[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia
[Cosmosdex]
Zegraden
Toys / Pests
Zegraden
Art by, Chimerii
- Strength-1
- Intelligence-3
- Charisma-8
- Endurance-4
- Agility-6
- Luck-4
Common Jobs: Toymakers, Authors, Actors
Likes: Appearances, Brands, Fame, Exclusivity, Children's entertainment
Dislikes: Loneliness, Dirtiness
Attack Method: Ram at the foe with their horn.
Attributes
Homeplanet: The Lightning SeekerLifespan: 40 years
Size: 3'8" ft tall, 4'8" ft long
Diet: Anything edible, Rotten food, Plastic
Bodytype: Taur
Type: Arthropod
Social Class: Lower Middle Class
Rarity: Uncommon
Common Traits
This character likes to open things up and see how they work, and try to make them work better. They have no respect for do not open and No user-servicable parts inside notices, and enjoy making little trinkets and gizmos of little use, just to see the mechanisms go.
When it comes to selling things, this character knows just what to say to make quite the convincing sales pitch. Items sold by this character are likely able to fetch a hefty sum.
This character wants attention. They are obsessive over it, and will do anything and everything to get attention from others, whether it's faking injuries, mental conditions, or making up any types of stories about themselves to grab a person's attention. Attention seekers may even tell half truths to spice up their stories to make themselves seem more heroic.
Physical Description
Zegradens are insectoids with a taur-like body, four legs along their thorax and two arms with two claws opposable thumbs each on their torso. Their forearms are much wider than the rest of their arms, and their legs are short and close to the ground. Their abdomens are short and covered in thick and fine fur like the rest of their bodies, including the legs.
Their heads have a short horn at the snout and they have two pairs of long, furred whiskers, as well as a pair of antennae. Their eyes are mammalian and their mouths have a W-like shape. Zegraden fur can be all manners of color and can take intricate, even artificial-looking patterns. The shell underneath is hard plastic-like, inherited from the zegraden diet of plastics.
Zegradens have large broods of up to 150 eggs. These eggs have hard shells and a shape reminiscent of a small, opaque plastic gacha capsule. Like adult zegradens, these shells are colorfully patterned and telegraph the traits of the person that will hatch from it. Zegradens mutate easily so new appearances of the shells and the hatchlings evolve frequently.
Newborn zegradens are no bigger than a coin. Adult zegradens are nearly 4 feet tall and they molt extremely often to get to this size, about 2-3 times a week then slowing down to just once a month at adulthood. Zegradens mature at about 6 years old, resulting in hundreds of shed carapaces.
The shed carapaces of zegradens harden over the course of a few hours to become stiff and plastic-like. They are fully opaque and have similar durability to action figures, and retain articulation, allowing them to be moved like one, as well. These carapaces, being made of a material similar to plastic, are long-lasting and can stay intact for centuries if treated properly. They look similar to actual zegradens but have a noticeably shinier, faux-fur look and clouded eyes. They retain the same patterns and colors.
Personality
Zegradens are an exuberant and bubbly species prone to back-handed gossiping and exclusion. Many of their cliques are formed based off of physical traits, which extends to intraspecies social class.
The shed carapaces of zegradens, otherwise referred to as "shell toys", make much of a zegraden's income. The popularity of these toys to alien buyers, and subsequently, the income of the zegraden who created the shell toys, are naturally dependent on the zegraden's physical traits. Zegradens face heavy pressure if they are not born with the desired colors or patterns or mutations of popular shell toy "brands".
Zegradens lay up to 150 eggs at once and yet they generally only raise a maximum of 10 children per brood. The missing eggs are those with undesired physical traits telegraphed on their shells, and most of those are eaten by the parents as delicacies. The others end up in crowded adoption homes or sold to the hands of pirates to be hatched (or eaten still).
The children that get raised by their actual parents generally have the shell toys they shed saved by parents and gifted back to the child when they reach adulthood. These toys, when sold, would give the child a large amount of points right as they would start to live independently. Having had to learn how to sell and market their toys, most zegradens go on to be toymakers and run toy stores, even after selling all their shell toys. Alternatively, zegradens leave the toy industry and enter other means of children's entertainment, like puppetry and authoring picture books.
Shell toys themselves, while essentially like zegraden-looking action figures, are often modified to be much more. Unintelligent AIs and mechanical parts are placed into them, making them similar to battleable toys one could find in a deck-building game, but the toys physically act out the combat. While mostly popular with children, some adults of the universe have formed communities based around competitive shell toy battling. What "abilities" a shell toy with an AI correlates to its physical traits- for example, if a shell toy has white fur, it will likely be given some sort of ice ability.
The shell toys are a great boon to zegradens when allowed to sell them, but some zegradens were never given this money, with some parents deciding to sell their children's shell toys for money for themselves. The common justification is that "the parents will know how to manage the money better," but some inevitably do not, leaving their children without the money they would ordinarily be given upon reaching adulthood. These children often grow up to be materialistic and face pressure to regain the "money lost" by having kids themselves and repeating what their parents did to them, creating a cycle of generational greed.
There is large amounts of pressure and guilt placed on zegraden children and adults for not being born with the most desirable and popular genes, and many are classist and vain as a result of this. Shell toys and their popularity generally decide their economic spheres. Fads that place typically unpopular genes into the limelight is a dream and nightmare for zegradens showing the correlating traits. Many are launched into money and occasionally fame, but the moment the fad dies out, they crash and burn, not knowing how to adjust back to their previous lifestyle.
Zegradens in space crews often find a niche from their small size and coming from a culture generally centered around commercialism and crafting. Many find work as mechanics skilled at building weapons and armor, simultaneously able to squeeze into tight spaces for ship repairs. Others are masters of trade and bartering, able to turn worthless junk into a valuable item.
But the zegradens who did not grow up with the idealized lifestyle, those who ended up with adoption homes and pirates, often gain very different skills. The large majority of zegradens in general end up in adoption homes dedicated towards raising zegradens with unwanted traits. Most facilities are crowded, and as a result, many raised there are perfectionists with attention-seeking qualities and low self-esteem. They are underprepared for salesmanship but often end up scrappier with more "practical" skill sets.
The zegradens that end up with pirates, if allowed any sort of individual autonomy, are usually violent people who end up shunned even by those who would accept them despite their physical traits.
It is a frequent criticism of zegraden culture that their physical traits evolve fast but their intraspecies mentalities repeat themselves over generations.
History
A Zeus ship was sent to disuse after the company that owned it went out of business. It laid in an empty lot for many decades where pests gradually started overrunning it. A special type of pest rapidly evolved from this, becoming the zegradens. They primarily hid within the walls and pipes with few making it to adulthood due to the other predators.
After some time, the Zeus ship was bought up by another company, which then started to repair it to remove signs of rot and infestation. Many zegradens were killed by this, but the species remained hidden even as the ship was fully reopened and cast into space with several civilians of different ages occupying it.
The children of the ship eventually started to find insect-like toys scattered around the ship. In reality, they were just the shed carapaces of the remaining zegradens on the ship, but the mysterious toys became popular with them and eventually noticed by the adults. A more thorough inspection of the ship revealed the zegradens hiding with their miniature civilizations in its hidden cupboards and crevices.
It quickly became doubtless that this was an intelligent species, so the zegradens were removed from ship infestations and elevated to registered specieshood and their own homes. They had not forgotten the popularity of their shell toys with the children of the Zeus ship, however. They started saving their shed carapaces and selling them as "lifelike action figures," creating characters and games based off of themselves in order to build popularity and interest. Once a simple species merely focusing on surviving in an abandoned spaceship, the zegradens became vain and focused on breeding "desirable traits" from themselves in order to make a living.
Before more proper systems to take in unwanted children were formed, a common way of "disposal" that did not involve eating zegradens involved selling them to pirates. The zegradens raised with them who fought their way to power are now notorious for, among theft and murder, advocating for a system made by merit rather than circumstances of birth.
Home Planet
The Zeus ship, named the Lightning Seeker, that zegradens evolved from, while it was still derelict, was stationed in an otherwise-empty lot in a blocked-off section of a warm planet. Several of its ceiling tiles had caved in and several of its windows had cracked. It had become a sanctuary for several varieties of pest animals, including an insectoid that would soon evolve into the zegradens.
Most signs of their early civilization have been cleared out by the ship's renovation and reintroduction to the stars, but what used to exist there was a medieval-esque society with items modified from the old household items scattered around the halls. Currently the Zeus is mostly just an ordinary passenger ship, made to transport people who do not own personal ships from planet to planet, but it does contain a few museum rooms dedicated to zegraden history and the preservation of old zegraden settlements. Zegradens no longer live in these hand-crafted buildings and are instead treated as ordinary passengers.
Subspecies
Toy Lines: Zegradens evolve quickly and each new generation introduces several new gene variations. To the greater public, zegradens' rapidly changing appearances are capitalized on as new "toy lines" for shell toy enthusiasts to buy and trade.
Special
Shell Toys: The shed carapaces of zegradens harden into a plastic-like material with articulation that makes them similar to ordinary action figures. Individual shell toys can be sold for decent amounts of points, or more if they are considered part of a "vintage line", a fad, or just an ordinarily popular one. Shell toys modified with AI and mechanical parts to be part of the "deck-building game" fetch even more of a profit.
Trivia
• Shell toys from the zegradens of the original Zeus ship can go up to over several hundred thousand points if given to the right collector.
• Zegradens often clean themselves using dust baths.
• Zegradens are able to eat plastics of all varieties. This is encouraged for them as their shells are made of a plastic-like material and become softer if a zegraden goes without eating plastic for too long.
Image Gallery
No art currently, maybe you can help.