Faery Tales

I'm copying and pasting this directly from my notes, so it will probably repeat some information I already talked about and may not make a lot of sense.

Sidai: All people. Dai is the plural for 'person' (dei) and 'si-' is a prefix meaning 'all'. They call humans naldai (flower people) among other things and Polloi are endai (lower/unfinished people).

The Sidai are the oldest race on the planet. They evolved when the world was young and much hotter. They tend to stick around the warmer areas of the planet: above active volcanoes, deep underground near lava tubes, in the deserts.

They are the only race without magic, though they have very advanced technology which can blur the line.

They are ruled by the Anteridai, who are the children and clan members of the children of their emperor, Eri. The Anteridai are godlike beings: they are immortal and have special abilities: healing (accelerated cellular growth; while it is most commonly used for healing, they can also grow tumors if they want to. They can heal themselves or people they touch and they can sense issues with the bodies by touch. They can also perform less-important jobs like growing out hair at an accelerated rate, altering hormonal levels, inducing lactation, or producing more venom.), telekinesis (requires line of sight, though they can use other Sidai to fulfil this requirement), telepathy (they have slightly expanded abilities at non-touch telepathy, but with a touch, they can read minds, rewrite them, puppeteer other people, and even affect physical sensations), and precognition (which only allows you to see possible futures from your own point of view. For instance, if you have a choice of eating two different kinds of food and you see yourself getting sick from one, that won’t tell you if someone else poisoned it, unless you decide you’ll test it in a lab. Then you can see the results of the test before doing it, since you’ve decided to do it. However, there are issues when two precognitives attempt to use their visions to influence their actions regarding each other. The actions caused by their visions inspire more possible futures – so many that it becomes a tangled thicket, which is nearly impossible to make out or glean information from. The effect can be duplicated by a non-precog simply by basing their actions on the precog’s own, which will not be as effective, but it can change the course of a battle.). There is a one-in-four chance of any Anteridai receiving any of these. Their emperor has four and the rest have two. Crosses between Anteridai and othey Sidai tend to have one, though it is forbidden to have hybrids. Other Sidai can become Anteridai, though hybrids cannot.

These abilities can often be combined in an individual for better results. For example, Nal is telepathic and precognitive. While he cannot read human minds at a distance, he can touch them to know. However, if he used his precognition and looks into a future where he reads a human’s mind, he can know what the human is or was thinking. This can give the impression of being able to read minds at a distance. He can also use his telepathy to expand his precognitive range, so to speak: he can only see what he perceives, but if he perceives something through telepathy, then it counts. So he can see what happens in a faraway village by foreseeing the results of himself travelling there and reading the minds of those people.

Their emperor has telepathy strong enough to look through every Sidai’s eyes. This means he is nearly omniscient.

Anteridai act as the rulers, military, and demigods for the entire species. They are typically the ones in charge of government administration. They do all the fighting – why send ordinary people to their deaths when you have people with superpowers and millennia of experience?
There is a rite of passage among Sidai where young adults are sent to another clan for an apprenticeship to learn new skills. It normally lasts ten or so years. This helps them with connections, as well as improves their clan by adding more skilled individuals. The Anteridai also must do this every hundred years, as it keeps them in touch with the rest of the population. They are forced to act like normal people for ten years. Failure means that they are moved to a new location and must start over until they get it right, and they are not allowed to return home until they do.
(Their precognition means that they have foreseen the end of the world. However, they have not seen the details, since human gods interfere with their abilities. This fact has allowed them to deduce that humanity will cause the end of the world. The details they have seen imply that it’s related to the massacre of humanity’s gods, that the entire solar system will be destroyed, and that a black hole will be involved.)

Sidai have clan groups, which may be or may replace family groups. A set of twins leads each clan, though one twin may be dominant. The leader is responsible for maintaining diplomatic relations with other clans, trading, arranging mating, and acting as law enforcement. They do not have ordinary law enforcement; instead, the leader must punish members of their clan as laid down by the laws. Anteridai run checks of all clans periodically; if a clan member has committed a crime and it was not punished – or not punished severely enough – the clan leader is held responsible for the crime. At best, they are charged with negligence of their duties, if they can prove that they had no knowledge of the crime. At worst, they are charged with the same crime and with conspiracy to cover up the crime.

Sex and mating are considered different activities. Male Sidai have heat cycles and females ovulate based on stimulation. If a female is bitten hard in the back of the neck, exposed to the pheromones of a male in heat, and experiences coital lock, she will ovulate, though males are only fertile during heat. They have sex all the time, as it serves as a way of maintaining social bonds and getting to know new people, but mating only happens when the male is interested in having children. Quite a few taboos that apply to mating do not apply to sex. Sibling incest (but not parental incest, due to the power a parent has over their child) is acceptable as long as it doesn’t lead to children, homosexual relations are normal (the vast majority of the population is bisexual), and the age of consent is below the age of parenthood. However, non-consensual relations are strictly forbidden and severely punished.

Sidai have sex with Polloi, but generally not with humans. Humans have a lower body temperature, so they feel like corpses. Polloi can manipulate their body temperature, so this is not a problem. Sidai are not capable of reproducing with either, as Polloi reproduction depends on humans and humans have a different number of chromosomes. There are also mechanical problems: Sidai mating also involves the male reflexively biting the female on the back of the neck; the pressure required to stimulate ovulation would snap the human’s neck. It is not possible for a human to impregnate a Sidai female, since she requires coital lock, which humans can’t perform.

Male Sidai carry the children. After a male impregnates a female, she incubates the zygotes for about a week, though her uterus is not capable of carrying them to term. If the male does not want the children, she simply lets nature take its course and her body flushes out the zygotes. Otherwise, she transfers them to the male’s womb. The womb, to the outside, appears to be a large vertical slit on their stomach. Females have an analogous structure on their own stomachs, which appears to be a ridge on their stomach and turns red when they’ve conceived. (The umbilical cord grows through either the child’s womb or the ovipositor, so they have no bellybuttons.) To transfer, the female lies on top of the male, sliding her ridge in the opening to the womb, and lets gravity and her body push out the zygotes. After that, the womb seals up. Gestation for Sidai is about a year long, and the babies come out more developed than human newborns (especially since they don’t need to squeeze their newborns out through a tiny hole in the pelvis). At birth, the plug in the womb cracks and another Sidai can reach in. A male can give birth by himself, simply by reaching in or allowing the babies to slide out. After birth, the male keeps the babies. He and his twin (unless they agreed to give the babies to another set) raise the babies, and after that, they belong to his clan. The female is not involved in rearing, though she does visit the babies to provide milk. (They’re mammals.) After that, the mother is only considered in terms of prohibitions on mating.

After birth, children are raised away from the rest of the world, though twins are raised together until they begin puberty. During puberty, Sidai children tend to release hormones, which are designed to sort children in a hierarchy and delay puberty in the “weaker” ones. (Some individuals choose to allow this to happen. “Child” actors are often legal adults who have prevented their body from moving on. However, they often die a few decades earlier (they live a few hundred years) due to the hormones, and their bodies deteriorate regardless of their youth.) Preventing children from having physical contact with each other until they’ve become adults allows each child to move on to adulthood and often prevents bullying from peers. It also prevents problems in social interactions caused by the Westermarck Effect. During childhood, they are taught as much as possible to take advantage of their growing brains. After puberty, they are introduced to social life (they are taught plenty of theory beforehand, but this is where they get practical experience).

Sidai normally have twins. This forms the backbone of their society. While humans tend to form families around mating pairs, Sidai form families around twin pairs. They are, essentially, married from birth. It’s possible to “divorce” your twin, but only if there is abuse or severe problems. Twins are not expected to fulfill their partner entirely. Since monogamous relationships are unheard of among Sidai, it’s expected that one will have lovers, whether or not the relationship is working, so it does not cause significant psychological problems.

Because they have twins, Sidai have four breasts (general rule for mammals is about two per average litter). The second pair is located directly below the first, which is where human women have them. The first pair grows significantly during puberty as a sign of sexual maturity. The second stays small until the female conceives or has sufficient exposure to a pregnant male, while the first pair remains constant. Sidai women also have narrower hips than human women, as they do not have to give birth; male Sidai have larger ones to support the weight of the babies. Female Sidai have spikes in their vaginas, which they can retract at will. Male Sidai have prehensile penises, which tend to be thicker as a result of the muscles. They also have a bulb at the base, which expands with enough arousal, causing coital lock. Generally, since it dissolves any telepathic barriers, it is only used with people they trust (or during mating, since they tend to lose control).

Part of their spine is outside their body. While the backbone is in the normal place, there is a ridge of pairs of downward-facing bones which start at the base of the skull and continue down to a floor-length tail. A Sidai can move them from their starting position, which is resting parallel to the spine, outward to provide cover for their back. Past the pelvis, the bones cannot move, and they sit on the skin of the tail. The tail ends in a vaguely egg-shaped club that opens and closes like a flower or a beak. There are four sections which open outwards. In the middle, there is a stinger with paralytic venom. It can take down a humanoid for a few hours. For this reason, clasping tails is a sign of significant trust and traditionally closes diplomatic negotiations. Tails are also the main way (besides telepathy) that Sidai express emotion (flicking upward or repeated upward motions mean happiness; steadily curled up means curiosity or sarcasm depending on context; a stiff, opened tail means anger; flicking from side to side with an open tail is agitation; with a closed tail is excitement (especially sexual, since they tap their tails against their prospect as a means of flirting); dragging against the ground means sadness, exhaustion, or depression). This has caused problems with humans, since they don’t have tails to judge emotions by and do not normally think to check. Polloi do, so they get along better with Sidai. (Their tails, however, end in a large demon point - about as big as a cat - instead of a club).The one emotion that Sidai display on their faces is anger to the point of violence – they grin. They have misinterpreted friendly smiles as declarations of war, and humans have thought extreme anger was a sign of friendliness. The Sidai get along far better with human cultures where smiling is not a friendly gesture. (Vei also uses her eyebrows as a means of conveying extreme disappointment, but that is an affectation.)

Other causes of discomfort when humans and Sidai meet: when Sidai have a conversation, they tend to stand at an angle, so the other person can see their tail clearly. Standing forward is disrespectful, since it is a sign of blatant distrust. Humans, on the other hand, tend to point their chest at the most important thing at the moment. Because Sidai do not point their chests at the human in the conversation and they do not have something that’s more important as an excuse, it feels like a slight.
For Sidai, there is a particular set of greetings that are performed based on the predominant occupation of the recipient’s clan – though the greetings only have to be performed once for per clan per meeting. For Anteridai, the greeting is a show of submission: getting to their knees with their hands behind their backs, and necks stretched out. The Anteridai will press the flat of a blade to the greeter’s neck, and signifies acceptance.

Sidai can digest stone, metal, and glass. These are incorporated into their bones to reinforce them. The bones on their spine and on their tail are typically the color of the most prominent part of their diet. (Vei and Nal eat an obsidian blend, which makes their bones a shiny black. Most Sidai who live by volcanoes do, too, but ones who live in the desert prefer stones found there, like sandstone.)

Sidai legend:
Millions of years ago, when the people were new and crops were newly sown, the planet was visited by the four star gods. They saw the Sidai and recognized them as sentient, as parts of starstuff. They decided to learn more about these new beings. They pulled each Sidai to them, one at a time, and told them that they would grant a wish in exchange for learning about them. Many did so, and made their wish. Some asked for the harvest to come in, some asked for mates or wealth or weapons.
One, when it was his turn, told the gods that he wanted to make the world a better place, to live forever and learn everything there was to know, to hold the world's fate in his hands and nurture it, to become a ruler who would never fall out of touch with his people, to heal the sick and dying, and to have children who would become as great as him.
The gods conferred and granted his wish. His personal name was Eri, and he became the god-ruler of the Sidai because he refused to settle for mediocrity when the opportunity for more was given him. Reach for the highest goals and do not be satisfied until you have become greater than your expectations.
(The legend is mostly fact, since he's still alive and actually does remember what happened. However, he maintains that he was joking with his wish.)

The Sidai mainly worship the Anteridai (though the Anteridai don't really worship themselves - except one narcissist) and the star gods, but there are hundreds of religions and millions of gods to follow, and none of the religions exclude the others. They're responsible for humanity learning of the star gods and kicking off the plot.

That's most of what I have, except the very spoilery stuff.

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