Category:Eldaral

Summary
The Eldaral are a telepathic and telekinetic race of twin "space elves" from the planet Sylva. They tend to be aloof and xenophobic and spend their entire lives within arms reach of their twin. They believe that their souls became too advanced to be housed in one body, so they have two instead. They created the Eldarin and sent them to the planet Sylvin. When the rebellion broke loose, they unleashed weapons of mass destruction on the planet, which mostly wiped out everything living there

Appearance

 * Their appearance is human-like but with very sharp, pointed features.  Their faces have an angular look and chiseled cheekbones. Their eyes are hawkish and piercing.    They are highly sexually dimorphic with males tending toward 6’0’’- 6’6’’ and females tending toward 4’8’’-5’2’’.  The range of their skin tone is like desaturated asian and caucasian humans, tending more toward “yellowish” and not so much “pinkish,” and their hair ranges from strawberry blonde to dark auburn.

Adaptations

 * They have long, pointed ears, so their hearing is pretty good.
 * They have freckles a few shades darker than their skin, arranged in certain places on their faces. There are a few (the size and number vary) in a line along their cheekbones, a few on their temples, along the top ridge of their ears, and one large one on the backside of each ear. The freckles are organs for their telepathy, they contain nerve cells that receive the psi-waves. This is also is why their ears are long.

Weaknesses

 * Eldaral get very anxious when separated from their twin, often to the point of not being able to function properly. Although there are certain times that call for privacy, Eldaral do everything they can to never separate in the presence of others, except for the most trusted family and friends.

Diet

 * Omnivores. Their dies are flexible and they can eat many different types of plant material, animal flesh, etc.
 * They can process alcohol, but are lightweights compared to humans. This is true of most substances.

Life Cycle (Terran years)

 * The twins are majority identical, but can be fraternal.  If they are fraternal, they can also be different genders, and this configuration is considered more “complete.”  They reproduce by finding a complementary pair of twins and mating with them. Typically, one ovum is released which splits once it’s fertilized, but some people have a gene which causes them to release two ova instead. The female reproductive system can sense how many zygotes there are and induces a split if there is only one, if it's early enough in the pregnancy.
 * Eldaral hit puberty at around 15 years, come of 25 terran years, and live for 250-300 terran years. The day they move out of their parents' home is a big deal, since it marks the beginning of their adult life, and since it allows their parents to be free of each other.

Language and Communication

 * When the Eldaral unified Sylva, they created a language using parts of the most commonly-spoken languages of their world. Sylvan is exception-free, very precise and descriptive, and contains many pronouns. Having everyone be twins, identical or fraternal, means there are many different ways to say "they" or "we."  You can think of it this way: 1st person singular is yourself, 1.5th person singular is yourself and your twin, 2nd person singular is an individual you're speaking to, 2.5th person singular is the pair of twins you're speaking to... it goes on.  There are also two versions of every word for "we," one that excludes the person you are talking to and one that includes them (we as in, us three but not you, versus we as in, us three and you).  Plus there are three different configurations for twins: two females, two males, or mixed, so many of the pronouns have modifiers for that as well.
 * If your character is speaking Sylvan and the distinction matters, feel free to clarify in parenthesis like so, "We(excluding you) think that they(female pair) should leave, but the rest of them(multiple pairs) can stay." It generally won't matter, and it's there if you need it. The Eldarin and anyone who learns Sylvan as a second language probably takes lots of shortcuts with the pronouns anyway, and most Eldaral would cringe to hear it.
 * There are words for each twin configuration, and for individuals without a twin. The word for a male & female twin pair is Shadith.  To make these plural, you add -en.
 * The Eldaral are telepathic. By default, they all have high-frequency telepathy on a certain combination of frequency, unique to each pair of twins.  An individual Eldaral can only send and receive high-frequency telepathy on that specific channel.  Basically, this means that by default, Eldaral are only telepathic with their twin.  Some Eldaral can also send low-frequency telepathy, which can be received by anyone.  Being born alongside another pair of twins or working with the Eldarin often causes them to develop low-frequency telepathy ability from a young age.  It's sort of like musical talent, some people just have it, and some just don't, and some can learn it.

Government and Structure

 * (Under Construction)

Culture

 * Eldaral culture highly values art and hand-made things. A lot of their art features symmetry and duality.
 * They respect and admire animals, and many of them keep pets. Almost everyone has had a pet at some point.  There are little reservations about domesticating animals, even those found on other planets, though they are careful to do it in such a way that ecology is not impacted.  Eldaral are commonly seen walking around with various animals sitting on their shoulders.
 * They are environmentally conscious and take good care of their planet.
 * Throughout their education, all tasks and tests are a team effort between the pair of twins. They share their jobs and job responsibilities.

Child-rearing units

 * Since there are actually two pairs of people mating, you can end up with one or both females getting pregnant with a pair of twins each. Many of such unions choose to keep trying until both females become pregnant. When both females simultaneously get pregnant, you have two pairs of twins raised side by side.  These children have a very high chance of learning low-frequency telepathy.  When something goes wrong and there is only a single fetus, it’s considered cruel not to abort. It’s not a complete soul, so it isn’t fully considered a life.
 * Since they lack the drive to be close with and commit to the other pair, their concept of marriage is temporary.  This commitment is assumed once the children are conceived, and only lasts until the day the children move out. Basically, they are roommates that happen to be sharing the responsibility of raising children.  Typically, they will mate until children are conceived, and then use contraception from then on, so that they aren’t getting pregnant multiple times over the duration of their relationship, as they tend to get sick of each other by the time their children are grown.  After that, it’s perfectly normal to go and find new mates.

Instincts and Predispositions

 * If one twin dies and the other lives, there isn’t a biological process that directly kills the other one, but the depression and sense of isolation that follows is intense, and in their society it is considered acceptable to commit suicide in that situation.  Those that don’t often get sickly and die within a few years. Not having a twin is considered a crippling disability.  Toward people other than their twin, they have less social drive than humans.  The closeness with their twin from an early age makes it hard for them to relate to anyone else, but they don’t feel a strong need to.  They tend to be cold and logical, and empathy isn’t one of their strengths.

Places

 * Sylva is a little bigger than Terra, and is 83% covered by oceans. About 70% of the population lives on the coastline of the largest continent, much of which is kept relatively warm and mild year-round by the ocean currents.

History
In early iterations of the temporal loop, the Ka observed that, for whatever reason, the Eldaral always got wiped out or driven to the brink of extinction. Something about their aloof nature and the slow speed at which they accept change kept resulting in some other race eventually taking them out. To compensate for this (turns out the original Eldaral thrived because they lived in a sector so remote that there was no one to wipe them out), the Ka give the Eldaral a massive tech boost - the good seed I mentioned earlier - and “hid” artifacts on their homeworld that would get them into space sooner. Thus the Eldaral almost always are the first into space, and tend to lead the tech race for a couple thousand years.

By the time they were exploring space, the Eldaral had all united their homeworld, the planet Syvla, into a one-world state. The Eldaral are overall not very diverse compared to other races, and they all have something in common: twinhood and how much it means to them. It is thought that this is what helped the Eldaral to unite their world sooner in the progression of their society than many others. During this process, they also synthesized a language using pieces of the most common ones, called Sylvan.

As a consequence of their early advancement, the Eldaral wind up becoming advanced enough in genetic engineering to create another race in their own image: the Eldarin. The Eldarin were intended to serve as an underclass to the Eldaral, and had their biology specially tailored to endure conditions on the jungle world of Sylvin (this is what the Eldaral named the alread-inhabited planet anyways) - a world the Eldaral had determined contained vast amounts of unobtainium (whatever we decide powers warp or whatnot). Sylvin was also home to a handful of primitive races, most of whom were in conflict with each other.

The Eldarin didt take well to being the Eldaral’s inferiors, and wind up uniting the races of Sylvin against the Eldaral. Despite their technological superiority, the Eldaral have extreme difficulty dealing with the Eldarin, as they simply aren’t suited biologically or socio-culturally to deal with conditions on the planet, whereas the Eldarin are. Humiliated and infuriated by their failure on Sylvin, the Eldaral more or less nuke the planet, which has a few consequences:the planet is largely uninhabitable, the Eldarin and the other natives are mostly wiped out, and the unobtainium is now very rare in that part of the galaxy.

Having already pretty much committed genocide against the Eldarin, the Eldaral decide that the Eldarin mk.1 was a failure, and begin purging their society of them with the intention of engineering an Eldarin mk.2, who will be genetically disposed to be servile, and lack the strengths that made the original Eldarin dangerous. Some Eldaral aren’t on board with this and think the great houses (their leadership) have gone too far, leading a small resistance effort to form around helping the Eldarin escape. This group eventually manages to steal a ship capable of deep space travel, disappears, and becomes the wandering group of the Eldarin.

Technology Level
The Eldaral have faster-than-light travel and are probably the most advanced when it comes to medical technology and the biological sciences, but since they are more artistic and spiritual, they often drag their feet with progress in other areas.

Intergalactic Relations
The Eldaral are xenophobic and not as interested in exploring and meeting other people as the other races are. They tend to want to just find a happy and fulfilling life with their twin and leave it at that. They have faster-than-light travel, but haven’t formed many settlements far beyond their own system.

The Eldarin and the people of Sylvin

 * This is a bit lengthy, so it is discussed on page for Sylvin.

Race name (link it)

 * History of how they encountered that race, how relations are today, and how they are regarded. This same text should appear on the other race's page.

Other Information
Pairs of twins share the root of their name, then you add some kind of ending to denote individuals. For example, Rathal is a Shirar, consisting of Rathalir and Rathaler. Ettrian is a Shirar, consisting of Ettrianthel and Ettrianthir. Vaer is a Shadith, consisting of Vaerin and Vaeral. The endings -ar is typically masculine, -eia is feminine, and -in often, but not always, means smaller.

Guardian Ka
(Under Construction)

Eldaral Characters

 * All members are welcome to create Eldaral characters.
 * You would play both twins; making an Eldaral pair of twins only counts as making one character.
 * See below for a complete list of Eldaral characters.