#irune

(A while ago I made a post compiling everything canon I could find about the volus. While it's somewhat out of date (I found more !), it's still a useful reference. Moreover, this entire post is predicated on a headcanon of mine, i.e. volus breathe molecular hydrogen.)

The planet Irune

Irune, the volus homeworld, is a planet with several characteristics key to understanding the evolution of the volus species :

its surface gravity is 1.5 g ;

its day length is 36.2 Earth hours ;

its average surface temperature is 9°C ;

and its atmospheric pressure at sea level is 60.56 atm.

This very dense atmosphere results in greater air resistance relative to that of other homeworlds, which itself has different effects :

lower terminal velocity : an object in free fall will reach a maximum speed significantly lower than that in Earth's atmosphere, despite the fact that Irune's gravity is slightly higher than Earth's.

more force is needed to accelerate Irune's air than Earth's, or to act upon any object, as air needs to move out of the way of the moving object. A moving object decelerates much faster as a result.

the dense atmosphere has led to the development of many flying animals, which can usually remain buoyant with very little effort. While the denser air is harder to move through than Earth's, and usually requires extremely aerodynamic body plans, the greater necessity to displace the air with the strokes of the wings also grants more impetus to the bodies of flying animals with each flap.

plants, land formations and land animals are subject to greater wind force as the greater air density means that the moving air carries more kinetic energy and more momentum ; Irune's flora evolved comparatively greater strength and flexibility to resist the wind. The near-spherical body shape of volus helps them in that regard.

All of this has had a few important consequences on the development of the volus :

high winds pose a grave threat, which dictated in turn where the volus might and might not live ;

and the development of flying, floating, gliding or otherwise aerial megafauna that the volus could never hunt to extinction, unlike humans with Earth's own megafauna (now mostly extinct) ; this included giant predators.

Irune's Planetology

Irune is a carbon planet that was oxydized in the later stages of its formation as large amounts of water were added to it from an outside impactor : this resulted in a diamond and silica carbide interior, a diamond and silica upper mantle, and a silicate crust like Earth's. Later volcanism brought some diamonds and carbides to the surface and produced large amounts of atmospheric hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide as a byproduct (instead of carbon dioxide as on Earth).

At the time Irune first developed life, its thick atmosphere was primarily methane and ammonia, much like Maskawa today. Other components included nitrogen, hydrogen, and light amounts of carbon monoxide and, to a far lesser extent, carbon dioxide. The absence of water resulted in seas of hydrocarbons (in decreasing importance : ethane, methane, propane, butane). The methane and ethane would evaporate then bond into larger molecules, precipitating as the more viscous tar.

Ammonia, which Irunian life would soon rely on as a solvent, typically photolyses under UV radiation as nitrogen and hydrogen gases. However, it is believed at present that the thickness of the atmosphere (Maskawa's currently stands at 3.35 atm) sheltered most of Irune's ammonia from Aru's UV radiation.

At some point, this atmospheric ammonia condensed into a liquid which the primeval, unicellular ancestors of the volus could develop out of ; and the hydrocarbon seas of Irune disappeared. It is widely believed by the volus scientific community that primitive Irunian lifeforms, which, like the volus themselves, use hydrocarbons like most other sapient species use carbohydrates, fed on the hydrocarbon seas and drained it.

It is also believed that volcanism and the development of Irunian photosynthesis led to what is known as the Great Hydrogenation Event, as the quantity of molecular hydrogen skyrocketed.

This results in Irune as it is today :

the planet itself is made of diamonds and silica carbides in the interior, an upper mantle of diamond and silica, and a silicate crust, with diamonds and carbides subsequently brought to the surface by volcanism.

its seas are made of liquid ammonia, with dissolved alkali metals tinting it brown.

and its very dense lower atmosphere, its troposphere, where the volus live, contains a mix of molecular nitrogen (in its supercritical phase), molecular hydrogen (supercritical), methane (supercritical), carbon monoxide, and ammonia vapor.

Irune's Ecology

Volus, as with the overwhelming majority of known sapient species, are heterotrophs. But whereas most species breathe in oxygen gas and release carbon dioxide from the oxidation of complex organic substances such as carbohydrates, volus and other Irunian heterotrophs - the fauna of Irune - breathe in supercritical molecular hydrogen and release supercritical methane from the reduction of complex hydrocarbons.

Irunian autotrophs - the flora of Irune - build up complex hydrocarbons from methane through photosynthesis, releasing molecular hydrogen.

At sea level on Irune, something to keep in mind is that much of the atmosphere, in fact, exists as a supercritical fluid, i.e. behaving in some ways like a gas, but in others like a liquid. The respiratory apparatuses of Irunian heterotrophs are in some ways closer to liquid intake, and the sheer density of the atmosphere means that, in some ways, it's better to think volus live at the bottom of a great sea than to think of them as terrestrial creatures.

Nowhere is this as apparent as their environment in which they evolved : Irune is full of creatures, up to and including megafauna, which has evolved to live in Irune's atmosphere, sometimes never touching the ground. In fact, the pressure differentials have resulted in entire ecosystems restricted to specific layers of Irune's atmosphere, and many volus legends and tales focus on the corpses of never-before-seen eldritch creatures drifting to the ground. Such events, somewhat similar to "whalefalls", have led to the development and prominence of carnivorous flora, such as the kympna lobes.

Unfortunately for prehistorical volus, this teeming ecosystem resulted in a very impressive number of a) big animals (it's amazing the girth you can get away with with natural buoyancy) which b) spent most of their lives in the skies out of reach of the earthbound volus, except to c) prey on delicious earthbound fauna, volus included.

Impact on prehistoric volus

All of those conditions together had several consequences. The first was that the first sedentary volus typically chose to make their homes either underground (or, progressively, in low-lying dome-shaped buildings to better shrug off the winds) or up in treetop villages. Both environments provided relative safety from predators and from the sheer force of Irune's windstorms.

Secondly, this certainly had an impact on volus caution and disinclination to aggression, though biological determinism shouldn't be overstated. Contrary to a popular misconception, the volus rejection of war and violence is cultural, not natural as with elcor. While it is true that volus are less inclined to violence and aggression than most other species, such as humans, that is because of this natural disinclination (or, as volus would argue, lack of overinclination) that volus have been able to abolish war altogether.

The reason is simple enough : in a world of dragons, you cannot hope to win every battle, and if you do, it won't be through raw numbers or brute strength : many volus heroes - and those are warriors - hem closer to Odysseus than Beowulf. Hence why volus prefer to remain out of harm's way if possible : it is considered common wisdom that the best way not to lose a fight is to ensure there is no fight to begin with ; that if war must happen at all, defense is considered the best offense ; and that committing any force to a fight is a gambit. However, though volus typically avoid fights or use their wits to escape a bad situation, they have proven time and time again to be capable, resourceful and ferocious when pressed or cornered, ready to die (and kill) for a cause in the right circumstances.

In consequence, volus as a whole tend to be more patient, calm, and calculating than humans, preferring to carefully analyze and weigh every risk before committing to a possibly dangerous decision. Conversely, volus rarely act rashly or impulsively, and when they do are heavily censured by other volus. Note, however, that volus are also decisive, unlike the elcor, because when you're not the biggest megafauna around, indecision kills.

Those traits, reinforced by their history, socio-economic organizations and cultures, have made them excellent planners, capable of maintaining organizational control over complex projects : those qualities all volus societies have praised and fostered may explain why they are overly represented today among accountants, project managers and executives, but also among many kinds of planners outside of the corporate world. As turians know better than anyone else, amateurs talk about tactics, professionals study logistics, and volus master both.

NOTES :

The kympna lobes (carnivorous plants from Irune) are canon.

None of this would have been possible without the copious hours spent reading Worldbuilding Pasta and the work done over an unfathomable quantity of time by the blogger. I sometimes quoted stuff about carbon planets verbatim, as well as about the characteristics of the components, because I have limited amount of free time and copy-pasted stuff. Since I'm not making a buck out of this, I hope that's okay.

The Avatar Wiki, specifically the worldbuilding of the setting, Pandora, has been immensely helpful and some of the text is likewise lifted off the linked page.

There's a lot about this worldbuilding that remains unsolved, unlikely, unspecified, unsatisfactory or otherwise plain vague (for example : how does molecular hydrogen, the single lightest molecule, stay at the bottom of Irune's troposphere). I did it on purpose, because I do think such lacuna can be filled with that vital element, suspension of disbelief, and I feel good about doing it because the volus themselves seem somewhat at a loss as to the precise conditions that led to the formation of their homeworld (and they've had free access to planets to study for something like 2500 years). So you might see it's all in keeping with canon. :)

Anyway, there's nothing here that's not canon-compliant, I think.

One of my challenges in making those posts is trying to make the aliens alien (i.e. to not be humans in silly costumes) without "dehumanizing" them (in other words, to make them distinct from what is considered human baseline and still ensure these hypothetical people elicit compassion and respect ; to be inhuman but not alienated) : here, I focused on something that is canon, that is the fact that the volus have entirely and successfully abolished war, which in itself suggests that they used to have wars. This in turn means that volus are aggressive enough they can get hypothetically embroiled in wars, but not so aggressive they cannot forego wars entirely (something which, at present, I cannot see humans ever doing). So this suggests there's a key element here of volus-hood.

This of course gets us into the not-complicated-at-all topic of biological determinism, a fraught subject because (spoilers) even to this day a festering bunch of idiots and assholes believe that everything about humanity (including the stuff that is not true of all human populations everywhere in the world and all the time in recorded history, but oh well) is biologically determined, often to (tw : rant) more or less subconsciously shut up conversations they don't like (because you can't argue against the inevitable). My own belief on the matter is, for the record, that individual human beings are 100% determined by a variety of biological, sociological, cultural and psychological factors, but that one of the key characteristics of humanity (here representative of sapient species as a whole, for lack of a bigger sample) is precisely our malleability, how our unique traits allow us to transcend to some extent our determinations, which should be obvious to anyone actually studying history, because what is the amazing diversity of human societies and cultures across time and space if not evidence that biological determinism is not the alpha and omega of the human experience ?????? (end of rant) So, how do you make volus that are not human while allowing for infinite variety and dismissing the seeming hive mind of aliens to the dust bin of the ranker science-fiction ? My answer : I've settled on a bunch of instinctive responses the majority of volus (but not all) would have and which most humans would not ; those instincts would function as basically incentives for such or such behavior, which would be further encouraged or discouraged by society, culture, and psychology. But, like, volus are animals, like we are ; I want them to be animals different from us (don't treat me like some of you treat Ashley please).

So anyway, that's how I settled on prehistoric volus being under threat all the time by very large aerial animals.

At the same time, the archetypal depiction of sophonts evolved from prey animals and especially herbivores is Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers, who are manipulators who have made a virtue of cowardice, supposedly on the basis of their herbivory. While it was bold of Niven to assume all prey animals behave the same way (the krogan are an excellent extrapolation of some prey animals' psychology, because they are much more aggressive than a predator would be), the problem with the Puppeteers, if applied to the volus, is that this would smack of antisemitic stereotypes (all the more with the common antisemitic dehumanization of Jews as mice or rats).

Reader, I ended up basing my prehistorical volus on Ewoks : they don't look like much, they're outgunned by everyone else on their world, they have to rely on guile and methodical patience to get by, but they're also fierce warriors that will eat Stormtroopers. I hope that's okay, because I'm lovin' it. While I've also taken elements from Star Wars' Ishi Tib, especially for the modern era, my vision really is : small badasses in treetop villages, thriving despite all the alien fantasy monsters that want to eat them, and coming up with ingenious ways to level the playing field.