#postexodus

terminology refresh: flares are males and gales are females

pegasus modesty compared to ours is pretty chill given the fact half of them don't have external genitals and feathers coat their body. most of the time nobody will mind if a gale walks around nude, but flares are legally required to wear "underwear"/those weird stupid pants due to the presence of a phallus (even if retractable).

what they consider "revealing" comes from their mating position (not pictured because i'm not drawing aliens fucking heart emoji) similar to that of mounting like with birds (and most other animals for that matter). its not as strict, you're pretty much just required to cover your junk if you're a flare and thats it - though it still is of weird reception to see one walking around in nothing but pants, and usually even taken poorly outside of the mating season. flares' dewlaps and throats have connotations (wow i really like the word connotations) related to courtship and chick-rearing, therefore covering it off-season and in the workplaces is seen as aknowledging that its currently not the time for that. their crop is also there, which they produce crop milk from for their chicks (hence the associating flare throats with children) so technically,, its like their boobs i guess? gales are allowed to walk around naked because while that does mean their cloaca is out around in the open air, the length and tilt of their tail covers it from view entirely and obviously its not acceptable to hole flash in public.

their idea of "skimpy" clothing is slightly different than ours - shaped by what they find sexualish on the body, yes - but its more about the idea of wearing clothes and still choosing to not cover that area, kind of like an invitation or putting emphasis on it. a gale with an intentional back window is more obviously sexy than just a gale not wearing clothes likely because they're doing a sweaty (they do kind of sweat!) job or its hot as hell outside.

pegasi can see UV and lots of their clothes have hidden UV patterns or atleast look more striking to their eyes than our trichromat ones. they favor cold colors as their perception toward reds and browns is poor, non-neon orange is on thin ice and yellow is their most easily seen warm color even if it still depends a little on brightness.

pegasi are not extremely conservative dressers and people can wear whatever they want but colorful clothing, more accessories, makeup/body paint and more coverage is seen as masculine, whereas muted, sometimes dark, less excessive clothing is seen as feminine. this heightens during the mating season but both of them cover less of their bodies by then. flares strive to look bright and flashy, and gales aim to appear big and strong. modern day broads won't really care much if you're painting your stripes/dewlap as long as you're hot enough in general, but it still persists in some places and used to be rather popular that utilizing makeup in courtship is disgraceful or cheating, like catfishing kinda. flares will cover their throats back up after they've selected a mate for the season (they only stay together until the eggs hatch) or just never have revealed it in general, those that don't wish to draw sexual attention themselves continue on dressing like in the off-season, perhaps even exaggerating it with dark/pitch black pieces as a crystal clear sign they don't want to be a part of all this. three cheers for asexual alien pterosaurs

Pegasi are avian-pterosaur-esque sophonts hailing from a planet quite similar to Earth, except for a slightly lower gravity and vegetation color ranging from red to purple, or even black. They were the first other sophont to be found by humans and were encountered on accident when a human spaceship collided with a pegasus one. Their relationship has been rocky and convenience-driven at worst, but no significant grudges or stigmas linger since the 3000s.

They were already as advanced as current modern day humans when they were discovered, utilizing vehicles, electronics, and spacecraft. Their advance to space was the fastest out of all sophonts, perhaps due to their earlier invention of aircraft.

They are technically not true birds, due to the lack of an actual keratin beak, possessing quadrupedal locomotion, and membranous flight structures, and are closer to Earth pterosaurs.

They evolved in the south pole ("Zégnuurr") of their homeplanet, where hemocyanin and copper-based oxygen binding was more efficient. Even as they spread across the globe and adapted out of their arctic traits, changing blood pigment would be evolutionarily costly, therefore resulting in them retaining their striking blue blood. Technically hemocyanin would be less efficient for higher temperatures, but theirs is tuned for better performance (while keeping the same basics and pigment result) and make up for it with their increased oxygen intake and large heart anyway.

Pegasi are omnivorous and predatory, living mostly off of meat and fruit. Some cultures have had taboos against eating or utilizing other flying animals due to seeing them as a spiritual equal as fellow fliers, but this has mostly faded out now.

Pegasi are oviparous and gonochoristic, possessing sexual dimorphism and diverging reproductive organs. Gales (females) are larger, stronger, have a shorter crest and are more drably colored, and flares (males) have slightly lighter colors, UV-reflective light stripes, a long crest, and an inflatable dewlap, aswell as being smaller and daintier.

They have a specific mating season, in either the start of spring or wet season depending what continent they live on (both of these happen at the same time). Flares show off in elaborate, personally choreographed dances (often aerial), putting emphasis on their bright dewlaps and stripes (which, to pegasi's tetrachromatic, UV-seeing vision, are also incredibly striking). Pegasi are polygamous by default and stick together as partners only until their egg hatches, in which the gale leaves childrearing to the flare. However, less commonly monogamy has been spreading as a sort of xeno trend, often stretching onto their usual breeding behavior and becoming polyamory.

They lay 1-2 eggs a season, pegasus chicks hatch altricial. They grow in soft down at about 8 months, roughly their equivalent of a toddler. They fully mature at about 5 years old and have a lifespan of 50-70 years. They are raised by their sire and most of them don't know their dam (but both parents being documented on their birth certificates prevents accidental inbreeding).

Myrmecoleons (usually dubbed myrms) are large hive arthropods with an eusocial society comparable to that of ants and bees. They hail from the equatorial belt of Virrker, a smaller planet with higher oxygen levels, thus why insectoid/invertebrate fauna gets so big (like prehistoric bugs!). They are somewhat of a rarity outside of their homeplanet, as they like to keep to their own (relatively) hyperorganized selves in general and they don't get along well with humans and pegasi due to a two decade long war that went on between them not long after first contact.

They have some less developed internal bone structure to support their large size and are technically vertebrates. Their thorax raised over generations and resulted in a centaur-esque body plan, their abdomen consisting both of their lower bodies and their tails (just an elongation that stores fat). They have iron-based oxygen transport like ours and are mesothermic, but they handle high temperature better than cold. In temperature drop they can essentially shut down to conserve energy for some time, but depending on how long this goes on it can leave lasting damage. They are omnivorous predators with high energy needs and tend to gravitate toward meats and sugary fruit/nectar from larger flowering plants. They don't really eat plant matter in itself, but they can process it. They have a mostly unidirectional respiratory system that consists of inhaling through the neck slits and exhaling out the abdominal vents, their airway does connect to their mouths but that is solely for vocalization (this usually doesn't mean speech, as myrm communication is a combination of wing whirring/stridulation/clicking and pheromone signals. They can't talk very well due to the lack of lips/teeth/anything that would make their articulation remotely comprehensible, so they tend to sign to xenos).

Myrms live in hives across a fair portion of their planet, which they build up from the ground using plant/wood-based pulp combined with their saliva, or rarely settle for a tunnel system underground. There are three major megahives ruling over a vast amount of their territory and dominating xenopolitically. There is one Queen per hive, but it tends to go along the lines of hives living in the major hives' territories having their own Queen that answers to the megahive's (i really don't have a better name for it) Queen. Hives are socially structured the same as eusocial insects; Queen at the tippy top, soldiers defending and policing at the second highest rank, and workers. All of the soldiers and workers are the Queen's children, but drones tend to get traded around between hives. Drones revel in a lavish lifestyle but they have no authority over even workers and pretty much have the only employment option of walking sperm bank. Some frown upon this as oppression, many outcasted spacer drones are up and about, and rights movements exist but this seems to be just labeled basic nature by the trad. Those forelimb "wings" on drones flare out for display also i just forgot to include that because i'm stupid.

'Unicorn' is a term for the sapient coalition of two species from a temperate planet named Ereshin, large advanced endoparasites named jockeyweaves and a mammalian-similar cursorial hexapod predator dubbed "arda" in the common language (as thats just what they're called in most prominent unicorn languages). Despite the early shudderings about being overtaken by an alien brain worm, jockeyweaves can only sustain life in species from their own planet.

Unicorns are obligate carnivores like arda, utilizing their jaws for hunting rather than their horns as to not risk it potentially fracturing (they're not that fragile but it can happen and it completely disables an entire physical system). Their short intestinal tracts can't quite process plant matter.

Their host species is endothermic and viviparous (placental) but lack the crucial milk production feature to classify them as a mammal (arda foals are born like immediately eating meat and fed via regurgitation).

Their signature forehead horn is a keratinized ovipositor. They essentially reproduce by injecting an arda mare with an agent via this horn that turns it into a passive carrier, and all young this carrier mare foals will become active endoparasited carriers - the unicorns themselves. Unicorns are visually distinct from arda as they genetically alter their hosts still in utero, mostly to the extent of growing the secondary legs into manipulators and setting the path to their eventual horn growth in their "teenager" (prothorate) stage. Arda are herd animals, but not sapient, only the parasite possesses sophont-level intelligence. They are farmed and basically kept as host livestock by unicorns.

Each jockeyweave has one designated host, and cannot survive for long outside of it, but arda tend to be selectively bred for environmental advantage, or simply show. These breeds are their equivalent to ethnicities.