#sobrekt

[ladyanaconda]

Vexarys Headcanons

Is over 630 Earth years old. 

When not on the job, he's a grandfatherly figure. You still don't want to get on his bad side, though. 

He's hunched over from his advanced age. This has led to some chronic back pain from time to time.

His full name is Arako Vexarys (in Sobrekt culture, surnames go first), but as a form of respect, everyone normally refers to him as Shuryo.

Tak calls him Ojizen, lit. meaning 'grandpa'

Grigon calls him 'old man'.

Like all Sobrekt, he prefers to eat raw fish. Naturally, he becomes very fond of Earth sushi.

His late wife was a Krytvor. 

Is a known fan of teas, including bahgol. 

Has a strained relationship with his daughter Scylla, Tak'ago's mother. He's particularly sore that she makes no attempt to even call her daughter. 

Because he was an indo'kani in his youth, he's very knowledgeable about animal behavior and training. In fact, he's very fond of them. 

His favorite weapons are heavy axes, and his favorite execution method is decapitation. 

By his species' standards, he's quite a pacifist. He'd rather not resort to violence unless necessary, which has brought lots of criticism from his people. And yet, no one who challenged him for the title of Shuryo has survived the encounter. 

However, even he was still skeptical to Grigon's intentions about forming an alliance. 

[ladyanaconda]

The Green Death

To answer @irubinehoshioka-blog's question, the Green Death is an infectious disease that's actually inspired on THIS masterpiece:

Stages

Lethargy and feelings of sickness and/or pain.

The skin turns yellow-green, the eyes water, and mucus drips from the nose.

Skin starts to sac and detach from the muscles, often tearing open holes along the body.

Rapid and severe dehydration, which leads to violent, bloody vomiting.

Lucidity starts fading while pustules and veins begin appearing on their skin and the pupils contract to the point of invisibility.

Best-case scenario, the infected are killed in the second and third stage before they become an active danger.

And now some headcanons.

The disease gets its name from the infected's sickly green skin. It's known as Midora'kan in the Sobrekt language.

The disease overtakes the host in minutes. They lose all sense of rationality, pain responses, and self-preservation, blindly attacking anyone around them to spread the pathogen.

Most of the organs are liquefied and expelled from the body during the bloody vomiting in the first stages before fully succumbing.

The only way to kill an infected is via fire or destroying their central nervous system. Surprisingly, they seem to know this, as they'll actively avoid fire.

Thankfully, the pathogen isn't airborne. It can only be passed via bite. Nothing happens if you're scratched by an infected—though an immediate visit to a doctor is highly recommended.

If bitten on a limb, you can avoid being infected if you amputate before the pathogen reaches your nervous system.

Despite their lack of rationality, the infected do seem to exhibit a certain grade of intelligence. They actively avoid chomping on people they perceive to possess a fatal illness, and they seem to learn and adapt under certain circumstances.

They're attracted by noise.

There's no known cure of vaccine, and any species can be infected.

Elio and Melmac would call it 'the alien version of a zombie outbreak'.

The Sobrekt fear this disease to the point they'll glass an entire city to keep the pathogen from spreading, even if the outbreak is restricted to one area; worst case scenario, they'd glass an entire planet.

[ladyanaconda]

Indokuro

The most ‘iconic’ of all Sobrekt gessen. 

They’re as valuable to the Sobrekt as a thoroughbred racing horse is to humans. The difference is that indokuros are not for sale. 

People who own an indokuro are referred to as Indo’kani. 

They’re famous (or infamous) for their high intelligence and adaptability. In fact, they’re so intelligent that they require constant mental stimuli or they ‘go nuts’.

They prefer hunting their food rather than being fed. 

A popular saying goes: ‘You can tell an indokuro is well-trained if it can ignore its prey drive’.

Indokuros only respond to commands in the Sobrekt language. Furthermore, they only obey their indo’kani. 

When not working, Indokuros are allowed to roam free in the wild, where they form packs to learn social cues from each other. They can hear their indo’kani’s calls from long distances.

Their genetic composition is classified. 

To obtain become an indo’kani, soldiers must take part in the Indo’kani Exams. If they pass, they’re given a fertilized egg which they must incubate and hatch. The newborn indokuro will imprint on the first person they see when they hatch , which makes it easier to train them.

From the above, Indo’kani see their indokuros not as war assets or even pets, but as their children and brethren-in-arms. As such, losing them is like losing a family member. 

The stripes running down their bodies have different shapes and colors unique to each individual. 

Indokuros are fiercely protective and undyingly loyal to their Indo’kani. Should their ‘owner’ die, it’s not uncommon for indokuros to go into a depression and even starve themselves to death. If they do get through it, another indo´kani can try claiming them, though they risk getting mauled in the process should the indokuros reject them.

I gave my boys a bit of a revamp, but kept their indoraptor influence. Their new body shape is based on greyhounds and cheetah to make them more agile.

[ladyanaconda]

The benefits included in accepting Hylurgian occupation on your planet include:

eternal protection from external threats

access (however limited) to Hylurgian technology and medicine.

you get to keep your culture and way of life as long as it doesn't interfere with the Hylurgians' activities

The only thing Hylurgians ask for is that the planet’s inhabitants swear their allegiance and unwavering loyalty to the Hylurgian Empire. One of the clearest examples is the Gar'al, home to the Ag'nakarr, who've been serving the Empire because of the benefits they brought, which Sobr never gave them.

[ladyanaconda]

Was there ever a campaign by the Armada to secretly convince the Ag'nakarr to rise against the Sobrekt government to topple the planet from the inside and weaken it enough for the Armada to move in and conquer easily?

As a matter of fact, Garrek did suggest the idea, but Garraxhar instantly rejected it. Hylurg would freeze before he’d resort to making ‘friends’ worth filthy half-breeds. (Plus, the idea came from the unfavorite son, so of course he wouldn’t take it seriously)

Millennia later, Grigon remembered his brother’s idea, and after some thought realized it wasn’t such a bad idea. The Ag’nakarr have a deep-rooted resentment toward the Sobrekt government for basically banishing them from their home world just for being half-breeds, so they’d jump at the chance.

However, at that point Grigon had already come to the conclusion that it’d be better to have the Sobrekt as allies than conquered slaves. So, he did reach out to the Ag’nakarr and offer them aid in exchange for information, espionage, and sabotage.

[ladyanaconda]

Are Hylurgian war prisoners on Sobr the only ones of their race to form actual friendships with Sobrekt?

Nop. Other species can make friends with a Sobrekt, though it can take a long time before a Sobrekt actually thinks of you as a friend.

[ladyanaconda]

Is Ghar'al a full planet or is it more like an exomoon?

Exomoon.

[ladyanaconda]

Have the Sobrekt taken any Hylurgian war prisoners as much/often as the reverse?

Yes, they take Hylurgian war prisoners. They've even developed a magnetic device to completely immobilize a Hylurgian carapace, even going as far as to tear them out of it to expose their soft flesh—the greatest form of humiliation.

Like Hylurgians, Sobrekt send their war prisoners to their own colosseums, but they do so for entertainment rather than religious sacrifice. They often pit captured Hylurgians against their warbeasts; if they do make it out alive, they're rewarded their freedom—partly. They're freed from jail, but confined to a particular area with other war prisoners, where they may continue with their lives under strict surveillance, and they may never use communication devices.

None of these Hylurgians may leave Sobr, and even if they could, they can NEVER return to Hylurg; they'd rather spend the rest of their lives in an enemy planet than return home in shame for their exposure. Curiously, some of these Hylurgians have embraced the Sobrekt way of life, which isn't that different from their own in some aspects.