Vari
Oculoptera avolitans
The industrious insectoids known as Vari are known for their pragmatism and their resilience. They evolved on a world where death in the form of much larger creatures, with even bigger jaws, lurked around every corner; their drive to survive left them with thicker skins than most, and bigger hearts (or equivalent hemocoelic systems). Among the Vari and their firm friends in the Alliance, no one is left behind – no matter how many they number, or what odds they face.
Vari Appearance
Requirements
Vari have long antennae, which may be glued on as prosthetics or incorporated into a headband or headdress. These antennae can be in any insect style. They have chitin instead of flesh, which can be phys-repped through make-up by drawing angular ridges on your face and other visible areas of skin, or raised prosthetics.
Additions
- Mandibles
- Multiple antennae pairs
- Nonhuman skin tone sections reflecting insectoid colour schemes.
- Multiple pairs of smaller insectoid eyes on the cheek or forehead.
Avoid
Don’t give yourself an extra pair of functioning arms – Vari are born as six-legged grubs, but they lose the middle pair of limbs in adulthood. Any nonhuman skin tone makeup should blend in with your natural skin tone, and never be full brown or black makeup if not your natural tone.
Variant: Vestigii Vari
A few vari, the Vestigii, have vestigial insectoid features such as abdomen-style tail sections, carapace shell parts, wings, or non-functional limbs partially fused to their torso/thorax. If removed, these vestigial parts do not regrow, and stumps will become hardened chitin.
Vari Biology
The Vari vary in form, size and colour – but they are all invertebrates with hard carapaces and striking antennae. A mature Vari has four functional limbs; two back legs on which they walk, and two front limbs with dextrous claws for manipulating objects. The more malleable chitin on their cephalon allows them to make facial expressions which are legible to humanoids.
Vari lay soft ridged eggs, which hatch into six-legged “grubs” after roughly six months. These larvae are raised in large communal nurseries for up to 18 years, during which time they slowly grow to their adult size and shape on a diet of nutritionally dense protein jelly (traditionally derived from domesticated Vari livestock). From the ages of 4 to 18, the Vari is considered juvenile – their middle limbs will generally have degenerated by this time, and they will be capable of speech and of being taught.
Vari do not pupate, but they do experience a shedding of their exoskeleton every five years. Removal of the exoskeleton is an intensive and intimate process, which often requires assistance from loved ones and/or medical professionals. A Vari with no complications in shedding – which can lead to asphyxiation or the loss of limbs if it goes poorly – can live for up to 50 years in the oxygen-rich environment of their homeworld. Vari with access to medical technology and reuptake implants can live for longer in environments with lower oxygen concentrations; as much as 90 years.
Adult Vari that exhibit traits from either their juvenile stage (such as a more developed set of medial limbs, or a soft tail-like abdomen) or their evolutionary history (such as non-functional wings, or heavier elytra-like shells) are known as Vestigii Vari. These traits have been considered to be burdens or signs of good fortune at different times in Vari history, but they are seen as simple natural variations in modern times. Vestigii traits that are lost through injury or illness do not grow back, with the wound simply healing over as a scar.
Vari Culture
Vari culture has been shaped by a fear of fire – the planet’s high-oxygen atmosphere can turn a spark into a raging inferno, and much of their technology developed around the need to control heat. Without mastery of fire for most of their history (and therefore without access to the advanced metallurgy that defines industrial advancement for many other species), the Vari adapted by relying on organic materials instead. The dense armour of Chetom’s fauna and the flexible cords of its fungi make adequate substitutes for steel and cable, and there has been some research into using these materials as sustainable low-energy alternatives to standard FABREP production.
Many Vari choose to adorn themselves with small garments spun from silk – originally taken from Silseradi as trophies of a hunt, and passed down over the generations. Scarfs, arm wraps and other silken accessories are worn in memory and in mourning of the lost Apharid flocks, who died trusting the Vari to protect them.
The underpinning of Vari society since the Muster is a philosophy called “redundantism”. In brief, this is the idea that any member of a community needs to be able to take over the duties of any other member if needed – a useful cultural tenet, in hard times when the loss of a skilled hunter could mean the starvation of their kin. All adult Vari raised on Chetom are trained to be able to take on as many responsibilities as possible, so that any gap in the workforce can be filled by any individual; some Vari raised in this system find it difficult to adjust to the specialisation preferred by Alliance work crews.
Species that are contacted by the Alliance typically undergo a trial period in which they are gradually introduced to new technologies and other lifeforms. For the Vari, the process was fast-tracked: it was deemed that the conditions of their homeworld were such that it would be unethical to restrain them there for longer than necessary. The Vari have returned the favour by throwing themselves into Alliance endeavours, embracing the culture and technology of others with curiosity and fervour. Things that were once unthinkable, miraculous, are now commonplace, and the Vari look ahead to a sun-bright future.
Naming Conventions
Pre-Alliance vari usually named their children after the order in which they were born (i.e. “First” as the name of the firstborn, “Second” for the second, and so on), wasting little sentiment on individuals as they devoted themselves to the group. This scheme has survived to the present day, but only applies until the vari comes of age in their final metamorphosis – afterwards, they choose or are given a moniker that relates to their interests or their appearance, and will further personalise the name over time with abbreviations and related nicknames.
Language examples: Chetom (homeworld), vestig (“possessing redundancies”)
Name examples: Gold-eyes (Goldie), Prefers-shadows (Shadows), Hard-shelled (Shellie)
Vari Homeworld
Galactic Co-ordination System: Horizon, LATROFER-1
Adult vari are among the smallest mature lifeforms of their homeworld, where the most common non-sentient carnivores can grow to be as large as a standard-issue Alliance shuttle. The planet is incredibly biodiverse, though the vast majority of its life is one flavour or another of armoured invertebrate.
While Chetom appears to be a verdant jewel of a planet, it is a nightmare to navigate – there are few arid areas, and most of the planetary biome is rain-soaked fungal forest with wide and treacherous sinkholes and swamps. The abundance of oxygen sustains these massive matted hyphae, along with the immense and vicious megafauna. It also increases the risk and lethality of fire – an aspect of life not helped by the atmospheric humidity, which leads to frequent lightning storms.
Though there are many cultural sites hidden among the stalks of Chetom – the boltholes and longhouses of ancient Vari, mainly – they are generally charted in relation to the three Citadels of old. Each is an named for a mythical monster from Vari folklore:
- Kusulk, the Widening Worm, is a tiered series of terraces leading into a labyrinth of branching dwellings. The Vari honed their stonemasonry at Kusulk, transforming material dug out of the site into a series of concentric fortifications around it. Though well-defended from any land attack, Kusulk and its flocks proved helpless against the Silseradi striding over its walls.
- Nisefid, the Storm of Mouths, was woven under the cap of Chetom’s largest and strongest fungal copse. Nisefid was the birthplace of Vari sericulture and the home of its finest cuisine, with the milk crystals of its Apharid flocks being especially prized. Unfortunately, such a delicious prize proved irresistible to the Silseradi, and Nisefid was left in tatters; the most damaged of all the Citadels.
- Pasarat, the Filaments Within, clings to the walls of Chetom’s drier equatorial gulch – a series of towers and bridges stretching from cliff wall to wall, each cunningly disguised as a natural geological structure. The large and well-appointed nursery hives of Pasarat held out the longest against the Looming, with the Vari sheltering in the arid depths below.
Though these cities were besieged and then abandoned during the Looming, most of the underground chambers and their defences remain intact. Reclamation efforts aided by the Alliance are ongoing, with archaeological teams and Vari tribal leaders alike rubbing elbows in the amphitheatres and speaking chambers of old.
Vari History
The Vari have strived to preserve records of their people in many forms, according to whatever was most readily available. From inscriptions on coiled shells to lunar calendars woven from reeds, the past has been reconstructed – occasionally from within the carapace of the carnivore that originally devoured it. Be that as it may, exact dates are few and far between; carbon dating of artifacts that have been retrieved after several digestive cycles can only do so much.
Prehistory to A -5000
Proto-Vari evolution on the planet of Chetom is led by their need to be faster and smarter than their many predators. Early Vari cultures are defined by a common aptitude for the domestication of large livestock lifeforms, and by a nomadic bent – Vari who nest in one place for too long become easy prey.
Approximately A -2000
The variegated past of the Vari culminated in “the Muster” – a meeting of folkloric scale between all of the extant Vari bands, culminating in a pact of mutual survival. While Vari groups had always been drawn together to survive blights, banes and disasters of all kinds before peeling apart in less fraught times, this union of the species enshrined the principle of caring for each other as kith and as kin. This principle is frequently tested in the intervening years, but never broken.
Approximately A -2000 to A -1000
This era saw the establishment of the three major cities on Chetom – a triumvirate of well-defended and ever-growing metropoles, collectively “the Citadels”, largely built below the ground for added security. Any material at the Vari’s disposal – from precious metals to the carapaces of hunted arthropods – was fed into new structures and new forms of art, which succeeded more often than they failed. The strength of solidarity (and of numbers, as the population surges) brought the Vari into a golden age.
A -1000 onwards
The golden age came to a sharp end in a cataclysm known as “the Looming”, thanks to the reappearance of Chetom’s Silseradi apex predators. These ancient arachnoids are large enough to loom over the spires of the Vari, and long-lived enough to hibernate for thousands of years in polar ice between brief feeding and egg-laying frenzies. By this point in their history, Vari agriculture had coalesced around a single versatile livestock species – the Apharid, a cattle-sized beast of burden and protein source bred for docility. The helpless Apharidi herds were wiped out by Silseradi predation, forcing the Vari deeper into a centuries-long cultural and industrial recession.
A -300 to -250
Start of the era of “the Flight”, which begins with the arrival of Alliance explorers on Chetom. The opportunity to leave the planet repulses some Vari and proves irresistible to others; the decision becomes the single largest test to the ancient accord of the Muster, above even the lean years of the Looming. Diplomacy prevails – Chetom remains as a home to many and a site of pilgrimage to many more, with those who wish to leave welcomed warmly on their return.
Present
Of the Vari who remained, some accept Alliance help to rebuild the Citadels of old Chetom – while others return to their nomadic roots, seeking harmony with the planet’s ecosystem. Of those who left across the stars, new friends and new opportunities are always around the corner – and even the most fearsome of foes seem small, compared to what they’ve already been through to reach them.
