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| Alien Species: Andorians | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sunday, 17. June 2007, 17:54 (2,119 Views) | |
| Moose | Sunday, 17. June 2007, 17:54 Post #1 |
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Rakurai, Alice, Ael and Olivia
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Posted Image The Andorians hail from the icy moon Andoria, which orbits the ringed gas giant Andor. Other than their white hair, Andorians are pretty much entirely blue, with blue eyes, blue blood, blue teeth, blue lips, and blue gums. In order to survive in their freezing cold native environment, they have a very high metabolism compared to humans and require a very high intake of food. But despite the coldness of their world of origin, Andorians are very hardy and can actually survive in almost any temperature, up to 57 Celsius or 137 Fahrenheit. The Andorians have a pair of antennae sprouting from their temples which are fully prehensile and can move independently of each other. The main function of antennae for balance, and if one or both are cut off, the Andorian will be severely incapacitated for several months until they grow back (much like a lizard's tail). Another function of the antennae is to show emotion through various positioning. For example, sagging antennae show sadness, perky antennae show excitement, and Andorian antennae tend to point in the direction of another Andorian they are attracted to. Posted Image Andorians have four different sexes - shen, zhen, chan, and thaan - with the shens and zhens appearing more female, while the chans and thaans conform more to humanoid ideas of maleness. The female types are taller and more sexually aggressive than the male types. One member of all four sexes is required for a proper Andorian marriage, although only one of the female types and one of the male types is needed for reproduction. There is also a subspecies of Andorians called the Aenar who live under the polar ice cap in Andoria's frozen northern wastes. Presumably due to living underground for a millennium, the Aenar have grayish-white skin and are blind, but have enlarged, telepathic brains which they can use to "see". The Aenar are a subspecies and can interbreed with regular Andorians, producing highly intelligent, pale green-skinned offspring. Depending on whom you ask, Andorian reproduction involves two people with two roles each in the reproductive process, or there are four people required who each do one thing. These might be different social conventions built on the same biological facts. Two-person mating is prolific, whereas the four-person mating entails a narrow window of fertility and low birth-rate. Society and Culture Andorians are frequently described as a deeply emotional, passionate, and even violent race. They are extremely talented at art, and the Andorian Art Academy is said to be the best in the entire Federation. Andorians are extremely vulnerable to phased energy weapons, which give them a deadly infection, which may be the reasons why Andorian energy weapons have no stun setting, and why even in a time of energy weapons, Andorian officers still carry blade weapons with them at all times. Of particular importance is the ushaan-tor, a blade used by traditional Andorian iceminers, which is a crucial part of the Ushaan, or traditional Andorian duel to the death using only the ushaan-tor, which an elaborate code calls for in response to any number of precisely defined insults and slights. Andorian society is non-hierarchical and rather egalitarian. There are no permanent leaders; rather group leaders are chosen by consensus when a leader is necessary to complete some task or deal with outsiders. Nevertheless, until it was folded into the Federation Starfleet, there was a class of Andorian warriors called the Andorian Imperial Guard, bound by a strict code of honour, which defended the chosen leaders and served as the guardians of the Andorian empire. The Andorians discovered interstellar space travel a few hundred years before humans did, and established an interstellar Empire around the turn of the 20th century. The Andorian star system is a close neighbor of the Vulcan star system, and around the 1950s a vicious war broke out between the passionate Andorians and the emotionless Vulcans, and lasted for about 200 years. Finally, the war settled into a kind of cold war and ultimately ended in a lasting peace, when the Andorians and Vulcans recognized their common interests and allied with the Tellarites and the Humans to resist the growing power of the Romulan Star Empire. Eventually these four allies would become the founding members of the United Federation of Planets, in 2161. Despite their passionate and warlike nature, the Andorians have largely been staunch and loyal supporters of the Federation, and its peaceful, utopian vision of interstellar harmony. A few small factions of Andorians refused to join the Federation however, and remain fiercely independent, hiding out on inhospitable, backwater worlds and occasionally engaging in space piracy. Andorians reproductive organs are normally entirely retracted and the sex of some Andorians can be difficult to discern to outsiders. In some Andorian societies, Andorians are treated as neuter until they marry. In others, individuals are treated as sexed from childhood. On the ice-covered planet Andoria, settlements are underground, heated by geothermal energy and connected by tunnels thousands of kilometers long. Many Andorians know the martial art ushaan, which employs the ushaan-tor (an ice-cutting tool) or chakra. Andorian culture puts a high emphasis on physical courage; conversely, despair, depression, or suicide are shameful for the individual and their clan. When Thalek contracted depression he acted recklessly in battle as an alternative to overt suicide. (Star Trek Hidden Frontier: "Coward's Death") Many Andorians live outside of Andorian society and even the Federation. They are often found as employees of Orion Syndicates. Andorian cellular physiology is based as much on cobalt as iron, giving them a skin-tint in the blue portion of the spectrum, ranging from cerulean to a blushing purple, while their hair tends towards white, ranging from silvery to platinum. They possess antennae rising from the brow. In further comparison with humans, as the de facto baseline, Andorians tend to have a higher cartilage-to-bone ratio in their skeletal structure, instances of a chitin-like cartilage-bone fusion combining the former's resiliency with the latter's toughness, and internal ridges of this quasi-chitin which serve to compartmentalize organs from gross physical trauma. Andorians -- as well as lower ghelnoids from their homeworld -- also feature a redundant circulatory system which allows blood to seep osmotically through tissues as well as through the usual travel through venous structures. All of these things make them more resistant to pain, injury, and fatigue than a human -- Andorians take impact differently, and the more efficient blood flow means they rarely get sore or stiff from over-exertion; an Andorian never suffers the indignity of having his leg 'fall asleep', for instance, due to cramped posture, nor do they get frostbite from poor circulation in cold weather. Posted Image On the other hand, the unusual nature of their circulatory system also makes it easier for some drugs to travel through their body -- Andorians, when they drink heavily, get drunk quickly, and entire cottage industries exist in some Orion Syndicate-controlled systems brewing poisons and drugs that work best on Andorians. Because their bones have the tensile properties of cartilage, as well, these bones break messily when they do break (which requires about two to three times the force necessary to break human bone); any injury which breaks an Andorian's bones will require a great deal of healing time, and cause enough pain that even the Andorian nervous system cannot compensate for all of it. The heavy cobalt base to an Andorian's blood and tissue make them most compatible, on a cellular level, with Bolians -- Bolian blood and tissue can be given to an Andorian with little effort, and vice versa, whereas both race's blood would be incompatible with a Vulcan's, for instance, and incompatible with humans. |
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