Codex: Cundarians
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Name: Cundarian (Singular) and Cundarians (Plural)
Sexes: Male & Female split 50/50.
Height: Males average 6’ 4” in height. Females average 5’ 11”.
Weight: 80-115 kilograms.
Hair: None
Eyes: One pair, slit-pupiled and generally yellow sclera.
Skin: Grey, dark blue and mauve are the most common shades.
Features
Cundarians are digitigrade bipeds of slightly above average body mass in comparison to the galactic norm. Their males are taller and bulkier than the females, a dimorphism exaggerated further by the different lives they tend to lead. Cundarians have prominent, defined faces immediately recognisable to humans and ausar, with the average compliment of two eyes, a fairly flat nose, a mouth and two fin-shaped ears. They do not grow body hair, however almost all adult males sprout small tentacles from their chin and jaw. These grow slowly over the course of a male cundarian’s life, displaying how old they are. All cundarians grow plated ridges from their brows across the top of their heads, and sometimes long, dreadlock-like tentacles as well. Whether head-tentacles are present, and the size and shape of the ridges, is dependent upon an individual cundarian’s ethnicity.
Cundarians have a slightly top-heavy, muscular frame most notable in their males as a result of an evolution spent mostly climbing the mountainous regions of their home world of Samaria. For the same reason they have blunt, balance-imparting tails, and their legs are hoofed; three toed and keratinous, perfect for traversing rocky, vertiginous territory.
Probably the cundarians’ most remarkable bodily feature is their ability to enter a torpor-like state in extreme temperatures. Across most of their body, their skin is smooth but tough, pebble-like. When they enter torpor, the chemical composition of their epidermis changes to further toughen until it enters a rock-like state across the entirety of the cundarian’s frame, virtually impervious to outside conditions. This necessitates the cundarian freeze in place, as well as drastically slowing their body and cognitive functions, but allows them to survive atmospheric conditions that would kill others for days at a time.
Reproduction
Outwardly, cundarians have a sexual arrangement which is immediately recognisable to most of the rest of the galaxy. Males grow a quartet of testicles and a large, free-hanging, blunt penis; females grow a spacious vagina behind a stony cloaca. The nature of their reproduction however is unique, thanks to the physical qualities of cundarian semen.
Immediately after ejaculation, cundarian semen is a moist, foam-like substance. If allowed to settle, it holds its shape and hardens into a smooth, tough but lightweight solid. After insemination has occurred within a female cundarian’s womb, the semen forms around the fertilised ova, and in a relatively short amount of time becomes a hard-shelled egg that the female can then give birth to. This enables cundarians to lay large ova much faster than they ordinarily would be able to, vital for them given that only one is laid per batch and the high turn-over of their population (see below).
Being oviparous, female cundarians do not have breasts, but do have large hips and backsides to enable frequent egg-laying. Cundarian penises are muscular and the male’s orgasm particularly powerful in order to ejaculate their semi-solid cum. A popular practice in traditional cundarian relationships is for the male to “seal” the female’s vaginal entrance with a plug of semen, broken only by the egg’s birth. This has the effect of constantly arousing the female via rubbing and stretching, “proving” her chasteness and loyalty to her partner by leaving it unbroken nonetheless.
Culture
The cundarians are a patriarchal society who place great value in honor earned through battle or personal hardship. Their very name is a samarin term meaning “bloodthirsty savage”, subsequently adopted with pride. Although their traditional values have mellowed through exposure to the outside galaxy, it is still rare for non-cundarians to meet female cundarians - they are largely confined to home worlds and colonies, where they are expected to raise children and maintain the social fabric. Male cundarians often express a desire to protect the moral sanctity of their females, a viewpoint they feel is confirmed by the licentiousness of a largely effeminate outside galaxy. This is not to say females wield absolutely no power within cundarian society - owners of property and land as a matter of course, they are traditionally the ultimate arbiters as to whether a male has earned enough honor to breed and hold station or not.
Cundarian honor is earned through vanquishing foes in battle or by overcoming intimidating trials of the body or mind. Mere strength or stamina are only one facet - tactical or technical brilliance are celebrated equally, if not more so. Whatever is materially gained from said battles or trials is of distant, secondary importance. Reports abound of cundarian raiders defeating colonial patrols and merchant convoys before simply leaving them without actually taking or killing anyone, the filmed proof of their victory enough. Outside of the anatae navy and military, cundarians usually find employment in mercenary groups and pirate gangs or on particularly hostile worlds, settings in which their mettle can be tested.
History
When the anatae discovered Samaria and uplifted the samarin in the Fifth Planetary Rush, little thought was given to the planet’s other sentient species, who unlike the literary-minded and sophisticated samarin were war-like, barely beyond the Bronze Age and confined mostly to the planet’s mountainous regions. In their early history the cundarians had brutalized the samarin, using their superior strength and aggression to tyrannize them across large tracts of the planet. Eventually, thanks to the samarin’s greater interest in and grasp of technology, they drove the cundarians back into the infertile wastelands of Samaria, where they subsequently lived a backward existence.
Unsurprisingly the samarin had a negative cultural view of the cundarians, and advised the anatae against attempting to uplift them as well. The cundarians’ natural love of adventure however saw them escape their planet anyway - mostly thanks to careless slavers - and eventually the Empire was forced into the difficult process of officially integrating them as well.
How successful that process was is debated. The anatae have ameliorated but never truly curbed the species’ entrenched traditional values, and cundarian raiders and pirates are a constant menace along new frontiers and poorly policed regions of space, a source of tension between the Empire and the rest of the U.G.C. They have however proved their worth many positive contributions elsewhere. Many of the Empire’s chief military and naval advisors are cundarian, and the first boots on the ground in any imperial intercession are invariably owned by cundarians (many of whom would refuse to serve if that wasn’t the case). Cundarians are also willing to colonize worlds most races would regard as out of the question, making them perfect for crewing mining installations and power plants on planets with hostile climates. The anatae generally view the cundarians as worth their boisterousness, given their willingness to serve at the sharp end of the Empire’s quest to spread its influence to as much of the galaxy as possible.