Tassalirian Hegemony

### **Biology and Culture**

The Tassalirians are an alien species that derivated from flora, especially funguses. They possess large caps on the top of their heads, in which their brain and breathing system is, along with a pair of eyes, ears, and a mouth full of sharp teeth with a tongue. Although anthropomorphic, their biology is hardly similar to other races in the galaxy. Their bodies are thin, and they have sharp nails. They have slits in their chests, where spores are exhaled during reproduction. Their offspring reaches maturity within 5 months, and their lifespan on average reaches around 35 years old. They possess a very unique characteristic, in which all knowledge learned by each individual is instinctively shared among all other Tassalirians. This knowledge then passes on to their offspring, who carries with them all experiences of the Tassalirians before them, the knowledge coming about at an occasional pace, being remembered as it is needed so as to not overload their brains.

They consume food through both their mouths, which is the most efficient way, and through their gills, filtering the air around them for nutrients. Their digestive system processes the food, and eliminates it in a microscopic scale through their external glands in the form of a spray.

They reproduce at an incredibly quick pace, via spores expelled from their body. These spores, once fallen in any type of soil, will quickly spurt dozens of new Tassalirians, ready to serve their empire. Tassalirians often reproduce several times throughout their lives, making them one of the most numerous populations in the galaxy. They are hermaphrodites, so the concept of gender is unknown to them.

A bizarre combination of animal and plant, the exact details of their evolution remains a mystery among the scientific community, like Cloud biology.

### **Society and Technological Advancements**

The Tassalirians are one of the oldest and most prominent societies in the Known Galaxy. Their dominion over other planets is matched only by the Northern Star Federation. They have witnessed countless empires rise and fall, and it is unclear as to exactly how old their hegemony is. They have an extremely strong sense of unity, with next to no major infighting throughout all of their history. Their government is a totalitarian authocracy led by a council of the oldest and wisest Tassalirians, who are succeeded by the best of their offspring once they die. They almost never have any disagreements, and their society runs as a well-oiled machine. The machine metaphor also applies to the way they see the individual in their society: To them, every individual is a part of the great machine that is their society. This worldview has resulted into a very high tendency to eugenics within their worlds, where they eliminate or exile any Tassalirian that isn't perfectly suited for work. Disabilities are almost non-existent in Tassalirian society. These are values that the vast majority of individuals agrees on and willingly participates on. There is no need for law enforcement, since all Tassalirians know exactly what they were born to do the second they are born. As a result of this, their society has almost no philosophers or artists. Anything that isn't useful to the society is worthless to them. The closest there is to art in their society are textile producers, which make clothes with specific colors and patterns that characterize the role of each individual in their society. They try their best to have amicable relationships with the other civilizations, even being aware of how ridiculously short their existence will be.

Their official "religion" of sorts is the belief in a completely united and cooperative society, which they also call "The Mycelium". Their ultimate goal being the advancement of technology reaching a level where they can transcend reality and essentially become gods. They believe that only through unity can progress truly happen, and so their entire set of values revolves around the collective instead of the individual. Due to this, they are one of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy.

Emotions and feelings are much more difficult for them to process than other species. Most of them are born knowing exactly what they should do, and they don't see the expression of emotions as something necessary in their society, since most of them don't have many social relationships nor care for having them. Their focus is on the machine, the society which they work so hard to maintain and evolve. Some of them, however, eventually have to learn about other species' way of expressing themselves and have to learn to emulate them. This is specially the case with diplomats, who often take apprentices with them to help them better perform the gestures. Other things they don't immediately understand regarding other species are social cues and dialogue expressions such as sarcasm or irony. Most of them take expressions literally out of habit. Even though they have the knowledge of what sarcasm and irony is due to the inherited information, the understanding of when other races are making use of these dialogue expressions is not always easily identified by the younger diplomats.

### **Mentions**

* Tassalirians have not yet been mentioned in any Everdream work.