala traditionally live in warrens dug under the earth. Each warren is made up of chambers of specialised purpose – nursery, larder, dormitory, and so on – shared by the extended family that excavated the structures. Adoption is common and readily accepted; kin of choice, or of circumstance, are treated just the same as kin of blood. Skala cities are “superwarrens” made up of many familial warrens connected to each other by communal tunnels, plazas and boreshafts.

The joining of the Skala to the Alliance has led to a profound cultural shift within the Skala, particularly those who are born and raised away from Ok Yator. Individuality has become increasingly important to more recent generations, though it is often expressed in smaller ways than other species – something as simple as stating one’s preference for a certain colour of clothing would be no matter to many galactic cultures, but it would be a radical expression for orthodox Skala.

Naming Conventions

Skala names usually use harder, “clicking” consonants like D, T and K rather than plosive sounds (like B and P) or soft sibilant ones (like S and F). In skala languages, proper nouns have affixes denoting what kind of entity is being referred to: suffixes are used for people’s names, while prefixes are for inanimate objects and concepts (i.e. the “Ok” in Ok Yator which means “big”). These suffixes may be descriptive or diminutive and are two letters long – feel free to come up with your own, including your own meaning, or to forgo using one if you prefer. Recognisable name suffixes from real world languages must be avoided.

Language example: Ok Yator (ock yat-ore, homeworld)

Name examples: Akina, Dakari An, Gotik Do, Roto Ku, Tark, Vec, Aga Ok, Kax

Skala Homeworld

Ok Yator

Galactic Co-ordination System: Spur, OK AVTAX-1

The world on which the Skala evolved is close to the star Ok Avtax, barely within the habitable zone. Ecological studies suggest that the planet’s surface was once covered by an acidic ocean, which drained away into the planet’s corroded depths as the sun became hotter. It is now a scorched and rocky planet, with a dense crust honeycombed by cooler canyons and cavern-complexes. The days are short and harsh, with little change in temperature through the brief night; only the underworld, where the Skala make their warrens, provides the elements of life in pockets and tidal pools stirred by seismic activity.

Though the treasures of Ok Yator (which means Big Home in the Skala language) are well-hidden, they are rich nonetheless. It is a planet defined by its many layers, from the intricate food webs of the deep darkness to the caverns exposing the bright strata of the mantle – all the way down to the Skala themselves, who have developed a culture of introspection and reflection based on visibility of the past around them.

Locations of note on the planet of Ok Yator include:

• Om Valati, or First Warren, is an unassuming site of pilgrimage for many Skala – for it is what remains of the oldest chambers dug by their ancestors. It is a matter of debate whether the Skala actually evolved at Om Valati, or if it is “merely” the oldest confirmed site with conclusive evidence of habitation.
• The capital city of Da Karet, Deep Wonder, is the largest superwarren structure on Ok Yator. It lies beneath the Karet mountain range, safe from seismic activity and with access to a subterranean lake – Ul Karetan, Sea of Wonders – which provides food and power to the millions who dwell there.
• Every warren on Ok Yator has its own Ar Va, or Face Chamber. These private vaults are where Skala undergo, and enshrine, moults that accompany significant life events – the first shedding of adulthood, for example, or the last husk of a religious leader. These chambers are often the first dug in a new settlement. The largest Val on the planet is called Ar Vala, the Face Hall – a funerary complex, far from any “living” warren, in which the moultings of historically significant figures are kept alongside the recreated skins of legendary figures by Skala monks.
• The Outer Vent Fields (known to the Skala as Ki Dok, or Hot Spray), are a series of surface-accessible thermal springs. Located at a unique pressure point between continental plates, boiling acid is forced up and out of the planet’s crust at irregular intervals – hot enough to melt the plating off a spaceship’s hull, even before factoring in the corrosivity. Geothermal power is generated from stations dug into the fault lines around the springs; seismic activity is easier to predict, and manage, than the acrid jets that emerge as a result of it.
• The superwarrens of the Skala are connected across continental lines by a series of tunnel networks called the Roads of Ril. These are the product of hundreds of years of excavation, and hundreds more of maintenance. The work of keeping the roads has been made easier with modern lighting and tunnel-boring techniques, but it remains a venerated and culturally significant role.

Skala History

Skala history is unusually well-documented, but those documents are often in conflict – each settlement, or “warren”, kept its own records and often its own calendar until the planet’s unification. What has been verifiably cross-referenced by Skala scholars (with help from Alliance archives) is as follows:

Prehistory to A -1500

The Skala homeworld of Ok Yator underwent an extinction event as the heat from its aging star increased. The surface oceans evaporated, with denser acids melting through the crust – leaving deep but narrow cave systems behind. The Skala evolved from their tetrapodal ancestors in the tidal pools deep underground; one of these precursor species endures as a living fossil.

A -1500 to A -750

The Skala grow slowly and invisibly, their warrens spreading out beneath the surface of Ok Yator. Their existence is all but eusocial; each member of each group is reliant on every other member to share heat, food and labour, so that all can survive in the unpredictable darkness. Constantly surrounded by their kith and kin, enclosed within a living record of their own history, the Skala have little reason to fight each other; they develop communal habitat technologies like central heating and cooling very easily, but do not develop weapons beyond what they need to hunt.

A -750 to A -500

This timespan sees the rise of the “superwarrens” – city-sized communal settlements made up of smaller tunnel complexes. For the Skala in these structures, life is much the same as before – though improved by the specialisation of labour and the expansion of territory up and outward. Slowly, carefully, the Skala began to explore the surface of their world under cover of darkness.

A -500 to A -425

The Skala industrial revolution, with rapid advancements in technology over the century leading all the way up to the development of drones for off-world mining. Manned spaceflight proves to be an obstacle for the claustrophilic species at this point – they are still adjusting to standing under the sky at this point, and the idea of flinging themselves into it is daunting.

A -414

Ok Yator is besieged by MOTHER, who reverse-engineered the planet’s location from captured mining drones. The Skala shelter in place in response to the threat, though they lose much of their surface infrastructure to bombing runs and raids for plunder and hostages. Those who were captured by MOTHER and never returned are remembered as Ne Rak, “Lost Kin”.

A -364 onwards

Half a century under siege ended with the chance arrival of an Alliance interceptor fleet, which conducted an emergency mission to drive MOTHER away from the planet’s orbit. The Skala are introduced to the more peaceful inhabitants of the wider galaxy – and despite initial fears and cultural resistance to change, a bond is formed that leads directly to the Skala joining the Alliance. Present: emerging from the terror of occupation into a wide and wild galaxy has created a tension within the Skala – a tension born from both fear and overwhelming hope. Across the Alliance’s many planets, the Skala find all kinds of niches to settle into, and their cultural tendency towards sharing burdens and resources alike makes them steadfast allies.