Genus Sourcia ("Sourcian")

An evolutionary path with no relation to humans or conventional genetic life, Sourcia are instead composed of a subtype of XNA or xeno-nucleic acids - a variant with zero sugars and instead, biopolymers.

The primary form of life is partially uni and multicellular, a classification called protocellular - in that it is not a living colony, nor is it a single cell but some blurred mixture of the two that is difficult to define using conventional biological techniques.

Many Sourcia derived organisms are comparable amoeba, molluscs, micillium and sea-anemone like creatures. They typically have a hardened central brain and their amorphorous organs are created adhoc to perform a task then disregarded when no longer needed. To this end, Sourcia are typically shape-changing and while they can differ enormously in size, those which exist on dry land are typically around double the mass of a human being.

Often, Sourcia are able to self-edit their own genome to recover from radiation damage or make stark changes to their biological or chemical processes - and can learn to respire with oxygen, methane, ammonia, alcohol or other chemically viable solvents or skip the process almost entirely and radically simplify their biological systems to function in a vacuum in a matter of hours.

To this end, the specific materials Sourcia use to actually create their bodies differ enormously: Some taking up residence in other animals which they genetically engineer to become their new environment, some in complex hydrocarbons and others even converting large lakes into exterior bodies for themselves almost indistinguishable from conventional water until they move.

Species derived from genus Sourcia include…

• Cruda (“crude”)
• Sourciana (“Sourcian” – sometimes 'flan' in the derogatory)
• Aquana (“common slime”)

With no exception, all Genus Sourcia are hermaphradites; one is typically the donor and the other serves as a carrier. With being the carrier having the hardest workload and lowest reproduction rate (a donor able to donate many times in the time it takes for a carrier to produce one offspring) it is generally preferable to be the donor rather than the carrier. As such, it is common for their to be competition, with the loser becoming the mother.

Replication takes place via a process very similar to cellular division, though once division is complete, a carrier can choose to carry the offspring for an extended period of time - as so both may recover their mass and so the offspring is more fully developed.

As such, extended carriage results in a better rounded offspring whereas rapid division halves the size of both the parent and child.

Being able to formshift and dynamically alter their genome to a limited degree, many Sourcia only reproduce for the purpose of improving their odds of genetic survival rather than for the sake of genetic diversity or the gain or loss of traits – though the library of 'learned' traits is exchanged at the point of reproduction.

It is fairly common for a mother once an offspring is fully developed, to cannibalize with it and merge with it as a kind of 'genetic software update', the resulting organism becoming a product of both the mother and the child together as a sort of third offspring.

Sourcia almost exclusively require a medium to place their core maesus brain and organs inside, which in almost all cases is a liquid. This can as stated, be a specially created liquid, a cultured organism, complex hydrocarbons or even adapted water.

Some are known to deliberately use food-stuffs as they are an excellent way of attracting what classically would be considered predators, which then they may absorb or deliberately allow themselves to be eaten, then infest and cultivate the body of their predator as their new environment. This is however a great risk and a grave undertaking and under no circumstances should it ever be taken lightly.

While it seems infestation would be an excellent method of transmission making Sourcia parasites, the technique only works when the subject is not under diuress and infestation itself is a very technical skill that a majority of Sourcia do not know and only functions if the subject is voluntary.

Rather than having conventional technology as it is thought of, Sourcians are a hybridization of many species organic, synthetic, biological, non-biological, natural and artificial mated seamlessly into what are called adaptations: the natural performance of which is comparable to or surpasses military grade weapons, armor and technology - including advanced materials, relatavistic weaponary, energetic defenses and advanced particle and gravity technology.

Adaptations are denoted by era (manufacturing date) and iteration (the number of revisions the adaptation has made).

The flesh and blood of a Sourcian so to speak, pricora is an XNA structure adapted and genetically grown specifically for a given task. It is adapted by its user as one might change clothes and can be disrobed just as easily by their minds - large ultra-hard self-organizing structures known as maesus, plural maesii.

A programmable metallic crystal which can be taught to assume a wide variety of complex machines and structures with moving parts, including firearms, limited armor and electronic circuitry.

• See Cultured Structol, Sourcian Applications of Structol

A form of solid or hardlight, tricking photons into becoming weightless nucleus. It is able to form a variety of shapes, become a prehensile electromagnet, antennae, armor, camouflage and moving structures - though it is not ideal for the formation of seperate moving parts.

• See Hard Light

When resources are particularly scarce or military variants are rarely produced, artificial enhancements (supplements) are given to these variants in order to make up for their performance shortfalls. Later, supplements were rolled in as adaptations which do not require training or preparation and can be fitted or added to any Sourcian.

• Adagio - Identified as the closest living equivalents to humanoid life in terms of scope of function. Peacetime form, often used externally to the central intelligence and granted independence. Serves as the cultural fingertips of the dominant Sourcian race.
• Orthadox - A simple drone involved in the exchange and management of resources.
• Advanto - Unknown
• Aevallis - Unknown
• Uraxi - One of the simplest forms of life resembling Sourcians, Uraxi are simple slimes akin to pricora able to occupy water systems. They are often farmed as a source of subsistence and are thought of as barely more complex than fungi or plants.
• Salaxi - A form of life similar to Sourcians, Salaxi are equivalent on their terms to cattle or rodents - using dense hydrocarbons to form prehensile gellatine liquid bodies of Viscoelastic polymers. While conventionally farmed, they have in the last few thousand years demonstrated cognisance similar to that of humanoid species and as such there is a current ethical quandry within the Sourciana. They are often lobotomized or kept as companions. Sometimes referred to as “crudes”.
• Maevallis - While many will rush to say Maevallis are combat weapons, they are better thought of as representatives or ambassadors, who conduct negotiation using warfare. In the strictest sense, while their attacks are devastating, they “await their turn”. Further reading reveals this to be part of an “honor system”, with this kind of combat as an alternative to intersystem or intercluster mutually assured destruction scenarios (in which the weapons of both sides wipe one another out). As such, they aren't so much weapons as they are the logical conclusion of ritualized gladiatorial combat - akin to animals locking horns to fight over territory or breeding rights.
• Maexalli - Unknown
• Kolossallium - Large permanent structures on planetoids, commonly involved in functional terraforming. Sometimes referred to as hives or stacks.
• Amelliaus - A limbed fighter-craft, able to walk and manipulate its environment.
• Daiclonius - Tactical gunship, electronic & warfare specialist with sentient functionality
• Lillius - A small multi-form fighter with powered-armor characteristics. Able to shed exterior propulsive husk for armor-to-armor combat and exoskeleton in the event of a problem.
• Aexalli - Almost thought of as a spy: Aexalli head the battle as an insurgent - copying the form of the enemy and then learning as much as possible about said enemy. It is common to create social ties which ensure there is a hesitation to combat them before they attack a given target. It is perhaps best to think of them in their combat forms as a “relative” in combat dynamics to powered-armor. They are best known for their cruelty (a form of psychological warfare) - often going as far as to eat the bodies of enemy dead and hold hostages for amusement, which often become an acquired taste, even while alive.

Sometimes referred to as “The Sourcian Army”, Maevalli are simply a military of one: a single unit acting as a complete comprehensive force of attack and defense for intersolar combat.

Their composition is thought to be a combination of structol, pricora, maesus and hard-light. Their weaponary consists not of conventional equipment but primarily a space folding system which exists in two halves, located on a pair of long extruded fins.

Used to great effect, these fins can be used to fold space as a high velocity transport system, to reflect high impact attacks (akin to a starship or battleship's main cannon), to cut through objects (by varying the apeture size), an FTL system and by folding the two together, they can act as what in records is directly comparable to a long distance transposition weapon. Backup equipment includes a comprehensive electromagnetic manipulation suite which rides a “cloak of hottest matter”, thought to be plasma - in essence, a plasma wake system.

Secondary equipment includes what matches the description of what is now known to be a hardlight formation system. Descriptions estimate it is used to replicate enemy conventional weapons. Materials akin to have been decribed as formable, albiet taking several seconds to form with a half-life of less than 20 seconds - meaning they were not viable conventional weapons. An “air to ground” capability has been demonstrated by polarizing the ground negatively beneath a target within a planetoid, triggering high speed lightning strikes through a target. While not particularly damaging, it has great effectiveness in removing what are described akin to distortion based defensive technologies.

They appear to bend light around their forms, appearing with no true volume but instead a two dimensional silouette of whatever side of the enemy they are seen by, equivalent to a high polarization image of a person. This image seems to warp light from behind it, akin to the lens of a telescope, meaning spacial phenomena behind the Maevallis can be seen from thousands of lightyears through them. This image seems to be warped in some way, making their true position difficult to determine.

Historical suggestion says this is not the natural method of operation for the Sourcian themselves but rather, something that was adopted to deal with the majority of other species in what was at the time, their sphere of known space with Sourcians themselves operating on a concept of mutual cooperation rather than survival of the fittest – which set them at a huge disadvantage biologically during their early days during interstellar exploration with most Sourcian destroyable by even a child. To this end, Sourcian biology's greatest strength is not in its ability to withstand hostile force but for it to stop or end, rather than explicitly die - to germinate from remains as a successor from a predecessor.