Approved Submission Deceivers (Yulips)

[Lijosu]

Submission URL

https://stararmy.com/wiki/doku.php?id=species:deceiver

Submission Faction(s)

1. Non-Playable Factions
2. None (nebulas, etc.)

Submission Terms

1. I agree

Deceivers (or Yulips) are a species I've been working on for a while that are based around the concept of a pseudo-human species that has the ability to make itself strongly resemble other pseudo humans.

The idea itself requires cooperation with many other FMs because a part of the idea is the use of other species in yulip culture due to their blatant xenophilic attitude.

The plan for this species is to keep it as non-playable for the time being until I know that other people are definitely interested in playing as them. I may make an example character and use it in the future to show off and advertise but until then the idea will just be sitting on the shelves. Once I am confident people are interested in the species they are planned to be discovered in-character, at which point they will side with a large faction (such as Yamatai or USO) and become playable. For this reason, the two pages I have written are intended to serve the purpose of adequate summary until I can rightly create more pages to more accurately represent information about yulips. Know that despite this, none of the information I am giving you is nonfactual or over simplified.

I believe this species will make a welcome addition to the Star Army setting due to their complexity in character and the relative lack of species that use the same subtlety in design that I feel I have achieved with this species. Subtlety being of key importance to a species based entirely around stealth.

The relevant FMs (who I have already contacted personally for convenience) are: @Kai (Origin) @Jack Pine (USO) @FrostJaeger @META_mahn (Elysians) @Soresu (Iroma and the Astral Commonwealth) @Wes (Yamatai & Everything else of relevance)

May the reviewing begin!

 

[Soresu]

For the Commonwealth I will wish to remain in the loop/discuss/give approval on possibly sensitive information, material and so on if it involves them. Just thought I'd put that forward as well. We've discussed this briefly, but I was clear that their homesystem remains unknown.

 

[Kyle]

Please be advised that I have edited my first post to include the checklist which didn't appear in it when I initially POSTED!!! >_<

 

[Lijosu]

It is not intended for them to be aware of Neshaten whatsoever. If you'd like them to be aware of them at least, just give me a shout. Though it seems fair that going through the lengths you described, they wouldn't know a thing about them.

How the "shapeshifting" works is described briefly in the deceiver article and I intend to expand on it in a physiology page later. Regardless, it is entirely scientific and no magic is involved.

They are unable to literally change shape, but have very complex skin which contains many small muscles and glands which serve separate functions. First and foremost, their skin has a layer which is entirely white, serving as a canvas. Above this is where the more complex things happen. They have muscles specifically attached to little pockets of pigment that when relaxed are small enough to be invisible unless observed very closely. When contracted, the muscles stretch these pockets to produce rich colors that ultimately change the colour of their skin. They also have extremely thin strands that hide underneath their skin and unlike real hairs, are alive. These strands are separately capable of changing colour and muscles/glands can be contracted to squeeze them out from under the skin and appear as short hairs. Changing the tilt of the tiny slots they come out of allows the deceiver to change these "hairs" from straight to curly. What is important to note about their skin is that its also very soft and quite malleable, which is good for the purposes it needs to fulfill, but not good if they get hit by something heavy or sharp.

They also have a number of glands underneath their skin that expand to allow them to change the texture of their skin and raise it just a bit. For simplicities sake (and because Star Army's setting allows these kinds of pass offs), they can do this anywhere on their body. To put into perspective how far these lumps in their skin can reach, they would be able to make their skin look rough and rocky, and maybe make it so it appears they have a nose. But they wouldn't be capable of giving themselves an extra "limb" or really anything more than an inch off of their skin.

 

[Lijosu]

For the Commonwealth I will wish to remain in the loop/discuss/give approval on possibly sensitive information, material and so on if it involves them. Just thought I'd put that forward as well. We've discussed this briefly, but I was clear that their homesystem remains unknown.

Absolutely! Seems like common sense, if I'm going to be honest.

 

[Kyle]

So Lijosu and I had a talk and I've decided to go ahead and let his faction know at least a few things about the Neshaten, not a whole lot of course, but I'll settle for things such as bits of their culture and population, knowing about them being three races (rather than one, like others)

I figure that, even with the measures in place, there will always be some civvy out there that'll blabber things into the wrong ears (or sent unencrypted ... uhh.. images and such )

 

[Lijosu]

Added Neshaten to Deceiver and The Tenet, and added "Research and Cultural Investigation" as a subsection to The Tenet.

 

[Kyle]

So, it looks like the forum is being screwy with me, I don't see Frost's post with the checklist which was why I had posted my own >.< (for me the post numbers go as followed: "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-11-12-13-15-16-17-18-19-20-22-23-24-25-26")

Thus I will defer to Frost in this thread, I have editted my own thread with my checklist and removed it. Sorry about that ;-;

 

[FrostJaeger]

Tis fine, @Kyle (pap); @Wes and @Zack, would you the two mind looking over submission this submission, please? Your approvals as the respective FMs of Yamatai and USO are all that's needed before I can go ahead and formally approve of this submission.

 

[Lijosu]

I thought they already did on page 1. Posts 11 and 14 respectively.

 

[FrostJaeger]

Thanks for catching that, @Lijosu; my bad, @Wes - I must’ve missed your post when I made mine. Sorry! (>.<)

Anyhoo, would you mind looking over the submission and posting in this thread whether or not you approve of it, please, @Zack?

 

[Zack]

@Lijosu is right, approval was already posted.

 

[FrostJaeger]

Although I officially believe otherwise, @Zack, I'm not going to let our..."disagreements" delay someone else's submission. Anyways...

Hello! Let's see if this submission meets the requirements for inclusion in Star Army's lore...

[ ] 1. The destination URL should be a page in the appropriate namespace and titled lower_case_with_underscores.
[ ] 2. The article is in the appropriate format and article template.
[ ] 3. The article follows our wiki style guidelines, including: No forced line breaks, text after each section header, etc.
[ ] 4. The article is easily read and free of errors in spelling and grammar.
[ ] 5. Links to other wiki articles are present as appropriate.
[ ] 6. The article fits into the Star Army universe's space opera theme and technology levels.
[ ] 7. Images in the article are hosted on Star Army's wiki and sourced responsibly (contact Wes privately if there's a concern).
[ ] 8. The article is original and doesn't contain copy-pasted content from other articles.
[ N/A ] 9. The article complies with Star Army's rules in terms of damage ratings, speed limits, etc.
[ ] 10. The Faction Manager(s), if applicable, have posted approval for this article in this thread.

Status: Approved, on the condition that artwork be obtained for the Deceivers within 120 days.

Thanks again for submitting an article to the wiki! Time for some final steps for the reviewer...

[ ] 1. State clearly that the article is approved in the submission thread
[ ] 2. Move the wiki article to its permanent (destination) location on the wiki
[ ] 3. Move the submission thread to the Approved Submissions subforum or get a moderator to
[ ] 4. Edit the article to add a link to the approval thread in the OOC Notes section
[ ] 5. Link other articles to the approved article as appropriate (equipment lists, etc.)

This review includes the following sub-articles:

• The Tenet

 

[Jack Pine]

Did you want to add S6?

 

[club24]

Since they literally just became a faction, I doubt the information would be super widespread just yet, besides gives you two some rp chances ;3

 

[Lijosu]

What club said. I mean, if you REALLY want S6 to be a thing they know about, thats fine by me.

 

[Wes]

It looks like everyone involved in this has left and I'm not sure the species was ever used in RP or has anything to do with the Star Army so I propose that we remove the species or archive it to reduce wiki clutter. If any has any objections, I'll leave this open for 3 days for them to be raised.

 

[Jack Pine]

I may want to discuss with my FMs if they wish to do something with them, or include them as a minor species population in the NDC. They're a very inhuman race, and we don't get many of those in the setting it seems like as much anymore. So I'd hate to see them go to waste.

@Alex Hart and @Whisper for their thoughts?

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

The amount of work put into it really is a shame to lose but it and its associated NPC faction are clearly meant for a story or narrative that will never happen now. After all a shapeshifting race is a unique thing to have at least towards the setting as a possible antag species and im surprised it never occurred to anyone to have them go kuvie and be an infiltration sub-species for the kuvexians.


Do remember for anyone that does want them tho they are canonically tied to an NPC faction that is strictly isolationist and junta-based that doesn't seem to want to mesh well with others until some narrative has been achieved (Hence the becoming a sub-faction under another part in their factions wiki page).

Could always just have the kuvies enslave them and use them to infiltrate the kikyo sector to cause background havok and having blow up their megastructure, leaving a bunch of them as refugees or who knows what~

 

[Jack Pine]

That would be problematic considering they're our neighbors and observing us last I checked with lijosu. Sirris VI also used to be their homeworld before they up and moved to said superstructure.

 

[Wes]

You got to remember that having stuff in the setting also takes time to bring to life and work to maintain it with updates. Everything we keep has a maintenance cost. I think the NDC already has so much on its plate that taking these over too would only be a kind of loss of focus. We gotta prioritize and do the work that matters most.

Does this actually form an important part of Star Army's setting or is it just a personal side project? I think it's the latter.

Does SARP need this? No, we've had this for a while and are still not using it now, so removing it won't change anything or hurt anything.

Also, and this is just my feelings, I don't really feel clean about using this. When someone makes something on here that's kind of "their baby" and then leaves because they're unhappy with SARP or whatever, I would rather just remove the "baby" instead of using it potentially against their author wishes. I've been burned in the past with ex-members sending me lawyer threats and stuff over their old content and even though we have a clear-cut license to use it, do we really want to put ourselves in that position of having to fight over that? Of course not.

TL: DR: IMO the costs of keeping it outweigh the benefits