Pleltkyk, trilateral arthropod swimmers of sector 708

[Glelukun]

PLELTKYK


Endemic to the gas giant Gythsheno in the far reaches of the outer rim, the pleltkyk are an amphibious, aquatic hard invertebrate sentient species with blue plated bodies and a rare trilaterally symmetrical body plan. They make their homes in migratory cities of natural coralite that rise above and sink down through the planet’s unusual suspended liquid stratum. Pleltkyk are boisterous, expert aquatic hunters and enthusiastic pilots of their own primitive aquaerial vehicles.

Until recently pleltkyk society was at a pre-information industrial level and highly fragmented, distributed across a vast, deep and turbulent gas giant that could easily swallow most rocky worlds a thousand times over. Efforts to unite their scattered communities have rapidly risen in scale and importance over the past standard half century. Galactic corporate interests began mining tibanna gas from their atmosphere towards the latter part of the Republican era, and later Imperial exploitation has lent a more explicitly violent character to their interactions with the wider galaxy.

Personality
Natural pack predators, most peltkyk are unafraid of rough and tumble, but more interested in finding a stable group to operate within than taking on the galaxy alone. They are generally curious, bold, spontaneous and abrupt, tending to straightforwardly seek consensus and avoid subterfuge. Many are strongly motivated by the plight of their homeworld and people, as well as a wish to be recognised as equal fellow sentients.

They enjoy moving fast, and can be prone to a degree of reckless or thrill-seeking behaviour. While they tend to be frustrated by the difficulties of moving on the flat surfaces so common away from their native world, some find worthy compensation in a galaxy wonderfully rich in machines with powerful engines. Used to living in large groups, clambering around or across each other and sleeping in piles, pleltkyk have a strong sense of communal responsibility but a very hazy one of personal space. Their tendency to constantly sway and undulate can also be distracting.

Physical description
At first glance a pleltkyk on land resembles a blue, aqua or lilac-coloured fish planted upright, moving with a waddling gait. Usually around 150cm tall, with a blunt tri-lobed upward facing beak and overlapping scale-like plates, it takes a moment for most humanoids to decode what they’re seeing. They have three gracile segmented paddle arms and three large, mobile bulb-like eyes arranged radially around a cylindrical body, with three shorter, thicker flippers that also serve as legs at the base of their torso.

They are simultaneous hermaphrodites with no secondary sexual characteristics and no nudity taboo, so on Gythsheno pleltkyk usually only wear relevant carrying pouches or tool harnesses. In the wider galaxy most individuals take their cues from what seems practical in the moment or advantages their interest in being recognised as civilised sentients.

Homeworld
The gas giant Gythsheno in the Hrapul system

Languages
All pleltkyk speak one, or usually several, dialects of pleludichora, a dense musical language that sounds something like a chorus of gossiping woodwinds — or, if they’re swearing, like three humanoids trying to settle an argument through the mouthpiece of one kloo horn. Any pleltkyk in contact with offworlders quickly picks up basic, and often a few other languages they’ve been regularly exposed to.

Example names
Fuchebukluut, Chrelowen, Vethliuloun, Telalengrevi, Glelukun

Adventurers
During the Imperial era and before there was almost no way for pleltkyk to leave their planet legitimately. Any that made their way offworld were either kidnapped for some nefarious purpose or managed to smuggle themselves aboard a tibanna freighter, be it bribing the captain of a battered black marketeer or wriggling unnoticed into the ducts of a bulk freighter. Those who left willingly might be urgently seeking the aid or resources of the wider galaxy to aid in their struggle against those exploiting their people, or they could be reckless wild-eyed explorers mesmerised by the gas miners’ stories of alien stars orbited by strange solid worlds.

Given their biological need to moult in their home city, even if they managed to gain autonomy in the wider galaxy pleltkyk would be either exceptionally driven to find a reliable way to return home (even if not to stay,) or deeply fatalistic, prepared to do whatever it took to leave a mark of their choosing on the galaxy in the years they had left.



PLELTKYK
Attribute Dice: 12D

• DEXTERITY 2D/4D+2
  
• KNOWLEDGE 1D+1/3D+2
  
• MECHANICAL 2D/4D+2
  
• PERCEPTION 2D/4D
  
• STRENGTH 2D/4D
  
• TECHNICAL 1D/3D
  

Move: 10/12 (walking and climbing, *5/6 on level ground, see trait Mobile in a Mobile Element); 12/14 (swimming)

Traits and abilities

Aquatic: Pleltkyk can breathe both air and water and can withstand extreme pressures found in ocean depths.

Mobile in a Mobile Element: Having evolved to live out their whole lives in complex, ever-changing gaseous and aquatic environments with no even footing to be found, pleltkyk think and move three dimensionally as naturally as they breathe. They ignore the first multi-action penalty incurred on their turn for checks that involve movement in axonometric space (acrobatics, operating speeder- to starfighter-scale aerial, submarine or space vehicles, climbing and jumping, or swimming.)

However, their physiology is poorly adapted for navigating flat surfaces. Their walking movement speed is halved on level ground (very easy or easy terrain) and they must make an additional moderate dexterity (or running, if trained) check to avoid stumbling or staggering when moving above cruising speed. This check doesn’t incur a multi-action penalty, but halves their movement if failed.

Parched Environments: When in very dry environments, such as on desert planets like Jakku or Tatooine, pleltkyk respire less efficiently. They are impaired physically and psychologically by their discomfort and the stress of their surroundings. They suffer a −1D penalty to all Dexterity, Perception and Strength attribute and skill checks.

Subaquatic Environments: When fully immersed in liquid environments pleltkyk breathe and move more freely, and feel generally much more at ease. While submerged they gain a +1D bonus to all Dexterity, Perception and Strength attribute and skill checks.

Trilateral Symmetry: Thanks to their threefold body plan pleltkyk can hold three objects at once, and have 360° vision. They can see beings or events all around them, and excepting darkness or other obscuring factors any attempt to sneak up behind one automatically fails.

Vocal Syrinx: The complexity of their multi-valved breathing tracts and their own subtle polyphonic, poetic musical language means pleltkyk can invoke the tones of shyriiwook as easily as those of basic. They are adept at precisely discerning and reproducing sounds, as well as intuiting their meaning. The gamemaster should allow pleltkyk to make appropriate Languages checks involving spoken languages at a lower difficulty than other characters.

Story Factors

Ecdysis: Every 1,252 galactic standard days, four times in the 5,010 day Gythsheno orbit, all pleltkyk must return home. Not just to their planet, but to the coralite city of their first juvenile moult. In order to shed their chitinous outer covering they need to spend time in the same atmospheric and electromagnetic environment where their shell was first formed. Attempting to moult under other conditions prevents their new carapace from hardening, meaning almost certain death.

Heteromorph Species: Being an unknown species with physiology far from the galactic norm, pleltkyk in the galaxy often draw attention. While their limbs are dexterous enough to use standard tools, gear and armour will often need to be custom made or heavily modified to fit their unusual anatomy.

During the Imperial era Gythsheno is also interdicted by the Empire, and no pleltkyk should be able to leave their home planet. Perhaps on a successful Alien species check, a higher ranking Imperial official may realise something is amiss….


Notes and inspiration
Traits- and lore-wise, the pleltkyk as we statted them are pretty overstuffed, and naturally they would not be appropriate for all tables. I invented them along with my GM and group for my second ever TTRPG campaign and an significant plot arc revolved around their homeworld, so a lot of enthusiasm went into them. Possibly with a more rules lawyerly crowd or in the hands of a powergamer they might make for a pretty un-fun party experience, but for our three-strong group of aliens (verpine, wookiee and I) our mix of weird specific abilities make for some creative ways out of (and into) scrapes.

The initial seed for this species was thinking about the affordances of a TTRPG group to showcase kinds of characters who couldn’t be central to a live action film, for simple budgetary or other practical reasons. Scenes like those in the Mos Eisley cantina and Jabba’s palace are still some of the most thrilling to me when rewatching the original trilogy, simply because of the way they showcase the huge variety of people to be found, even in a single backwater dive. I felt the more ‘like an alien’ an alien character could seem, the more they would help provide a story we’ll likely never quite see on screen, and the more they could act as a signifier for the variety of viewpoints, beliefs, ways of being the spotlight of narrative can shine on.

We know that non-humans are persecuted by the Empire, and that many bothans sacrificed themselves for the rebel cause, so there must be other alien rebel stories playing out in far-flung sectors all across the galaxy. Through fan production we have the opportunity to expand on all those implications of other lives with vastly different umwelten co-existing and sharing the struggle for freedom in the same galaxy.

One of the seeds for the look and identity for the pleltkyk was discovering the extinct Trilobozoa phylum, and wondering about the ‘could-have-beens‘ of evolution. They’re also influenced by coral ecosystems, including the eusocial sponge guardian shrimp Synalpheus regalis.

The specific key visual direction I settled on is basically an aquatic arthropod that can walk upright, swim, climb and use tools, or ‘what if a penguin had fingers and was a shrimp.’ Then I made that trilateral. My other main visual inspirations were Alex Ries’ birrin design and Subnautica concept art, as well as the bug-ferrets and scuds from Jay Eaton’s Runaway to the Stars setting.

The peltkyk are also designed broadly to look like they could be manufactured as ornate, Jim Henson Workshop-style puppets. Their segmented limbs can flop and flap about and their heads could be manipulated in a classic craned-hand muppeteer manner, possibly threaded up through one of the three legs.
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"Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. [...] Remember this. Try."
— The Trail of Political Consciousness, Karis Nemik

[Glelukun]