Extradimensional Species

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Peregrin
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Extradimensional Species

Post by Peregrin »

FAERIES

Ah yes, the Faeries. As indifferent, unpredictable and mysterious as they are, this universe would not be the same without the Faeries.

The Faeries have explained their exact origins; if we assume that they are not lying, they come from a parallel universe where the laws of physics are different. The home universe of the faeries is one which occassionally overlaps with the one to which the Descendants and the Nerakk are native. Furthermore, the psychic powers which many individual Faeries possess (more about this later) allow them to bend the fabrics of the universe the Faery in question currently dwells in.

In practice, this means that Faeries can appear and disappear out of nowhere.

That, however, is not the strangest aspect of them. The strangest aspect is that the Faeries can take any shape they desire, usually appearing as a member of a Descendant species, and they also apparently speak all of the different languages of the galaxy. How and why they are capable of this remains a mystery which they decline to explain.

Since the Faeries have identified themselves as extradimensional, many have speculated whether there are any relations between the Mala'akim and the Faeries. Some even suggest that the Mala'akim are the true form of the shape-shifting Faeries, a theory backed up by the fact that some individual Faeries are affliated with the Mala'akim. However, the majority of Faeries are at as much as loss as to who and what the Mala'akim are, as most Descendants and Nerakk.

Though most Faeries are eager to provide information about what they know, they also tend to take the part of being outside observers of the other factions of the multiverse. There are some exceptions to this; as mentioned before, some faeries side with the Mala'akim, others with the Descendant Confederacy.

The psychic powers often exhibited by the Faeries are far beyond the capabilities of both what was previously thought to be possible in this universe and often appear practically divine. While their sudden appearances and disappearances are explainable, many other feats accomplished by Faeries are not. It should be noted that some Mala'akim are rumoured to have similar abilities; though these rumours appear to be unverifiable.
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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Peregrin
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Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:56 pm
Location: Denmark

Re: Extradimensional Species

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MALA'AKIM

Utter the word "Mala'akim" to anyone but a faerie, and the sense of fear in the air would be so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Mysterious and elusive, no-one knows exactly where the Mala'akim (singular: Mala'aka) come from, nor their exact nature, but the evidence implies that they are from not a distant solar system or even a distant galaxy, but from a wholly different plane of existence. On the few occassions that communication with the Mala'akim has been established, what little information they have given themselves on their origins is exceedingly vague. A Mala'aka who was infamously asked about it by the Veglyr Fleet Commander Vasthar Shorvayn replied that it came from both nowhere and everywhere. This is commonly interpretated as the Mala'akim most likely being from a parallel universe, possibly one where the laws of physics are different than in ours. Others suggest that the Mala'akim are from a higher plane of existence which occassionally overlaps with ours, or that they even may have similar origins as the faeries. In fact, it appears to be a popular belief amongst the Hruka (and even some of the Veglyr) that the Mala'akim and the faeries are one and the same, with the Mala'aka being the actual form of the shape-shifting faeries. The faeries themselves, from whom most of the Descendant Confederacy's information on the Mala'akim derives, deny this but admit that some faeries are allied with the Mala'akim. In fact, a lot of the information which individual faeries give about the Mala'akim is contradictory, but they are the most reliable sources the Confederacy currently have.

Notable is the fact that the Nerakk military are known to attack Mala'akim on sight. It is therefore generally assumed among Descendants that at least one Mala'aka is partly responsible for the Nerakk's retraction from their enormous past empire to the much smaller territories where they currently dwell. The Emissaries of the Nerakk who have been asked on this, though, are notoriously reluctant to answer.

As for the Mala'akim themselves, they are very alien in appearance. The best description of a Mala'aka is a monstrous quasihumanoid. A Mala'aka stands around four metres high on two hooved feet and has two pairs of clawed arms with four digits each similar to taloned tentacles, but that is where the resemblance to humanoids end. Each of a Mala'akim's four heads is eyeless and ending in a great, sharp beak, crowned with a pair of horns and resting upon a snake-like neck a metre and a half in length. Where a neck segues into the head, there is a great golden mane like that of a lion.

In addition to the four heads and four arms, a Mala'aka also possesses two pairs of vast, insect wings with a span of between six and eight metres. With these wings, a Mala'aka can fly with a speed of 20 km/h. An elite caste within the Mala'akim, known as the Serafim, whose members are half a metre taller on average, have three pairs of wings with a wingspan of ten metres when folded out. According to the Faeries there are other castes of the Mala'akim, but the faeries do not know exactly how many, other than that others among the castes are the Kerubim, the military caste, and the mysterious Ofanim, whose exact purpose is unknown.

Nothing is known about the reproduction of the Mala'akim nor their actual biology, but they have distinct highly symmetrical patterns across their bodies and wings of fluorescent material which glows in the dark in a colour which vary between individuals. These fluorescent splotches are thought by the faeries to be some sort of optical nerves, meaning that an individual Mala'aka has a 360-degree vision angle.

Most of the few Mala'akim encountered, especially the Serafim, display psychic powers similar to, but much more finely used than those among even the most skilled Veglyr psychics. The caste of the Ofanim, however, are said to have powers more like those of the Faeries. No Descendant, however, has yet witnessed a Ofana use its power and survived to tell about it.
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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