CURRENT  |  ARCHIVES  |  CHARACTERS  |  CONTACT

--- Warbwunian Library Datum 2545804 ---

Bomaugs

Bomaugs are an intelligent species from the planet Briste in the Dugaeli Shard. They first entered the interstellar community around the year 1240 of the 20th Eon. Unknown forces destroyed an Asmid base on Briste and brought down one of their ships. After several years of work, the Bomaugs reverse-engineered the technology and began to explore their part of space.

Their early expansion brought them into contact and conflict with the Five Courts of Man (the Human empire at the time), resulting in a series of bloody and genocidals wars referred to euphemistically as the "Myurnel Border Skirmishes." The wars ended when the Bomaugs learned that the Asmids had chosen to use them to remove Humanity from the stellar community. Humans and Bomaugs were then forced to fight together against a half-dozen hastily-uplifted races, battling Asmid proxies in the Thunderstone Campaigns. After the retreat of the Asmids, Bomaug stellar society broke into dozens of kingdoms and moon-nations, uniting three times under the so-called Queens Who Built Cities, before collapsing again into factionalism.

In the year 1012 of the 21st Eon, repeated attacks by Zrentili led to the formation of the Region Protected by Bomaugs (RPB), a military meritocracy designed to guard Bomaug space. Its aggressive expansion ignited several minor wars in its early years, but it has since stabilized and become a major nation in the Rift.

Bomaugs are bipedal, typically massing from 50 to 80 kilograms. They are longer than they are tall, with an average height of 1.1 meters and an average length, from snout to their balancing tail, of 2.9 meters. Their fingers are jointed in three to five places, depending on subrace, and each finger rotates freely in any direction, granting those digits extraordinary flexibility. Bomaug vision is poor, using laterally segmented eyes that can detect heat, neural activity, and some bands of visible light.

Bomaugs have a complicated life-progression, beginning first as mindless worm-like creatures in one of their home planet's many freshwater lakes. As they grow, about 10% become intelligent. These are the females of the race, which migrate out of the water after two or three Wuffinoc years. The males retain an animal-like intelligence and an amphibious form. The female Bomaug goes through a fully intelligent "gathering and protecting" cycle of 20 to 30 Wuffinoc years. At the end of that time, the Bomaug's intelligence declines, it regains its ability to breathe water, and it grows obese and quiescent. At the end of its active life, the Bomaug returns to the water as a Brood Mother, to birth the next generation of Bomaugs.

Bomaug culture is staid and slow-to-develop, focusing more on philosophy and engineering than art or more ephemeral pursuits. Bomaugs are often regarded as cool and calculating, driven as they are by a permanent desire to expand and protect their own self-defined "pool" or territory. Their visual art often uses elements of alternating hot and cold bands, which Bomaugs find pleasing. Modern art uses strips of still-living neural tissue, which is considered avant-garde by some, immoral and base by others.

While Bomaug technology lags behind that of other species in the Kabacta Rift, they are quick adaptors. Though their size and strength, second only to a Human's, encourages them to favor close-combat, they are frightening at range, employing "molt cannons" that fire globs of liquid and gaseous metal. They are also talented aeronautical and hydraulic engineers, having expanded into the lakes and seas of several major worlds. Their limited ability to detect neural and electrical activity has encouraged the organization of a Bomaug medical organization, the Bomaugs That Study Brains, which do exactly what a group with that name would be expected to do.