Penodir

the penodir are a robotic species from a planet covered in a single enormous factory complex.

## Anatomy & Physiology

the penodir are a robotic species. they're highly varied, but are always roughly humanoid and visibly, obviously robotic.

penodir are conditionally immortal and cease aging upon finishing puberty. however, they're never allowed to age beyond pre-pubescence by the pseudodeity running their society, so not much is known about their development beyond that point. it is known that they only develop waterproofing near the end of their puberty.

penodir are able to absorb other technology to heal their wounds.

they need to eat (they generally subsist on metal and gas/oil/other fuel but are capable of and get nutrition from eating normal food) and sleep, but they don't need to breathe. penodir can technically survive for extended periods of time without eating, but its very uncomfortable.

penodir communicate with each-other via radio waves. although they are capable of conventional speech for speaking to meat beings, its much less comfortable. many pendodir choose to sign instead

when a penodir cares enough about a mechanical object (the qualifications are that it has to be smaller than a washing machine and has to have parts that move without being directly manipulated by the user), the object has a small chance to turn into a new penodir. the process starts after years of the beloved object being in possession of the given penodir, usually when its nearing the end of its life span. the object will start functioning unusually well, and then a few weeks later it sprouts legs and you have a baby penodir on your hands, which will become more humanoid over the next year.

### Zombies

sometimes malicious actors will dig up a dead penodir, or worse kill a living one, and sell the body to some kind of shady tech person (black hat hacker, crypto-bro, etc) to use the massive amounts of computing power needed for a sapient mind to mine space bitcoin or whatever. the penodir's body is usually also put to work doing chores. after long enough of this, the zombie will gain sapience and a soul independent of the original owner of the body

## Society & Culture

### during the reign of the pseudodeity

the penodir are led by a mysterious pseudodeity (anything powerful enough to be mistaken for a god but that isn't one in any official sense). the pseudodeity can exist in multiple places at once, but ultimately it has a 'core' body that, if destroyed, will destroy all of its other existences.

penodir are a culture of hunters. younger penodir will stay on the home world to process kills and train, while older penodir will leave the home world to hunt.

anything that is alive is fair game for a penodir hunt, even if it is sapient. in fact, they seem to show a preference towards sapient life. but the thing is, they dont know that the people they kill are sapient. the pseudodeity gives penodir rewards for species whose parts he can sell for greater amounts on the black market (he does all the selling himself), incentivizing them to go for sapients more.

once a penodir reaches pre-pubesence (around the time where the critical thinking skills to figure out they've been killing sapient beings all this time develop), the pseudodeity will summon them to his closest existence and do something to them that both essentially factory resets them both mentally and physically and creates a new penodir. personality traits from who the penodir was before being reset will eventually re-emerge, and this piles up over the resets until they start remembering things from previous incarnations as well (which would happen even after the first reset if the penodir was allowed to mature). at this point the pseudodeity just kills them.

the highest achievement in penodir society is to kill an Elgavan. they're like boars but much more useful. the more useful parts gained from a tough kill, the more the pseudodeity will reward the given penodir. not only are elgavans hard to kill, but they're also incredibly useful from the pseudodeity's perspective. their meat, being made of photons, has a unique and highly sought after (by people who seek these things, at least) flavor, their wings are highly magical and the feathers/tanned membranes can be powerful magical ingredients, tech they almost always carry can be sold, their brains are especially tasty to cerebrophages, if they have them their horns can be ground into a powder that serves as a powerful magic ingredient, and their hair and skin are fairly standard but can still be sold.

### post pseudodeity

after the death of the pseudodeity, penodir are very scattered.

many of them work as some form of killers for hire, it can be difficult to find legit work when your species is only known for murder afterall.

there's a general distrust in penodir culture towards elgavans. because everybody treats elgavans like they can do no wrong, giving them the benefit of the doubt to a fault, while penodir are treated like they can only do wrong. in spaces where they live and/or work together, elgavans often blame their wrongdoing on penodir, to near universal success

due to these tensions, a group of extremist penodir known as elgavan hunters have arisen. they make themselves into walking tanks and and go on elgavan killing sprees, decorating themselves with elgavan feathers afterwards.

## History

after a penodir kills a Tox, deadpica (they need a wiki article. whats important here is that they're the most powerful thing in skaiason canon that isn't an outright god. they-re more powerful than even some lesser gods. also they're best friends with the guy that created the tox) confronts the main body of the penodir pseudodeity, using a display of their power to kill him more or less instantly after monologing to him. deadpica then broadcasts out to every penodir the fact that they killed the pseudodeity, as well as the fact that they've been killing sapient beings all this time.

after this, there was a mass exodus from the penodir home world. as its covered in a single enormous factory complex, its very difficult to inhabit casually, plus it holds traumatic memories for many penodir.

## Naming Conventions

penodir are named an onomatopoeia of any noise any sort of machine can produce; such as ka-chunk, whirrrr, or click

## Etymology & Inspiration

the penodir were inspired by howlers from animorphs and gravitals from all tomorrows. the name 'penodir' came from modifying a name generator name