Three Strange Places Pt 3: Azuria

I wish I could offer up the full high-resolution image that I created for Azuria. It is a composite of more than 200 individual images from more than 60 sources – but not all of them are copyright-free, and there are far too many contributors to list. Hopefully, I can get away with this low-resolution representation.
0. Introduction
Even if the main subject matter doesn’t interest you, or doesn’t fit the genre of your campaign, there’s still content of value for you within the article – look for the sidebars, they contain useful tools, techniques, and fascinating side-issues, and apply to D&D / Pathfinder / Cthulhu / Pirate / Western games (you name it) as much they do to Sci-Fi.
The setting itself is strongly Sci-Fi, but the content would also would in a Superhero campaign as an alien world, and could also be used in a high-level Fantasy campaign, probably located in another Plane.
1. Welcome to Azuria
This is the third, last, and longest, of the planned string of “strange places” created for my personal campaigns. You can find the others at Three Strange Places Pt 1: Cemetery Gates and Three Strange Places Pt 2: Mydas. I may come back at some point with another trilogy of strange places, though, as these have proven quite popular!
Those who have been reading my articles for a while will have already encountered Azuria and its’ inhabitants in some form, as it was certainly at least mentioned in Vortex Of War: A Dr Who campaign construction diary. Very little of the detail was worked out at the time, however; most of what follows was generated for the adventure (currently underway) which took the protagonist there for a visit. As usual in this type of campaign, however, something came up while he was there…
This article is NOT about that something. It’s about the place where the something occurs.
I’ll excerpt the adventure – heck most of the article is excerpted from the narrative and dialogue within – when it becomes illustrative of some point or another.
Azuria was once described as ‘what it would be like in a strange corner of heaven, had the Devil taken it with him when he was cast down.’ Even taken metaphorically, it is a not entirely inaccurate summation, and almost poetic in its own way.
Azuria is both beautiful and nightmarish, all at the same time. It is also one of the most remarkable places any visitor has ever seen

The original image of Quasima, as sketched out in my mother’s kitchen a Christmas or two back, with a new background just for this article.
2. Azurian Traits & Capabilities
While each Azurian is different, they have a number of common traits and capabilities due to their fundamental nature. These include:
2.1 No physical bodies
Azurians have very little of what most species would consider a physical body. They are mostly electrical phenomena.
The circuits that form a television set or radio receiver don’t generally do anything in and of themselves (unless they are control elements, of course); they exist purely to direct, regulate, and manipulate the carefully-designed flows of energy within the device. It’s those energy flows that are the “true” television receiver, the circuits are just the trappings.
The same can be said of the electrical current within the brain – the physical structure is only important in that it provides the foundation for the complex electrical activity that is sentient thought. If one had some other means of regulating and manipulating those energy flows, the ‘hardware’ becomes more or less irrelevant.
In this way, Azurians can be said to be ‘intelligence without a biological brain’.
Physical structures tend to be lot more compact, however, and for this reason, it has been estimated that as much as 80% of an Azurial exists only to think.
2.1.1 Near 2-dimensional
Azurians are almost (but not quite) two-dimensional. They are about 1/4 of an inch thick, generally, but this shape can be wrapped around itself like onion layers to create an impression of a three-dimensional space. Some notable examples take advantage of this to “bulk themselves out” and look impressive – Meta-Lar for example (who you will ‘meet’ later in the article).
They can (temporarily) push themselves out to form a more three-dimensional shape, but this requires concentration.
2.2 Resistant to physical attack
Physical attacks will generally pass straight through, doing minimal damage What’s more, Azurians can all but vanish as a target simply by turning to one side. Being struck by a physical weapon or a fist is likely to do more harm to the attacker than to an Azurian.
2.3 Vulnerable to energy attacks in certain forms
Being something akin to plasma, however, intense magnetic fields, energy weapons that distribute electrical charge, electrical attacks of any sort – these weapons do disproportionate damage to an Azurian.
In particular, electrical attacks will follow the ionized trail of their internal electrical currents, which will lead the energy of the attack directly to their most vulnerable locations.
Furthermore, many of these attacks are, or can be, area-based and not single-target. Azurians are far from invulnerable – of you prepare for them specifically, or your weaponry already runs in that direction. That’s usually not the case, though.
2.4 Interface directly with high technology
Azurians can’t grip controls – they can’t turn knobs or flip switches or push buttons. Well, they can, and I’ll get to that, but it’s a lot more difficult for them. But they have an ability most beings don’t – they can electrically interface directly with the wires and circuits behind those controls and operate the ‘controls’ directly.
Some are much better at this than others. It requires an understanding of how electronics work without ever having seen the circuits in question, operating purely on general principles and on their capacity to sense when something isn’t having the desired effect.
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Electronic locks, in particular, tend to open as soon as an Azurian looks at them sideways.
This ability can also interfere with electronically-triggered weapons, play havoc with clocks and timers, and be useful in all sorts of other ways.
For those skilled in it, they are often capable of greater precision and sophistication of operation than the “clunky old interfaces’ would have been, through the equivalent of biofeedback.
2.5 Psychic Abilities
Azurians, like all life on the planet, communicate telepathically because no other form of communications is possible there. From this beginning, they have evolved a number of Psychic Abilities (which are a lot less impressive than they sound).
They don’t have Psychometry – they aren’t solid enough to actually hold something in their hands for very long. They don’t have any sort of telepresence or astral projection capabilities or any such nonsense, either. They have zero precognitive abilities (but they tend to be fairly astute observers and logic can make sensible predictions that sound almost precognitive).
They have telekinesis – enough to life them into something that mimics flight (see below). Depending on how hard they concentrate and “push”, they might be able to exert anywhere from a few hundred grams of force to maybe 5-10kg of lifting capacity – very briefly, a time measured in a single handful of seconds, or less.
So they probably can turn “A” knob, flick “A” switch, push “A” button – with extremely limited control.
Get a reasonably heavy book and hold it in front of you – both hands – for as long as you can. With no more than thirty seconds to recover, add a second volume of similar weight and repeat the exercise.
The second time around, your arms were already tired, probably shaking with exertion, and you probably lasted for less than 1/4 the first time.
Within thirty seconds, add a third volume and repeat – and as soon as you can’t hold the books up any more, try to type a coherent sentence on a keyboard. Your arms will be shaking so much that you will find it almost impossible; you need time to recover.
That’s what it’s like for an Azurian to do things “the hard way”.
2.6 Inspiration by Douglas Adams
At this point, I need to tip a hat at the memory of Douglas Adams, the British sci-fi comedy writer. It was in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” that he mentioned the Hooloovoo, a “highly intelligent shade of the colour blue” (note the British spelling!)
In the Doctor Who episode “The Rings of Akhaten”, in a throwaway reference to the above, the Doctor points out a Hooloovoo in the alien marketplace to new traveling Companion, Clara Oswald.
So such creatures (supposedly) exist in the Dr Who universe. The Azurians are my attempt to take that basic concept and embed enough “science” to make it sound almost plausible – enough for a space-opera type campaign, anyway.
2.7 The Color Blue
Azurites tend to be various shades of the color blue. Some oversimplified descriptions actually refer to them as “Sentient Shades of the color Blue”, but however poetic, this description is at least as inaccurate as it is accurate.
The blue coloration is due to the electrical discharges passing through our bodies at a greater speed than the speed of light within those bodies, what the humans call Cherenkov radiation, but in this case it illuminates the plasmatic biological material which has a natural blue tint – like seeing light through stained glass.
2.8 A Metagame Perspective
An awful lot of what the Azurians, and specifically, what Quasima, the NPC representative of the race, can and can’t do in-campaign revolves around the character’s role as a Companion to the titular character. Specifically, I didn’t want him to steak too much of the thunder from the one and only PC in the game, while still being useful enough to get involved in various ways.
The race was derived from that foundation.
This behind-the-scenes factoid may help the reader understand why some things in the world are the way that they are. It was, in essence, whatever was necessary to make the race viable in a fictional sense, plus a lot of ramifications and consequences of the decisions taken.
2.9 It’s not quite flying, but…
In particular, if they don’t have feet, I needed a way for the Azurians to get from place to place. They were already all but weightless, so telekinetic movement seemed the obvious answer. Similarly – no mouth, so how does he communicate? Again, Psionics was the obvious solution.
I was also amused by the general assumption that the inhabitants of a ‘heavy world’ would be short, stocky, possibly four-legged creatures, and how the Azurians, as pictured, were pretty much the complete opposite.
Excerpt in conditions approaching zero-G, like deep space, Azurians can’t fly per se. But they are so light that they can move around.
Some in-game background: The Origins of a species
It’s not strictly relevant because it may well be different in your game world, and this is very strongly integrated into the Dr Who campaign, but here – in a nutshell – is a very brief set of bullet-points describing the in-game origin of the species as the PC has discovered it to be:
- timestream shattered into shards
- each shard evolved as a parallel universe from that point on
- the doctor and the master combined forces to reintegrate them under extraordinary circumstances, making a few changes along the way
- each reintegration merged species worlds etc from that divergent timeline into the new mainstream reality, propagating backwards through time to create the logical precursors that would lead to the existence of the creatures inhabiting the shard at the moment of reintegration
- another Time Lord, the Rani, observed a strange species in the future of one of the shards and noted that something was causing them to evolve at a staggering rate (the Ood)
- she decided to see what would happen if she took their development to the logical extreme
- she created an artificial environment (Azuria) in which her ‘creations’ could live and function, seeding it long in the past
- these creations were eventually transfigured into beings of pure energy, the Azurians.
In essence, this is the in-game explanation for why there are so many things that the Doctor should have mentioned in old episodes, or that should have been involved, but weren’t. Answer: history got rebooted. The Doctor had to be involved because it’s a campaign about him, but he couldn’t be fully in charge, creating room for new discoveries and events and things that can surprise the character.
3. Azurians away from home
Azurites instinctively take on something of the appearance of those they are most frequently around, when away from home, because many humanoids overreact to their true appearance. This is something close to an instinctive defense to them.
If an Azurite spends a lot of time amongst humans, they will tend to present themselves as smooth-skinned and with most of the internal workings concealed. If they were to spend time amongst a feline race, they will develop a more fur-like surface texture, and the internals will once again be hidden from view, and so on.
There are limits to this camouflage capacity when it comes to size. With an ongoing effort, and Azurite can reduce himself to half his normal height, or increase his height by about 50%. With normal height being anywhere from 4 feet to 12 feet (depending on the individual), that’s a range of 2-18′ – but not all of it will be accessible by all members of the population.
4. Azurians at home
At home, they feel comfortable enough to drop this pretense, revealing a complex structure of chemical reactions and energy transfers, some of which manifest as a constant ‘halo’ of electrical discharges like those of a Jacob’s Ladder. Most of these are contained within the ‘epidermis’ but a few ground out harmlessly.
These reactions also cause light to shine from within when an Azurite opens its mouth to ‘speak’. Note that in many cases, these mouths are completely invisible when the Azurite is in ‘camouflage’ mode.

I actually did this as three separate images because I didn’t have time to produce an animated gif which transitions from one to the next. Each image also had a ghostly after-image of the one before it. For this article, I have re-composited them into a sequential series of images.
5. Individual Morphology
As is probably to be expected of a life form consisting of an impure form of energy bound together telekinetically, Azurites come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. In adult life, this is partially deliberate and partially instinctive, while in younger examples, the child is still learning how to do this, and so has a greatly simplified form.
Also to be expected is the fact of an intermediate stage.
Even in those simplified forms – rather fat disk-shapes – each individual is visibly somewhat different to all the others.
Azurian physical forms are created by the thoughts of the individual and the internal structures that comprise their awareness of self. Because each individual sees his own existence through the unique lens of his experiences, each Azurian has his own unique body shape in adulthood.
5.1 Gender
Azurials in general do not have what humans would consider gender. They may or may not mimic external physical structures that are suggestive of one gender or another, but even these can be more often misleading than instructive.
6. Complex Internal Structures
Much of the differentiation in these early forms derives from the development within the individual of complex mental and physical structures. Each Azurite is different, mentally, and their internal structures are – to some extent – a reflection of that individuality.
Not all individuals will have need of the same internal biological processes, though there will be an overlap of commonality. Most individuals will mimic the internal processes of their parents or educators, but some are more wide-ranging, in keeping with the potentials designed into them by their ‘parents’. During the youngest stages of life, these distinctive differences are more generally on display.
In broad terms, there is a uniformity of external shape with differences expressed as unique patterns and – to a lesser extent – variations in hue and color.
During the interim stage, much of this individuality becomes hidden behind a facade of broad uniformity. Many of the internal processes are hidden from view as the individual constructs new layers around themselves to mimic a more functional form for tool use. For example, many will learn to extrude and maintain something approximating arms as they begin interacting more with their external environment and less with their internal processes.
When full adulthood is achieved, individual expression through morphologic variations becomes extremely pronounced; one could view two different Azurites and not even be sure they were of the same species. Some are wispy and almost immaterial; others more like storm clouds wrapped around an approximately humanoid form. Short, tall, big, small, spiky or smooth, thin or seemingly-solid, translucent or opaque – each of these is individualized to suit the needs and personality of the person contained within.
7. Azurian Life-cycle
The Azurian Life-cycle is equally complex. Only general approximations are possible, though social norms creates a measure of uniformity which gives those approximations some credibility. Individuals can vary from the broad general picture quite considerably.
The youngest stage of life is a “proto-Azurial”, the equivalent of an infant. It is incapable of maintaining its own existence and is literally held together by the will of it’s parents, who will often still be refining what potentials they want the eventual Azurian to posses.
When that constant act of psionic will is no longer needed, and the young can (given the proper care and environment) survive unassisted, it becomes an Azurial, the equivalent of a child. Curious and capable of exploring its environment, it spends a lot of time playing games that humans (and humanoids in general) would find instantly recognizable – tag, hide-and-go-seek, and hurdling each other (except that the Azurites being hurdled are all in flight). There is a constant stream of telepathic giggling and laughter as they play, and every now and then (should the opportunity occur), they will swarm some random adult and ask a seemingly never-ending series of simple questions. The social pecking order (see 9.2, below) is strictly observed under the authority of an older or more responsible Azurial.
Azurials can remain in this mental and physical stage of development for years or decades.
Eventually, all going well, the Azurial will begin considering important questions about their future lives and assuming responsibility for the choices that lie before him. He transitions into the equivalent of teenager, an actual “Azurian”. This stage of life can also persist; it usually takes a decade or so to complete the maturation process, but some precocious examples do so in a handful of years, while others (equally rare and extreme) may take half a century or more.
Characteristic of the stage is a form of indecisiveness, an unwillingness to give firm commitments or make permanent decisions in full awareness of the consequences of those decisions. As maturation continues, this slowly gives way to a certitude about what the Azurian wishes to do and be, and how that can fit into the broader tapestry of Azuria’s society.
When emotionally mature enough to make important decisions, and physically mature enough to have full control over his bodily form, the Azurian undergoes “Ascendance” and becomes an Adult “Azurite”. In this form they can exist for multiple decades or even centuries.
All three stages of development have the potential to fail, and eventually, even an Azurite” will enter the final stages of life as they undergo “The Wasting”, gradually losing control of their physical functions and mental faculties. This is frequently characterized by an abandonment of responsibilities that lie external to the family group and increasing introspection. In some cases, extreme moodiness or intemperance can occur, notable because in all other stages of life, an Azurian is unfailingly polite – the legacy of being reared in a telepathic society.
There are some key details to note within the Azurian Life-cycle.
7.1 Intentional Design of Potential
Emotional and mental traits and the mental processes that generate them are categorized by Azurials as though they were written on index cards. Each participating parent gets to add their own selections to the ‘mix’ (in consultation with the others, of course).
This does not guarantee that a given trait will manifest or dominate the personality; it merely creates the potential for it to do so. Some traits will remain untriggered for the entire lifetime of the resultant Azurian. Others may manifest at an early age and have a direct influence over the developmental path of the youngster.
As with any act of parenting, you never know exactly what the outcome is going to be – you just do your best and hope that it’s enough.
Azurians have one advantage over other species, however – their telepathic nature makes them instantly aware of any maladjustment or inappropriate thought processes, and – if necessary – corrective mental surgery can take place immediately. As a result, all Azurians are remarkably “well-adjusted” in human terms. This includes respect for others and an unfailing politeness.
Some species find these traits to be bland, even artificial. Others find the natural consequences to be endlessly amusing.
An example of the latter: An Azurite might (with deepest regret over the necessity) cause the weapon of a hostile party to explode within their grasp, inflicting terrible injuries. The same Azurite might then, with absolute sincerity, tell the once=hostile party, “I apologize for the inconvenience and hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.”
7.2 Strange Interactions of Components
Often, a combination of these potentials will interact in some unexpected way, manifesting in a surprising character trait, subject of fascination, or sequence of personal choices. Azurials are never afraid of following such choices to their logical conclusions. The personality is a gestalted compounding of potentials that have been actualized by opportunity of expression.
Parents can create the potential for something – say, a love of Jazz; can deliberately create opportunities for the potential to manifest – taking the individual to music classes and Jazz recitals – but none of that means that they will become a professional musician. Instead, a love of pattern within structured chaos may lead them into higher mathematics as a career, a different manifestation of the potentials that were built into their foundations.
7.3 Creation of a new Life
For the sake of description, let us assume that two or more Azurites decide to create a child. They combine their thoughts to form a cloud of structured matter that is held together by the mental force of those parent-Azurites. Two are the minimum necessary, but more are not uncommon, permitting the workload to be shared; until the child is self-contained and self-sustaining.
As [electrical and material] currents flow through the Proto-Azurial, the pathways and structures that shape and direct those currents are assembled by the Azurite currently monitoring the process, usually modeled upon their own, because the parent knows how they work.
In this way, each of the parents contributes to the mentality and potential of the offspring. The process is analogous to, but not even remotely the same as, the DNA of humanoids being recombined and passed on to descendants. For one thing, the choice of model upon which to base a particular thought-function is always a deliberate one, save only when a new mental contribution is required as a result of some sort of emergency.
7.4 Specialist Participation
Organisms are inherently complicated; designing a new one for each member of a race is a task beyond almost any parent. Much of the process is instinctive, as automatic as the musculature motions and adaptions needed to complete the task when a human decides to pick an object up for examination.
Sometimes, two ‘pathways’ within the Proto-Azurial are incompatible, contradictory, incomplete, or simply erroneous, and a Pseudologist is needed to graft an emergency correction into the mental structure of the child. And, tragically, sometimes that process cannot be completed sufficiently, or in time, and the nascent proto-Azurial dissipates, taking with it all the efforts and hopes of those who had contributed to its becoming.
The medical and psychological specialists who provide such support are known as Pseudologists. They specialize in knowing what processes are essential to continued existence and in identifying conflicts within the processes present that threaten the internal harmony that permits that existence. They can determine when a process can be safely removed, when an alternative that does not share the incompatibility can be introduced, and what the resulting consequences will be.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for such specialists to be consulted when the infant is being ‘planned’ by its parents.
7.5 Stages of Development

This image is almost entirely my own work because I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. There are numerous elements (more than 200) combined in various ways – everything from bacteria under an electron microscope to dust motes, and all sorts of things in between. Three of the images are not by me, but have been extensively modified in various ways – they are all on the Azurite row (the bottom). There’s the thin lightning-figure in the middle, there’s the cloud-like figure second from the right, and there’s the rightmost storm-cloud figure. I wish I could give proper credit, but didn’t keep the notes. I do remember doing a lot of searches for “Lightning Elemental” and such. This one I think I can show you full sized (click on the image), particularly since the text is barely legible at this smaller scale – (click on the image).
Prior to it becoming self-sustaining, the responsibilities of the parents are to the survival and well-being of the nascent young. When it becomes capable of independent existence, those responsibilities change, as the new life enters a series of stages of self-development..
7.5.1 Independent Existence
Parents of an Azurial are required to guide and protect the new life, to ensure its education and preparation for potential maturity. As it develops, the child will develop potentials of its own choosing, often ones that were not obvious to the parents, resulting in richer and more complex internal structures and an ever-greater self-control over its form.
Some of the paths and potentials created by the Parents are superseded or simply abandoned along the way. Maturity, and a mature personality, is as much about what you let go of as it is what you acquire. But those dead and dormant pathways remain engraved in the internal structures of the maturing Azurial.
7.5.2 The Wasting I
Eventually, the Azurial reaches a crisis point in which it has developed sufficient personality to take full control of its development, becoming an Azurian.
But it doesn’t have an unlimited time to reach that point; the dead and corrupt pathways left behind accumulate, and if the Azurial takes too long to develop, can do so to the point where it no longer has the evolutionary capacity to make the next step; its growth is poisoned by it’s own mental wastes.
The Azurial then remains as an eternal child, gradually sickening and failing as the light inside becomes obscured and dimmed, a process referred to as “the Wasting” – in this case, “The Wasting Of Potential”.
7.5.3 Azurian Stage
For a while, the new Azurian will seem to collapse into itself, becoming smaller and more condensed – but that is only because more of its currents are directed inwards, building new and more complex internal structures faster than it can grow. But eventually, it will begin constructing variegated external structures and learning how to develop a humanoid form.
The details are frequently modeled on non-Azurites with which it has associated. These may be ‘skin deep’, designed to do nothing more than lubricate social interaction with those surrounding it; because they share a physical environment, there may be some measure of practicality involved as well.
In some cases, a particular representative will be singled out as a role model, and the emulation will run deeper – see 7.7 The Mentor, below.
One defining trait of this stage of life is that the individual is considered mature enough to care for siblings and impaired older relatives, and generally take great pleasure in doing so. This creates a social and familial continuity that might otherwise be lost.
7.5.4 Approaching Maturity
Eventually, an Azurian reaches the point of maturity, where it can begin designing its exterior and interior to suit its needs, and shaping its capabilities to render it suitable to undertake a career – which are never pre-defined, they are always subjectively defined by the Azurian themselves.
Azurians take this approach because there are so many combinations of specialty that it is impossible to adequately define them all.
In fact, it is often the case that the Azurian themselves cannot adequately define or describe the scope of their professional life, and spends their entire mature life in the pursuit of that definition; they know only that there is such a definition that is possible.
7.5.5 Second Wasting
Once again, however, this is a race against time. The decaying and decrepit processes that are abandoned and ignored act as pollutants within the body, and if maturity is not achieved in time, they will prohibit it. In time, the accumulated decay products will leave the Azurian unable to maintain even its semi-humanoid form and it will collapse into an end-of-life Azurial. Mentally, too, it will revert into a second childhood, a form of senility.
For much of its life, those who endure the Second Wasting remain capable of functioning as an Azurian, caring for the young and infirm, for example, and they often take great delight in doing this. It is reasonably analogous to a grandparent taking children (or senior citizens) to a park or other activity.
In time, they become incapable of even this, and become an Ante-Azurial, indistinguishable from those who suffered from the First Wasting. This progression can be slowed, even reversed in the short-term through the development of new interests and personal associations; as with humans, mental activity is necessary to prevent sufferers from simply wasting away.
Because the sufferer was closer to adulthood, and it’s potential offerings to society at large better defined, the term “wasting” in this case is meant to imply “Wasting Of Opportunity”.
7.5.6 Azurites
Only those who have achieved maturity are considered Azurites. No two Azurites are alike. Every Azurite can be considered a professional of some sort, though some observers note that the society permits, even encourages, the study of ‘fringe subjects’. Frequently of little social or scholastic value, this is considered the price that needs to be paid for the occasional “from out of left field” discovery.
Earlier notes might also suggest that Azurites do not disagree with each other, or that such disagreements are without passion; neither suggestion would be correct. What is lacking in such discussions is disrespect. “You have been an able contributor to society in the past, but I find your current choices ethically questionable and morally exhausted. Give me your reasons for this behavior, and they had better be convincing, or I will seek to have you removed from office, forthwith,” might be typical of a confrontation. “Whatever possessed you to do such a thing, given the past history of failed attempts and the terrible cost of those failures?” is couched in even stronger terms – but the presumption is always there that the individual being raked over the coals knew what they were doing, and their motives were good (even if their reasoning is flawed).
Azurites continue to enhance themselves, adding intellectual and physical capacities as needed or as they capture the interest of the individual. Equally, dead and disused capabilities build up as the individual focused more and more precisely on their chosen careers, and eventually, the same problem manifests – these begin to get in the way of further growth, and the individual begins to first stagnate and then wither.
7.5.7 Post-Azurites
There are two primary manifestations of the Third Wasting – mental faculties may deteriorate, or physical skill and precising may deteriorate. The first is ten times more common than the second. It is normal for Azurites to begin planning for a retirement, voluntary or involuntary, in later life, usually after the last of their intended children have achieved adulthood. They begin focusing their efforts on completing tasks already undertaken as a priority over new tasks, which they will set in abeyance or hand off to up-and-comers within their profession (or something close enough to their profession).
This social behavior is frequently the first hint that an Azurite feels his time beginning to draw to a close. More tragic is when accident. injury, or distraction causes the symptoms of age to go unnoticed until the day come when they can no longer be ignored. It is usually not to late to implement a prepared succession plan, but will often require the aid of an Assistant or other ‘guardrail” to keep the failing Azurite focused and on-track if the problems are mental, or to actually complete activities on the Azurite’s behalf if physical.
There are obvious parallels to the three great Human failings, Alzheimer’s / Dementia and Parkinson’s Diseases, respectively, but there are also parallels with incurable (but usually slow-acting) cancers. GMs can often get a better handle on the personality impacts of the conditions by translating the human experience.
Inevitably, the point is reached where the Azurite is no longer fit to continue professionally. They may still be consulted on various matters (though their advice is weighed more cautiously), but – in general – they have only social activities and family with which to occupy themselves. A due course – months, or years, perhaps even a few decades in rare cases – some function critical to ongoing life becomes critically compromised and the individual dies.
7.6 Critical Moments
As the descriptions above make clear, there are a number of physical and mental milestones that an adult individual experiences in the course of their life. These are cause for celebration and social/family gatherings when they are reached. Often, the only person capable of determining that a milestone has been achieved, or is imminent, is the individual themselves; is is them who gets to set the terms and criteria of their achievements. (As noted, however, there is a terrible penalty for waiting too long).
In particular, there are four milestones that rank above all others (and there are many others – Azurials are a social species); three independances, and one retirement..
7.6.1 First Independence
First independence comes when an infant no longer needs parental mental support simply to exists; it marks the transition to a child. Not all Azurials achieve this, but 98% of the population do so. The responsibilities of parents change as a result.
7.6.2 Second Independence
Second independence comes when a child begins making personal decisions of a significant nature and convincing others of sound reasons for the choices being made. These decisions are often not permanent commitments, and are certainly not binding. The responsibilities of parents change again, but this transition is often a more gradual affair. At some point along the way, the parents will decide that the changes need public acknowledgment so that society in general can also begin to treat the Azurian with greater consideration and confidence.
7.6.3 Ascension – Third Independence
The third independence is the biggest one of the lot, the equivalent of coming of age. It is a declaration by the Azurial that they are willing and able to make their own life choices and abide by the consequences that manifest from those choices. It usually also involves a declaration of intent in terms of chosen career. From that point forward, the new Azurite is subject to no authority in personal matters save those dictated by Azurian law. They can choose to respect or ignore customs, they can choose to become parents in their own right, they can wear a silly hat (held telekinetically, of course) and call themselves a cowboy, should they wish.
7.6.4 Retirement
There are lots of reasons to retire. One may have completed what one considered their life’s work, satisfying the motivation that kept them professionally engaged; one may be forced into it by age; and so on. While no career path is considered more important any other, there may be pressure to choose a related occupation that is more socially-productive (retirement may be avoided in such cases through a part-time commitment, deemed a necessary act to obtain the resources needed to continue what is seen as the ‘primary’ occupation by the Azurite practicing it).
Retirements can be happy, or mournful. They are often reflective, even nostalgic, and it is normal for friends and family who may not have been around for many decades to reappear. Very little happens on Azuria by accident; while one of the retiree’s family will frequently be dominant in the planning and execution of a “retirement party” (to use the human vernacular), the retiree is also a highly-engaged participant.
In many respects, it’s like a reverse wedding – one or more of the family making arrangements for a key event in the life of a parent, instead of the parent helping the child plan the event.
7.6.5 Death
When death occurs, the mental force binding the individual together dissipates, and they simply vanish as though they had evaporated..There are no significant remains to bury, and hence the Azurians have no burial ritual skin to a human funeral (a common saying amongst Azurites is that “where there are remains, there can still be animation”; it took a long time for them to realize why this had such a triggering effect on many other species, but especially humans).
One human practice that has begun to catch on is The Wake. A more informal gathering of remembrance of the individual than a Retirement Ceremony, in which his personal and social achievements are lauded as loudly as his professional ones.
7.7 The ‘Mentor’
Azurians are not considered mature enough in my culture to be fully responsible for my own decisions. I am expected and required to attach myself to someone of greater maturity, as it were, and to approach them for guidance when necessary, and use them as a role model the rest of the time. These are known as ‘Mentors’.
Those selected to be a Mentor by an Azurian need not be consulted and are often not informed of this status. This is not a voluntary relationship on their part, it is the deliberate choice to utilize the Mentor as a role model in at least some respects of their development by the Azurian.
An individual can have a succession of such individuals in the course of their development; sometimes, a Mentor is accorded that status for the development of a specific trait or capability. It is possible, though rare, for a single Azurian to have multiple mentors at the same time; it doesn’t happen more often because of the potential for conflict between the lessons being absorbed from each Mentor. Better to master what one has to offer and integrate it fully into the personality and then move on – but opportunities should not be wasted, either.
Most Mentors are Azurites; it is uncommon (but not unknown) for an off-worlder to be accorded the status, and some Azurians who travel off-world so so specifically to find, and develop a relationship with, a suitable non-Azurian.
As an Azurian approaches Ascension, it becomes more common for the Mentor-Student relationship to be acknowledged. Although rare, it is even possible for a non-Azurian Mentor to be invited to participate in the Ascension ceremony. The rarity is a consequence of the environment of Azuria. This generally exposes them to the Parents of the Azurite-in-waiting; like parents anywhere under such circumstances, the Mentor can be expected to be probed for their fitness as a role model and any fault, however slight, can be amplified to cataclysmic proportions.
They do this out of care for their child, and not as insult to the Mentor – the first is all-important to them, and the second trivial, no matter how offensive their interrogation might appear.
Scene In A Park
Below is an excerpt from the Dr Who adventure, “The Coming Of Ageless”, from which most of the material in this article has been excerpted and compiled. It’s worth including here because of the way it illustrates much of the content of this section.
I did a specific image for the scene, but it didn’t quite come out as clearly as I wanted, so instead I have chosen to include (at the bottom of the excerpt) another composite of Quasima’s entire family group – with names.
Newly aware of the nuances of the Azurite definitions, you recognize that approaching you are one Azurite, one youngish Azurian, and a late-stage but still youthful Azurial. “Quasi-ma, welcome home. It is good that your journeys have completed your growth. Neo-Na awaits. Para-qua insisted on greeting his favorite sibling, and so I have brought Poly-Tra to watch over him should he wander off.”
The Azurial, with kittenish shyness, looks out at you from behind the shoulder of the Azurite. Presumably, this is ‘Para-qua’, one of Quasima’s most junior siblings, and it must be your presence that is inhibiting the enthusiasm that the Azurite’s welcome implies.
Confirming this impression, the Azurian, Poly-Tra, tells the younger specimen, “it’s all right to be curious, Para-Qua. This is Quasi-Ma’s chosen mentor, a humanoid – one brave enough to come here and celebrate your brother’s new maturity with us.”
“Is it really okay, Papa?” says the young ball of lightning, and at a nod, he erupts from his hiding place and begins swarming around Quasima and peppering him with questions. You get the sense that if the Azurites recognized genders, the young ball would be feminine, but they don’t. You realize that this is exactly the sort of gender-equivalence assumption that Quasima was warning you against.
The Azurite now addresses you directly. “I have no doubt that Quasi-ma would have intended to introduce us, but he will be busy for some considerable time with the enthusiasm of his sibling, who wasn’t really old enough to ask coherent questions when Quasi-ma left for the stars. I am Meta-Alto, one of two who cultured his initial patterns, and I must recognize from the outset that you do him much respect by attending his maturation ceremony.”
(reply)“Neo-Na and I sought to cultivate a sense of curiosity allied with an analytic mind in Quasi-ma, but for a long time he turned his thoughts inward, as you might suspect from his chosen name. It was something of a relief when he finally chose to seek a mentor beyond this world. He did not find it stressful, mind; he seemed completely confident in his assessment that he had to adequately prepare himself to match any mentor who he would consider worthy before such a mentor would accept him. We often wondered what qualities he would seek in such a mentor. You must have come to know him well, by now – can you enlighten me?”
This question was capable of several nuanced interpretations. Meta-Alto might have been asking About Quasima, but what he really wanted to know is why Quasima might have chosen YOU as his mentor – what qualities do YOU have have that entitle you to have an Azurite apprentice (or whatever they call the relationship).
The scene continued from there, but that’s where we will leave it, and move on.
Unfortunately, this is also almost illegible. Rather than offering the larger image as a separate file, however, I’ve decided to transform it into a triptych (I think I have the spelling right)! – three panels, with a little overlap to show that they are parts of a whole.
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7.8 Choice Of Careers
Azurians spend much of their phase of development in search of an answer to the question posed to virtually every teenager, ever – “What do you want to do with your life?” – and then preparing both themselves and the society around them for the assumption of this role.
All careers are subjectively and personally defined, but many are subject to broad general classification.
If there is no demand for a particular function, part of the career of the individual can be defined as creating such a demand so that they can then satisfy it.
Provided that society, and it’s stewards (the politicians) are satisfied that the individual is making a contribution to society in general, they will not judge the validity of the choice, but will support it by ensuring adequate professional workspace, minimal life needs – accommodation, food, etc – and then do their best to get out of the way. They do not consider themselves wise enough (in general) to make value judgments over people’s life choices.
7.8.1 A shortage of plumbers?
This system is not as unstable as it might, at first, appear. It could be argued that it would break down because not enough individuals want to choose a particular profession at some given moment, for example.
Australia is suffering at this very moment from a dearth of skilled tradespeople, but it is doing so because past governments de-emphasized giving trainees in such trades the support, income, and opportunities needed, perhaps because there seemed to be enough people doing the job already, perhaps because they were undervalued.
Well, there weren’t enough trainees to keep up with demand, a problem exacerbated by the Pandemic, which prompted many in an aging population to take an early retirement.
The consequences and ramifications are still playing out – there’s a new restaurant / takeaway across the corner from me that has now missed FOUR opening dates because there simply aren’t enough tradesmen to complete the fit-out of the shop, for example. Remedial action is being taken, but will take 5 years or more to make a significant difference.
What was expected to be a crisis ten years from now, if not promptly addressed, is here early.
There are attempts to bridge the gap with an immigrant workforce of tradesmen. But this is creating it’s own problems – having knock-on effects within the housing market, for example, and not having enough people working within the civil service to process all the applications. Government priorities are being shifted as a result – and the cascade of ramifications continues to grow.
So this is potentially a serious problem, at least in the short-term. The solution within this society is that a shortage is in itself a trigger for career desire when one career is not falsely valued over another.
So far as Azuria is concerned, a happy and productive citizen is part of a complex and interlocking web of responsibilities that collectively create the society.
Another part of the solution is the presumption of secondary responsibilities. If you are an archaeologist, for example, part of the job description is the education of other like-minded individuals – succession planning, in other words. This is a generally unspoken, but very real, part of the social compact of the culture.
7.8.2 Changing Occupations
Inherent within the complexity of people is the potential for someone to fall out of love with a career path, or grow overly frustrated at a lack of progress, or simply to begin finding that the career is not as personally rewarding as the individual expected.
When that happens, people always have the option to retrain themselves and enter a new, possibly related profession – or simply to change job titles if no retraining is necessary. Before they are permitted to do this in Azuria, however, they first have to satisfy the government that there is insufficient demand for their ‘former’ occupation, or that if there is a demand, that the supply of individual workers is adequate to that demand. If neither of those is true, then before the old career can conclude, the individual needs to implement a more direct and targeted succession plan.
This usually involves a deferment of the change for a few years, nothing more. And it has sometimes been the case that the search for potential replacements and their training and education, gives the individual a chance to further appraise their contributions to society and rediscover their love of the original career path.
8. The Azurian Environment
In some respects, the Galactic Core is analogous to a solar system. You have:
- A central mass, which emits huge amounts of radiation, the accumulation of every bright object that crosses the event horizon and appears therefore to linger, forever;
- Orbiting inner “worlds” (entire star systems) which are drawn toward the central mass, and may or may not collide with it eventually (noting that the mass is always increasing due to other objects being absorbed, so no orbit can be considered entirely stable);
- A belt surrounding the central mass like a halo in which the radiation emitted is insufficient to directly threaten life most of the time;
- A region outside of that in which orbits are comparatively stable save when acted upon by one of the millions of other masses surrounding the central mass (not so stable, then);
- An outer area where objects in long cometary orbits reach perihelion, and begin to plunge anew back into the chaos, eventually to become part of the central mass; and
- Clouds of dust and debris created when objects pass too close to the central mass and are torn apart, but not so close that they are completely absorbed.
The turbulence in the latter makes the core one of the prime locations in the galaxy for stellar and planetary formation, but such objects are frequently extremely short-lived.
8.1 Galactic Region
Just outside of this region of gaseous turbulence is a relatively safe zone, though passing stellar masses continue to create chaos on an astronomical timescale. That chaos can be considered an ongoing series of perturbations in the otherwise stable orbits of the star systems concerned. Each one that passes either adds or subtracts from the orbital velocity through gravitation, but over a longer time frame, the evenness of distribution means that such perturbations even out, statistically.
There is always a tipping point, however, beyond which the consequences of the orbit being perturbed become unrecoverable. Living on planets in this region of space is a constant risk.
Although rare, collisions between stars do occur, and there are so many candidates swarming in and around the area that they are a regular event.
8.2 Star
The star around which Azuria orbits is fairly typical. Azuria itself was not originally a part of its solar system; it’s an outsider that it happened to scoop up during it’s own travels around the galactic core. It’s stellar type is largely irrelevant – it can be anything from a Type A to a Type K sun, or anything in between (it’s unlikely that a dwarf star of any sort would work, however). In general, a bright star, perhaps even a giant like Rigel, would work.
These details are up to the individual referee. So unimportant is the star (in general terms) that I haven’t even specified it’s type in-game, and the player has had no need to ask for the information.
8.3 Planet
The Planet called Azuria is more complex. It’s a variation on a Hot Neptune, with some characteristics of a Cold Neptune. If those terms mean nothing to you, it simply means that you’re not keeping up with the discoveries of exoplanets and the revisions to stellar categories that are being necessitated to classify them.
The mass of the planet is fairly high – it is a gas giant, with an ultra-dense Neutronium core, formed around the remnants of a high-speed collision between two Neutron Stars. The bulk of the stellar matter from the collision condensed into a larger neutron star (perhaps even a black hole), but some of the ‘splash’ would have escaped the collision. It then passed through one of the many gas clouds surrounding the core, one with relatively little hydrogen and helium – plenty of carbon, oxygen, water, ammonia, and nitrogen, though – scooping up enough of this material to form a planet.
Azurials do not live on the planetary surface; they live amongst the clouds, at sufficient altitude that the gravity is earth-like, i.e. 1G. If you want to specify exactly what the mass of Azuria is in Earths, you can calculate this in earth radii – the Azurials live at an altitude above the core approximately equal to the square root of mass (in Earths) (all the other variables cancel each other out).
I didn’t think it was worth the trouble to calculate it.
8.3.1 Cosmic Origins
The two neutron stars must once have collided at high speeds almost head-on; while the bulk of the combined masses would have been combined and departed (causing another gravitational perturbation in their wake), there would have been remnants. Most of these would have been too small to sustain the internal pressures and immediately exploded. But there must have been at least one remnant that was just large enough to survive. Gravity would almost immediately have caused plastic flows to render the surviving stellar core material spherical.
Thus, the planetary core of Azuria itself has to be hollow, with a relatively tiny neutron star orbiting inside it, almost certainly spinning at incredible speeds (any normal matter present would have wrapped itself around the neutron star remnant – it might not have been sufficiently compressed by gravity to become more Neutronium, however).
The orbit of the neutron star is almost certainly not precise; there would be wobbles and the likelihood that it was in the same exact direction as the rotation of the rest of the planet is infinitesimal.
As it approaches just a little closer to the surface, the increased gravity would super-heat the remaining surface material through tidal stress, but inconsistently – there would be geysers of metal constantly thrusting upwards and cooling in the winds of the upper atmosphere. Some would then shatter and fall back down, ready to be super-heaated again on the next pass. Others would cool quickly, courtesy of the strong winds present, and become spires of metal pointing skyward.
These are hollowed out and used by Azurials as places to construct their homes.
8.3.2 Planetary Formation
It must then have drifted through the debris of the exploded fragments, consisting largely of metals and other exotic materials, and then through an almost-depleted planetary nebula; if it were not depleted in this way, the planet that was forming would have become a gas giant, and it didn’t – quite. Or perhaps you could say that it did, but one composed of gasses other than hydrogen, helium and methane – making it one of the rarest planetary bodies possible.
8.3.3 Primary
And then it must have somehow blundered its way not only into a stable orbit around its current primary, but one that was in =exactly= the goldilocks position for a planet of this unusual composition. And picked up a moon or two, which swept up asteroidal mass and sent it plunging to the surface, accreting a rocky mantle. These also skimmed away any remaining hydrogen and helium.
8.3.4 Asteroid Rain
The impacts of some of those asteroids threw molten metal and rock almost out of the atmosphere – but it must have cooled just enough in the process to form solid structures hundreds or thousands of kilometers tall. Atmospheric skimming by the moons then reduced the atmospheric content enough that most of the time, those structures project out of what atmosphere remains.
8.3.5 ‘Surface’ Conditions
Charged particles from solar radiation strike the exposed metal created by past asteroid impacts, which conducts the resulting electrical charge to ground level.
Atmospheric tides crash against the walls of the resulting mountains, creating incredible turbulence, which in turn would create an electrical differential between atmospheric clouds and surface. This produces the incessant electrical activity.
All this drives unusual chemical reactions, some of which produce great pools of bubbling polymers in the lower atmosphere. Heat transferred to the atmosphere from the hot-spots below would push this material upwards, and spread it out into relatively thin sheets that were visually indistinguishable from the clouds that blanket the planet. These are the ‘solid clouds’ that Quasima described.
These would produce relatively cool areas in the atmosphere by providing shade from sunlight and a shield against the radiated heat; islands of semi-stable cool air surrounded by heated atmosphere. More atmospheric turbulence, more clouds, more lightning.
Because different compounds have different melting and boiling points, they would settle out at different rates, layering the polymer clouds and strengthening them. From time to time, some of these pockets of relatively pure gaseous compounds would escape through the sheets, especially when one was punctured; the results would be jet streams in the air that travel at hundreds of kilometers per hour.
This is an environment in which nothing is fixed or permanent, but some features would have such long lifespans that they are all-but-eternal. And that includes floating polymer clouds with electrostatic coatings of metallic elements, thinner in some places than a sheet of cooking foil, thick enough elsewhere and sufficiently resilient for a vessel to land on them – with care.
8.3.6 ‘Habitable’ Environment
The gravity of Azuria is far too intense for the planet to have normal composition, but because visitors never go near the surface, it is not much different to Earth-normal.
In many ways, though, the planet is a Gas Giant in which atmospheric layers have been compressed to the point where they present as semi-solid surfaces – that are free-floating on other gas layers like streamers or ribbons.
Azurians weigh next to nothing, and can easily manipulate that next-to-nothing with their telekinetic abilities, limited though those capabilities are. That being the case, they do not live on the (uninhabitable, even for them) surface of the planet, but amongst its cloud layers.
Some of these are solid enough for humanoids to walk on, being constructed of naturally-occurring polymers, while others are insubstantial as fog or mist, and most of the latter are indistinguishable from the former with the naked eye. Humanoids constantly probe the ‘cloud’ ahead of them to ensure it has enough substance to function as a ‘surface’ for them to walk on.
That Azurians can (and do) walk upon a cloud-like surface is no indication that it is safe for a visiting alien to attempt to do so. Because the differences don’t matter to Azurians, only those consciously accommodating the solidity of visitors will even think to point out an area of insubstantiality unless the visitor brings the matter to the attention of a local.
Should one do so, most Azurians will attempt to be helpful and mindful, just as the visiting alien might attempt to help a handicapped or crippled individual who was struggling in some way. Most humanoids do not tolerate this attitude as well as, perhaps, they should.
Sidebar: About Clouds
Two of the most astonishing facts that I’ve ever encountered: 1) Any cloud that you see in the sky above the Earth is actually at least 10,000 much smaller clouds aggregating; without sufficient density, they are virtually invisible. 2) Any such cloud easily weighs as much as a full-grown Bull Elephant.
Put those thoughts together and add a higher gravity field and more substantial chemical compounds, and you can easily discern the inspiration here.
8.3.7 The Long Fall
When a humanoid falls through a section of cloud that is sufficiently unsubstantial as to be unable to bear their weight, they will fall. If they are lucky, they will encounter another ‘platform of cloud’ of sufficient solidity to arrest this fall before they accumulate enough momentum to break through such a surface.
Unless they encounter ‘semi-solid ground’ within a few meters of descent, however, their velocity and mass will be such that they will begin the kilometers-long descent to the ‘surface’ of the planet. They will never reach it; the atmospheric pressures of Azuria are such that they will be crushed like an eggshell long before encountering something solid enough to arrest their fall.
Both this problem and that of transiting from one piece of ‘solid ground’ to another are solved – partially – by the wearing of some form of jet-pack. Note that these can be very difficult to control without sufficient training and practice.
8.3.8 Uncontrollable Descent
Complicating this problem is the electrical environment, which tends to play hob with any sophisticated control circuitry. Brute-force mechanical controls are necessary, anything else will be completely unreliable unless massively shielded – and the weight of such would be prohibitive.
Think of it as like trying to cross some incredibly thin ice – the more you weigh, the more likely it is that the surface will give way under your feet.
This is a very tricky engineering balance to get right.
One ingenious solution is to place the humanoid in a large plastic balloon; this distributes their weight over a much broader surface and lets them roll from place to place. Downhill is easy, even fun – uphill is harder work.
Other buoyancy aids may also be successful. You had better hope so if you’re relying on them!
8.3.9 Azurian Solutions
As a general rule, there are none. They don’t need them, and the environment is such that they get few visitors, so they have seen no need to develop any.
8.4 Atmosphere
The Azurian atmosphere is a cocktail of exotic gasses, which float hither and yon in streams. Extracts from these different compounds are used as biological components to manufacture the internal structures and processes that permit Azurians to control the electrical plasma within their beings; they consume biological compounds as though they were food.
One of the compounds is oxygen, a significant fraction of which is in the form of Ozone.
Many of the gasses are poisonous to humanoids, and some would be corrosive, either chemically or because they have been super-heated by lightning.
8.5 Surface Environment – from a visitor’s point of view
The first discovers of Azuria described it as a place that both is, and is not, habitable.
Azuria is blinding. There is constant electrical activity.
The planet is deafening. Lightning produces Thunder- constant and deafening to humanoids. Only those protected against those (and other) hazards should exit the shelter of the conveyance that brought them to the planet.
Azurian Life is all telepathic to some degree as a result of needing to communicate within such an environment. No other form of communications is possible there unless cocooned in an extremely well-protected sanctuary.

This is an excerpt from the main Azuria image that started the article, which I don’t think contains any copyrighted elements. It illustrates not only the environment described above, buit the Azurian style of architecture. (I thought I needed something at this point to break up a large block of text).
8.6 Energy Cycles
Earth has it’s Nitrogen cycle and it’s water cycle – Azuria has energy cycles. The flow of energy around the planet. mostly in the form of heat and electricity, is paramount to life there.
8.7 ‘Plasmatic’ Biochemical Cycles
All life on Azuria is electrical in nature. In a sense, that is true of all life, everywhere, but it is more literally true of Azuria than anywhere else.
This is a consequence of evolving within an environment containing the energy cycles described. Just as human cells retain the chemical structure of the sea in which the chemical compounds first came together, so the electrical nature of their environment is part and parcel of the internal structures of all Azurian life.
Electrical discharges are, to an Azurian, akin to a summer shower.
8.8 Telepathic Noise
Azuria is not perfect, not even for Azurians. They are suffering from the telepathic equivalent of Noise Pollution, the consequence of a population that is outstripping the habitable region of their planet.
Because they are almost two-dimensional, you can pack a LOT of Azurians in a given volume their architecture – flattened tower-like spires thrusting several hundred meters into the sky, smaller in horizontal footprint than any human skyscraper, grown like crystals. One of the primary features of this architecture is that it removes a family unit of Azurians from the company of others, or at least puts them a suitable distance away.
At ground level, where there are billions of Azurians coming and going, it can be so overwhelming as to overload psychics from other races.
Although they are typically not sensitive to it sufficiently to be injured, even non-psionic visiting races find it almost impossible to sleep anywhere near the surface due to the constant hum of billions of simultaneous conversations that no ear-plugs can keep out.
During the day, when individuals are active, this noise can usually be tolerated by visitors; at night when trying to sleep, no. Since most material beings are extremely dependent on sufficient sleep, this poses yet another hazard to visiting aliens.
9. Azurian Personalities
While Azurials are more individual than members of most species, there are traits in common that emerge from the “biology” of the species as a member grows and matures.
9.1 Proto-Azurials and Newly-formed Azurials
Like all infants, these are comparatively helpless, physically. Intellectually, they are relatively advanced; first telepathic communications (of simple emotions) takes place almost immediately, and coherent thoughts are frequently just a matter of weeks, though this can vary from one individual to the next depending on the traits selected for inclusion by the parents.
9.2 Young Azurials
Azurian young in the Azurial stage are curious and playful. They may or may not be respectful. Think of them as being like puppies, always shoving their (metaphoric) noses into everything around them, exploring the limits of their universe and their capacities for interacting with it.
The new fascinates them. They will ask a lot of questions, and expect simple answers that enhance their understanding of the universe. Should they not understand something, they will deem that to be important and will ask other, older Azurites for clarification. Some find understanding such an answer to be their life’s work – so such answers are treasured, when they occur, and can be personally transformative.
When groups of young Azurials come together, they develop a pecking order that is strictly adhered to. There are three primary factors – Experience / Development; Relative Boisterousness; and Age, in that sequence – though a high level of Boisterousness can overcome a deficiency of Experience / Development. They do this largely instinctively, and use this ranking to determine leadership, responsibility, membership in group activities, priority sequence when interacting with strangers, and so on, even down to the sequence in which they get to ask a question – and then, to the back of the queue!
9.3 Older Azurials
It must be remembered when considering any individual that they are the sum of the expression of their potentials and the opportunities they have been given to develop those potentials. The emerging personality, in particular it’s likes and dislikes, also plays a role; one may have the potential to be a concert musician, but if you never awaken a love of music, it’s not likely to happen.
Parents can design their young to have unique combinations of traits, but what the end result will be is anybody’s guess – you could hand a different group exactly the same set of potentials and the maturing Azurial will be markedly different.
Sidebar: An analytic tool for characters
This is more akin to what goes on in human societies than most humans like to think. The initial part of the process is simply largely hidden from view, inferred by the demonstrated traits and abilities of the parents. These create potentials, and social status and educational opportunities present what opportunities the child has to express and develop those potentials.
The intersection between potential and opportunity provides a relatively strict ranking of developed abilities: (1) Both; (2) Interests with the Potential; (3) Interests without the potential; (4) Potentials without interest; (5) No interest and no potential but socially mandated; and (5) No, interest, No potential, no mandate.
Insight can be acquired into any character by assigning their skills into these different categories. The higher the net score in the skill, the earlier it should appear in the lists. Try to distribute them as evenly as possible – so if you have 10 skills, you should have 2 per category on average, and no more than three in any one category. Four would be exceptional.
This can create hard choices, but those are where insights are formed. What you are essentially doing is probing the question, “Why is this skill at this score? Why not higher? Why not lower?”
For a single skill, the results can be interesting, even insightful. For a more fully-realized character analyzed in full, they can be revealing, even revelatory.
The GM can’t really do this analysis of a PC without the player, but he can do NPCs. Players can analyze their PCs on their own, of course, but a collaborative effort with the GM will frequently yield a better understanding of the PC for both parties.
When you have these insights, put them in writing. They will serve as signposts to what the character should be developing, in terms of future skills and personal growth, and should signal the GM what opportunities he should make available to the PC, what type of individuals the PC will relate to, and so on.
Useful.
9.4 Azurians
The Azurian stage marks two developmental paths which generally occur in tandem, though development in one can be temporarily retarded in some individuals.
The first is a refinement of personality and self-understanding.
The second is a greater capacity to interact with the world, generally manifesting in a more complex physical form. While it’s not necessary for this form to be humanoid, it often is – from the ‘waist up’, anyway.
A third line of development is in education and vocational training; during this stage, this aspect of the individual’s life is under their control and not the control of the parents. Quite often, this is not apparent to the casual observer, but it can be a defining factor, if the Azurian choose to seek off-world experiences, for example.
Azurians are either thoughtful, quiet, and contemplative (but not shy), or they are boisterous, outspoken, and energetic (but not empty-headed). Neither nerds nor jocks, though there is a tendency for individuals to be misdefined by outsiders into those categories. “Jocks” can be studying higher physics, “Nerds” can be contemplating Internal Plumbing. Both groups will frequently surprise those outsiders mentioned.
9.5 Azurites
An Azurite has a self-defined career that they find compelling enough to direct their full physical and mental efforts toward, the result of the blend of education, training, and personality.
No matter what the career path, an Azurian understands and appreciates how his particular personality profile creates an advantage within that career, even if it’s just “I find ‘X’, fascinating.”
Other aspects of the individual’s potentials are relegated to the status of “hobbies and interests” unless directly related to, or secondarily important to, the primary career. They represent fallback positions should the individual’s career not be in demand, or be oversupplied with qualified individuals – and are a diversion from any stress and strain resulting from the primary career. It’s all very human, really..
10. Azurian History
Until they were discovered by human explorers, Azuria had little comprehension of the wider universe. Too much of it was washed out by the riot of change in the night sky, and none of it was constant enough to be placed within a logical framework that would permit them to deduce the existence of parts of a structure that were not so densely packed with stellar bodies in motion.
They named it for the color which dominated both the landscape and the inhabitants.
11. Azurian Culture & Society
11.1 Something New!
Most Azurians will never encounter a non-Azurian. Such a visitor will be “something new” and will be the center of attention for everyone they meet, at least for a while.
But there are always a few who have abnormal reactions to the strange and different – some will view the visitor as a threat, some will view them as a danger, and some will regard them as inherently inferior.
While most Azurians will be too polite to do more than grumble to the alien or about the alien, there are a few who may take stronger measures.
Fortunately, the precautions that must be taken against the environment also protect the casual from most of what these malcontents can inflict upon their person.
11.2 Children are the responsibility of all
Any passing Azurite who encounters one or more Azurials automatically assumes responsibility for and over them until another arrives to replace them. Adults can and do come and go as needed, but there is always an adult at the heart of such swarms.
There is little or no control exerted over the children; they are free to go where they will, and (in general terms) do what they want; unless their actions place themselves or others in danger, authority is not exerted beyond making sure that their games do not get out of hand. They may need to resolve some minor conflict, as might happen when supervising any playground, but such control is light and usually takes the form of a “lesson”, engaging the endless curiosity of the young and leading them to decide that certain behaviors are unacceptable or unsafe.
12. Azurian Politics
Azuria is led by the “Ascendant Chorus”, which occupy a building specifically designed for government function, the Chambers Of Chorus.
The landscape and architecture leading to the Chambers is quite remarkable – a single isolated mountain rising out of the clouds does nothing but exaggerate the epic scale of the Chambers, which rise out of a valley in the base of the mountain, managing to feel both manufactured and organic at the same time, serious and whimsical in parallel – much like the Azurians themselves, you note.
The Chambers are actually two towers, connected at both top and bottom of the smaller. You ascend through the lower parts of the towers by ramps, staircases, and vertical shafts (which may or may not have lifts in them depending on the technology level of your campaign).
The smaller tower contains administrators and clerks, or their local equivalents, while the Council itself and staff occupy the taller tower, ordered strictly by seniority, rank, and the importance attached to their post.
12.1 Appointment to the Chorus
Positions are never allocated ‘at large’ or by seniority, the way it seems to happen in human administrations; instead, prospective candidates for a given position must advocate their ideas for improvement within the division for which they are applying, and a select group within the Chorus, whose job it is to evaluate prospective members, determines whose ideas are most practical and useful, assisted by experts in the relevant field as necessary.
Once successful in achieving Appointment to the Chorus, a Chorus Member is also allocated a specific segment of the population for whose interests they must advocate, who they must represent, and to whom they must report, in addition to carrying out the functions of the bureaucratic position for which they have successfully applied.
Chorus members can be removed at any time by the Chorus for failing the latter, or by those they represent if that representation is inadequate, so neither duty can be neglected.
Political Exposure
This creates a political atmosphere that is both distinctively different and yet familiar, as this excerpt from the adventure shows:
“This matters,” Quasima told you telepathically. “By asking for outside help, Meta-Lar has exposed himself to ridicule and accusations of inadequacy that could cost him his career.
The only way that fate can be avoided is if the situation is seen as serious enough that not seeking such help when it is known to be available would be tantamount to an admission of the same shortcoming.
Whether or not the severity of the situation has been clearly and correctly assessed, the act of asking for assistance defines how seriously Meta-Lar views the problem.”
[Meta-Lar was the name given to the current Leader of the Chorus, in effect, the head of Government.]
The final illustration for this article is of the leader mentioned above and his Assistant, who features in excerpts that follow..
Overstepping Bounds
You arrived at a well-appointed office with lots of smoothly-polished blue marble slabs, 20 feet tall by 4 feet wide, mounted on walls of a muted gray-white color. Tastefully used as highlights here and there are gold trim and golden lamps. Entering, you were greeted by an Azurite you have never met before, who seems to still be more late-stage Azurian than Azurite in many respects, just barely able to maintain a sufficiently-humanoid shape with which to perform his duties, which are presumably receptionist-secretarial in nature.
“Welcome – you must be the Doc-Tor and Quasi-Ma. Meta-Lar is in gestalt at the moment, obtaining the latest updates. I am Part-Eth, and serve as manager of Meta-Lar’s schedule. He has asked Social Engineering Expert Quantum-Sanz to attend as well, but Quaze – as he likes to be addressed – has not yet arrived. It’s entirely likely that he is also participating in the Briefing. In the meantime, may I get you a serving of particulate Nickle-Hrydrate ions?”
[The Doctor didn’t think that would be all that compatible with his Biology.]
About 15 minutes later, Meta-Lar emerges from his inner office, his voice booming across the room like rolling thunder. At least partly, this has to be a professional affectation, he wasn’t quite so voluminous at the Feast. “Doc-Tor! Thank you for coming. Have your biological needs been provided?”
Quasima interjected before the Doctor could frame a polite response: “The offered refreshments were entirely appropriate – to an Azurite, not to a demi-human analogue.”
The room seems to brighten dramatically as Meta-Lar darkens and sprouts additional bolts of lightning. “Part-Eth, you were specifically warned that a demi-human analogue would be arriving for an urgent meeting and that he was to be shown full courtesy! Your Azurian-first philosophy often works to your advantage in performing your duties, but this breach of protocol and ill-manners places your position in jeopardy. I will discuss this with you again when time permits. Schedule a twentieth-cycle this after-zenith for a dressing down and performance evaluation. And if I were you, I would spend the intervening time considering carefully the value that you intend to offer in service to the Chorus, hereafter.”
Doctor, it’s clear that Meta-Lar wants to tear strips off his receptionist-cum-secretary-cum-office manager for this diplomatic faux-pas. While you were not particularly fussed, I expect, having provided your own refreshments just in case, the next non-Azurian with an appointment might be less casual about such things, to the diplomatic detriment of Azuria. At the same time, you probably don’t want to be the reason he loses his career as a civil servant, which is a real possibility when you filter Meta-Lar’s words through what Quasima explained to you earlier.
I then put the questions to the player: “Are you intervening? And, if so, what are you saying and who too?”.
A secured War Room
With the unpleasantness dealt with, Meta-Lar turns back to you, and at considerably more intimate volume levels, advises that “The information you will need to understand the crisis is extremely sensitive. It can only be imparted in a secured environment. I do not know it, myself, at this time, because I have placed it within a secured compartment within my mind. Quasi-Ma, not all Azurites are capable of this, and it is not a failing on your part not to be one of them, given that you only Ascended to adulthood yesterday. If you cannot do so, then you must remain here.”
Quasima replies, As assistant to the Doctor, I found the need to have such a capacity. It will present no difficulty.”
Nodding, the planetary leader – all 10 feet tall of him – leads you into the outer chamber, a hub leading to multiple office spaces. Approaching a blank wall, he pauses to warn, “This room is telepathically shielded, and swept for other recording devices four times daily. To those accustomed to the constant conversation of the world in general, the silence can be disconcerting. It tends to make Azurians ‘shout’ – probably to try and fill the space with noise. I suspect that you will have little trouble, as you’ve had considerable time away from the noise of home, but wished to warn you. Social Engineering Expert Quantum-Sanz is already within, waiting for us – or so I have been led to believe.”
With that, he opens a hidden door and leads the two of you through into a chamber that seems to have been tacked onto the side of the tower in such a way that its existence isn’t obvious from the outside – and then hidden from the inside. Doctor, you notice that it contains telepathic shielding of very high quality embedded within the walls; the constant hubbub of telepathic conversations stops abruptly, and silence seems to rush in, creating a void.
Waiting inside, standing at a huge round ring-shaped table with inset electronic controls of some sort and a ring of 10 elevated view-screens facing outward descending from the ceiling. The walls contain a series of 15 even larger screens, with a series of small alcoves in between them everywhere except where one has been left out in favor of the entrance. Each alcove also contains a small workstation of some kind. Even smaller screens are inset and angled next to the controls; there are 16 such stations. Also at each station, in the position you would expect to see a chair, metal poles about two inches thick rise about two feet from the floor, terminating in a T. These earthing stations evidently form comfortable seating for an Azurial. At one of the stations, a human stool-top has been fitted to the crossbar, obviously for your use. You hope that you don’t have to work out how to use one of the stations, or your reputation for infallibility (assuming you have one amongst the Azurians) will be seriously dented! Or perhaps that might be a gentler let-down than what might be about to transpire.
Before you can say or do anything, the Azurite in the room rises and approaches. “You can only be Doc-Tor and Quasi-Ma. I bid you greetings from the Azurian Institute Of Higher Learning. My formal name is Quantum-Sanz, but I prefer to be called Quaze to the maximum extent that informality is permitted. Congratulations, young Quasi-Ma, on your Ascension.”
Quasima replies, “Thank you, Respected Quaze. My brother sends his regards; he is a student within your department, one of many so I doubt that you would know his name.”
“You speak, of course, of Semi-Phran. Quite the prodigy, that one, which is obviously why his name has come to my attention on a number of occasions. I had to formally approve his occasional service on behalf of the Council; officially, he is not yet old enough for such responsibilities.”
Doctor, it’s dawning on you that the field on which Quaze is expert might be better described as “Comparative Xenosociology”, i.e. “Diplomatic Relations”. He is probably the head of the Diplomatic Corps of Azuria – and it’s worth taking a moment to recall that most Intelligence Services are run through such departments. ‘I prefer to be called Quaze,’ indeed!
Meta-Lar takes up a position with Quaze to his right and the Doctor to his left, with Quasima one station further around from the Time Lord. Touching one of the controls, his section of the ring-shaped table elevates about eight inches, as does his seating and the floor from which it emerges. A second ring around rises four inches to form a step. Of course, the psionic shielding must interferes with the Azurian ability to fly, too.
In a nutshell
I don’t think there’s huge value in actually describing the crisis in detail. Instead, here’s a very quick summary, highlighting those parts that might be relevant to an understanding of Azurian Society & Politics.
The uniqueness of their world means that there are very few suitable worlds for Azuria to colonize. They have made such attempts in the past, in fact, three times, and each has been a catastrophic failure. There are multiple theories as to why – the existence of someone making sure their experiment doesn’t escape the lab not being one of them.
Because any experimentation to test these various theories would have placed the participating Azurites at considerable risk, all such experimentation was banned at the same time that it became enshrined in their legal code that any further colonization attempts be illegal. This was all some significant fraction of a century in the past. Azuria has an annual day of remembrance for those who were lost in the past attempts.
.
Five years ago, Meta-Lar very quietly reversed that decision and established a colony on a distant world that was being artificially “Azuria-formed” around another neutron star fragment. Azuria, of necessity, resides in a volume of space that is inherently crowded and energetic. This causes numerous repeated incidents of extreme violence, sufficient that most species would deem it to be uninhabitable. It is simply too close to the galactic core and the super-black-hole that lurks there. Although the public remains unaware of it, there have been more than 140 documented near-cataclysms that threatened our world’s ongoing existence over the last 3500 years, since our recorded history began. Some were closer to catastrophe than others, but in all of them, there was a tangible risk of the destruction of the planet.Collisions between stars occur at a rate 900,000 times more frequent in this part of the galaxy as they do out in the arms that are more comfortable for other species. Gamma-ray bursts are 10,000 times more common, as are nova and supernova. Orbital mechanics are disrupted or rearranged at more than one billion times the frequency. Stars age at a rate more than 5,000 times that of more benign areas of the galaxy. To one in [Meta-Lars’s] position, the risk posed is unacceptable and intolerable. For the preservation of Azurites in the face of planetary destruction, an interstellar colony is essential.
Meta-Lar is a leader because he considers himself fit to make the big decisions, even overruling the general population if he thinks they are wrong. This, naturally, risks his career should things not work out right. “The Buck Stops Here!”
The rest of the briefing dealt with the most credible causes of the past failures and how every conceivable precaution was taken to prevent a repeat.
13. Azurian Naming
Many things on Azuria are not quite what they seem to be, and this is reflected in their names. Many of them begin with prefixes like Quasi- or Semi- or Neo- or even Partly-, or any of a dozen alternatives, all of them reflective of this fact.
The name is carefully chosen to be reflective of the individual identity, and settling on a clear and permanent name is one of the signs of imminent maturity. Most Azurians choose a name fairly youthfully, and 40% change it a number of times before choosing a definitive expression.
Azurians borrow liberally and with abandon from other languages to derive their names.
Quasima
The NPC representing this species in the campaign is named “Quasi-Ma” – “Ma” being a human word from Albania which means ‘Me’. His name literally means “Almost Me” – a reflection of the philosophic quality of a personal name being both an identity, and reflective of that identity, and yet not the totality of that identity at all, not even symbolically.
But in this case, it was chosen because all of the career choices open to the Azurite didn’t quite seem to fit – several were close, but none of them were quite ‘Him’. The resulting uncertainty regarding life direction is unusual in an Azurite, and this distinctiveness manifested in a name choice.
Wrap-up
Azuria is a unique environment, which draws upon a wide range of literary and gaming sources and binds these elements together in a pseudo-science that sounds plausible enough to pass muster in a game environment. The individuals get to be fun and boisterous and polite all at the same time. They suffer from many (but not all) human failings, or have their own analogues of those failings, making them as fun to play as any other species you can name. They make good allies, and implacable enemies. As with the previous offering, an artificial ‘hidden origin’ hand-waves away a lot of potential inconsistency. I hope readers have fun with this creation!
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