Outside of their home world of Dykon, urogs have a reputation as brash know-it-alls who stay engaged only while a topic interests them. Within Dykon's society, their lives of careful study show how they truly engage: sharing knowledge, avoiding the waste of precious energy by keeping conversations short, and leaving topics that require nuance to subject-area experts. However, not all urogs call Dykon home; at least one concentrated settlement of urogs on Akiton primarily worship Oras as they expand their understanding of silicon-based life. Urogs often make valuable members of starship crews as well, especially those who enjoy optimizing navigational routes.
Physical Description
As silicon-based life-forms, urog physiology differs drastically from their carbon-based counterparts. Their flesh is dense, heavy, and translucent—supple yet firm and covered in tough shell scales. While these shell scales are sometimes identified as an exoskeleton, urogs understand them as an extension of their segmented limbs and see the exoskeleton label as a holdover from carbon-based life being the standard paradigm. Many of urogs' so-called eccentricities come from the fundamental difference between carbon-based and silicon-based life. Overall, urogs don't bother fighting these misunderstandings—likely due to the amount of energy it would take to correct them.
Energy conservation and efficiency are biological imperatives for urogs. As their flesh is firm and mostly immobile at comfortable temperatures, they need to expend considerable energy to move their limbs. However, it doesn't affect their mobility, as they typically move by using minute cilia to generate electromagnetic currents and float over the ground. A similar electromagnetic process in their biology breaks down food into its molecular structure for consumption, making it so that urogs can consume almost any object. However, urogs prefer the easily consumed plant life and minerals from their home world since these silicon-based structures require less energy to digest. Their control over this process is precise to the molecular level, enabling urogs to consume choice nutrients and leave non-nutritive substances behind. For efficiency, they only keep their consumption field active to purposefully break down food or to safely carry delicate items.
When inactive, urog bodies settle into a resting state, their shell scales hanging over their limbs and making them appear like a scaled slug. When fighting, engaging directly with the environment around them, or otherwise exerting significant physical energy, urogs enter an active state, extending their beaked head-stalk and unfurling the limbs that line their abdomen. In this state, their body temperatures rise to make their joints supple enough to move. Maintaining this active state is physically taxing on an urog's body, to the point that a single hour in this state requires the same energy as a single day in their resting state. This active state is typically reserved for academic study, life-or-death situations, reproduction, or interacting with other species.
Urogs control the layering of their shell scales as they return to their resting state. Specific combinations act as fashion statements, mood indicators, or personal identifiers. They can also manipulate their color by purposefully consuming supplemental minerals. The changed color ranges from iridescent tone to a saturated dye, depending on the amount consumed, and fades over time. These supplements are produced solely on Dykon, so any urog who wishes to maintain their coloration typically stocks up when visiting, imports through a specialized mail-order outfit, or creates a unique blend and processes their own from locally accessible materials.
Home World
The crystalline Dykon, one of the moons of the gas giant Bretheda, is a vibrant, silicon-based world. The moon itself is home to a vast array of plant life, most of which is unique in the Pact Worlds due to the moon's distinctive biochemistry. Urogs, truly having no other world than Dykon that could easily support their biological needs, have undertaken a significant effort to catalog much of their native flora and fauna so they can maintain a well-tended moon. This planned ecosystem includes a balance between staple foods, medicinal plants, and the necessary biodiversity to support the scarce fauna that live alongside urogs. This control over their planetary environment is possible only because urogs face few threats from the natural world and have political independence in all but name. Dykon formally falls under the leadership of Bretheda, but the planet's ruling body, Confluence, leaves Dykon to govern itself. The urog government on Dykon, the Preeminence, is a panel of experts on areas of planetary concern. New experts are nominated for appointment by their research institution whenever a previous member steps down or the panel decides that a new perspective is required.
The majority of Dykon remains undeveloped, with a few concentrated settlements housing the whole population while a few countryside hermits and academics engage in full-time field work. The major population centers serve specific functions and include research centers that specialize in those areas. For example, the city of Zethir, originally carved into the side of an immense crystal cliff and now encompassing the buildings that have sprung up around it, hosts child-raising centers and life span–development researchers. One of the smaller settlements, the town of Precursor, hosts mostly engineers who work on prototype structures that give it a cluttered, eclectic appearance: no two buildings are alike.
Venturing outside of these settlements is common, as the relative safety of the moon enables urogs to wander without threat. Scenic depictions of Dykon commonly include classes of urogs engaged in field work, floating cloudlike above silica crystal fields. The moon holds several famous research sites, such as Lake Kellgin, a mile-wide ammonia lake, and the silica run just outside of the spaceport Ekynas. More curious still is the Oscillation Field with a reputation for altering consciousness that attracts urogs who believe they aren't living up to their full potential.
Out of all the various academies and universities, the Dykon Replication Studies Center maintains the most prestige for aspiring urog academics since its research agenda requires expertise in multiple fields. Other institutions develop around a particular specialty, such as Ekynas' mathematics institute. While outside scholars are most common at Ekynas, each of Dykon's research institutes encourages scholars from other worlds to apply—except for the Replication Studies Center.
Urogs have spread from Dykon, often ending up in academic study or providing technical expertise for starship crews. Commonly, urogs will leave Dykon when they feel like they've ceased growing, if they need to get experience not offered on the moon, or after a major professional embarrassment. While these rovings are most often solitary, a community of urogs has developed alongside the contemplatives of Akiton, calling itself the Pillarist Meld.
Society and Alignment
Culture on Dykon prioritizes efficiency whenever possible. While biological necessity drives conservation of energy, cultural values drive optimization far beyond the need to avoid overexertion and into its own art form. These values touch nearly every aspect of everyday life, from the way meals are prepared for quickest consumption to Renewal Day, a single day dedicated to the implementation of many low-priority changes all at once. Social interactions follow a similar structure, with the expectation that conversations outside of close relationships should focus only on necessary information and avoid small talk.
While this belief leads to stereotypes of curt urogs who walk away when conversations bore them, urogs see this avoidance as polite. Even in crisis situations, Dykonian society instills that it can be harmful to speak up on a topic on which one isn't an expert, as doing so inevitably leads to the spread of misinformation and misunderstanding. Even in a medical emergency, a traditional Dykonian response is to seek appropriate help instead of risking harm by taking amateur action. The common aphorism, “Don't undo work before it starts,” emphasizes the need to wait for direction before acting. On Dykon, this approach tends to be effective, as education typically focuses on specializing in a particular area of strength or interest, so an expert is never far away.
Day-to-day life is mostly self-regimented because urogs encourage each other to find the daily routine that works best for them. These routines do include unstructured time since being too strict is often inefficient; this contradiction is colloquially known as the inefficiency paradox. Particularly driven urogs refer to their time away from work or study as paradox days, as not working leads to more efficient work later.
Socially, urogs tend to have personal living quarters in their research lab. The majority of housing is built for lone urogs with the expectation that group living quarters will only be used for brief periods. Most socializing occurs in weekly knowledge-sharing groups, where urogs in the same field come together and share any insights they've learned. Few religious congregations maintain a consistent service with Eloruti, Ibra, Yaraesa, and Weydan being the most common. Individual urogs dedicated to one deity aren't uncommon, though it can seem rarer since devotion is treated as a private matter.
Education
After efficiency, advancing knowledge is the strongest value in Dykonian urog society. Formal education begins once children can move independently, which typically comes soon after they develop telepathic abilities. Their first lessons take place in large child-rearing centers, mostly in Zethir. There, they learn rudimentary urog skills: reading, writing, conservation of energy, and maintaining an efficient routine. Before they leave this school as adolescents, they undergo aptitude- and interest testing; the results determine initial placement into specialized academies.
These academies cover a wide variety of topics, treating both scientific and practical fields with equal respect. After initial placement, switching areas of study is encouraged, especially when a student struggles with coursework or seems disinterested. Specialized study within these academies takes another four years, at which point an urog graduates into adulthood. Urogs immediately post-graduation are known as dendrites, taken from a philosophical text likening urog academic lineage to branching rock formations.
In the immediate years after completing formal education, urogs are expected to find an academic mentor in the field of their choice. The mentorship and cohort experience is highly valued, with some urogs eventually finding full-time work in mentoring newly graduated students. During this period, urogs become experts in their chosen area of study by performing independent research and networking in their mentor's wider professional circle. Once a mentor has determined that their protege has mastered the subject, the partnership dissolves, and the protege changes from dendrite to learned.
However, education never stops. After significant milestones in their careers, such as publication of research or novel findings, urogs can choose to identify their education level by a new term. These terms are self-chosen, typically based on how much growth the individual feels this milestone represented. Typically, these appellations indicate rising in height, using terms such as “elevated” or the names of atmospheric layers. Going extended periods without these milestones is sometimes seen as matter of concern.
Dykon Replication Studies Center
After urogs began traveling off their moon, especially with the advent of Drift Travel in the Pact Worlds, academic research boomed. With urogs able to safely leave Dykon and easily return in case of inhospitable conditions, the Preeminence declared it time to advance research by gathering knowledge from other worlds. This declaration lasted for only a few scant years before an agricultural researcher, Second-Learned-Harvesting, attempted to change cultivation practices in the Dykonian berry fields. The fields nearly collapsed from the technique, and the experiment came to a sudden halt. The Preeminence charged a task force with outlining appropriate research methods and summarizing other near-catastrophes.
The resulting report outlined a root cause: Dykon's silicon-based life created such fundamentally different conditions that the accuracy of most offworld research couldn't be trusted on the moon. However, the knowledge exchange brought in some advances. The task force recommended a new focus on replicating research from other worlds to truly test the difference between silicon- and carbon-based life.
Shortly after the founding of the Dykon Replication Studies Center, its research team gained a reputation for precise experimentation and intriguing results. The center's focus remains on replicating research done in carbon-based settings to see if it remains true on Dykon and using differences between results to illuminate the fundamental nature of differing types of life. Official posts at the research center are highly competitive, and ambitious urogs specialize in interdisciplinary fields and engage in offworld research to strengthen their application. Unlike other institutions, the center accepts only urog scholars so that its tight focus on the species' needs remains central.
Names
Traditional names for Dykon-based urogs follow a uniform structure, which efficiently identifies an individual's context within their society upon first meeting. Typically, names are structured in this order: family name with tree, branch, and node; followed by an individual name with birth order, education level, and area of specialty. Outside of Dykon society, urogs use a shortened version of their individual name, choose a name that matches the culture in which they live, or adopt a nickname given by their crewmates.
Sample Names
Betula Sprig Node One Second-Dendrite, Fifth-Exosphere, Fir, Navigeer, Xenii Epicore Node Three First-Elevated-Xenobiology.
Vital Stats
Average Height 10-15 ft.
Average Weight 500–1,000 lbs.
Age of Maturity 50 years
Maximum Age 300+2d% years
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