Profile The Echurans

[jayphailey]

Profile The Echurans

Name: Echurans from Echura

Created By: Jay and Garry

Short Summary: Happy Dinosaurs who are pleased to meet you

Apppearance:
Adult Echurans weight between 150 and 500 pounds. They resemble Velociraptors with bigger arms. When runninging their body extends straight out, but when talking or doing stuff they can rest it at 70 degrees or so.

Their skin is thicker than a humans, They are green and blue blotches or stripes .

Their head is actually a good deal rounder than the Jurassic Park Velociraptors and shorter. They have biocular eyes.

Biology:
The Echurans are normal in terms of DNA and Biochemistry. Their DNA is compatible with Earth forms but tells of a different history.

The Echurans have a lot in common with avian physiology. Their life processes borrow a lot from birds.

The World of Echura has all the different plants and animals of any Earthlike world, a majority of them recognizable to terran biologists. But they also have saurians in a lot of roles.

The Echurans reproduce by laying eggs. The eggs start off leathery and harden, becoming more brittle over time. Echurans will assist their young in eggs and outside of eggs.

females lay 1 to 4 eggs at a time. More have been known but this implies health problems for the young.

Males and female will incubate eggs, taking turns. A sitting mother will have a desk and do her business while she sits.

In ancient times sisters and female relatives combined egg clutches, and the young were raised in a family group. This still happens, but less aggressively.

In modern times, incubators can be used but this is considered unnatural. The young benefit from hearing adults around them. Heated "nests" are common.

The Echurans bend towards long term mating. Instead of a marriage, they form a "Household" with rules governing property and wealth surrounding a household.

A Female is the head and center of a house hold. She might have one male mate, or she might have more than one.

There might be more than one female in a house hold. There are careful rules concerning which female is the head of house hold and how other females are ranked. This is consered old fashioned, but has never entirely gone away

Dimorphism
Among Echurans, Females tend to be a little larger. Large size in a female is considered attractive.

Ammong males, speed, dexterity and quick thought is condsidered attractive.

So the ideal couple among Echurans is a large female and a quick, fast male.

But, since these are living people you'll find variations all over the place.

Children start out sub sophont and grow into bigger brains. But they can run and poke into things within a day or two of hatching. Baby Echura will climb anything and put anything into their mouths.

Their vocalizations start out raucous raw and emotional. Then they become music. Afterwards they build in lyrics.

it is not uncommon to see young with collars on leashes. An Echuran creche resembles a daay care and a prison - for very good reasons.

Most Echuran cities have long "Chase parks" where young Echurans can chase robot or real bunnies. This is really not fun for the bunnies. Holographic bunnies are considered a bad idea because they leave nothing to catch.

Young Echurans are very cute and *extremely* dngerous.

Location:
The SW corner of the Calad Empire - Anti-spinward and Coreward.

Population:
About 3 billion people.
There are several million Calad people Including Ane on Echura, as part of being in the Calad Empire.

Languages:
The Echura Language is a collection of trills, whistles, honks, shrieks and weird noises. Like a flock of Song birds trying to out do a drunken woodwind section. Their voice boxes are much closer to Avian than humanoids - this makes their language subtle, versatile, marvelous and all but impossible for humanoids to learn.

There are many different Echuran languages, most, if not all have been programmed into universal translators at this point.

The Echurans do not have a distincting between "Music" and "Language" for them, these are both the same thing.

Government:
The Echura government comes up in layers. The bottom layer is a "County" or "City" council. These handle the day to day running of their zone.

The next level up are provincial councils, and then regional councils.

At the very top there is a world council. It is made up of the oldest, largest females. They are careful to govern lightly and with great deliberation, to make sure they never break the image of being the wisest of the wise.

Economy:
The Economy of Echura is a modern Calad economy.

The Echura make a point of allowing commerce and trade in such a way as to allow winners and losers, although its biased towards "winning"

There are large trade houses which either run broad sectors or are specialized. So there can be the Northern Songbirdland Trade house, which dominates trade in Northern Songbird land or there can be the Fusion Powerplant Trade house, which dominates the construction and deployment of Fusion power plants.

There are medium and small trade houses.

The smallest are small groups of males who work with great enthusiasm and energy. These small groups of males can be enormously inventive and creative. They can also take unwise risks.

The reason for this is one way that males woo females is to present them with "Shiny things" Also, food helps.

Although their intelligence broadens this out considerably, the basic urge is there. A male presents shiny things and food to a potential mate.

Hand crafted items, works of literature and science, successful battles for social improvement have all counted as "Shiny Things" - although it is common to commemorate abstract things with a shiny token so males can present them.

A small trade house is usually a successful male or group of males who have wooed a female or females into their orbit, and the female then reform the oranization into a more stable form.

The Echuran also like to give each other gifts just to reinforce friendship and social bonds.

The Echurans would consider Earths view of economics to be perverse. Although they appreciate an energy economy that takes care of everyone, earning and trading shiny things is a key part of their social structure. They would take an earth style energy economy but then coin "Credits" - tokens of energy credits in various denominations to trade with each other.

This has moved into space. The Echurans run a lot of space commerce. Small ships can be manned by males looking to make shinies to woo females - these would tend to be adventure ships and explorers. Ships with females aboard tend to run in a more business minded sense.

Larger ships can be run by small groups of females and their mates.

And there are a number of Space going Trade Houses which run numerous ships and regular lines.

Military:
Almost none. When contacted by the Calad, the Echurans were a violent people. Bands of males would hunt and fight in teams over females. They moderated this enough to form a civilization, the death tolls were still high.

When the Calad adjusted the Echura they ENJOYED the result and consider it one of the best things that ever happened to them.

Modern Echurans think violence is INSANE and people who are violent to be scary and crazy.

There is crime on Echura so there are police forces.

The Echurans have a space going force called the "Space Police" - and they do just that. Law Enforcement. The Echurans resist making any tougher defenses because of their own distaste for violence.

A parallel "Space Rescue" force also exists and does SAR. There are a mixed mode cruisers that do both the Space Police and Space Rescue missions. But they are lightly armed and defended. The Echuran just don't see the need to go any further.

If presented with a threat that required military power, the Echurans would lean on other members of the empire and learn from them. Building warships and raising an army would be a very sad affair for the Echurans.

But there is a limit. Past a certain point an Echurans brain might just ditch the Calad Adjustment.

Then presenting bloody chunks of enemy to females would count as very shiny indeed.

This is why the Calad don't push the Echura too hard.

Many Echuran individuals do tours of duty with the Cordy to learn the required skills, but even then, they prefer to take non combat and support roles.

-*-

Exploration and scouting is considered to be a civilian, freelance, male business for the Echura. So there are numerous scouts and explorers poking their snouts everywhere looking for shinies.

When confronted with evil, they tend to view clever ruses and escapes as the best way to proceed. Echuran males tend to flee from violence now.

pre adjustment males would only stand up and fight if they had a commanding advantage. Ambushes and hit and run raids were their bread and butter. They were natural Guerillas. So they liked high mobility and weapons with high immediate damage output, but easy portability.

Modern Echuran males hide, flee, misdirect, tell persuasive lies or try to verbally turn the tables on enemies. Violence is extremely unpleasant to them.

History:
The Echura were iron Age when discovered by the Calad. Sailing ships, muskets and cannon. The Calad adjusted them and then brought them into the Empire. Since then they have been living their best lives and enjoying it.

Culture:
The Echura culture is musical, quick witted and trade heavy. There is nothing an Echuran male loves more than a Haggling rap contest, musical improv that results in shinies to woo females with.

Females love to create trade empires.

Echuran night life is a musical bargain hunt.

They have a sport called "Chase ball" which is very similar to soccer but with a lot more biting.

Young Echurans **LOVE** bedlam, but Ane have to occasionally think **Remember! People!** at them. Even very young pre-verbal Echurans will confusedly pet and be contrite to an Ane they get a little overly bitey with. They don't mean any harm.

Young Adult Echurans love to race Ane. This is competitive in sprints but the Ane dominate over distance.

Older Echura love to sing with the Ane. Both voice boxes are odd and make for lovely music.

Relations:
The Calad - the Echurans are four square pro-Calad. The consider people who don't want to be adjusted to be a little wierd and anti-social.

The Echurans love the Ane, and want to meet all their friends. The Echurans find just watching Ane move and exist to be interesting. They enjoy the voices of the Ane.

Aragron - The Echura love to adopt Aragron people and take them out exploring and trading. It's their way of trying to kick them out of their complacency.

Cordy - the Echurans privately think that the Calad didn't adjust the Cordy *quite* hard enough, but will never say so publicly. They love to trade with the Cordy and be friends.

Drex - the Echurans enjoy the Minds of the Drex. They find Drex dancing and athletics to be hypnotizing to watch.

Hruu - the Echura love to hear from the Hruu. They like to watch Hruu move and to hear their songs and stories.

Nuradan - The Echura have joined in the Science project to understand the Nuradan.

The Federation: The Echura are eager to go visit the Federation and find out about all the new people.

The Trantorian Empire - the Echurans have greeted the concept of the Trantorian Empire with some disquiet. They hope they don't have to grapple with the idea in a more practical sense.

The Klingons - the existance of the Klingon Empire is not well known among the Echurans. The few who do know of the Klingons might just suffer nightmares. The Klingons represent everything the Echurans think is just a very bad idea.

Advantages:
Good natured, witty, social

Weaknesses:
They have a strong distaste for violence.

Campaign Role:
Weird people in the Calad Empire

[Innkeeper]

Going some place with this?

[jayphailey]

No. I just stumbled into it and thought it was neat