Kallids

The Kallids are an extraterrestrial race of humanoid creatures that made first contact in 2021. They are an intelligent and amiable species, allowing almost seamless integration with earth society. Kallids have many quirks that differentiate them from the homo sapien, but none of these quirks break "laws of reality" in ways that would classify them as anomalous: none of their evolutionary or cultural history implies supernatural origin. As such, the Kallids can truly be classified as genuine alien creatures, rather than anomalous but native races like Ranchos or anomalous and nonnative races like Them.

## Cultural Development

Kallids have developed - socially and psychologically - at a slower but more stable pace than humans. Developments that would take man hundreds of years to invent and globally standardize would take Kallid thousands of years to invent, but only ten or twenty to standardize. This is in part due to their elevated communication skills: Kallids are exceptionally intelligent creatures with incredible adaptive mimicry. They can quickly assess the physical and emotional cues of another and alter themselves to match. Given time, Kallids can rapidly amass information from multiple different sources and effortlessly recall that information for their purposes. They also have a good intuition for what actions are fruitful to emulate and which do not match the cues of their current situation. On the other hand, Kallids lack the spontanaety of thought that allow genuine moments of originality or invention. They do not dream and do not visualize fictional "what if" scenarios like humans. When a situation occurs that a Kallid does not understand, it first tries to match the situation with a previous one, and if this fails, attempts to imagine how a being with spontanaety of thought would respond. Kallids can only use this last manuever when they know at least one such being very well.

This theme of slow stability also extends to their genome. Most creatures on their home planet evolve 2-3x slower than those on earth - Kallids included. That this race is technologically on par with modern earth speaks to the fact that life on their world emerged billions of years before our own. By combinations of chance and systematic experimentation, they developed into a space-faring civilization sometime around the 7th century and have been exploring their side of the cosmos ever since.

## Recent Involvement

1992 affected the Kallids on a smaller but similar scale to humanity. Their stable society was challenged by the influx of the unusual, unexplainable, and deadly. Fortunately, Kallids were far enough from earth to avoid the most intense shifts and more readily adapted to the phenomena. While humanity struggled with potential ruin and made technological developments driven by desperation, Kallids were already past the phase of fear and entering the phase of curiosity. They realized that these anomalies were often the very essence of randomness and unpredictability, and found such things fascinating because they were not readily accessible to Kallid psychology. Their interest led them to discover the 1992 incident had an epicenter and triangulated that epicenter to earth. Kallids sent their first pair of ships to the milky way in 2002 and they arrived 10 years later. From there, Kallids followed existing spacefarers who were part of the first exodus and backtraced the location of humanity's home planet. They observed this planet undetected until 2021, where they revealed themselves by choice.

After the initial shock of extraterrestrial visitors, humans and Kallids have retained a close - if one-sided - association, with Kallids adopting the cultural values, psychological mentalities, and technologies of earth. Although they have not been hesitant to share their technology, they have stated that it does not compliment humanity's, further earth sciences in any reasonable fashion, or utilize the materials common to the planet. Kallid technology is foundationally different from that of humans, and caters to alien physical and mental needs. As a result, pure Kallid technology and its use are rare finds on earth. It is the Kallid's expansive nature that makes them delve into their neighbor's trove of insights regardless of incompatibility.

## Biology and Personality

As previously implied, Kallids are memory powerhouses with highly efficient means of storing and retrieving relevant experiences. They will commonly remember details of individual people and select complimentary mannerisms during one-on one discussion, though others are known to purposefully mix uncomplimentary behaviors in to avoid appearing uncanny. They are natural extroverts and tend to find others fascinating. They are often interested in meeting new people so that they can experience fresh ideas, but are equally interested in maintaining existing relationships to understand and potentially simulate new personalities. Studies have shown that Kallids do not have true empathy, but they do possess an instinctive tendency for altruism and the ability to *simulate* empathy after seeing it in action. All of these traits make them understandably popular friends, and global reception towards Kallids has been very positive.

Kallids have no eyes or ears, instead possessing a honed sense of touch, vibration, and scent. A Kallid's spinal tubes are constantly respirating: pulling in surrounding air, filtering useful nitrogen, and expelling the rest as byproducts along with a tinge of ammonia. As it does this, the tube's nervous system develops a muscle memory of certain aerial attributes, helping construct an ephemeral map of the Kallid's surroundings based on airflow, emmission, moisture, and several other factors. This trait is usually more useful indoors. Outside, Kallids tend to supplement their scent-mapping with vibration. A particularly confused Kallid drums its fingers on walls and floors to get a quick picture of its surroundings.

Like humans, Kallids are not without their physical flaws. This race borders the line between quadruped and biped. They are able to straighten their backs and stand on two legs or hunch and adopt an apeish four-legged stance. However, Kallids excell at neither posture and usually alternate between the two. Since they are rather topheavy, both stances put strain on different parts of their back. A Kallid that favors one stance is more likely to develop chronic back pains, though they are usually annoying than crippling.

Kallids have an elastic exoskeleton around their arms, legs, chest, head, and digits. Their spinal tubes are made of a different substance that is porous but firm. Their backs, however, are made of a vulnerable, blubbery skin. This evolutionary weakness makes them hesitant to turn their back on things they can't trust, and likely encouraged the development of community among their own kind.

## Trivia

* Kallids have experienced weaker versions of several existing phenomena, including The Piropipes and The Global Hog (further lending credence to the notion that both expanded beyond earth's borders). These two phenomena introduced them to architecture and animals not native to their planet, and they share a particular fondness for the earth pig.
* Kallids are confirmed not to be the race who encoded The ICE with protective warning signals, as their culture contains no mention of it or its effects.
* Kallids have an instinctive fear of spiders due to their similarities to a deadly parasite on their homeworld, but this fear can be overcome.
* Since they have no eyes, Kallids cannot gain visual information from TV or computer screens. However, they can equip themselves with unique headsets that translate color into cranial pressure and thus interpret visual stimuli in a fixed range. This technology is purely Kallid in nature and must be configured for each individual, so its use is not commonplace.