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Velorans

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These creatures are Velorans, native to planet Coatlicue sentient species. They live in ant like colonies, but beside typical ant castes (workers, warriors, queens), Velorans have their own, very unique caste, which is called singers (or chanters, whistlers, leaders). Singers are very unique, because they are truly intelligent caste that controls behavior of other castes and in fact they form collective mind of the whole Veloran hive. Other castes’ intelligence is developed only to the level of a dog. Veloran singers communicate with other Velorans, with sound based language (like humans), but it sounds absolutely different from human speech. Sound on Earth, which resembles Veloran language the most, is blackbird song. They whistle with their book lung openings, simultaneously with knocking their hands into ground (or clapping with hands, when ground is to soft to knock into it). That means for humans Veloran language is absolutely unpronounceable (and vice versa), but trying to repeat it playing on flute may bring some effects.
Interesting thing with Veloran singer intelligence is they completely loose their minds, when they are separated from hives. Good example for that is simple mirror test. Single Veloran singer never passes it, but three or more of them do it easily. When single Veloran finds a mirror, it talks to it constantly, and imitates the behavior of its reflection (that means that it repeats the same activity constantly, sometimes even to starvation). Single Veloran singer, behaves rather like lonely, scared child than leader. That means it is hard to honestly tell singers are truly sentient. They are rather like neurons of the brain of a whole hive. But whole Veloran hives are definitely intelligent and capable to solve problems, which sometimes can be out of range of human mind. Also interesting thing is the way they understand the world around them. Every Veloran colony is treated as single entity, while Veloran specimens are just bricks, which build it. And every Veloran except the queens is constantly ready to die for its family if it is necessary.
Veloran singers control behavior of other castes by giving them orders, which can be in fact much more sophisticated, than we can order to a dog. As workers and warriors are intelligent about the same level as a dog, sometimes it takes longer time to teach them some kinds of activities. But specimens, what master certain activity, usually performs it constantly all their lives, like industrial robots. And like industrial robots, they have usually no idea what is the purpose of their work, but they do it because it is their order given by singers. Workers and warriors have very strong urge to obey singer orders (and well developed apishness behavior), and working under singer orders is the only thing they lust in life.
Singers have also very high apishness tendency and usually accommodate their behavior and priority of their goals, to other singers in hive. This behavior resemblances way of functioning individual neurons in human brain. That also means that inside their own hive, singers decide about everything democratic-like way.
Relation between separate hives is totally different, resemblances rather eastern feudalism. Smaller and weaker hive is property of stronger, and stronger have absolute rule over weaker. That means bigger colony can even order smaller to commit mass suicide and smaller colony have obligation to fulfill it. In fact suicide command, are very rarely ordered, because most colonies are more or less cognate, and beside that it is just needless waste. Wars between Velorans happen very rarely. That way of understanding politics is just wrote in Veloran genes, and they believe it is obvious and cannot be different and they are all happy with it. As example they often show many human empires, what fell. Veloran ones tend to be more stable. But this extreme politics of force sometimes lead to conflicts with other civilizations, because some Veloran requests are unacceptable for humans, while Veloran often refuse to obey human orders, arguing with them only with thesis that Veloran are more advanced species than Humans and Velorans are the ones to command. In fact Velorans negotiate with humans only when Humans have very serious military supremacy.

Beside singers, other Veloran castes are workers, warriors, queens and drones.
Workers are the most numerous caste in every hive, they make 60-70% of every colony. They are also smallest caste, they weight only 10-20 kg, and can be easily killed by human by single strong kick. They perform most of work in hive.
Warriors are biggest caste, they can weight even 50 kg, what is almost the size of human. Warriors make 25-35% of colony. Warriors are just killing machines of Veloran colonies. Their lip jaws (sometimes called chelicerae, but it is not accurate term) developed into enormous claws, similar to that ones of predatory cephalothoraxids. Veloran warriors can bite worker or singer from other colony in half in single snap, or also in single snap bite off leg of other Veloran warrior, or even human (it is in fact a sacrifice of warrior, because toxicity of human flesh for Velorans, but for Humans Velorans are also toxic). They are also definitely stronger than other castes and are often used to carry heavy objects or perform work what is to hard for normal workers. Warriors are more independent than workers, because if singers didn’t give them any order, they begin to patrol close area of hive, or join to squad of lumbers or hunters walking into jungle as their guard. Warriors are the most aggressive caste (but only for enemies, they don’t attack their siblings) and are first to sacrifice their lives for rest of colony. It is clearly visible during predatory cephalothoraxid attack on Veloran squad. While workers and singers begin to run in panic, some warriors always attack the monster, to let others run away. They of course die, but their sacrifice scale down loses in workers and singers. Warriors need orders rather to stay calm, than to attack, they really want to engage in fight. With their monstrous claws instead of normal lip jaws warriors have problems with eating and often are feed by workers. But they also use their powerful bite to crack food too hard for workers, without using tools.
Singers weight about 30 kg and make about 5% of the hive.
Queens make about 0,2% of colony and also weight about 30 kg, what makes them smaller than warriors. It is believed that historically every hive had one queen, but when Velorans get civilized, they changed their habits to form much stronger colonies and now some colonies have several dozens of queens and huge army of other castes. Queens have less developed brain from all Veloran castes. They very rarely perform even the simplest work except from breeding, because they are too important for colony to take a risk of injury them. But breeding is also controlled by singers, if colony have problems with collecting food, queens can stop to breed. (Or when situation is very bad, colony can eat newborn specimens.) In good times queen can give birth to over a dozen hamster-sized pups in time of one earth day.
Drones are male Velorans. They look like normal workers, but they have genital opening on their belly between second arms and hind legs. (In the same place like queens, but different shaped, what enable to distinguish them from immature queens). Drones intelligence is also on the same level like workers. Drones spend all their live with queens and they work together with workers, but almost only in tasks needed to maintain the queen. There are usually about 5 drones for one queen. What is important, all of the drones are simultaneously fathers for all queen offspring, because Coatlicuan “animals” have chimeric way of development. That means single fetus is formed from more than one zygote and have different genetic codes in different cell populations. (It is also possible in humans, but very rare and unlike Velorans, not normal) If female spawns with more males, like Veloran queens do, their offspring have more than one father. It is interesting fact, that embryos with greatest quantity of different cell populations have greatest chance to develop into a queen.
Queens and drones are only sexual castes in Veloran hives. Warriors, workers and singers not only cannot breed, but they completely lack any form of sexual organs. That means if we can tell that ants or bees are infertile females, recognition Veloran infertile caste sex is impossible and pointless. They are just asexual.

Veloran singers have interesting brain adaptation, because they have not only bigger brain lobes, but also more of them than other Veloran castes. Multiplication of brain lobes for humans sound strangely, but typical Coatlicuan neural system enable it much more easily than Earth.
Velorans have four book lungs in the armpit of their arms. Every lung have attached heart, what pumps blue blood (copper based oxygen transport) into them, and single elongated heart on the belly, that pumps blood from lungs to rest of the body.
Lung pair primary attached to front legs transformed into small hearing organ. Their eyes are highly advanced in Coatlicuan standards (color vision), but Veloran vision is not so good developed like ours.
Olfactory organs are underside their heads , where olfactory receptors are located in three shallow holes. Velorans have very good sense of smell, and pheromone communication is almost as important for them as their “singing”.
One of not drawn but also very important sense receptors are located in primary articulus of every limb. It detects electromagnetic field and warns Veloran if they are spotted by cephalothoraxid radar. If you live on planet, what is like jurassic park, full of monsters, what can detect you from distance, it is very important to know when they can feel you, when are still outside sight range. This sense is so sensitive, Velorans can even identify cephalothoraxid species. They do it with quite good effect even, when sitting on back of big herbivorous cephalothoraxids, what after tamed can became Veloran “war elephants’.
Veloran legs are biramous. It may look like they have fingers (and in fact they use it like fingers), but evolutional origin of Veloran fingers is disparate of ours. Beginning of Veloran biramous legs are just bifurcation of their ends.
Feet on Velorans legs (depends how you look on them, all four or all eight) are strongly adhesive. It is because Coatlicuan plants have nearly always smooth surface, sometimes covered by mucus, and are very slippy. Adhesive feet are very important to walk in Coatlicue jungles. But it is so well developed, Veloran easily walk upside down, on the celling.
Interesting feature of Veloran gut is (beside bowel divided into two ways on all its long) is enormous blind stomach. Elongated, twisted, similar to cecum, but long almost as bowel itself. It is big fermentation chamber infested by many species of symbionts, not only bacterias, but also symbiotic helmbugs, of two species what live only in Veloran blind stomach. Because of this structure Velorans can digest most of Coatlicuan biomass and in fact they can eat even very hard, glass like shells of crystalplants (grinded into flour of course). That means they never needed agriculture, because almost every part of Coatlicuan jungles and creatures living here are edible for them, they treat jungles like fields. Setting traps for native fauna and harvest plants. Because in hell-like hot atmosphere of Coatlicue (Velorans feel most comfortable in 90 Celcius grad), plants grow with speed no content to Earth plants, it is possible to harvest truly impressive amount of biomass without damaging ecosystem.
First encounter of Humans and Velorans happened about year 3300, when Human made explorer space vessel “Iulises” landed on Coatlicue. It turned out to be huge mistake, because Iulises was lost on the planet. For about 200 years nobody knew what exactly happened to it until Velorans begin to construct their own spaceships. Iulises was neither damaged nor attacked by Coatlicuan predators, but captured by Velorans. Instead of simply burning it into ashes, or turning into religious artifact, like human barbarian would certainly do, Velorans set out to figure how it work and copy this technology. This allowed them to jump over about 4000 years of normal civilization development. It taked about 200 years, what means over thousand of Veloran generations, but they achieved success. Veloran tenacity are just legendary. It is said that if they cannot do something, that means it is just impossible.
But Human origin of Veloran advanced civilization had very strong influence on their technology. For example their vehicles still look a little similar to human six wheeled remote controlled space rovers and their mathematic system is just clearly human, but upgraded to duodecimal by adding two additional digits. Duodecimal numerical system is more practical, and Velorans do not have 10 fingers to have reason to use decimal system. Interesting fact is that they also replaced symbol of “9”, probably to make it distinguishable from 6 when reading from ceiling. They also learned architecture, turning their ground and stone made mounds into colossal factory chimney shaped structures (called Veloran pillars), what reach over 3 kilometers high and may contain many thousand Velorans inside.
Velorans have opinion to be very xenophobic and untrustworthy. They strongly believe, they are the most advanced species and other ones are worse by definition. Other sentient species think that Velorans are even more aggressive than humans and really nobody likes them.
In fact what make Velorans strong is their extreme tenacity and practicality. They have their goals and aim to them at all costs. From all true civilizations Velorans are the most emotionless. It is not true that Velorans do not feel anything, but emotions have almost completely no influence on their behavior. They can cooperate better than any other species. And they have completely no desire of entertainment, free time or love. All their lives they dedicate to working for their hive, what in the long run pays off for the species. And makes them even more dangerous to other sentient species.


Velorans are alien civilization I started to create quite long ago, because in 2007, still in school. And also my first created I still like. What inspired me to create them was reading Stanisław Lem’s “Fiasco”. But difference between my Velorans and Lem’s Quintans are so big that now I cannot say, Velorans are even based on Quintans, but only inspired by them.
Also their position of leg and arms may look little similar to aliens from “War of the worlds”, but it is complete coincidence, because I watched “War of the worlds” only in TV, long after drawing Velorans sketches. And still Velorans have 8 limbs and are much more spider like, while “War of the worlds” aliens have 5 and big heads.
What Velorans are truly based on are just ants “fused with” Coatlicuan “shorted” eight legged “centipedes”, what occupy niche of small, fast running opportunists in Coatlicue jungles. I made colonial Coatlicuan “spider centipedes” and beside normal ant castes like workers and soldiers I added them untypical to ants, sentient caste. That resulted into sentient species project with quite good potential, I think.
Funny thing with early Veloran sketches is on the beginning I created for them A LOT of different castes, whom some were quite funny and absolutely needless, like living “food depots” (based on honeypot ants), very small, but fast, long legged “scouts” and “heavy workers”, what were bigger than warriors. Later I removed some of the castes from project, because I decided it is not the good way. Also in first sketches queens were colossal, cow size, living ovaries, like termites have, but this was also not good idea. And at first they had stand their legs much more vertical, what also didn’t look good. I prefer, when they crawl close to ground.
I have drawn this specified drawing since autumn 2008, but most of its time it spend in form of a sketch to what I sometimes returned. But it finally reached the stage I can show it in internet.
On this drawing I exceptionally added some English subtitles. It is because there is too much different parts of drawing to name them all only in description.
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ClueTaker's avatar
This is actually legitimately amazing