Codex: Sydians/zh-hans

通用名称： 赛迪安人（单数）；赛迪安人（复数）

Sexes: Male and female.

Height: 4’ 6” to 5’ 6” for females and 6’ 3” to 7’ 1” for males.

Weight: 90 to 160 lbs for females and 200 to 320 lbs for males.

Limbs: Two arms bearing hands with two thick fingers and a thumb. Two legs with two large toes each. An armored tail branching into four protrusions covered with downy fuzz. Two 1’ to 2’ long prehensile antennae, also covered in downy fuzz.

Skin: Pale white or beige in color, covered in drab black or brown chitin.

Hair: Soft and feathery, found only atop the head. Generally earth-toned but rarely green or shades of red-orange. Orange hair in females usually indicates a seasonal change in hormones.

Tongue: Extends up to six inches. Fully prehensile.

Eyes: Insectoid and multi-faceted. Typically black, but rarely found with greenish sheen.

耳朵： 内耳。位于头部几丁质小孔下方、颌关节上方。

解剖学

赛迪安人全身覆有几丁质甲片，只有脸部，以及雌性的躯干前侧与腹股沟裸露。多孔几丁质下方有会分泌腐蚀性酶的腺体；此酶在触角和尾部绒毛中最集中，但全身都有。它会催化多数金属元素氧化（即生锈）。接触活体组织时，酶会刺激神经中的低水平离子交换，产生快感；对非金属物质或无神经系统的生物则无效或被无害吸收。赛迪安分泌物略带柑橘味与香气。

栖息地与饮食

赛迪安人为温血（内温）生物，几乎只生活在塔库斯的废料场荒原；其氧化多数金属的能力正适应这种环境。偶尔也会在定居区发现个体，但难以与其他文明种族共处。

Sydian dietary requirements include heavy metals alongside water and organic nutrients; colonies form when the three are found in close proximity. Freshwater bodies carrying fish and trace metals are common sites. Isolated colonies have developed rudimentary farms using scavenged or stone tools once forage no longer supports population growth. Lone individuals, social groups without settlements, and those in frequent conflict exist as nomadic hunter-gatherers, sometimes for generations before a colony is founded.

Sexual Dimorphism

Male sydians are taller and burlier than females, with larger, stockier tails. Male antennae tend to be smaller, growing no longer than 1’ 4”. The chitinous plating is more prominent on the male, covering all of his body except the eyes and mouth. Flexible plates protect the male genitals, and open slightly during copulation. Females bear chitin only on the arms, legs, tail, and back, including the back and sides of the head up to the sites of the antennae. Large areas of the female sydian’s front torso are exposed, including the throat, breasts, stomach, and groin. Females conceal and protect these places with a layered patina of metal oxides mixed with clay and body oils; these solidified body paints are usually styled, decorated, and accented to resemble male plating. High-ranking females exhibit more abstract and colorful patterns to symbolize their rank. Female sydians have a much higher concentration of enzyme-producing cells in the armor they do possess. The head hair and downy fuzz found on the antenna and tail grows longer on the female.

Reproduction

Sydians reproduce sexually. The male penis, when exposed during arousal and copulation, is slightly larger than an average human’s (prior to genetic manipulation). First-hand accounts estimate lengths between nine to thirteen inches. Sydian penises are orange and covered in tiny brushes that flutter on contact to stimulate the partner. Ejaculate is silvery in color and may have a metallic component, though rudimentary testing establishes it as nontoxic to at least 85% of known sapient life forms.

The female vagina appears as a simple slit or lipped opening that, according to report, blooms to ease penetration upon arousal, exposing its orange color. The upper edge of the vulva bears a single clitoris.

Female sydians do not have an established breeding season and ovulate multiple times throughout the year. Roughly every 240 days and lasting up to 30 days, regardless of estrous phase, female sydians begin to crave the oxidizing enzyme of other sydians; male-female interactions during this state almost always result in intercourse. This heat-like state is indicated by the head hair becoming fiery orange and the affected female seeking out other sydians more diligently. While males prefer females in the receptive state, they are not above seducing non-receptive females or employing physical force to breed.

During either consensual couplings or forced copulation, the male penetrates the female with his penis, ejaculates, and potentially impregnates the female, who ovulates two to three eggs in each cycle. Embryos attach via hemochorial placenta to the uterine wall. Gestation lasts six months, after which the female gives live birth.

Sydian children are born with scaly, soft gray chitin that persists until puberty. Puberty occurs between the ages of eleven and thirteen, whereupon the chitin scales thicken into the sex-appropriate adult configuration, darken, and join together.

Behavior and Society

Sydian society is patriarchal, with groups of ten to one hundred led by a dominant male. Larger size, thicker armor, and weaker corrosives cause male sydians to rely on and respect brute strength, giving rise to a culture underlaid with terrible violence. Most do not hesitate to resort to force to obtain food, breeding rights, and positions of power, resulting in a semi-stable group dynamic frequently interrupted by internal and external challenges. The leading sydian has absolute primacy in matters of females, food, and, when found in settlements, housing and governance. Some subject males willingly take positions of servitude, looking after children or performing manual labor; other males are forced into such positions. Younger sydians, especially powerful males, may eschew the group, striking out to join or attract a new clan. All males court mates from among the group’s females and establish relationships, though the leader’s ability to claim rights on any female at any time usually prevents monogamous coupling. Cuckolding is commonplace, especially toward subject males who have challenged the dominant male and lost. Vengeful leaders sometimes assign a rival as the personal slave of a favored female; while intended as humiliation, this has lead to the clandestine rape or seduction of the female in many observed cases.

Female society is shaped by the parallel male society, with females favored by the dominant male assuming positions of dominance themselves. The highest-ranking female has access to the best housing and finest goods as well as many social liberties; such females can be distinguished by the breathtaking detail on their body paintings, made from the most colorful metal oxides and applied by subordinates. Correspondingly, lower females shoulder more of the work and employ lower-value materials for their coverings. Lower-caste females not currently pregnant are expected and often forced to aid in hunting and gathering, accomplishing the task with exceptional reflexes and higher chemical load. Dressing accessories, usually made from scavenged non-metallic materials, are used to highlight or conceal body features. Such possessions are one of the few items sydian females prize enough to hand down to their offspring, and being offered one as an outsider can be considered a sign of ultimate trust.

Female sydians regard being without their body paint as an extremely vulnerable position, both mentally and physically, and such ‘naked’ females are scorned in public; this has been exploited to humiliate social adversaries and captives. Non-consensual couplings often involve intentional damage to the paint as a display of power by the transgressing male.

Though extremely unpopular among other Tarkus races and held in a literal stone age by their diets and tempers, observation suggests sydians are no less intelligent than the galactic average. Their culture is tribal and traditionalist, with little room for scholarship or what would be seen in higher societies as a progressive attitude toward sex and gender. Most sydians have accepted the limitations of their biology; some prominent individuals publically express quasi-neo-Luddite, anti-technology opinions. Conversely, a few have left their colonies, using specially-tailored clothing to study machinery in detail.