Rodenians
Codex
“Do not refer to a rodenian as a mouse unless you are looking to start a fight, and be wary of calling them ‘cute’. More than one careless spacefarer has parted ways with a finger for daring to compare one to a rat. Basically, just don’t point out that they resemble lowly pests. Definitely don’t point out that their English name was derived from the word ‘rodent’. It remains a sore spot centuries on.”
-The Intergalactic Guide to Manners, Volume VI, Terran Edition
Name: Name: Rodenian (singular), Rodenians (plural) / Ch’squee’ch’chk
Homeworld: The forest world of Corvus
Lifespan: 150
Sexes: 33% Male and 66% Female
Height: 4’ 2” to 5’ 3” (1.26 - 1.6 m)
Weight: 50 to 170 lbs
Ears: Large, multifunction ears similar in structure to a terran mouse.
Fur: Full body - typically white, pink, gray, or black (but often dyed).
Eyes: Nearly identical to terran/ausar standard. Colored green, red, or blue.
Appearance
Small and short-furred, rodenians bodies share many visual cues with the rodents of earth. They have large, dish-shaped ears with a small amount of mobility, allowing for superb hearing. Just below, their faces bear short, mouse-like muzzles that lack the oversized teeth one might expect. Their incisors are merely mildly oversized. Their hands and feet have claws extending from their tips for climbing. The legs themselves are plantigrade in structure, though rodenians tend to walk with an upraised heel, owing to slight variations in tendon length and bone structure. A tapered, prehensile tail provides near flawless counterbalance, as well as an additional limb for tool use.
In short, rodenians look like walking, talking mice, excepting for a few major reproductive differences covered further below.
Reproduction
Rodenians method of reproduction is highly unusual and, to many minds in the greater UGC, perverted. The females’ wombs are located in their breasts rather than their abdomen. Stranger still, those same wombs are accessed for breeding via secondary channels recessed deep in the ear. They do not lubricate during arousal. Instead, the flesh is lined with a friction-denying structure, similar to the nonstick coatings employed in cooking vessels. (Non rodenians have reported them to feel strange but pleasant.) Those passages route through the back of the skull, merge together, then travel down the neck and into the torso to split off into the twin uteruses.
Cleverly, a membrane seals the aural entrances as pressure is applied to the reproductive tissues, preventing hearing damage and sealing out any stray fluids. This adaptation is redundant, however, for the holes themselves are positioned so that any drainage naturally flows into ‘ear-ginas,’ allowing for the rodenian’s keen hearing to remain unobstructed."
Insemination is handled by the more traditional males, for while they too have vestigial ear-cunts, their bodies have produced a more typical arrangement of genitalia for impregnation: one phallus between the legs, backed up by two testes, shaped and sized similarly to golf balls. The largeness of their gonads relative to their body size affords them impressive sexual endurance - something they need since there are two females with two wombs each for every rodenian male.
It’s no surprise then that rodenians mate in threes, with one male joining two females for life. Intercourse happens often, typically at least twice a day for the poor, overworked male, yet fertility rates are quite low. Females only ovulate every year or so, and their eggs have a thicker membrane than a terran’s. Scientists seem convinced that such a change was self-inflicted before UGC contact, a forward-thinking move to counter potential overpopulation.
Once inseminated, the female’s other womb will begin ovulating, throwing one egg after another out until the mother carries a set of unborn twins. The children grow slowly within her to minimize food stress, but after four to five months, the eggs are large enough to impede the mother’s movement, and birth can begin. It is at this point that she lays them - through her nipples. The first time can be quite painful, as residual membranes must tear, but each successive laying is typically viewed as more pleasant than the last. Some older rodenians even delight in it.
The mother’s body recovers quickly, her elastic flesh snapping closed in a matter of minutes if not seconds. The vacant womb will shrink, converting excess mass into a nutrient-rich cream over the coming days which the mother will then milk onto her adsorbent egg. This is not necessary for the production of healthy offspring, but those whose mothers took the time to milk-bathe their eggs are 2-3 inches taller on average. Only after all this secondary incubation will a rodenian child emerge, clawing free from his or her shell with quiet squeaks and a sharp birth-tooth.
Rodenian children mature rapidly, over 13-14 years, though females’ bodies do not begin to ovulate until late in their twenties, another quirk suspected to be by design rather than happenstance.
Culture
Rodenian culture has been shaped by a single gland - what has come to be known as the hedonary gland. It grows in the rear of the skull, near the passages used for breeding, and when pressured, it releases a potent chemical cocktail that induces trance-like behavior. The resulting hyper-suggestibility leaves the recipient of nearly any sexual contact utterly at the mental mercy of their mates, an aspect slightly mitigated by their tendency to form romantic entanglements in trios.
Invariably, all three sexual partners find themselves changed, utterly infatuated with each other, their minor irritants smoothed away into unwavering loyalty. Conflict is a thing of the past. Rodenian relationships are tripods of reinforced titanium. There is no weakness within them. Their language has no word for divorce, nor does it need one. The concept is utterly foreign. When one partner dies, the other two either die of grief or bond together all the stronger.
For this reason, they naturally became xenophobic. Aliens cannot come to love the way they do, cannot submit their very being during sexual congress. Their ears and their hedonary glands are a vulnerability all too easy to exploit, particularly for clever slavers. For this reason, many rodenians have formed closely guarded enclaves, limiting their contact with the outside. Those who do venture into the wider UGC typically do so with some sort of protection for their ears - specially designed headphones are the most common.
History
Corvus is a planet dominated by forests on its one, large continent, and that is where the Rodenians developed. They had attained access to advanced levels of biosciences before first contact was made, three rushes ago, though they lagged behind in many other disciplines. No atmospheric craft had yet been devised. Self-drawing crossbows were their main form of self-defense. Slug-throwers had not even been invented. Power was siphoned from the roots of certain types of trees, a naturally occurring form of solar power.
At first, they welcomed outsiders with open arms... until more and more of their people vanished in the night, taken with a whimper and wiggle. The UGC did little to protect them from the dangers of the wider galaxy - pirates, slavers, and criminals - so the rodenians took matters into their own hands. They traded away their expertise in gene-modification for guns - big ones, and threatened to shoot down any ship who landed without their express consent. The crackling reports of their cannons made good on those threats.
The mouse-people of Corvus had learned a painful lesson about their own vulnerability, one they would not soon forget. With their home relatively secure from unwanted intervention, they allowed themselves to establish colonies on other worlds, but only after arming their colonists with the finest guns and the toughest helmets they could buy. Their caution has limited their influence on the galactic scale, but it has kept them safe for the most part.
Pirates prize them as easily programmed pleasure slaves. There is no need for drugs with side effects or expensive neurotherapy. A few slow fucks with a looping audio file playing in the background is all that’s needed to convert a proud rodenian into a simpering slave.
Psychics
In recent years, rodenians have begun displaying a heretofore unforeseen talent for all things psychic. Skills in telepathy and telekinesis are most common, but odd reports of clairvoyants have cropped up as well. Rodenian ambassadors categorically deny any allegations of mass genetic modification of their people, instead claiming it as a natural evolution against predation. Experts in the field suggest that such a change cannot be explained by natural phenomena, but since access to Corvus is tightly restricted, no real investigation has been conducted.
These frightening powers are rare among most core species, and frequently only a result of surgical implantation or extreme genetic manipulation. That a member race of the UGC would suddenly begin to show widespread psionic talent has caused many to reevaluate their opinion of the oft-ignored rodenians. Some theorize that this is the beginning of their rise to prominence. Others assume it is a destabilizing act that will bring about the big-eared mice’s downfall. Only time will tell.