Kaguügang
The Kaguügang (also known as "Vamps" and "Leeches") are a space-going species whose sphere of influence is adjacent to the Western Reaches. Their recent discovery has reawakened old scientific debates about parallel evolution because, despite obvious differences in habitat and physique, their resemblance to Humanity is in many ways remarkably close.
The most noticeable physical characteristics of the Kaguügang are their reddish-orange skins, conical heads, and luminous eyes, which are adapted for nocturnal use. They are also slightly taller and stockier than humans. But, otherwise, the similarities between the two species far outweigh the differences. Both species have two sexes and are bipedal land dwellers whose bodies follow the laws of bilateral symmetry, with two legs and two arms, a central nervous system, uro-genital track and mammary glands in the middle of the body, and a heavy-boned head protecting a brain. Official autopsies conducted with the permission of the Kaguügang Empire show equally analogous other organs in the two species, despite differences in location and design.
The similarities are so great that Tecumseh Singh Vlato, the famed Spartan neurosurgeon, once quipped after travelling to participate attend a dissection of a Kaguügang specimen that he might as well have gone to the local hospital on Spartan Hold instead. He was exaggerating, but not by much.
Kaguügang scientists seem non-plussed by the similarities between the two species, seeing them as inevitable. They have been far more disturbed by the existence of other intelligent species with less resemblance to themselves. In fact, many have a hard time believing in the sentience of species like the Bappakana or the Ferrets — not out of xenophobia (although they sometimes express prejudice) so much as a profound bewilderment that so much variety can exist. Apparently, to most Kaguügang, sentience should only come in a form that resembles them. For many Kaguügang, even the differences in Humans present a profound philosophical problem, challenging their assumptions of a highly patterned universe and hinting at an alarming degree of chaos.
While the Kaguügang try to reconcile other sentient species with their belief in order, humans debate the implications that the Kaguügang have for galactic history. The debate takes place on many levels, from the scientific and mystical to the journalistic and the ill-informed, but, in the absence of concrete information, is equally speculative — and frequently fantastic.
Some argue that the biological similarities between the species is proof of the validity of parallel evolution, showing that, in similar environments, similar body structures will develop, conveniently ignoring a galaxy of challenges to the idea. Others argue that the apparent fact that the Kaguügang evolved for conditions on one common type of planet and Humans on another demonstrates either the existence of a deity or some long-lost super civilization that directed the development of both. However, by such arguments, sentient species adapted to gas giants or dwarf planets should be more common still, although none are currently known. For that matter, some argue that both species evolved many times on many worlds, a position that seems to ignore the relative homogenity of genetics in both species. Still others insist that the Kaguügang are really an unusually stable Nano culture waging a complicated guerrilla war against humanity, an idea that fails to explain the thousands of years of Kaguügang records.
At the opposite extreme, hard core rationalists hold that, in an infinite universe, such coincidences sometimes occur, and therefore there is nothing to explain, although the same reasoning might also lead observers to expect an infinite varieties of species. On all sides, the logic seems strained and the facts wanting, but the debates continue regardless.
Meanwhile, ordinary Kaguügang and Humans seem able to restrain their mutual puzzlement long enough to interact freely. Since the first encounters with the Kaguügang a few centuries ago, both species have traded deep into the other's sphere of influence. Although relations have often been strained as the Kaguügang struggled with the new level of chaos in Human affairs since The Disappearance, on the whole the trend is towards greater economic and cultural exchange between the two species.
Biology and ecology
While the Kaguügang have many theories about their origins, evidence points to their origin on the planet Nagyáa, a world that is now uninhabited except when rituals honoring ancestors are carried out according to some elaborate schedule.
Nagyáa is a rocky planet, with mildly heavier gravity and higher temperatures than human norms, and free-standing water as well as polar caps. The composition of the atmosphere is markedly different from that of terran-class planets, with high proportions of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, and, consequently, higher percentages of carbon and sulfur in the ground composition and throughout the food chain. This atmospheric composition means that Humans and Kaguügang are conveniently complementary, each species preferring one of the most common types of habitable planets and having little interest in large scale settlement of the other type. It also means that, from the Human perspective, that Kaguügang usually have an overpowering reek of sulfur. For all these reasons, large scale conflicts between the species seem unlikely, although disputes over other system resources, such as minable asteroids, do occur.
As in the Terran norm, life on Nagyáa can be loosely divided into flora and fauna. However, this analogy is deceptive in many ways. For one thing, while the planet's native flora greatly resembles what humans would call fungus or perhaps algae, many samples are considerably more complex than the analogy might seem to suggest. Even more importantly, the Nagyáa flora does not have a monopoly on photosynthesis that Terran flora does — or, to be more exact, Nagyáa fauna has extensive respiratory systems lined with symbiotic flora that, in a rough analog to cyanobacteria, draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce oxygen and waste products of nitrogen and carbon, just as any standalone flora does. It seems probably that the atmospheric composition of Nagyáa is directly attributable to these waste products.
Even more importantly, carnivore life forms are next to unknown on Nagyáa among the vertebrates, and known among the invertebrates only in the form of phagocytes and bacteria that aids in decomposition. Rather than being carnivores, those at the top of the food chain on Nagyáa are usually what might be called sangovores — consumers of blood. Moreover, while some predators bleed their suppliers of blood indiscriminately, most have a more complex relation with their suppliers that could almost be called shepherding, rarely drinking enough to kill a prey animal unless it is already sick or dying.
For this reason, pastoralism on Nagyáa could almost be said to have pre-dated civilization, extending from the highest to the lowest levels of the food-chain. At times, it seems a strange inversion of evolution, with some species becoming naturally selected for tastier blood, which guarantees them being herded by other species. Cases of symbiosis, including ones in which several species exchange blood in a kind of economic exchange, are also said to exist. On the whole, though, Humans are still in the process of understanding the ecologies of sangovores, although we do know that the Kaguügang grade and treasure blood much as many Human cultures do wine, with the value of blood determined not only by the species of origin, but also what herbs or other species' blood the species has been fed upon. Among gourmets, this pedigree of blood can extend for several generations, so that the blood of the Skamdáasaang, a vaguely canine pack predator that has fed upon the blood of the Ts'angsaang, which might be called an insectivore, that has fed upon the blood of the Sgíidang, a small herbivore, is valued in much the same way as a fine vintage of champagne or yellowdusk might be among Humans.
This pastoral ethos, which exists upon both land and sea, is evidently fundamental to evolution on Nagyáa, pre-dating even the rise of animal-life upon land. Only in some flora and phagocytical bacteria is anything resembling carnivorous behaviour known, although a craving for flesh is said to be a psychological disorder that occasionally occurs. At any rate, the ethos is so ingrained that it might be called instinctual.
Moreover, since sangovorous pastoralism seems to be the dividing line between flora and fauna (a few fascinating borderline cases aside), it explains the Kaguügang's distaste – or outright horror – at the carnivorous tendencies of other intelligent species. Nor does any movement resembling vegetarianism exist among the Kaguügang, since exploitation of prey species simply does not exist. In fact, in drawing blood from prey, predators on Nagyáa leave antibodies that strengthen the prey's resistance to disease.
The relation between predator and prey may also reinforce the Kaguügang love of symmetry and pattern. The Kaguügang see fauna, with its complex set of relations, as being fundamentally opposite to the overgrown excess of the local flora, and their culture as the ultimate expression of this difference. However, Human study of these ecosystems remains in its infancy, and possibly we are not equipped to deal with its subtleties and influences, any more than the Kaguügang are to appreciate the affect of omnivore habits upon Human culture.
Another aspect of their sangovore nature is that the Kaguügang are nocturnal, rising shortly before sunset and retiring not long after sunrise. The Kaguügang themselves believe that this preference enabled them to locate prey in the last light of day, and then to extract blood from sleeping prey, which would resist less and make feeding a smaller expenditure of energy. The Kaguügang are perfectly capable of functioning by day if necessary, but the structure of their eyes shows how adapted they are to night.
However, the Kaguügang are not complete sangovores. The species long ago learned to harvest edible flora, particularly that of the sea. One species in particular, the K'yúugyaa, or string clam, is such a popular food stuff that it gives a characteristic bright green-blue tinge to the bays and fjords where it is cultivated — a color that is easily viewed from space. However, the Kaguügan languages are heavily laced with insults and forms of abuse that suggest plant-like characteristics, such as rootedness or passivity.
History and culture
Kaguügang history stretches back over twenty-five millennia. During this time, the species has expanded outwards from Nagyáa. The expansion was considerably slower than Humanity's, due partly to inferior spacefold technologies but, because of the greater time, seems to have been at least as extensive. Very likely, it is more so, but due to the disruptions caused by The Disappearance, no one has had the leisure yet to confirm the possibility.
The history is also remarkably non-violent by human standards. It is not that the Kaguügang are in any way pacifists — as individuals, they seem as prone to personal violence as any random collection of humans. Nor is the history of the species free of mass warfare; the wars of Yáalaay I, II and III that eventually unified Nagyáa were especially bloody and lasted half a millennium.
Rather, the violence is curiously restrained, and perhaps muted by the ethos of being sangovores. The aim of most wars among the Kaguügang are clearly economic, being more about control of prey and the areas it frequented than about the destruction of the other side. Aggressive Kaguügang do not seek to kill the opposing side so much as to bring it into their own social grouping. In fact, by the blood-drinking rituals that mark the continued submission of one group to another, the defeated become a kind of prey species — and, therefore, the responsibility of the victors. Since a large flock of prey species brings prestige in Kaguügang culture, the victors rarely kill many of the vanquished after they submit, because to do so would undermine their own prestige and reduce the size of their social grouping. For the Kaguügang, wholesale slaughter is literally "acting like a weed," destroying yourself by destroying your own food supply, and is behaviour to be avoided by anyone of sense and breeding.
How long such attitudes would have prevailed had the Kaguügang encountered a species like the Crucians is uncertain. Perhaps the Kaguügang would have adjusted to the new reality, but, perhaps fortunately for them, such a challenge never arose. Instead, the Kaguügang expanded slowly and largely uneventfully for eighteen or nineteen millennia until, in IY 6761, they met their first alien species in the shape of the Humans — and that, in many ways, was traumatic enough to Kaguügang social concepts.
The meeting occurred off Xants, a system that the Kaguügang had recently colonized. The Spacer ship Telephos Bay under Captain Fist Aubrey dipped into the system for emergency asteroid mining required for repairs, and was immediately met with scouts from the Xants colony ship. The initial meeting was tense but passed without violence, with helmeted and suited crew members of the Telephos Bay becoming media stars on the planet before the ship moved on.
The Kaguügang were not surprised to meet other intelligent life, and apparently took for granted that it should closely resemble them. Socially, however, the discovery was deeply troubling. Humans did not belong to any recognized social-grouping nor, because of metabolic differences, could either species consume the other's blood – even ritually. To a culture as orderly as that of the Kaguügang, such a situation was almost intolerable, and rumour of the chaos caused by The Disappearance was only confounded them further. For many decades, contact between the species was severely limited as the Kaguügang struggled with the question of how to fit Humans into their world view.
Gradually, however, practicality won out. Not only were Humans obviously powerful allies, but their slight technological edge over the Kaguügang meant that their trade goods were always welcome. Very rapidly, those Kaguügang willing to place the advancement of trade over philosophical considerations became rich upon human trade, and in the last century or so, such traders have started to assume positions of power in their culture.
About a decade after The Disappearance, Kaguügang decided that relations with Humans would be based on the legends of Táawk and Xitgáay, two legendary warlords, each of whom, while expressing the deepest friendship for the other refused to take a subordinate position and formed an alliance without an exchange of blood. On the basis of this analogy, the last restraints on relations between the Humans and Kaguügang were eliminated, and the two species continue to interact strongly, if often to the mutual puzzlement of both.
The Kaguügang today
Kaguügang culture continues to be organized along traditional lines, with each individual's position within their social grouping the single most important part of their identity. Early human scholars characterized these social groupings as feudal, and, given the elaborate ceremonies that mark changes in relationship, the description has some truth. However, a literal translation of the Kaguügang word is "family-corporation," which gives a better sense of the ambiguities and subtleties of the arrangement. Probably, it can be best thought of as a series of overlapping relationships, some of which are fixed, and some of which are fluid.
Every Kaguügang, both male and female, is defined primarily by family as children. However, as they mature and begin to make their way as independent adults, they begin to establish relationships based on their own activities. Friendships, marriages, and business deals are all marked by elaborate ceremonies that involve either an exchange of blood (if the relationship is equal) or one person ritually sampling the other's blood.
Other ceremonies exist to mark the end of relationships, but, except in terms of career, they are rarely used. Legally, the Kaguügang proof of sanity is the ability to explain your web of relationships, and the typical member of the species will go to extraordinary lengths to preserve it. A typical element in Kaguügang tragedy is the complete loss of this web, either through loss or exile. Another popular plot element is the shaming of the family-corporation, and the efforts of its members to restore its good name.
For Kaguügang, the state is the family-corporation writ large. The species has an imperial line, but, in practice, rule is shared among each ruler's family-corporation. The same is true of lesser officials. Since, in practice, everyone ultimately belongs to the imperial family-corporation, this organization is immensely fluid and has no problem promoting able individuals to positions of authority.
At all levels, in return for submission, the head of the family-corporation is expected to listen to subordinates, and it is not unknown for subordinates to act against the head when a majority are of the opinion that he or she is shaming the group. At other times, members of the family-corporation may submit petitions or conduct work-stoppages — which are strangely respectful by human standards — to protest lesser offensives, such as injustice against individuals, or even a failure to keep a neighborhood tidy.
The latter cases help Human comedians to characterize Kaguügang as hopelessly anal-retentive and unable to assign priorities, but, from the point of view of the Kaguügang themselves, can be surprisingly serious. The prestige of a family-corporation rests mainly in its numbers and alliances, but the beauty and upkeep of its territories is a direct reflection of its power. For their part, the Kaguügang often view Humans as deeply deceptive, since slovenliness among Humans does not correspond to a lack of power.
Like many species, the Kaguügang often worry that contact with other intelligent species will mean a relaxation of cultural standards. And, in fact, some indicators suggest that Human values are starting to become more acceptable on some Kaguügang worlds, especially among those who interact regularly with Humans, and thus introduce new complications into their family-corporations.
In general, though, the Kaguügang are too numerous and far-flung for such a relaxation to become a serious cultural threat. Already, despite the brief history of interaction, the Kaguügang are becoming major trading partners of Humans in the Western Reaches, and their traders have also penetrated much of the rest of Human space.
Moreover, while slightly behind Humans technologically, the Kaguügang are rapidly closing that gap, and their immense pride in their family corporations make any feeling of inferority that might accelerate cultural influence unlikely. The Kaguügang are close allies of Humans, but they have always made clear that the relationship will be on terms compatible with their dignity.