Lore:Cerulean
 Cerulean |
Denonyms: Ceruleans |
Ceruleans are upright, ambulatory descendants of Space Carp and genetic siblings to the bipedal Akulans. The main distinction lies in the tail and legs: Akulans have jointed plantigrade legs and a tail, and Ceruleans have a larger tail with vestigial leg-bones within. Ceruleans require water within their lungs, in contrast to Akulans' need to merely remain moist, and both achieve this through portable hydro-vaporizers. The Cerulean tail is flexible vertically, as typical of mammals, aided by the muscular formations typical of a leg, while the Akulan tail flexes horizontally, aided by their gluteal muscles. Ceruleans tend to inhabit deeper waters than Akulans, though given the Akulan propensity to live on land, this isn't a low bar to sink beneath.
As a deep-sea creature, Ceruleans wanting to experience the greater galaxy and drag themselves among the ambulatory need a slight surgery or augmentation to adjust their body's inner pressure, lest they bloat like a blobfish. This can come from significant fat cell eradication, significant blood volume loss, or microgravity adjustments, all of which allow the Cerulean body to thrive in human-standard atmospheric conditions without skin tearing. These "Surfaced" Ceruleans may find it difficult to return home, potentially succumbing to human conditions like the Bends when free-diving so deep.
We Were Not Born For Greatness
In the Era of Jetsam, when grandeur was deposited upon our aquatic people, only those above the waves elevated higher. Until the Year of Our Mother 780, Akulan culture did not differentiate between the legged and otherwise. Fossil records suggest that maybe 30% of Akulans had distinct legs at the time King Consort Whimuhaha Kiētito was exiled to the observatories aboveNot "abovatories". Bad.. Our scrimshaws focus on action, on teeth and claw, so even depictions of the lower half are rare, let alone detailed enough to distinguish legged or non.
When the traitors to King Consort Whimuhaha Kiētito did what they did, taking the bait and luring more of our kin into the stars, that is when we Ceruleans were truly left behind. Tending to Selantis ourselves, those "incapable" of walking the sands and thus sailing the stars, we did what we could: keeping the seas stocked, our warcharts plotted, our armories stocked, but the glory of battle was denied to us outright. Sure, our agility in the air is lacking, but how many of our fights ever stooped so low? We were told we were fighter pilots, fish in a sealed tank with the agility of gods, our static pressures withstanding G-forces those in atmospheres could not even fathom. And yet, only the seas were ours.
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Auralis Nerhenshi, on behalf of the Postcausal Analysis Team says: "The Hindsight Committee notes that Ceruleans were observed during the Akulan Uplifting experiment, but wrongfully assumed to be maimed Akulans, a statistically insignificant minority, and as outliers were excluded from the experimental samples." |
When the Bite of Our MotherNot a common term for the Akulan Warpath, but one nonetheless seared across the stars, in her wake came us in colony ships, sealed in tight fishtanks to be ejected into our conquests' oceans. Even in our freedom, isolation. When the galaxy is ruled by bipedals, governed by bipedals, and catered to the ambulatory, there's rarely chance to interact with the uninteractible. As much as we're equal people, as much as we wanted to share the joys of embracing a larger community and the valor of crushing them, going unseen... helped, when the counter-offensive dredged our trail of brimstone, exterminating the surface encampments and shallow sea-bases. Without divulging Current Affairs, just know that there's still a strong Akulan presence along the River of BloodAlso not a common term..
Homesteaders, When The War Came Home
Historians would like you to believe that in the War of the Three Seas, Ceruleans backed the pacifistic Free Floaters, but in truth their support also drifted evenly with the Hardcore Adherists. As much as being refused the front-lines kept Ceruleans from sating their artificial bloodlusts, it also insulated them from the horrors of war, of witnessing fear turn to spite as their cornered prey sheds their survival instinct in futility, lashing back with the fiery wrath of a man of gasoline. Those who had never turned a gun on another, schooled together under whatever banner could bring them glory. A long, laborious war makes sense when it's just numbers clashing against numbers, casualties you've never met, foes you don't have to hear.
When the Diplomacyteam Ceased all hostilities, this included the entirety of the surface-capable Adherists, leaving the movement incapable of influencing Azulae or starting their own crusade. Back in effective exile, the Adherists - now the School of Martyn - ruminate over their failures and their pilfered technology. With the sort of academic rigor that only a furious population can muster, the School of Martyn developed technology to rival the Ordoht: the hydro-vaporizer and the gravity generator. Artificial Gravity existed prior, through trickery or rare anomalies, but the Cerulegraviton utilizes Bluespace to selectively compress electrons along simple iron lattices, artificially emulating a significant amount of mass in a small area, scaleable to large interconnected space stations. Through wisdom, the Ceruleans conquered the only obstacles between them and social freedom.
Cerulean society runs parallel to the Bureau of Current Affairs, recognizing the wisdom in not pissing off the galaxy all at once, but reveling in the implied forgiveness that history brings. That is, they recognize that most folk have moved on from the scars left by the Era of the Hunt, and are in no rush to remind folk of their terrors and thus reopen old wounds. Their methods of neither caring nor bragging don't strictly conflict with the Bureau's edicts, so Ceruleans are still technically recognized as part of Azulan kingdom, but it's also not wrong to see them as independent.
Another cultural divergence from the main Azulean population is how they approach endearment. The Bureau of Current Affairs focused on chivalry and knighthood as their modus operandi to appear endearing yet strong, whereas the leading Cerulean population drew inspiration from memes about proving existence. Citing the "shoe-on-head" trend of verifying pre-Holonet users' authenticity, Ceruleans briefly had a trend of wearing bipedals' shoes as hats. Of course, this "brief fad" became cemented in the galactic zeitgeist through the Streisand effect and is thus just one of those things they're expected to do.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
