#The Chromaspeakers

[parakaryote]

Chromaspeaker sketch.

I keep moving the eyes to be more triangle- than diamond-shaped. Not sure which one I’ll settle on in the end.

[Pasted image description:

A pencil sketch of a chromaspeaker, a humanoid alien, shown from the chest up. They have a long snout and four dark eyes (three in a row above the snout, one on the forehead), and are looking at the viewer with perhaps mild annoyance.

They are wearing a shirt with a low-cut collar. They have a pair of flipper / small wing-like appendages where the arms would be on a human, drawn close to their body. These limbs are covering their actual arms, which are lower down on the torso (only one shoulder is — just barely — visible here).

End ID.]

[parakaryote]

Miscellaneous facts about chromaspeaker vision and language

Chromaspeakers have the same three cone types as humans (long-wavelength / red, medium / green, short / blue), plus a medium-short-wavelength / cyan cone.

The communication-limbs can change colour separately, so it’s possible (albeit taxing) to hold two conversations at once.

Since chromaspeakers have eyes along the top of their head, ceiling writing is common in public spaces. It takes the role of signs / directions.

Most of their written languages use a system vaguely similar to abugida, but with units representing small groupings of shades within colours (the exact shade is figured out through context) and notation for location on the limb.

In addition to “conventional” instrumental music, chromaspeakers also have “colour-music”, which consists of multicoloured lights being displayed on a surface. Some is meant to represent chromatophore-language (“singing”), and some isn’t (“instrumental”). The latter category often uses colours which their chromatophores can’t replicate.

Most colourblind chromaspeakers use contrast-based chromatophore-language, in which words are formed largely or exclusively by lightening and darkening patches of skin on the communication-fins (with the “colour category” being unimportant).

[parakaryote]

A couple of updates to Celestial Community lore:

I learned about the Galactic Habitable Zone, so Gexge is now in the Scutum-Centaurus Arm instead of the Galactic Bar.

Chromaspeakers are now diurnal, not cathemeral.

[parakaryote]

A map and basic infographic of Sahess, the home planet of the chromaspeakers.

The little orbit diagram in the bottom left is, of course, very not-to-scale.

[parakaryote]

This is the naming system used in several of the major chromaspeaker languages.

From left to right, the dots are:

1: The “name signifier”. This is the same colour for every speaker of the language, it just means “this sequence is someone’s name”.

2: The city that the person’s family (but not necessarily the person themself) is from, or the nearest major city to the settlement they’re from. Whether you can / should change this if you move somewhere else is a much-debated topic, with the legal stance on it varying between countries.

3: The family name / surname. I’m honestly not sure how this is passed down yet. I considered “kid gets the name of the parent who gave birth to them”, but that could get confusing fast given that chromaspeakers can generally do both reproductive roles, which would result in siblings having different surnames from birth if the parents decided to switch roles… maybe I could make it a six-dot system instead and have double surnames? I’ll think about it.

4: The family “branch”. This colour is different between a person and their cousins.

5: The personal / first name.

The first two shades of green being a bit difficult to distinguish (for the average trichromat human, at least) is intentional. Chromaspeakers are tetrachromats who can better distinguish shades of blue and green.

[parakaryote]

[Image Description: A species reference sheet for the chromaspeakers, an alien species. They have a humanoid body shape, light grey skin, and a long-snouted face with four eyes arranged in a diamond shape. They have a pair of flipper-like limbs where the arms would be on a human, with the actual arms being underneath them. Around the individual shown on the sheet are a bunch of notes and smaller drawings explaining details about the species’ anatomy, which will be summed up in the text below. End ID.]

The chromaspeakers are a humanoid(ish) alien species from the planet of Sahess, located a few hundred light-years from Earth. They are part of the Milky Way Celestial Community, like most of the galaxy’s spacefaring species.

Homeworld conditions: Terran mesoplanet, part of a binary planet system orbiting a yellow dwarf star. Very warm climate, medium-high oxygen levels, same gravity as Earth.

Ancestral habitat: Hot semidesert

Biochemistry: Fairly similar to Earth life, but not completely compatible

Diet: Herbivorous

Activity: Cathemeral (no set cycle)

Reproduction: Viviparous (placental), monoecious (single-sexed)

Average height: 9 ft (3 m) tall

Average lifespan: 120 Earth years

The most notable trait of the chromaspeakers is their method of communication. Their vocal organs are not capable of making complex sounds due to their specific structure; instead, they communicate via the chromatophores on their flipper-like upper limbs. The chromatophores shift between shades of yellow, green, blue, and grey, with each shade and its location/s on the limb marking a different word. Chromaspeakers have tetrachromatic vision that can differentiate between greens and blues much more finely than humans, so subtle distinctions between shades of these colours in particular are used a for a lot of words (which makes most of their languages difficult for humans to interpret… unless the human also has tetrachromacy, I guess). The individual on the ref is saying “hello”.

The upper limbs have a very wide range of motion in the shoulders, so conversation can be held with the other party at different angles relative to the speaker. The elbows and wrists automatically lock into position when fully extended.

In addition to the chromatophores on the upper limbs, chromaspeakers also have two strips of them on top of the muzzle. Unlike the ones on the limbs, the muzzle chromatophores can only change to beige or rose-gold and usually change involuntarily, in reaction to strong emotions (although it’s possible to learn to activate them at will). It has been compared to blushing, though that’s not completely accurate.

Their unusual diamond-shaped eye arrangement is an ancestral trait of their phylum that they can’t really evolve away from. Think how tetrapods can’t just evolve a third set of limbs, it’s a similar kind of deal. Their eyes have a vertebrate-like structure, and are completely black in the same way that a squirrel’s are.

Other anatomy notes:

The skin not covered in chromatophores is light blue or grey. The pigment in it is very effective at preventing sunburn.

6 fingers per hand (with a thumb on either side), 5 toes per foot, communication-limbs are monodactyl

Very dense bones, granting great strength but preventing buoyancy in water.

Coboglobin-based blood - amber yellow when oxygenated, clear when deoxygenated. Chromaspeakers do poorly in cold weather, in no small part because of the heat-dependent nature of coboglobin.

Rounded teeth, all the same shape / size

Noticeable knob / hump at the base of the neck

Some other stuff about them

Chromaspeakers tend to be rather casual about surgery. A prime example is their “antenna implants”, commonly-used neuroprosthetic devices that either grant them extra senses (like magnetoreception or radioreception) or expand their existing senses (for example, hearing ultrasound or picking up polarized light). Also, modern-day chromaspeakers sometimes get surgery on their vocal organs to allow them to speak human/like languages.

Diamond shapes, like the one their eyes are arranged in, frequently show up in their art.

Chromaspeakers initially invented space travel in order to explore Iisaii, the other planet in Sahess’ binary system. Iisaii also bears life, having vast forests visible from space (or from Sahess’ surface). As you can imagine, the sight of a lush otherworld just out of reach resulted in the formation of entire mythologies. The decision to actually go there was… somewhat controversial.

As you can probably guess, the species name is a human-given exonym. The names of their planets are also exonyms, but given by a different alien species. It doesn’t make sense for a species that can’t really speak naturally to have pronounceable-by-humans spoken names for themselves and their world.