By Aliset iš Yamatai1)
Translated from Shuristan by Aliset Kōun to Yamataigo, Trade
Editing and notation by Takeda Sayako, CSO, YSS Kōun.
Before bringing your new crew member aboard, please ensure cold weather or heated uniforms are made available, and any private cabins are temperature regulated between 40 and 75 degrees celsius (104-170 degrees fahrenheit). Due to Senti biology, a temperature lower than about 30 degrees celsius (86 fahrenheit) can risk hypothermia if unprotected, and below 18 (65 F) degrees will be lethal within as little as thirty minutes. Please advise your medical team that one or more of their patients will require specialized treatment due to an iron based carbon metabolizing biology, with an oil based blood flud carrier. We understand this provides challenges for medicines and issues with diet. For the health of your crew, do not allow Senti to engage in drinking contests with hominids, as Senti process ethanol as a simple sugar, where sodium alumate produces the intoxicating effects. Please see this document for more information. Typically, Senti dietary needs can be met by issuing a salt shaker full of easily manufactured iron, magnesium, copper, beryllium, and other metallic salts to supplement their diet. This arrangement is far less expensive than shipping unique dietary staples from the Flotillas or nearby Senti ships.
Senti bodies can handle massive blunt force trauma, but do not respond well to piercing trauma due to blood consistency, slow healing times, and severe scarring. Be aware that Senti blood contains a symbiotic bacterial infection that acts as a general virophage to break down viral shells by feeding on the complex proteins, almost completely replacing the macrophages of their own innate immune system. While rendering them almost immune to viral and prion infections, it does pose a risk of blood sepsis and opportunistic infection if medical nanomachines are used without prior use of high potency general antibiotics, which will destroy that portion of the immune system, putting them higher risk than humans for certain kinds of infection.
Also be aware that despite having a very small and nearly nonfunctional jacobs organ, Senti do use pheromones, though they largely do not know or acknowledge this. Pheromone sensitive species might be affected. Common pheremones include a “sex” pheremone indicating arousal, or a fear pheremone that increases protective urges among the crew, especially when faced with a perceived danger. This can make large crews seem skittish or on edge when some of their number feel alone or otherwise scared in the long term, as their instinct is to seek out and assist the one producing these pheromones.
Congratulations, ship captain, commanding officer, or corporate manager, on your recruitment or assignment of Senti personnel. While it would be preferable to say that Senti are set and forget, this would be a lie. There are many cultural and biological necessities far different from standard races that necessitate a briefing on their culture, taboos, and slang. This guide was written from the point of view of a Shuristan, so some aspects may not apply or be mentioned, as the Star Army of Yamatai currently has knowledge of eight Flotillas, translation packs for three dialects, and rough location information for one Flotilla
The first thing many notice when being introduced to Senti personnel is that they generally take on the name of the ship or station that they plan on calling home. This is not to claim that they are part of the ship. In fact, quite the opposite, as Senti are an extremely social species, even more than humans. Senti families consider their ship to be their home, and will rapidly build large familial webs of polyamorous romantic natures. This familial support web is expected to improve camaraderie and unit cohesion, though many hominids may have feelings of jealousy. In their culture, the family tends to come together to support the individual, even if members are separated by degrees of relation, romance, or plain dislike for each other. Jealousy is a concept they have, but it does not seem to apply to relationships.
Senti culture does not have given names that have meaning. These names are derived from blending syllables from the names of both parents to form a meaningless name, given meaning by the person the word refers to. In this case, it is very unlikely to meet Senti that have the same name, even if the pronunciation is similar. Generally, when referring to a Senti crew member formally, one would use their given name in place of their home name, to avoid confusion with claiming the ship has its own rank, or a rank far lower than its position and importance would imply.
In fact, it is considered extremely rude, an insult for crewmates to refer to a Senti crew member by a former home name. To imply that a Senti crewmate should call another ship home is tantamount to ejecting them from the family, or, if new to the ship, implying that they will never be a member of the crew. Due to their large family driven social dynamic, this can be a deeply hurtful implication, even if the offense was not intended. In certain formal situations, the full name of a Senti person can be expressed as (name) of (ship) who flew with (previous ship) of (faction), more commonly as Name of (or from) Ship. Close friends and familial bonds will usually select one or two syllables of the person’s name to speak as an informal way to refer to them. For Name-Rank designations by androids, they will not correct the use of the ship’s name, but they will also often mock it or fail to respond.
Please keep in mind certain Flotilla specific cultural traits which may cause distinct behavioral differences between one or more groups of Senti, so ideally, ensure that multiples of Senti have a cultural majority from one Flotilla, and read up on reports and comments of other captains serving with Senti, taking care to determine where they are from, and plan accordingly.
Another point to pay special attention to is the fact that almost every starborn and worldborn Senti has the First Law hammered into them from near birth. They are taught and raised to see every sapient life and that life’s autonomy as holy, until a sapient being violates that autonomy on any other sapient. They will generally consider this an immediate threat to the safety of every person in their community, and will neutralize it as such. It is recommended for crews that have Senti to take allegations of any kind of body, mind, or soul violation very seriously, and attempt to keep the resident Senti from hearing about the incident and especially the identity of the perpetrator to prevent short lived and very focused violence.
Senti think and move in three dimensions, and most have never had artificial gravity or natural gravity. Flotillas and most ships use magnetic boots or high power magnetic cores to simulate gravity and act as a form of radiation shielding. Your Senti crew will almost always leash their tools and wear high power magnetic boots even if gravity is reliable on your ship or station. This will cause them to rarely lose tools, and be able to easily respond to issues with gravity.
These people do not have words for “up” or “down”, and will often refer to things by Z axis orientation, or even fail to identify an object’s location entirely, using a rapid tonal shift to describe its location and orientation in three dimensional space, often followed by a common word describing the distance relative to the speaker. They will also often refer to human derived species as “feathers”, primarily referring to their light weight to body size ratio.
Keep in mind, Katamurans are more than pirates, Shuristans are more than scrappers and miners, and Turassieli are more than traders. Any walk of life can be influenced by the specific culture they hail from. As the Senti do not have a centralized government, do not expect the cultural homogeneity of Yamatai, nor the melting pot culture of Nepleslia. Their entire government and society is based on volunteerism and expertise, with no Senti being able to be called a legal adult without passing a series of rigorous exams that help determine their aptitudes. These exams and the raising of their children often produce effective, extremely highly skilled technicians, astronavigators, pilots, medics, farmers, and cooks from a very young age. These aptitudes are then developed and encouraged to produce passionate and extremely highly trained personnel in their fields of promise.
Most Senti believe that galley duty, the act of working in the kitchen and preparing food for the crew is a duty of all members of that crew, assisting the galleymaster with his craft to catch up on gossip and socialize with members of other parts of the crew. In fact, galley duty is a popular date between courting couples to guage compatibility and initiative in a team based setting while allowing that social aspect.
Singing is a common passtime for most Senti. This is not simply due to the musical nature of their language, but it is commonly a way home for them. Most Senti Flotillas are constantly sending and receiving ships, often with new pilot-ship pairings. In these cases, a practice called the Gift of Song is performed, where people of the family or of the docks sing into the broadwaves as a beacon to guide their people home. In practice, this makes Flotillas difficult to lock onto as beacons, with thousands of transmissions across a mobile megastructure across thousands of channels and sharing only the language being sung. Senti going to a familiar Flotilla will sing these songs into the open airwaves to gain the attention of listeners, who will then set up a communications handshake using a shared song as the main focal point. The signal will grow stronger as more transmitters are brought into that channel, providing a beacon of music. Most of these songs are oral tradition and the Senti generally do not allow recording of the associated music.
Despite their complex oddities and odd social structures, Senti are passionate, industrious people who are excellent at gauging aptitude, organizing strong and cohesive teams, boosting morale, and completing their work with boundless enthusiasm and energy.
While not as enduring as other races, Senti are a hardy people. They begin their adult life with extensive training from a young age, over a wide variety of skills well outside their job title, with masterful trainers, often taught by people with centuries of experience. They are extensively reliable and adaptable, and will consider your ship their home. They do not like to “go on leave”, believing themselves to already be home, and will defend that home with a ferocity rarely seen, and an inventive way of solving problems that may make impossible accidents survivable. While a Senti crewman may not be loyal to you in specific, they are loyal to their ship, their crew, their fleet, and the sector’s community, in that order.
Madi Harper created this article on 2022/08/13 00:49.
🚧 This article is a work-in-progress. Is it not currently approved.