[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia
[Cosmosdex]
Sklam
Muscle mussels / Skulltakers
Sklam
No art currently, maybe you can help
- Strength-9
- Intelligence-8
- Charisma-2
- Endurance-6
- Agility-1
- Luck-0
Common Jobs: Accountant, Manager, Wildlife guardian
Likes: Hunting, Giant monsters, Big skulls
Dislikes: Accounting, Managers, Small skulls
Attack Method: Pull out a huge weapon and thank the assailer for giving them an excuse to fight.
Attributes
Homeplanet: ThalapriaLifespan: 300 years
Size: 5.5 ft tall
Diet: Fish, Meat
Bodytype: Orblike
Type: Mammalian Marine-dwelling Mollusk
Social Class: High Class
Rarity: Common
Common Traits
This person has a major honor problem. They gain morale and sanity for doing things they deem honorable, however if they feel they've failed someone, they will lose heavy amounts of morale. They may blame themselves for things out of their control.
This character can recover quickly from blows, and will not go down unless they are knocked out. They can break out of grabs and stuns, and have a chance to fight back even when completely pinned down.
This character has a disorder which makes them sweat intensely and without control. Prone to dehydratation.
Gods
Sklams don't worship any gods.
Gods: None
Original Creator: curiousFellow
Physical Description
Sklams are colorful mollusks resembling large primates. They have four muscular arms, the longest pair of which is attached to their shell, which is made out of skulls held together by calcite. Sklams don't have legs and move around by hopping or by dragging themselves around with their free arms.
A sklam's face has a pair of monochromatic eyes, a flat nose and a pair of tusks. Like the rest of their body, their necks are thick and muscular. A sklam's body is usually shiny outside of the water since they sweat heavily to keep their skin from drying out. Sklams are genderless and any two sklams are able to reproduce.
Personality
Most sklams live by a honor code with three central tennets: Fight honorably, honor your slain by taking their skulls, and don't put your personal glory above the common good. These last two principles are commonly taken to extremes: Sklams don't just take the skulls of the people and creatures they kill on purpose, they take the skulls of anyone or anything whose death they deem 'their fault'.
Many sklams' shells are made up mostly of tiny vermin skulls that they've killed by accident or to keep them out of their food, even though they consider tiny skulls on their shells to be ugly. On the flipside, a sklam might also render themself near immobile by attaching an enormous heavy skull to their shells if they get a big enough kill.
Trying to follow the principle of putting the common good before their glory, sklams often find themselves frustrated by the extremely boring solutions they're forced to persue. A sklam might set up anti-wolf fences, instruct people to patrol against wolves and prepare and hold a two hour presentation about how to handle a wolf attack before they allow themselves to go hunt wolves like they really want. If a sklam does give in to their want to resolve a situation with cool fights instead practical solutions, they will be overcome with enough guilt over their percieved dishonor to suck all their enjoyment out of their victory, even fighting did turn out to be a perfectly effective solution.
While sklams really enjoy fighting things and hunting big monsters, most don't make this their full time job as many feel as though they can be more useful working boring corporate jobs, in spite of the high demand that often exists for dangerous jobs that involve lots of fighting. It is almost as though sklams feel an obligation to make their lives as tedious and boring as they're able, and most sklams end up going hunting only on their days off, spending their day to day lives in boredom, hoping that a band of armed robbers storms their cubicle block.
While sklams are known to deal with monster and wild animal problems in their free time, plantets with big sklam populations tend to end up with monster conservation efforts and sklams might even lobby to have monsters imported if they don't find the planet's game exiting enough, though generally sklams will go where dangerous animals already are instead of bringing them in after the fact.
History
The sklams were once a society of hunters on an aquatic planet full of deadly monsters. Sklams formed a warrior culture around the fight of keeping themselves safe from these monsters. As the sklams became more successful and started to require dedicated farmers and craftsmen, the sklams' concept of honor started to expand to include things such as it being dishonorable to skip feeding animals or close shops just to hunt.
Pretty soon the sklams' honor code, originally created for people constantly hunting for safety and sustenance, consisted mostly of rules on when a sklam -wasn't- allowed to hunt. Worse, the sklams were expanding so much that the huntable game started to run out. The skalms started to focus on building up their society, trying to load enough obligations on their people to keep the animal population steady. Eventually the sklams reached the stars, and with those, new hunting grounds. All at cost of having a society that is near unanimously frustrated with their jobs.
Subspecies
None / Unknown.
Special
Skull shells: Sklams collect the skulls of nearly every creature they kill and add them to their shell. Sklams can attach skulls to their shell using a calcite paste if they eat enough shells, bones or other foods that are high in calcium. A sklam whose shell gets too large or too small can have trouble moving or have exposed weak spots.
Trivia
• Sklams don't take the skulls of clockworks they've killed because they, quote, 'aren't stupid and don't want to die'.
• Sklams treat training with weapons like other species might treat playing an instrument. Wealthy sklams will teach their kids to use large, expensive weapons to show off their wealth.
• Sklams used to buy a lot of beasts from the notails but their relationship has strained over time due to the notails' repeated use of 'dishonorable' tactics in their wars. Sklams now avoid cooperation and trade with the notails as much as they're reasonably able, and they make no secret of it that they do this out of spite.
Image Gallery
No art currently, maybe you can help.
