#vitvit

Here is an image of my character Yarlu styling her integument in a gender affirming fashion. She occupies a transfeminine/transmodor gender space within her culture, with short "feathers" being considered somewhere between feminine and gender neutral.

She is a Lower vitvit who has joined a nearby monastic order for a variety of reasons. Members of her monastic order tend to wear gender neutral clothing and "hair" styles which is what initially attracted Yarlu to the order.

The mirror she is viewing herself in has a stylized vitvit eye at each corner, which serve a religious/ apotropaic purpose. The bottle on the shelf in front of her is stylized with "kee plant" imagery and contains oil used to stylize and maintain the scale-like integument common to both vitvit and kee.

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Here are vitvit, the second(?) sophont native to keeland. Like kee they are streptisomazoans, which means they exhibit symmetry based on glide reflection (among some other synaptomorphies). This results in a slightly asymmetrical body plan. Like kee, they have a "vox" organ on their front segment and hind segment which they use for vocalization.

The clade kee and vitvit share is five limbed (six including the jaw). Vitvit usually move with their hind three limbs and use their front pair for manipulation.

Diet:

Vitvit come from a grassland environment where they originally evolved to use short distance running to take down prey. When doing short distance running, vitvit rear up on their middle limbs to move bipedally. While a significant part of their diet consists of meat, they rely a lot on other food sources like domesticated plants (some of which they share with their kee neighbors).

Life Cycle:

Vitvit lay leathery eggs similar to those layed by terran sharks, skates, and rays. After hatching, it takes vitvit a few months until they can properly walk. They become mature at ~10yrs for males and ~15yrs for females. Lekking and mating doesn't usually happen until the vitvit is 15 or 20 years of age.

Some quick thinking about what vitvit would wear. This is kind of a dress fitted over an undergarment that keeps it in place and leaves the spiracles free. Sometimes the cutouts for breathing are covered in a mesh or thin fabric depending on the climate and local fashion.

greason status: seasoned

Sunbeam and the rest of their clique are alive during a time of ecological upheaval. Crops are failing, livestock aren’t doing well, and conflict is on the rise.

This is somewhat less of an immediate problem for kee since they are small, can easily travel, and aren’t that reliant on animal food sources (they are technically omnivores but have a preference for frugivory). Vitvit, however, rely a lot on animal protein and are under more immediate threat. This has led to increased conflict between polities with large vitvit populations.

While kee aren’t typically that violent amongst themselves for a variety of reasons, they tend to be more open to fighting with other species. This lends itself to kee being hired on by vitvit to provide air support and reconnaissance during wartime.

Sunbeam’s clique were originally itinerant mercenaries but ended up taking on an extended contract with a hybrid kee-vitvit city. This location has historically relied primarily on cropland, fisheries, and trade for it’s food resources. Their trade and fishing industries had been less heavily impacted by ecological change, making the location a tempting target for nearby peoples more reliant on nomadic pastoralism and more greatly impacted. Eventually this culminates in an extended siege, with Sunbeam's people being on the losing side.