Skip to content

Playable Races: Novan

Nothing on this page is a promised feature or guaranteed to be in the game.

If you are seeing this warning bubble, here is a reminder that this project is in early development.

Anything you see here is NOT a promise or guarantee. Features on this page WILL BE ADDED, REMOVED, OR CHANGED WITHOUT ANY SORT OF NOTICE. If I find you on twitter.com saying how I "broke promises" because you saw something on this page that I removed later, I will point at you and laugh for being a dummy idiot doodoo bref dummy head, a real stinker, perhaps dare I say, a poopyhead even.

Information recently trimmed

I am focusing on lore for the game, meaning things are in a constant state of flux. Cultural values and other relevant information of the sort have been removed from the page. They will be re-added at a later date. Sorry!

This document written in-character, as if you were reading a manifest from the game's lorebook.

Key Overview

Attribute Associated Information
Home World Arcnova (NEC-Core System (Pulsar), Planet № 1)
Propagation Technique Natural Mutagen-Enhanced Cloning Process
Average Height 3.2m
Average Mass 104kg
Average Lifespan 224.6 Years

Overview

  Novan are exoskeletal, tall, slender bipeds. Unlike most races, they are incapable of speech and auditory speech processing, as they do so through visual stimulus. They are perhaps the furthest from typically expected bipedal life and, for lack of a better word, the most "alien".

Phenotype

  Novan are often colored all black, with slight shades of either red, violet, or blue. They often have lines or regions of bright cyan or magenta glowing parts, typically in joints or parts of the chitin which must buckle or bend. Their panels are typically solid, not unlike an insect's exoskeleton. Their chitin panels are typically 3 to 5 centimeters thick, and in total make up around 20% of their body mass. For this reason, they are extremely strong.

  Novan have five eye-like lobes shaped in a pentagonal formation, with one eye centered on their forehead. These are not all eyes, however, and each pair serves a different purpose.1

  • The odd forehead eye is used for empathic communication with nearby peers and other races.
  • The lowermost pair is used for communication, and are asymmetrical. Through triboluminescense, UV and X-Ray radiation can be fired off in short bursts towards their peers via the left of the pair. The right side has an organ sensitive to these flashes. This is how they communicate, through a series of specifically timed flashes.
  • The middle pair can see within the infrared spectrum, and is used for navigation of hazards on their world. This vision is not particularly clear, and so Novan vision is poor.

  Novan have four long, pointed ears. These are used for locating prey and threats, and are independently controllable. This allows them to form full 3D maps of their surroundings, including with vertical discretion. They are extremely sensitive. Novan report that they can often hear people using cloaking technology.

  • To reiterate, they are not capable of auditory processing. Their brains are incapable of breaking sounds apart to identify them as speech.

  The Novan digestive system classifies them as hemophages - blood eaters. Under both of their forearms are two large tubules which contain silicate spears approximately 30cm long and 2cm in diameter. These needles are connected through a long, stretchy artery directly to their lymphatic system. To eat, they launch these spears at prey and "drink" their blood, passing it through the lymphatic system to clean out contaminants like viruses and bacteria, and then directly integrate the blood into their own systems. Most importantly:

  • They do not have a waste system. As a consequence, they lack all faculties required for digestion of food items. They do not have a stomach nor do they have intestines. They do not have mouths.
  • If one of their feeding spears breaks, it can easily be regrown. The same is true for the filament connecting it back to their body.
  • Spears are typically launched at a velocity of 50m/s.

  The Novan respiratory system works a bit like above-water gills. It is exposed through six slits located on their backs. These gills absorb carbon dioxide and split the carbon atom off, which is used to construct parts of their chitin and in biological chemical reactions. The gills secrete and dispose of oxygen and cellular waste molecules.

  1. This five-eye setup and the use of masks was loosely inspired by the Urzuk from Creatures of Sonaria. ↩