Physical Description

Something about the way notails look makes them appear so universally normal and casual, and this fact is what makes the notails so deadly to people who don't know what they truly are. Notails are a bipedal species that are covered in a darkish to lightly toasted brown skin that can also more rarely come in paler or darker tones. Notails once came in a much larger range of shades a long time ago, but over time the common mid tan tone was decided to be best for surviving the sun conditions that notails are exposed to on their planet. Notails who were made to work on planets where there is less sunlight tend to be made paler, where those who work on planets where there is more sunlight tend to be darker.

On top of the head of a notail is two antennas. These antennas normally reach upwards, before having a sharp bend in the middle, but notail antennas can come in a variety of shapes and lengths. Notails can fold these antennas and flatten them against their head for protection and when they are not in use. If someone or something touches their antenna this causes the notail to feel an awful life threaten feeling that makes them automatically retract it. The notail's black to dark brown hair does a fine job of hiding their antennas. Uncommonly a notail will have a hair color outside of that range, such as having blond, red, lighter brown, or grey hair. Notails lack hair on any other part of their body and their hair doesn't grow past neck length unless they have a mutation.

Notails have four fingers and a thumb for a total of five digits. Each of these digits has short but sharp claws. They also have the perfect front teeth for ripping and tearing into things, but their back teeth are fairly flat to allow for chewing, thus allowing them to eat a wide range of foods. Notails are mammals with nothing that sets apart the male and females except their physical sex due to the careful refinement of their genes. In some extreme and unusual cases, these refinements may fail and a notail will be born with these traits back, such as the notail developing mammary glands.

The most important thing about a notail is what they call their "face." To them, the mask that sits on top of their face is their "face" and what is underneath it is their "mask." For the sake of easy clarification, the Cosmosdex will use the word mask for what sits on top and face for what lays under it, but when speaking to a notail it is best to say it the other way around to avoid an aggressive correction. Notail masks are very important to them and most notails keep the same mask for life. Some never even remove it from their faces, causing the skin to grow into it. Some notails are a little more fickle and will change masks every few months or years, just feeling the need to have a change in viewpoint.

Their masks are pure white in color and made of a hardened material such as a sturdy plastic. They can also be black in color, but this is much rarer. While decorating one's mask or making it a color that isn't white or black isn't breaking any rules, it does go against social norms and is looked down upon unless the person is an L-class or very important notail. This mask must have an expression of happiness, such as a smile, or a contentment. Any other emotion that does not express some kind of joy, but especially those of sadness or anger, are strictly forbidden.

Inside the masks are usually a thin screen connected to a tiny nearly invisible camera so that the notail can see just fine without having to remove it. Notails are disgusted by the idea of taking off their masks where people can see them, and as such if they need to eat they will lift their mask slightly to slip food under the gap or move to a location where they can't be seen. The mask is far too important to casually remove for most, after all, expressions of anything that doesn't display some type of joy is forbidden. True emotions should be hidden.

Personality

Alone, a notail is but a simple creature, but together they are the universe's worst nightmare, and that's how they want it.

With their antennas, notails can speak to each other non-verbally to up to 20 feet away, but some can even go farther than that. With enough notails around they can create networks, allowing one notail to be able to contact another from miles away by bouncing their signals off of other notails. Low-class notails are more susceptible to following orders transmitted from the highest and most controlling classes, the O-rder, J-udge, M-atriarch, and L-andlord class. Nearly every type of notail still has free will and if there is something they utterly refuse to do they will reject orders from even the most powerful class of notail, the O-class.

The more notails connected in a "network" the smarter they are. Extremely large collections of notails can do incredibly huge projects without ever speaking a verbal word to each other. While notails are not a true hivemind, some notails hold the firm belief that they are. This may be because notails are taught to be extremely logical and distance themselves from emotions and feelings. When it comes to any situation they perceive numbers and values instead of "people." If they had to pick between saving four low-class notails and one high-class notail they'd turn the situation into an equation. If the high-class notail is worth less than the worth of the four low-class notails they would save the low-classes. The high-class notail would accept this fate. After all, in the end, they believe themselves to be a cog in the machine and if only part of the machine can be saved than the parts worth more are the correct choice. Plus, if they didn't want to end up in such a situation they should have tried harder to survive.

Notails are highly impersonal, to the point it is common for notails to not call even aliens by their name, instead, they call them "Subject" or give them a number. Notails have a need to constantly test and learn new things, and many notails will find their niche in life around reaching the age of adulthood. What others would call a hobby outside of work, notails consider it their life work. For example, there are notails who enter into relationships with different species just to catalog and archive how said species operates in a relationship for others to view. Others might go out of their way to test the effects of certain mind parasites on different species, completely unknown to the people they're testing on. This life work varies highly notail to notail.

To notails, everything is about the survival of the fittest and smartest. There is no pity for the dead and if someone a notail knows dies they will rarely be moved or saddened by it; according to the notails, that person should have been stronger, or their genes should have better. Notails create their children using a machine and a whole class, the B-reeder class, that carefully gathers and mixes genes to create the perfect batch of children in these machines. Children who are deemed "incorrect" are either disposed of right away or are sent to labs where they will be experimented on for as long as they live.

As notail children are born in batches where every child in a class for that year are nearly genetically identical, there is very little room for failure. If one notail in the class is doing poorly compared to those they were born with this is considered a great failure on the notail's part and will be brought up over and over. Notails cannot see a reason for someone from the same batch to perform poorly while the others succeed.

Due to the careful gene selection notails do, notails have a higher tendency than most species to either form absolutely no romantic bonds or seek a mate outside of their own species to avoid creating "bad offspring". Notails are taught early on that messing with the gene pool by having natural children is a great issue and to never do so. Such aggressive teaching causes many notails opt for romantic solitude, many even react with utter disgust at jokes aimed at them that even imply anything on the emotional level, much less the physical level.

In the case that a notail is born from the actions of two notails this notail is known as a "natural born" and is classless. While natural borns are free to hang around notail society and attempt to fit in with a class they are never to be put up to the same standards as non-natural born notails. If a natural born fails a job other notails will casually say something along the lines of "It's ok if you fail, it's no problem, your genes just aren't correct."

Notails who gain genetic issues later in life, mostly those who end up unable to work due to them, are strangely overhelped by other notails who see them. Yet many notails who end up in such conditions would rather waste away in their homes. It might be because notails will often say how sorry they are, how the person was a mistake who never should have been born. How as they help this notail take their bags home they remark that they hope that the B-class who made them gets fired for making such a huge mistake. It might even be because of how many notails note how free they and society will be from their ailment when they die.

While rumors of notails who gain issues later in life being taken in and turned into D-classes is hugely false, that doesn't mean these notails don't deal with horrible conditions. Conditions caused by "well-meaning" notails whose "friendly helpful remarks" equate to "you are a mistake who shouldn't be alive." These notails will either learn to shrug away all comments, become reclusive, or succumb to much worse.

The depersonification and objectifying of the individual means that it's either get up and fake normality or parish. "Only the slowest of the herd gets killed" is what a notail would remark. Notails are unable to put themselves in the shoes of the other because as stated before, it's all a number game and if someone is doing worse than the rest of the swarm and it's not a genetic issue then it is their fault and their's alone. The mask of the notail which covers their true face is the epitome of this idea. Notails are unable to tell what emotions another is feeling by looking at them, making sure that empathy is at an all-time low. Anger, distress, anxiety, every emotion is removed when the mask is on, and the only thing left is a smile to tell everyone that they are fine. They are happy, and always will be.

Everyone is just an object. Just another cog in the machine.

History

An old tale on the notail planet goes like this.

Once there were a delightful group of beings, holy in all ways. They had long graceful tails and faces, pale and hardened. They were known as the tailed. They lived in peace for many ages, unknowing to the idea of harm or pain. Then one day a young tailed noticed a creature passing by their local forest just outside of their town. The young tailed tried to explain what he had seen, and could only explain it as a "no tail", a creature just like them, with hardened pale faces. Just as humans would call bigfoot, bigfoot for his huge feet, the no tails were called no tails for their lack of graceful tails.

The idea of this no tail was silly they thought, a nightmare the child thought up. A nightmare was right. People would go missing suddenly. More sightings of these no tails would be talked about, but no one would believe them. The town of people became sick with an illness that could not be cured and perished. Word spread to the towns nearby about the sickness, but no one assumed anything about the no tail sightings.

And then it happened again.

And again.

Town after town. These no tails would be spotted and then a few people would go missing. Afterwards, a sickness would tear the town from the inside out.

The last settlement of the tailed stood. They knew what was coming. They knew it would be their end. The no tails were no longer scared to hide behind trees and bushes. In the dead of the night, they walked in the open with no fear into the last town. What the tailed saw horrified them. Upon their faces, the notails wore masks. Masks made from the tailed's hardened and pale faces.

Notails have built their society on the idea of killing their main god, the Neo, for they feel the Neo is the cause of all pain. They feel like they were betrayed by their god long ago for not giving them the perfect life. Their society became about improving things, streamlining them, trying to advance everything possible until they finally find out how to kill god. As such notails were the first species to reach the space age and start finding new species and planets. Despite this, not much has changed about the notail's society; they continue to march on, barely acknowledging the other species in the universe unless it's to make them useful or to put them in their place.

Subspecies

Classes: Notails lack subspecies but do have classes, which are genetically different from each other. Every notail class has a leader for their whole classing. This leader is like an O-class and thus is able to control other notails with ease, but only for their classing. To see more info about the notails and their class system, go to the notail lore section in the Cosmosdex.

Ducklings: Ducklings are not true subspecies but certain types of ducklings are not considered notails to notails. A young notail is described as a "duckling" due to the fact that they become highly imprinted on their current parent's species between the ages of two and three. Once a notail is imprinted it is impossible to draw them away from believing that they are that species. This means that notails raised by species that are not notails will act like said other species. Only the most extreme and lengthy of arguments with constant evidence could ever cause a duckling to even consider the fact that they are not the species they were raised with.

As ducklings will still exhibit the need to cover their face many duckling parents obtain masks that look like their species for the duckling to wear. Ducklings will do whatever the other species does, even if it is deadly to them, such as being raised by a robot and refusing to eat or attempting to fly. In these cases, the parent may have to pretend to do certain actions so the duckling mimics it, or they may try to calmly explain to them that they are unable to do a certain action because "sadly they were born unable to grow wings." Adult ducklings who believe they were merely born lacking traits will attempt to gain these traits either through surgery or using equipment to do the task.

Just as ducklings cannot see themselves as notails, notails cannot see ducklings as notails. Notails will completely treat the duckling as the other unless utterly forced to consider them a notail. Oddly enough notails who don't have antennas between the ages of two and three, either due to not being born with them or due to them being removed will not display any duckling behavior at all. Notail children with malformed antennas, on the other hand, might display a form of duckling where they copy traits, sometimes even entire personalities from other people and this can last for their whole life if the malformation is not removed.

Special

Sickness Spreader: The notail homeworld is basically the Neo's domain of punishment, and due to this notails have developed or evolved a system where many of the sickness and mutagens they come into contact with is stored within them. While they are not as affected by both of these things, these diseases and mutagens will hop from notail to another species with ease. Keeping up with the latest vaccinations will ward off the most common and horrible of diseases carried by the notails, but even that won't fully protect a person.

Trivia

• When a notail wishes to show aggression they do a two handed-salute where they hold one arm to the side, and the other one folds before their face. Then they put their face into the crook of their arm. This movement lasts for only a second, two at most, and means "I hope you get sick and die." It is uncommonly used outside of the notail species.

• Notails are notorious for their bad naming. It's to be expected from a species whose own members do not have true names, but it still comes off as ridiculous watching high ranking members say things like "Tentider"(A spider that is a tent), "Thorn Head" (A creature with thorns on its head), "Braiab" (A brain that is also a crab), and "Notail". (That last one is not a joke they literally named a creature that was a tailless version of itself notail despite the fact that they themselves are called notails.)

• Notails children are raised in groups, given a creature to train, and are they kicked into the wilderness for a few years to see if they can stay alive to root out any and all notails who cannot survive the elements. More on that in the entry on The Woods.

• Most notail have no care for the concept of both gender and sex and thus go with whatever is assumed of them. They do get highly annoyed if one person attempts to correct the other, stating that the notail is one thing, not whatever the other person is using. In these cases, the notail will tell the person that they're the ones incorrect as they go by whatever is tossed at them, not a particular thing. The Cosmsodex will be using He in all entries about notails so that it is easy to tell when a notail has a set pronoun. If that set pronoun is He it will be explicitly mention in the entry.

• Notails seem to be strangely resistant to organ and body part rejections. This is what allows them to cut off their arms and put on the arms of a completely different species with relative ease compared to most other species who deal with organ rejections even in their own species, not even considering other species.

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