Races Among the Stars 12: Novian
And now we end off this week with perhaps one of the most novel species we’ve seen so far: Living Stars!
When a star goes supernova, exploding in destructive flares of light, they send all matter of stellar ejecta across the cosmos. Sometimes, a bit of these matter condenses in on itself, becoming a dense little ball of elemental energy until something, namely encountering sapient life, occurs.
Whether they crash-land on a planet, pass by a nearby spaceship, or ram right into a space station, these stellar beings soon awaken and fully become living beings capable of interacting with and exploring the world.
These novians awaken with the knowledge that they were born from a star’s death, specifically the violent detonation of such a stellar body, the scale of which boggles the mind. And therefore, they too are just as mighty and powerful…
…Which is hilarious given how small and cute they are and how shrill their little voices are.
Novians are a boastful and prideful people, with a deep abiding need for everyone to know it So they constantly seek challenges and confrontation to better themselves and prove their might to others. Don’t mistake this for a lust for fame and power, however, for while they strive to prove their greatness, they quickly grow bored of others fawning over them, leaving to find greater challenges.
For all their desire to learn and grow in might, however, they struggle to grow emotionally, and academia and self-improvement through study bores them. Learning by doing is much more interesting, and most already believe they are perfect when it comes to who they are personally. Convincing one that they need to grow as a person, or that they have, is very difficult indeed.
Still, that unwavering conviction can be endearing, and can see them through against foes that might wear on the hearts of others.
By all appearances, novians resemble miniature stars about the size of a housecat, and though they constantly produce light and heat, they rarely generate enough to actually burn anything without deliberate focus. While they do not have true physical features or a need for an anatomy, they do enjoy creating sunspots on their surfaces resembling eyes and mouths to better communicate their emotions to other species. They also lack limbs in the traditional sense, but can manipulate gravitational forces in order to have their gear and possessions orbit around their bodies, with items they are “wielding” being notable for the plasma arcs linking to said items while being handled.
Being such rare beings, novians don’t really have a society of their own, but when they meet other novians, particularly those born from the same stellar explosion, they tend to be extremely competitive, in the later case trying hard to prove themselves the “prime inheritor” of the star that birthed them.
Beyond that, they tend to struggle with other species, mostly because of their drive to constantly prove themselves coupled with the fact they don’t exactly cut the intimidating figure they’d like to be seen as.
Novians a surprisingly strong with their gravitational forces, and have strong personalities. However, their disdain for intellectual self-improvement leaves them a bit ignorant at times.
Despite their small size, however, their gravitational grip means they can grasp and manipulate objects with the same reach of most other species.
Even when defeated, novians sometimes have the last laugh, as they can unleash a miniature nova when they lose consciousness, burning and searing anything nearby.
While book learning isn’t their thing, novians do boast an intuitive grasp of many physical concepts both on the macro and atomic scale, appropriate given that they are living fusion reactions.
The light and heat they shed is enough to illuminate the area around them, as well as ward against the cold.
By focusing some of their elemental power, these miniature suns can set objects in their grasp alight.
Meanwhile, their bodies are also highly resistant to radiation, and they have no need to breathe or stay pressurized.
While they can roll on the ground slowly, they prefer to fly instead, reaching appreciable speed in the air.
With their strength an charisma buffs, novians make for perfect solarians, though any melee combat class works quite well for them as well. The charisma boost also makes them decent envoys and social operatives as well, not to mentioned witchwarpers. However, their intelligence debuff makes the skilled side of certain classes less appealing, but some novians overcome their ignorance. This also means technomancer is rare, but not impossible, while other casters have plenty of options.
That will do for this week, but look forward to more options next time around!
