Creature:Zazlotl

''This page is still under initial construction. Two races mentioned below still do not possess names, and are therefore listed as "****" and "____". This is to more easily differentiate between the two species, to make the Historical Background areas they are mentioned in that much easier to read.''

Information
The Zazlotl are a race of vertebrates, superficially resembling fully marine salamanders. They have evolved into quadrupeds, in compliance with their crawling lifestyle, but they can also swim freely by folding their legs against their body and paddling with their tail and snaking their body through the water. Like some of the other Hydrothian sapients, the gravity of their planet coupled with their crawling lifestyle has led to them being capable of standing bipedally outside their home environments (or in more modern times, even while in the pressurized cities built to accommodate the various other Crux races).

Unlike the other sapient species on Hydroth, they evolved on the submerged coastal plains of their home continent, where they spent their lives crawling throughout the caves riddling the "landscape". These continents never successfully reached the surface of the vast oceans, and therefore the Zazlotl and many other similar species living in these areas were the closest thing the planet has to a terrestrial specimen.

Their eyes are positioned somewhat more stereoscopically than the Zolacians and ____s, due to their diet of small burrowing invertebrates. Their mouths are almost centered on a shovel-like head, and possess sharp bony ridges and powerful muscles for crushing or slicing through prey. These eyes are highly-adjustable, and can focus to see both in 'outside' and cavernous environments. However, they are not well suited for sight above water, and they are almost never seen off-world without their trademark pressurized helmets.

Zazlotls led a cautious lifestyle for a long time, due in part to their soft bodies and exposed, feathery gills. While these gills cannot be withdrawn into the skull, they can be waved about to increase water circulation to them.

Statistics
Species Type: Cold-blooded Marine Vertebrate Lifestyle: Social Carnivores Hunt/Forage Success Rate: 100% Forage (78% success rate in natural habitats, 32% success rate on more land-based environments) Armor: Zazlotl skin is weak and susceptible, leaving them to require the creation of more durable armors through their technological prowess, or the prowess of their allies. Defenses: In a way somewhat similar to the Zolacians, the Zazlotls' main natural defense is hiding in caves or attempting to swim away after biting a foe. In more modern times, this is impractical, and they will therefore utilize body armors, cybernetic implants, and energy shields. Weapons: The Zazlotls only real natural weaponry is their sharp bone-plates in their mouth, therefore most of their weaponry is technological in nature. Cybernetic, energy-utilizing enhancements are not uncommon.

Tools: Under Construction

The forelimbs are capable of complex manipulation comparable to that of a Human, thanks to the evolution to allow them to grab onto areas for crawling along the sea floor. The hindlimbs however have instead adapted to pushing the rest of the body along, and cannot manipulate as well; off-world these hindlimbs are used as their legs and feet.

Method of Eating: Under Construction

Zolacians feed by way of numerous large, paddled cirri that guide plankton-laden water down to their mouth, where several smaller, more tentacle-like arms covered in bristly cilia then scoop the plankton contained therein into their mouths. Water swallowed is filtered out through their gills, allowing them to breathe. Even more cilia lines the rest of their digestive system to aid in moving food through their system. Plankton are guided down the esophagus into the stomach. Specialized organ called the paragaster excretes enzymes into the stomach to properly break down chitinous material. Once material is broken down, it passes into the intestine, where it is further broken down and absorbed into the body. Waste is excreted through four vents on the opposite end of the digestive system. These four vents allow the low levels of waste to be released in quicker periods to prevent it from having to remain exposed for longer periods. Naturally, most material is also successfully digested, leading to nearly clear 'mist' to be released, although feeding in non-local areas may result in different digestion ends.

Reproductive Rate: Like the other Hydrothian races, the Zazlotls breed during the warm "summer" seasons, during which time males and females will actively seek each other out. Mating is sexual and involves direct physical contact. Both males and females will take approximately half of the created eggs, which are placed in a pouch like organ on their backs -- this helps lower offspring mortality before their larval forms. The Zazlotls have declined the use of cloning technologies used by some allies in more modern times. Gestation: Under Construction Number of Offspring: Under Construction Offspring Survival Rate (before age of maturity): Under Construction Singular/Plural/Possessive: Zazlotl/Zazlotls/Zazlotli

Historical Background
Below is information entailing the history of the Zolacian, from simple marine organisms to spacefaring beings.

Evolutionary History
Under Construction

The Tribal Era
Under Construction

Discovery of the "Others"
With the invention of vessels that could carry them beyond the abyssal plains and through their oceans, it was not too long before they discovered other submerged continents -- 5 in all, including their own. To their surprise, they also discovered that during the eons upon eons that these continents were separated by the abyssal plains, each continent had developed their own uniquely intelligent species. Two of these species -- the ____ and the **** -- were hostile, much like the Zolacians themselves, and they therefore spent little time associating themselves with these, immediately considering them threats to their own existence.

The third, the Zazlotl, were somewhat more neutral in their actions, and would spend much time hiding in small caverns that resided upon the continental itself. The Zolacians were surprised to find any life up here at all, and these were the first race considered safe for the Zolacians to make contact with. This contact was slow and tedious at first, with each species acting more cautious than the other, but eventually a tentative agreement was reached, bringing the Zolacian and the Zazlotl people into a renaissance era. Considered by many scholars to be the shortest era of time within the Zolacian timeline, the two species' technologies boomed with the help of the other, and soon they set off to find the last of the continents, which as they expected led to the discovery of yet another sapient species.

To the Zolacian's shock and surprise, these sapients were quite similar in appearance to their own kind; in fact, the two species were genetically related to each other by a distant relative, both belonging to the same Phylum. Unlike the distrusting Zolacians, this new race, who called themselves the Hydrothi, were a peaceful people, and they had not been converted into the grass-like niche of their cousin-race. This coupling was easier on the Zolacians to accept than it was for them to accept the Zazlotl, and soon all three species were successfully trading and living together. This coupling would become known by future historians as the Troika.

An Unintentional Betrayal & the Collapse of the Troika
It was not more than a few hundred years before the Zazlotl came across the ****. The Zazlotl soon discovered that the **** were not hostile to them like they were to the Zolacians, and the two species were able to set up a relationship with one another. No harm came from this for quite a while, leading to even more prosperous times where the Troika's combined technologies influenced the few tools of the ****. However, when the Zolacians discovered their original allies had become good friends with the hostile ****, they took this as an omen. Believing it would lead to the downfall of their beloved Troika, the Zolacian leaders confronted those of the Zazlotl, initially pleading with and eventually ordering them to cut all ties to the "free-swimming monstrosities". The Zazlotl, taken aback by this order, refused, inciting their own freedom and will to do as they chose fit.

For the first few months after this dual-race Council Meeting, the Zolacians lived in complete fear for their lives, every day filling them with the dread of an attack, while every night filled them with nightmares of the same. This fear within their general populace led to anger in their councilors, who incited that they had lost the peace they had striven so hard to obtain. With the Zazlotl utterly refusing to cut off their relations to the ****, the Zolacian council chose to go to war.

Not expecting these results at all, the Zazlotl were far from prepared, and large numbers of their members were annihilated within a few days' time. Many Zazlotls fled their ancestral lands and moved into **** territory, where they were welcomed by open fins. Here the two races retaliated against the zealous Zolacians, and for a while they seemed like they would win. But when the Hydrothi were ordered to be enlisted into the former Troika's armies, the tides quickly turned, and both the Zazlotl and the **** were beaten into submission, both their technological levels being stripped from them, forcing them back to a near-tribal era.

The peace-loving Hydrothi were traumatized by what they had been apart of, and when the Zolacians explained at another meeting of their intent to bring the ____ to their knee-equivalents to prevent them from also affecting the overall safety of both species, the Hydrothi shakingly told their allies that they could not participate in the oncoming battles, as their hands were already too stained with the blood of others, and they could not let their people perform such a terrible act again, which had brought their entire populace into a dark, brooding depression. The Zolacians were disheartened by this, and reluctantly agreed to the terms; soon the Zolacian army was off to bring down the ____ culture as well. This species proved hardier than the two before it, and many Zolacian soldiers were killed in the ensuing battles; however, they eventually won with numbers, and the ____ too were beaten back.

With the few surviving soldiers returned to their home cities, the councilors began to secretly distrust their allies, the Hydrothi. Why had they chosen not to fight alongside them? If they had, perhaps the casualties on their side would have been far less, and the war would have been won far sooner. Fearful as ever, they began to wonder if the Hydrothi may one day conspire against them, as they sincerely believed the Zazlotl had before them. They eventually decided it was too risky to trust them not to, and with heavy heart-equivalents, they brought their remaining soldiers against their only remaining allies, choosing to do so under the cover of darkness. Few Hydrothi survived that bloody night; those that did were mostly larvae and juveniles, with a few adult females and males peppered sparsely between them. Those who did survive the onslaught were then forced back to their home continent, and like the others, their technology was stripped from them. With all other races beaten back onto their tribal ages, the Zolacians became the absolute rulers of the world, which they named in their honor...Zolacia.

Eventually, those who performed the dark deeds with heavy heart-equivalents perished, and the old alliances were forgotten. The generations of Zolacians who followed would rule with iron phalanges.

Zolacian Rule
The Zolacians ruled the planet of Zolacia for many thousands of years, keeping the other four sapient species in check due to what they considered as being their more hostile natures. Over time, they had lost their love for the Hydrothi and the Zazlotl, and they felt it a necessary evil to continue to keep the others at a third world technological level, preventing each from being able to properly uprise against the ridiculously more advanced Zolacians.

While the Zazlotl, ****, and ____ did not fight back against their subjugators, the peaceful Hydrothi grew increasingly enraged over time. They did not see it fair how the Zolacians treated them, and over the course of a few hundred years, with their levels of technology constantly being hampered, the became desperate. Some of the more desperate Hydrothi chose to perform espionage attacks against their overbearing neighbors, although this did not put much of a dent in the Zolacian way of life, and led to many Hydrothian casualties, which then led to more Hydrothi terrorists, fueling the cycle all over again. As time went on, the secretive Hydrothi terrorists became more and more open to their own people about their standing, and as time went on, more and more peaceful Hydrothi began to join their ranks.

Although these Hydrothian terrorists were ashamed of the position they believed that they had been forced to take, this attitude transmogrified into a true hatred as the older generations died out and new generations took their place, ones who knew nothing of peace and only of war. In their bide to take back their freedom, they had become as violent as the Zolacians themselves.

At the same time, however, the Zolacians had reached a nearly Utopian society, minus the occasional terrorist attack made by the Hydrothi, and had begun to slowly become more passive in their attitudes, now that they no longer had to worry about predators or their sapient neighbors. Initially this caused them to war with themselves for the first few hundred years, but this quickly died down once they realized what they had been doing, and that it might be an exploitable weakness to their enemies.

They had finally learned of true peace and prosperity, and started to look back towards the Hydrothi for an ally in these, their most peaceful times...but it was too late. The Hydrothi had already converted to a vicious species, and it seemed as if the Zolacians and the Hydrothi had completely switched positions, with the Hydrothian viciousness heavily fueled by their blood-hatred for their cousins, the Zolacians. Disheartened at the massive change they had unintentionally caused their cousin-race, they sadly turned their backs to them once more, and continued to keep them in a third-world culture like the Zazlotl, ****, and ____.

Crux Invasion & Initial Xenophobia
Under Construction

The Zolacian Subjugation
Under Construction

Escape From Hydoth
Under Construction

The Founding of New Zolacia
Under Construction

Open War & New Alliances
Under Construction

Allies
Under Construction

Major Allies

 * Ailodon
 * Human
 * Hushian
 * Kyisziqan
 * Platterkat

Minor Allies

 * Ciitarkian
 * Glairnog
 * Mnemosyne
 * Shrumite

Enemies
Under Construction

Major Enemies

 * Hydrothi
 * Zazlotl

Minor Enemies

 * Abyssal Zharkulan
 * Avin
 * Mohm
 * Stralk
 * Surpraxx
 * Zaryn

Notable Zazlotls

 * Cruzpuppy: Under Construction

Trivia

 * Like several of my other races listed here on SporeWikia, the Zazlotls are a race I created in 7th Grade. Like the Hydrothi and the Zolacians were spawned off of a single character -- Cruzzpuppy.
 * Unnamed for many many years, the Zazlotls finally received their species name on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at around 3:17am Alaska Standard Time.