A Conversation

Ah, the kerishiiali, one of the oldest, if not the oldest of the alien races I've invented. One day I'll get around to finishing enough of their language to write a paragraph or two. Well, one of the most common keri languages anyway. Why is it that most Sci-fi aliens have one government, one race, and speak only one language? After all, humans come in many subtle physical variations which we call "races" we have many separate, autonamous, usually warring nations and speak thousands of different languages. So too there are different races of kerishiiali, many nations, not all of them friendly to one another, and several different languages, of which I have only partially worked on one. Hey, I only dabble in linguistics, gimme a break. This particular keri is a member of the most common race, which I cannot remember the name of offhand. >< I draw keri's a lot, but usually I draw 'em nude. This would be because it's hard enough for me to get clothes to look right on humans, let alone on something an un-human as a keri. With kerishiialli floating around in my head for so long, you can imagine that I have amassed quite a LOT of information on them, so I won't ramble on about them in-depth here. Hmm... maybe just a little ramble. Okay, keri's live on a hot desert moon called Shiial just a little larger than Mars. Shiial orbits a gas giant. I've read a lot of info on creating astronomically believable planets, but there's not much on life-supporting moons, so I'm winging it there. And I realize that lower gravity planets/moons would be cooler on average but Shiial is hot. I have no real explanation why right now, maybe the sun is hotter, maybe the planet's gravity causes Shiial to be rather more geothermally active, I dunno. Anyway, keri's grow tall and attenuated because of the low gravity, they have four arms (used to be just two), and walk on the knuckles of two bird-like hind legs. The torso is held at an angle, about thirty degrees above horizontal. They have beaks, (which have recently become more like a oviraptor's than a bird's) compound eyes like a dragonfly's, and large ears with multiple deep indentations along the edges to dissapate heat. Their blood is copper-based and sky blue like a horseshoe crab's or a lobster's, not green like Spock's. Skintones vary from near-black olive and mahogany through greenish-brown to a pasty muted blue. They are furless, featherless, and scaleless.


Kerishiiali and Shiial © me. They are among my favorite creations. Steal, and shall maim thee most grieviously.