Lestis

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First appeared in Qalea Drop, book 7. They are a fairly peaceful, mysterious, tall, hooded species that communicates via light flashes.

## Homeworld

* Lestis were taken from their home planet long ago and dumped on Reeh planet Eshir, in ancient city of Qalea.

"The lestis homeworld is a place of extreme spectrums of visible light," Styx replied in kind. "The sensitive eyes possessed by most organic beings would be destroyed. Lestis have evolved a singular sensory organ to filter that light at a reduced intensity. Sensitive light receptors have also become projectors, and evolved to become their primary form of communication. Through the organ, they also hear and smell." (QD-22)

## Descriptions

* Communicate via blue light flashes from light sensor on face
* May have genetically encoded memory like the toulemlek aquatic species on Cephalae. (QD-22)

> Lestis have evolved a singular sensory organ to filter their homeworld’s extreme light at a reduced intensity. Sensitive light receptors have also become projectors, and evolved to become their primary form of communication. Through the organ, they also hear and smell." (QD-22)
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> One of the lestis removed its hood, revealing a smooth face, detailed only by grooves as though upon the surface of some undersea sponge, and an odd-shaped, bony protuberance at the back of the skull. And then the face/sensor began glowing, a dance of blue light. Another joined in, then one more, a dancing play of luminescent patterns about the circle. (QD-22)
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## Neurological Weapon

* Lestis can pulse their blue light to calm angry, dangerous organics.
> "One of the big fighting creatures was restless, growling and posing at some drysines, perhaps mistaking them for fellow animals. A lestis stepped before it, a faint blue light pulsing from beneath its hood. The big creature settled." (QD-31)
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* Styx thinks it is an inborn, innate ability. "The lestis carries no technology. It must be a biologically evolved defence mechanism. I detect no harmonic or other vibration anomaly up here, the range must be limited." (QD-25)

"I think I just discovered the source of that neuro-weapon on the Zondi Splicer, which the Purists copied. The lestis is doing it to the creature." On all fours above the slim, cloaked figure, the creature's four eyes were slowly closing. "And the creature seems to be enjoying it. It calms a creature this size, but it knocks a human out cold... or at least it does once the reeh weaponised it." (QD-25)

* The Reeh empire weaponized the lestis defense mechanism to create an attack mechanism that incapacitates (QD-25). At Zondi Splicer space station, the reeh disabled both Human and Tavalai with this pulse. In Qalea Drop ch 17, it was used by the Purists, but in a less concentrated formula.
> “Then the crushing nausea hit, squeezing her brain as though within the clamps of a vice. Rael was on his knees, clutching his head, then vomiting....Trace recalled all too well that she'd felt this before, at the Zondi Splicer where she'd fallen prisoner to the reeh. It was her last conscious thought before the floor came up ..." (QD-17)
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* Styx may be able to replicate the weapon:

> "Styx, any idea how that lestis stun-weapon works?" "Several ideas, Major. I will develop them in more detail later, and present them for your analysis." "The Zondi Splicer weapon system that blacked us all out?" Dale guessed. "Yes," said Trace. "Only I'm not sure the lestis developed it as a weapon system. It might just be a form of communication." "Which the reeh weaponised," said Dale. "Cheerful species." (QD-31)
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## Religion

The temple building was as simple on the inside as it looked on the out. The wall made a circle of white plaster, within which lestis made a standing circle of their own. In the circle's center, a black crystal, one meter across and spiky with rough protrusions. Styx stood by the crystal -- an even more incongruous sight than usual, Trace thought, with her twin shoulder-mounted cannon in this peaceful place, surrounded by unarmed and robed lestis who, to the best of anyone's knowledge, were psychologically incapable of violence. (QD-22)