Creature:Assan

The assanli (singular assandr, adjectival assan) were the first species in the galaxy to achieve space travel and faster-than-light travel, and the resulting empire became the foundation for the modern Federation.

Terminology
In the language of the Assanchec people, as is the root meaning "person", with further affixes -san, -var and -tar for the neuter, male and female genders respectively. Neuter and gendered words, for singular, dual and plural, respectively, have the futher suffixes -dr, -e and -li, and -n, -q and -i. Thus, for example, "two men" is asvarq and "women" is astari. Referring to the species in general, one always uses the neuter forms assan, assandr, assane and assanli.

Biology
Assanli are omnivorous bipedal endotherms covered in fine scales, with sweat glands between their scales to speed up the loss of excess heat. They average 1.61 metres in height (1.64 m for males and 1.57 m for females) and, as typical for large endotherms, their natural life expectancy is around 70 years, although medical treatments allow the healthy lifespan to be greatly extended. Typically, ethnicities originating in equatorial and coastal regions have drab green scales to block ultraviolet light, while those from elsewhere have lighter scales so that UV can be used for vitamin D synthesis. Some patches of skin, particularly on the torso, have chromatophores capable of undergoing colour change which are used for expressing emotions.

Assanli are naturally digitigrade with a two-fingered prehensile tail, although the skeletons of individuals who have had their tail removed at birth can grow to adapt to plantigrade locomotion, adopting an erect posture. This is mainly due to the fact that the hips and heels of hatchlings are very plastic, and the heel only grows to its full length (which is itself fairly short) when under the tension of digitigrade running during late childhood. Homologous to the legs are a pair of arms at the top of the torso, which end in five-fingered hands, of which three fingers have three joints each and the other two are two-jointed opposable thumbs. All of the digits have thick claw-like fingernails at their tips, protecting and enhancing their softened and sensitive pads, and have a thin cutaneous membrane between them extending part-way up the first segment.

The assan head is built around a large cranium atop a wide mandible. The face is extremely flat, consisting of two large trichromatic lensed eyes above two pairs of nostrils that in turn sit directly above the lipped mouth, and inside the mouth is a long cylindrical tongue and four types of specialised teeth. Aided by a highly developed larynx and conscious control over the diaphragm, the mouth is capable of verbal communication, but it has very little capacity for emotional display. On each side of the head is a small round ear, adapted for hearing the vocalisations of other assanli.

Due to the fierce arms race between animals and pathogens on Prasandadr, assanli feature many adaptations towards combating disease. Their innate immune system is strongly focused on anatomic barriers, with most bodily fluids being filled with disinfective molecules and proteins, while their adaptive immune system has a long-lasting hereditary immunological memory and a very rapid response time; as a side-effect, this means that allergies and autoimmune diseases were highly prevalent prior to the advent of effective therapies in the early interplanetary age.

Assanli have little sexual dimorphism; the females tend to be 5-10 cm shorter than the males and are brighter in colouration, and they have wider hips for the purposes of growing and laying their eggs. In both sexes, the reproductive and digestive tracts end in a single orifice, the cloaca. Assanli are continuous breeders, although there is some seasonal variation: females are at their most fertile in the early wet season (in equatorial regions) or spring (elsewhere) when food is at its most available and will continue to be for the coming months. Two or three ova are released at a time, and after fertilisation, they grow into hard-shelled eggs - averaging 20 cm long and 12 cm wide - which are laid three weeks after mating. The eggs hatch four months later, and the hatchlings are very underdeveloped, especially in terms of brain development, so they require a lot of care for the first ten years. A further decade usually passes before they become fully independent from their family.

Religion and Spirituality
Much of the assan traditional worldview was shaped by the prevalence of disease, due to microbes' ability to rapidly evolve within individual habitats and then spread across Prasandadr via migrating populations of animals. In particular, the contagion heuristic (the idea that abstract concepts, such as disease, are physical forces capable of moving between people or objects) proved very effective for dealing with pathogens via quarantine despite the fact that their existence was not yet known, and thus became firmly entrenched within the collective psyche and culture of the species. Supernatural beliefs, therefore, became primarily focused on the existence of immaterial substances and, to a varying extent, sentient spirit beings composed of these substances. Conversely, the principle of similarity ("like affects like") has minimal presence in assan beliefs, since cures for diseases based on similarity consistently failed during the frequent plagues when they were needed the most. Instead, finding working cures in a protoscientific manner became a priority for healers. While many cultures did not care how these cures worked (that they helped the power of healing overcome that of disease was enough), others were far more curious as to their deeper workings and developed a form of alchemy based on how they supposed different immaterial substances interact with each other.

The interconnectedness of Prasandadr's societies led to the evolution of global syncretism, a blend of the various animistic beliefs and religious ceremonies developed among each the planet's cultures and exchanged between them all. This syncretism has no central authority or formal dogma, and most specific tenets and rituals are specific to a small region or even a single ethnic group, although a few common ideas are held by the vast majority of its adherents.

Immaterial substances come in pairs, each substance having an opposing effect to its counterpart. Most of these pairs must be held in balance for the world to function, but there is one exception: life (or healing) and disease. Disease, whether this is a physical malady or the corruption of a government, must always be fought, while the power of healing is to be revered with purification rituals (which had the benefit of maintaining good hygiene). Indeed, the fall of empires due to plague or famine was usually rationalised with the claim that the moral disease of a nation or its rulers spread out into the land and made the people and crops fall ill too. Several societies even adopted a belief that entire classes or races of people were "spiritually infected" and established caste systems as a form of quarantine, but later advances in medicine resulted in wide-scale cultural shifts in emphasis from quarantine to healing which caused most of these doctines to fall out of public favour.

Historically, there were two competing tendencies when it came to enumerating the immaterial substances: minimalists, who believed that there were very few pairs, and pluralists, who believed that there were many pairs, possibly infinite in number. For example, minimalists would hold that heat/cold, light/dark and fire/water were all manifestations of a single pair, while pluralists would not only disagree but often further divide light into its different colours. In practice, the majority of people held an intermediate position, not having any metaphysical preference towards either extreme, but most recorded debates were between philosophers of the minimalist and pluralist schools. While late pre-industrial science seemed to support the pluralists, with the discovery of gravity, electricity, and numerous chemical elements, further progress in thermodynamics, field theory and nuclear physics helped to unify the majority of these "substances". Within two centuries of the industrial revolution, minimalism had evolved into the entirely non-spiritual physicalism, while pluralism had become the dominant religious paradigm in the form of panpsychism which held that every emergent concept and structure was associated with an immaterial spirit-substance.

Shamans
In nearly every pre-agricultural assan community, shamans were the centre of spiritual life. It is the task of shamans to intervene in the immaterial world on behalf of their people in order to help keep the various immaterial substances in balance. The shaman had permission to stand out of space of normality, where the breakdown of cultural boundaries could help gather insights for the community. They do this by entering trance states, usually by the consumption of hallucinogenic plants, repetitive music and dance, deep meditation on mystical sigils (which co-evolved with the development of more intense hallucinatory experiences), or some combination of the three, which allows them to perceive a realm of spirits. The shaman was often located on the edge of the community, whose wisdom needed an outside perspective and was regarded with caution even by the leaders of the clan.

Traditionally, shamans were believed to be chosen by the community's totem spirits against their will. The spirits would force them to undergo a rite of passage that involved being inflicted with a non-contagious disease that sent their bodies into a trance state and their souls into the immaterial world; if the initiate succeeded at the task they were given there, they discovered the secret to recovery from the disease and returned to the material world as a true shaman. Using this esoteric knowledge, the shaman played a helping hand in cultivating members of the community who appeared to have succumbed to the possession of spirits, using traditions to seek order and meaning. The way that unsuccessful shamans, who succumbed to their illness and died, were treated depended on the culture. In the most severe cases, their failure brought lasting shame upon their family.

Once agriculture allowed for the growth of much larger societies, solitary shamanism often evolved into communal priesthood, often with a particular family line being deemed intrinsically "clean" and chosen for the task of the shaman. Initiation rituals were still required, but they were much less life-threatening than the ancient shamanic rite of passage. Many priesthoods built city temples around communal shrines and became wealthy from the tithes and donations of the public, but others - particularly voluntary, rather than familial, priesthoods - chose to live ascetic lives away from major settlements, believing that they were better able to serve their purpose without the distractions and diseases of civilisation. The religious symbolism also evolved with the advent of agriculture, because the relationship with the land began to change. The spirits of hallucinogenic plants gave way to the gods and goddesses of grain and fruit.