Blattia (LightVoid)

The blattaria are cockroach men that dwell in Lor'quhans toxic swamps. They have no society, little in the way of technology, and little to no influence in what goes on beyond their personal scope. None the less, they are interesting enough in their culture and biology to warrant a rather indepth look at them.
==Biology==
Insectoid in nature, the blattaria look for the most part like giant, vaguely humanoid cockroaches. They possess a soft exoskeleton, segmented bodyparts, antenna, and have six limbs, two of which could be called 'legs' and four of which could be called 'arms'. The have no wings, unlike their ancestors.. they are too large and awkward for them to be much use anyway. Perhaps the most interesting thing about blattia biology is there amazing ability to take punishment. Much like a cockroach, if you cut a blattia's head off, it will starve to death before it dies from decapitation or bloodloss. Of course it's unlikely to do any of the above, as a blattia can reattach limbs it's lost with enough time and patience, their bodyparts reknitting rather akin to a trolls, albeit far more slowly. It is still possible for a blattia to die though, from enough dismembering, dissolving substances, or merely an overload of shock. Despite their ability to withstand punishment, a blattia has a very short lifespan, growing to adulthood from larvae in three years and dieing in fifteen.
Aside from all these features, blattia all have one more thing in common... they're completely and utterly delusional.
==Delusions==
Perhaps it's a result of living in a toxic swamp for fifteen pointless years before dieing. Perhaps they're naturally disposed towards insanity. Whatever the case, 999 times out of 1000, any blattia you meet will be delusional. Those that aren't are usual manic depressive, as their lifestyle without the sweet taste of fantasy to sweeten it is incredibley bleak, boring, and frankly disgusting.
Blattia are not insane... well technically they are, but they are not lunatics. Rather, each blattia suffers from one specific delusion, which will not change throughout their lifetime without considerable trauma. They do not change personality, jump of bridges because they can, or the like, they are predictabley and thus relatively safely mad. This delusion differs wildly from blattia to blattia, though they can be broken into several different categories.
Friendship: The blattia believes something is it's friend when it clearly isn't. This often takes the form of personifying inanimate objects, such as rocks and trees, and dubbing it it's best friend and companion for life. The blattia hears the thing talk when no-one else does, and accuses anyone that denies hearing it of not listening hard enough. It can also dub incredibley dangerous or unwilling things as it's friend, for example a dire lion or a passing traveller. If it's 'friend' dies or is lost, the blattia goes into intense mouring for anywhere between a few days and ten seconds, before promptly finding a new, similar friend.
Calling: The blattia believes it had a unique calling, whether this be some mission or a career. There have been reports of blattia toting entire weapon racks around claiming to be the 'mayor' of the weapons therein, blattia travelling around the world delivering letters it found in the swamp because it thinks it's a postman, and blattia finding old armor and weapons and fighting 'evil trees' because it claims to be a righteous paladin despite not being able to pronounce 'righteous' or 'paladin' correctly. Some of these delusions are harmless, but a blattia can get very defensive if someone claims it's just crazy. Some particularily delusion blattia, especially those with a calling that involves some measure of violence, will brutally attack anyone that challenges their worldview.
Polymorph: The blattia believes it is not a blattia at all. Rather, it is a tree, or a rock, or a dwarf, or a bird. It acts like a blattia, looks like a blattia, and thinks like a blattia, but it is convinced that it is something else, and proudly tells everyone it meets that it is a tree or what have you. If challenged, it will often claim a wizard made it look like what it does now, or simply say that the observer is mad. This is a relatively tame and harmless manifestation of madness.
Everything else is polymorphed: The blattia insists that this isn't how the world should be. It insists that when it went to sleep yesterday, the world was very very different, but when it woke up, the entire univers had changed just to vex it. Maybe it thinks the world should be candy, and gnaw on wood or the like just to see if the world is indeed changing back to the sweet one it knows. Maybe it claims that the world is one in which the entire world they live in is actually an RP, and that it's been drawn into it somehow, making vague allusions to a "Dee'M" and "Attack Rolls". These blattia are usually relatively calm, though they often search for a way back to their own world or to turn the world back to the way it was... however, they can often be violent when just waking up, as they are occassionally 'drawn back' into their own world only to 'wake up back here'.
Paranoid: The blattia is hopelessly paranoid. This is rarely just general paranoia, rather the blattia KNOWNS something is out to get it, and it's usually something fairly outlandish. Never is merely an assassin after it, it's a giant sentient pinecone, causing the blattia to regard all pinecones with suspicion and fear. It frequently asks people if they are pinecones in disguise, and brushes their skin or looks in their boots to see if they display any trace of pine needles or pinecone grooves. This type of blattia can get quite violent around the fear in question, but is otherwise docile if constantly suspicious.
A blattia IS it's delusions, so much so that they take their name based off of their perceptions of reality. The mayor of weapon town IS Mayor. The postman who delivers stray letters IS Postman. The blattia with pinecones after them IS Pineconefoe. The blattia convinced the world is a game IS PC. Occassionally, there ARE sane blattia, or blattia's who's delusions don't lend themselves well to names, and so they often take names that vaguely describe themselves. Since most blattia have little to no purpose in life, these are usually along the lines of 'Wandering Vagobound', 'Aimless Renegade', or 'Has a piece of moldy bread'.
==Society (or lack there of)==
The blattia are asocial creatures. This is very unusual, as most intelligent creatures are either social, as in they yearn to gather together, or anti-social, that is they intentionally seek out solitude and scorn company. Blattia, on the other hand, are rather like their cockroach ancestors. There can be dozens, hundreds of blattia in a single place, drawn there by good, junk or the like, but never speaking, even bumping into or crawling over eachother yet paying no heed to their fellows. That isn't to say blattia are unfriendly, far from it. If spoken to a blattia will gladly enjoy good company. It's just that it's incredibley unusual for the blattia to speak first, making relationships between other blattia extremely rare to say the least.
One thing that could be called a cultural quirk of blattia is there compulsive need to gather junk. In part this is practical, as junk can be used to make shelters, gather food, or sell to other races or blattia for something practical. But in truth a blattia will hoard it's junk, carrying it on swamp sleds and often having a hole where it deposits it's 'treasure'. Perhaps this is to give the blattia something concrete and meaningful to do in an otherwise meaningless world... most likely though it's just another instinct carried over from roachhood that's turned into another quirk of their madness.
Despite the difficulty in dealing with them, many races seek blattia out for junk that might be useful. A blattia is adept at repairing junk, and will gladly trade a super powerful magical portal generator for a shiny rock if the other race indulges them in company and it considers it a fair trade. A blattia has a skewed version of worth, on a basic principal: things that foster delusions beats edible, edible beats functional, functional beats pretty, pretty beats everything else but the above, except when it does.
A blattia wears junk like others wear fine clothes, compulsively gathering scraps of cloth to bedeck itself in. A blattia isn't happy unless all you can see is it's arms, feet, eyes, and a whole tonne of rotting cloth. They don't just limit themselves to 'traditional' cloths though, they often wear pot helmets, potlid chestplates and the like. A blattia has little knowledge of 'real' clothes, attaching it's cloth and other items to it through a combination of stickey mud and rope like junk they happen to pick up.
==Food and Mating==
Blattia spend a lot of their time searching for food along with junk. They don't hunt, or gather, they merely scrounge. Due to their unique biology, they can eat food that other races would consider spoiled with no ill effects. Indeed, they relish the taste of rot, and consider food to be like wine: it ages well. Thanks to the Junk Falls, blattia dine on edible garbage filtered through from the rest of the universe, with little need to hunt or gather additional meals.
Unfortunately for male blattia, the average population density of male to female is roughly 20 to 1. As such, female blattia are doted on when found, given the prize junk from the males hoard, and generally wooed over as well as a blattia can actually woo. It's actually somewhat romantic the extent to which a male blattia goes to to prove it's devotion.. at least, it would be if it wasn't just because they probably wouldn't see another female in their short lifetime.
A blattia's reproductive equipment is retractable, and emmerges from their carapace during mating. However, while the males reproductive organs are on the FRONT, the females are on it's BACK, meaning the blattia must always procreate in a 'spooning' or the like position, rather like the insects they came from. Blattia sex is short, sweet, and well worth all the trouble it was to get. Usually a female will repel a male once it's been fetilized, but exceptions do exist, and the male always remains by the female as long as it will have it. They are solitary creatures however, and if delusions colide things can get rather tense.
A female lays up to twenty eggs at a time, most of which hatch and grow to adult hood. If it wasn't for their solitude and low lifespans, blattia would probably overrun Lor'quhan through sheer numbers. As is, most males go their whole lives without seeing another female. The eggs hatch into larvae, which are cared for by the female and on occassion by the male if it's been allowed to stay on. These larvae eventually grow up into blattia, after which they run along their seperate paths. As a side note, a blattia does not consider it's family members viable candiates for mating despite the low supply of females. Indeed, a blattia doesn't mate with anyone within three generations of relation to it, instinctively knowing a potential mate is related by scent. However, due to the blattia's low life-span, a generation is a very short time and usually at least one of those generations are dead by the time it reached adulthood.
==Racial Abilities==
((Coming Soon))
Category:LV Races