Practicum: Linthre
Greetings and swasivious! I guess you can say that I am that 🤔 Anyway, another practicum and one of my species! So buckle up, we’re in for a ride!
Usual sidenote, as a different species their plural and adjective forms are different:
Singular (one): Linthre
Plural (Many): Linathre
Adjective: Linthrin
Worldbuilder intent
We have all heard that silicon life is a possibility because, well, silicon is kinda like carbon. This is gonna go a bit into chemistry; fortunately, I studied just for this kind of occasion!
Image generated by ChatGPT fixed by Human
Atoms have a nucleus, and around it are electrons in a bunch of shells. It is very complicated, to say the least, but I will try to simplify it. Now, as you are all very smart 🍪s, you all remember your classes in chemistry about atoms. I’ll give a brief description of what matters here. There are 2 types of electrons we care about: valence electrons and non-valence electrons.
Valence ones are in the outermost shell, which roughly correspond to be furthest from the nucleus, and thus have the lowest energy. These are important because for most important atoms that life deals with, these are the ones that form chemical bonds with other atoms and thus allow chemistry as we know it to exist. This is in contrast with non-valence electrons, which generally do not form chemical bonds. There are atoms like sulphur and phosphorus that can take non-valence electrons and form chemical bonds, but for this discussion, it does not matter. I will likely come back to it someday.
Anyway, the point with that mini-class on electrons is that carbon has 4 valence electrons out of a maximum of 8 (roughly, for simplicity sake, we can say 8 is the max, but it is not entirely true for all atoms). That means carbon has 4 electrons to use for bonds, and each bond requires 1 electron from each atom that makes the bond, again, roughly. So that means carbon can make 4 bonds, which offers a huge variety of structures! It means you can have huge carbon chains, make it into circles, stuff oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen, and almost all non-metals into it to create complex structures.
This variety of structures is crucial to life as the variety and possibilities are what allows life to evolve and find ways to do what life has to do to sustain itself. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Almost infinite possibilities have a higher chance of having something that works than a small, finite set of options. Now, silicon is the same because it has 4 valence electrons, which is why it has always been a candidate for alternative biochemistry.
This is, however, not very easy, because while they both have the same number of valence electrons, silicon oxide is solid while carbon dioxide is a gas, meaning they face very different prospects for all the biochemistry. I could skip it all, but, you know, why be boring and just make it a silicon one and handwave away the problems?
Especially given I found this! I don’t remember where I found it, unfortunately, but this made my brain spin! As you can see, silicon, Si, is used in conjunction with carbon. Where’s the carbon, you ask? Carbon is considered the default, so on this chart, wherever there is a corner or a split of lines and nothing is said, it is a carbon! So this is a SiC, Silicon-Carbon, structure! Carbon is still the more dominant one, but hey, I can make it a mix! So that was why I created the Linthre: to have an interesting silicon-inspired form of sophont (sophont is a generic term for any being capable of human level cognition, intellect, communication, and such).
Biology
Most of my universe operates under what is called, uh… checks my notes Universal Carbon-Based Hypothesis… which is a name so straight forward I should have remembered it… Anyway, it is a set of rules I have made for my carbon-based life and is an in-universe hypothesis! In-universe and out-universe combined!
Anyway, given this, and that virtually all other life does not contain the SiC aminoacids and nucleotides that the Linthre need, they have to eat supplements a lot when they are off their homeworld which… they all are. I’ll explain why later. But suffice it to say, they need supplements that give them the carbosilicates needed for them to build all the compounds they need to function; a pill a day keeps the doctor at bay!
General body
The Linthre are humanoid, like the vast majority of my species. They are the species for all those who like the more muscular kind of people 😏 They have a greyish brown tone to their skin and angular forms. They are not made of rocks, so not rock-looking, but less curved than humans. One thing to notice with them is that their angularness increases with age. They are much softer as children than as adults. So in a way, they become more rock-looking with age.
An interesting fact about the Linthre is that they have structures in their arms and legs that can help them build up energy and forces. They can, over a period of seconds up to a minute, springload their arm or leg muscles and then release them all quickly, meaning that their already pre-existing, heightened strength is further amplified.
I do not have images of the Linthre, but one day I will! But one thing that is crucial in how they are perceived by people in known space is that… they never stop growing! I mean it: they get bigger and bigger as they get older, and it never stops! The growth slows down with age, and when they reach what humans consider adulthood, it slows down substantially, but every year, they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
The oldest known Linthre in space are actually the size of mountains. As you can imagine, this is very heavy and hard to lift. Of course it is! So as Linthre get older, they get more tired… Almost like old humans 🤔 Anyway, once they reach the size of mountains, they can be asleep for decades and become indistinguishable from an actual mountain with dirt, plants and more covering them. They then wake up for a few days, gorging on everything they can reach before going back to sleep once more.
As you can imagine, one thing that happens is that after a certain point, they get simply too big to be in space as no one can accommodate their enormous sizes, so they become planet bound.
The Linthre are also what is called a resurrectional species. This is a phenomenon of some species where they have an ability to come back from the dead, so to speak. They are not actually dead but have a method to remain alive and come back from “death;” this is not a common trait though. In the Linthre’s case, they can be killed in the ordinary sense, but instead of decomposing entirely, if their body is put reasonably fast in ground, their decomposing body will help fuel a plant-like growth. This “plant” will eventually sprout from the ground, and after a very long time–the larger the Linthre was upon death, the longer the ”plant” takes to mature–the plant-like thing will release the Linthre as it has regrown, and most memories remain intact. I hope it is sufficiently obvious that if you kill this plant thing, the Linthre is gone and dead for good with no coming back.
Reproduction
Reproduction gotta be crazy, huh? After all, I am the great Vivian! The one obsessed about weird reproduction! Unfortunately for this time, I am going to have to disappoint you. I am going the fairly ordinary route here with 2 sexes, one having the 🍆 stuck into their 🍩.
But you know, just a regular pregnancy is too BORING! So no, they are not mammals, no no! No placental stuff, not even oviviviparity! Which means you lay eggs but keep the eggs inside you until they hatch (kind of). No, they lay eggs! And to be a bit on the whole silicon theme that I have been avoiding, the eggs they look like… 🪨-like rocks that blend in! It is a camouflage technique from ancient times.
The shell is pretty thick, too, so the baby cannot actually get out! But fear not, mumma and pappa Linthre to the rescue! Which means that toward when the child can come out, one parent has to always be nearby in order to hear if the child is trying to get out so they can help the little one! And yes… parents have been known to be a bit too eager and… Yeah, let’s not talk about it. It is sad when it happens.
One important thing to remember when it comes to their reproduction is that they don’t have an infinite opening for it. It is between about 15 years of age and at latest when they reach 200 years of age. After that, they are simply too big, too sleepy, too much everything to be a parent. The big Linthre were and still are used by those that are planetbound to keep bad people and creatures away.
History
To know their history, you have to understand that the history of Stellima is split into several eras. The Era of Concert is the current era where the Concert of Stars reign over known space and maintain peace. Before that, you had the Era of Strife, which is when most species in known space got the Discrete drive, their FTL, in a short time span, so a lot of wars happened. Before that, in turn, you have the Era of Silence, which is called so because almost all experienced silence and solitude not knowing about any other species.
The era that is important here is the first era, the Era of Darkness, so called because for many, it coincides with the pre-industrial era and a huge lack of understanding, and thus is considered ”Dark” metaphorically. Virtually no one had discrete drives or travelled space in this era–this was centuries and millennia before space would come to be crawling with intelligent life going all around everywhere.
So, in this era, there was actually a civilisation that had managed to get space flight and was cruising around in space from star to star, but they didn’t find much. It is not like most species were doing anything to call attention to themselves. But this unknown species did find the Linthre homeworld, and, you know, having those enormous beings to do lots of labour is in many cases much better than machines!
Unfortunately for the Linthre, they had no advanced technology and were in their Bronze Age, so they were quickly subdued even with their enormous size (especially when older) on their side. For almost a millennium, they were slaves to this mysterious species and spread out on various worlds.
That is, until the species in question disappeared mysteriously. No one knows why or how. The tales that have been passed down by the Linthre are confusing and contradicting. Each world the Linthre were found on later seemed to have their own stories, with only one factor in common: they got into their ships and flew off and never returned. A common but not universal theme was that they looked fearful when they left, as if they were terrified for what was to come.
The Linthre tried to rebuild and regroup on all the planets and even used the technology left behind. Most of it was futile, but the Linthre did not give up! Eventually, during the Era of Strife, they were found by other species that had taken off to space and were now expanding. The actual homeworld of the Linthre remains lost to history, but some Linthre continue the search for it to this day.
Ideology & Government
I generally tend to keep these two categories separated, but for the Linthre, I put ideology and government together, and I do it for damn good reasons. Namely, they don’t have any ideology or government that unifies them. They are a scattered people who have long since lost their homeworld. Due to their lack of technological development in both instances of being found, they never have had the ability to properly govern themselves as a united force.
Local groups have managed to do it, and depending on which star nation laid claim to the worlds that the Linthre had ended up stuck on, their governments and freedoms differ greatly. Some are left fully autonomous in exchange for services and help, others live under the rule of another species because they need the protection no matter the cost.
Some remain without technology to this day on some worlds, but many have modernised and taken space flight as part of culture like many species have already. Those that are in space and dealing with people have found one thing to bind them all together, however, namely that they have to stick together and look out for each other to be certain that they never end up as slaves again, no matter what people say.
Modern Culture
Being so divided, they do not have a proper, cohesive culture to speak of. Their culture depends largely on which planet they come from, and many of those encountered in space tend to be Linthre who live with other species rather than with others of their own kind. But when there are enough Linthre around, they do tend to cluster together much more than other species.
One reason is that they are often feared. They tend to be extremely strong and hence be perceived as an inherent threat by their sheer existence, even if the person, family, clan, or whatever the Linthre is locally is anything but violent. This perception is not helped by the fact that an enraged Linthre can cause immense destruction unlike any other known species.
Another reason is also because they have to deal with their elders as they get larger and deal with the inevitable problem of them becoming too big for most forms of modern life. It is not uncommon that a lot of these groups of Linthre practice ritualised suicide in order to prevent themselves from having to get to that large size and inactivity. Some groups have it obligatory, some have it as an option, some forbid it. They are among the least monolithic people I have made.
Summa Summarum
So what have we learned today? Well, from the start, I hope you can learn that inspiration for crazy fun can come in the most unexpected places. A simple image of silicon being part of a carbon structure spiralled into creating these fellows! And to one of my favourite characters, Ainthree! A silent big dude who is best friends with another favourite character of mine, Irruma!
I also, importantly, made the resurrectional bit an inherent trait of the species so readers and people learning can know what to expect. Resurrection is often a bad trope because it is unexpected, but for the Linthre, I have a very strict set of rules on how they survive and how to kill them permanently in order to prevent it becoming cheap.
The fact they are also so spread out allows them to have little to nothing in common even if they are the same species, which opens up a lot of stories. I think that will be all for this post; enjoy!
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as silicon-based, or carbosillicate, life and resurrectional species are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as the Linthre and every detail unique to them plus all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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