Neumono

## Noteworthy characteristics or abilities

High level regeneration and Empathic broadcasting

## Character Examples

- Waska- Korli

- Rokoa Rozu Astra

Neumono are a race that entered from both the PBverse and a universe dubbed "GR-137" due to a holiday event in which a rift was opened between universes. Some individuals came to stay, either residing in on the Dauntless or residing within the Astra hive.

Their home planet is called Astreneus V

## Base Stats

-6 Mental Res When their Empathic Links are targeted

Regeneration mechanics common, hard to kill either way

The larger the individual, the larger a negative to reflexes/defense may be added

Autofails deception and stealth vs anyone who can detect their empathic broadcasts

## General Biology

Neumono take the form of rabbit-like humanoids. They are a bipedal, omnivorous species with powerful regeneration and redundant organs. Because of this, they need to eat a great deal to sustain themselves.

Their colors come mostly in red, blue, green, and near-white.

### Bonus Organs

It's a rare thing for a neumono to become the apex predator of their respective region. Instead, neumono will spread apart to cover the largest amount of area to hunt and gather back together at night or when necessary to protect each other. The chance of receiving what most species would consider a mortal wound was exceedingly high during hunting trips, and it's this danger that led to a series of organ redundancy.

They have 10 hearts across their body of varying sizes. They still contain only two lungs, but these are compartmentalized, preventing choking on blood in case of an internal wound. Each lung is also capable of taking in a high capacity of air in case the other lung is destroyed. Their blood is under higher pressure, but coagulates quickly.

Not everything is fully redundant. For example, they still have a single stomach, which acts as a key weak point. Stomach shots can even put them into a regenerative coma as the body works to repair it before it runs out of energy to regenerate with.

### Arm Brains

Most influential is that they do not have a centralized brain. Instead, their brain matter tends to be spread apart with their nervous system anywhere that there is bone to protect it. This tends to have enough backup such that even should a neumono lose both legs, they will still retain nearly all of their knowledge, although the neumono will be severely disoriented mentally more so than the physical duress of losing limbs would cause.

The costs involve a severely dampened reaction time. They can hold several conscious thoughts in their mind at once, helping their mental capacity, but they're slow in mental agility. This leads to a high level of focus for trivial thought patterns, but difficulty in rapid flows of logic and deduction. They can grab information and hold onto it effectively, but their ability to deduce further conclusions based on their knowledge tends to be limited.

There is no correlation to neumono size and the amount of brain
matter they have. In other words, smaller neumono have more compact brain matter. Their limitations, and advantages, are both suppressed the smaller a neumono is.

A small neumono on average will have a reaction time of 300ms, while a large neumono may have upwards of half a second of reaction. They get around this by showing tactics that don't need quick thinking. Snow hives, the worst due to their size, would simply sacrifice an arm or take a wound from a predator to distract it while the neumono's companions would deal lethal blows to the predator, and carry the wounded neumono back to camp if necessary.

### Regenerate it all anyways

The ability to regenerate most wounds is, without saying, a valuable asset. Each cell in a neumono body holds information to how the body is supposed to be, and it's part of the brain's subconscious ability to tell the cells where to regenerate. The cell itself has no way of knowing, for instance, that the entirety of an arm is gone. Therefore, it is impossible to simply chop up a neumono and expect it to regrow just fine. Enough brain matter must be connected such that the neumono still has self awareness of its own body to initiate proper regeneration. Theoretically, if a neumono brain had so much redundancy, then it should be possible to bisect this individual and leave both halves to regrow into two identical neumono. To date, however, this level of redundancy has not been found.

Since they must eat a lot of food, the process to convert this into energy generates a high level of heat. Their body temperatures are typically around 103 degrees Fahrenheit, which is often conserved on cold nights by huddling together. The process of this constant energy influx requires lots of oxygen, which has led to neumono blood capable of holding a large surplus. Most neumono can hold their breath between 30 and 60 minutes, and can survive with up to 50% of blood loss provided sufficient rest and food is supplied afterward. The ability to hold breath is diminished significantly when the neumono is physically active, or undergoing active regeneration of body parts.

### Reproduction

With help from regeneration, a neumono takes approximately 4 months to be conceived and be born. During the first month, the fetus is generated within a womb of the mother, to which the womb then hardens and is given birth to as a whole, with the womb then acting as a pod, or pseudo-egg, to which the baby spends the next 3 months growing into.

Despite pregnancy lasting only one month, the toll it takes on the mother is considerable. It takes enough effort to feed oneself, but to generate enough material to grow the baby for one month and generate enough nutrients inside of the womb for another three, the mother must eat nearly constantly. This burden is such that an accidental pregnancy at the wrong time could lead to the death of the mother, and so the mother, through evolution, has gained the ability to control when and if
she gets pregnant.

The male and female each have what appears to be a functional penis and vagina, respectively, but the act of sex is functionally different. Male sperm, instead of acting as a fluid, is compressed into a solidified ball. The female vagina is capable of sucking this out, and can be tucked away in a compartment for later use, and can be sustained for years. It is a common practice for the mother to gather and mix several samples from various desirable males such that, theoretically, the strongest sperm will reach the egg.

This ability to pick mates to reproduce with, and the additional strength females tend to have to protect and hunt themselves while pregnant, has led neumono societies to have fairer gender biases than most sapient species. There is still a moderate advantage towards females, however.
For the most parts, hives breed with other hivemates due to familiarity, trust, and convenience. Due to the low numbers of most hives, this can possibly lead to interbreeding. Due to the evolution and complexity of genetic behavior listed in the previous section, and only through multiple generations of inbreeding will adverse effects be caused.

## The Empathic Link

Neumono passively broadcast their emotions and even surface thoughts. The average broadcast radius is 30 meters, but generally varies between individuals. This ability is called Empathy. This ability serves in to main capacities.

### Empathic Development

Neumono children are highly susceptible to empathy given out by others. Their redundant genetics means a kid tends to retain the entirety of their parents’ genetic information within them, along with weaker copies of their grandparents and other ancestors, diminishing through the generations. These benign, redundant copies die off over time but are recreated in their own children, and may become contenders to be reactivated during fetal and childhood development.

As an example, neumono do not have incisors, the large flat frontal teeth that reside between the canines. This is most likely because incisors look particularly strange to the parents and hive of young neumono. As such, should that mutation occur, than the sheer disdain and discomfort with the strange teeth that the child’s body may activate the previous backups from their parent’s genetic information, employing the genes for front canines and mixing them into the child’s own active genetic structure. If this happens, as it most likely has, then the neumono’s regenerative powers will begin to reject their incisors, and the newly activated backup genes will tell the regeneration how their teeth are supposed to be.

By the end of childhood, their genes sort themselves out more permanently in a dominant-recessive pairing, and legacy genes behind those.

### Hives and their function

With their weak psychic ability, a number of neumono tend to gather together in a tribe called a *Hive*. The bonds within a hive is placed at such a sacred level that by comparison, all outside entities including other hives are only seen as untrustworthy enemies.

A hive needs a king or queen (usually a queen) to act as a bonding force to get neumono to become part of a hive during the initial hive formation, but should the queen die, a pre-existing hive will still be able to perpetuate and eventually get a new queen. A queen is the sign of a healthy hive, as schisms and rogues are less likely if there is a single, tangible neumono to look on as the essence of a hive. The "coronation" of a hive queen triggers a genetic switch within the individual, causing growth in physical but especially empathic power.

A hive may try to grow, as well, but a queen's ability to bind neumono together is limited based on strength of personality, Should a hive grow in population, schisms can occur. The bubble of the hive may start to wobble with too many chances for cliques of neumono to drift apart from each other. A latent queen may feel such separation from the hive that she, and a great number of the hive, will split off. Rogues are also neumono that feel estranged from their hive for various reasons. They end up repelled from their hive and leave on their own merit, even though attempting to survive in the wild alone is near suicide.

This rejection of the hive, from either a schism or a rogue, isn't handle well by the original hive. The broken branch or rogue is then treated as a complete stranger with the added trouble of a sense of betrayal from the hive. These old hives will quickly go to war with a schism hive, or hunt and kill rogues.

Children are still malleable empathically, and can be adopted by hives with or without a queen. By the time they are adults, becoming adopted is not outright impossible, but is rare and a long process.

## Ancestral Enemies of the Neumono

Neumono have three long standing enemies to their species. Astreneus V copies across the multiverse host the same genocidal conquests as Neumono opt to hunt down their greatest enemies once they receive any sort of technological uplift. One of which is extinct, the other is in gay baby jail forever. And the last are their natural predators.

### Predators

The neumono natural predator that has evolved its own empathic link. However, unlike neumono who achieve a social cohesion, these creatures have evolved to detect neumono and emit specific pleasing emotions back to them. This provides an easy pacification effect. Only the most strong willed of Neumono can avoid pacification by a predator and successfully hunting one is seen as a mark of honor.

They never created a distinct name, simply calling them "Predator".

## Other factoids

### Notable Characters

- Korli the bioscientist

- Katzati with her extreme regen rate

- Rokoa

### Trivia

- Neumono can tolerate moderate amounts of chocolate and caffiene, but will get sick if they have too much

- Neumono have much greater taste sensitivity to savory tastes, they can tell by how the meat tastes if they're eating something that was gay.

- The only BW neumono hive is the Daunltess Hive

- Snow biome neumono have black skin, while other biomes produce pale skinned neumono. Under the fur that is.

- Neumono are from a quasi-interactive story called AsteroidQuest