Testrian

Overview

Testrians are a spacefaring people who carry a spiralled shell and a slime of their own making, and both answer entirely to them. The shell opens, closes and folds away into the body when it is not wanted. The slime lies over the whole body beneath it, and every property it has is set by the testrian wearing it.

They are predators, and they are quick. Gender is individual, as it is everywhere else in this guide.

There are no testrian breeds.

Physical traits

Testrians run anywhere from four to eight feet tall, and where any of them falls in that range is their own.

The skin is soft and extraordinarily smooth, thick and slightly yielding under pressure. The feet are broad and heavily muscled, carrying real gastropod structure through the sole, and they end in individual toes. The hands are built the same way — muscular and on the larger side — and they stay thoroughly dextrous across a full five fingers.

Short antennae read the surroundings. The eyes are set in the face the way any predator’s are, and the pupils shift between a slit and a round the way the light asks, or the way the testrian decides.

The shell

The shell spirals, and its patterning belongs to the individual.

It expands and contracts, and how far it is expanded settles what it is for. Held close it is armour. Opened out it becomes a space to withdraw into properly, and a testrian who wants shelter has it with them already.

Folded away, it goes into the body and leaves the line of the back clean. Bringing it back out is as ordinary as putting it away.

The slime

Testrian bodies produce the slime, and it covers them completely beneath the shell at all times.

What it touches is decided rather than accidental. A testrian chooses what the slime sticks to and what it passes over, which is why they leave a trail only when they intend to, and why they can climb by making a surface tacky for exactly as long as they are on it.

The rest of what it does follows the same principle — the testrian sets the property, and the slime takes it on.

Fire has a very hard time getting through it.

Sealing runs tight enough to hold a vacuum.

Insulation works in both directions, against heat and against cold alike.

Impact is absorbed, and thoroughly.

Healing draws on cellular regeneration, applied to a wound and left to work.

Texture follows the task. Left to itself on the body the slime is thick and warm; put to work it runs cooler and harder. Healing sets firm over a wound. Sealing and sticking go thick and tacky. Impact absorption turns almost gel-like. A testrian moves it between these at will.

Colour runs from a darker version of their own skin tone through to something closer to metal, and the skin’s colour carries through even at the metallic end.

Homeworld and ships

Testrians have a world of their own and they live on it. It is home in the ordinary sense, and a testrian who spends their life there is unremarkable.

They also build ships, and they take to the stars often. The travelling and the homeworld sit alongside each other rather than one having replaced the other.

Ageing

Testrians age slowly, and they do age. A testrian may live for hundreds of years, and many live for thousands.

Strength holds nearly the whole way. A testrian stays as capable at a thousand years as they were at a hundred, and the decline arrives only very close to the end.

Magic

The slime sits in both categories at once. The body makes it, which is biology, and the regeneration it carries when applied to a wound is magical. Every testrian has it, and that is the whole of what the species fixes.

Nothing else is settled. Whether a testrian is tied to magic beyond the slime, and what that tie looks like, is theirs alone.

Shared instincts

Testrians share the shell, the slime, the antennae, and the build and speed of a predator. That is the list.

Temperament belongs to the individual, and the shell invites a reading it does not support — someone who withdraws, waits, and keeps their own counsel. The shell is a tool with two settings and it says nothing about the person carrying it. A testrian may open it constantly or keep it folded away for years, and either tells you about their preferences rather than their character.

Where the name comes from

The name comes from Latin testa — shell, earthen vessel, shard — the root behind testudo, the Roman shield formation named for a tortoise’s shell, and behind the English testaceous. It points at the shell rather than at the animal.

The animal behind the concept is the land snail. Snails travel on a broad muscular foot lubricated by mucus, laying a trail as they go; the shell is calcium carbonate, coiled in a logarithmic spiral; many seal the opening behind an operculum, and others wall themselves in behind a dried epiphragm through a season of drought. Most land snails are simultaneous hermaphrodites, and nearly everything eats them.

We take the shell, the spiral, the slime and the muscular foot. The slowness stays behind, and so does the prey status — testrians are quick, and they hunt. The hermaphroditism stays behind as well, since gender here is individual. And the trail is the one detail we kept by inverting it: a snail leaves one because it cannot do otherwise, and a testrian leaves one because they chose to.

Field notes

Individual shell patterning, skin and slime colouring, height, the look and feel of the slime and what any testrian actually does with it all belong on each member’s own page.