(Boimler note: I've brought on our Mellanoid officer, Ens. Eaurp Guz, and our resident expert on Mellanoid biology, D'vana Tendi)
name: Mellanoid Slime Worm
(Guz note: some mellanoids prefer to be called Gymnomi. Personally I don't care that much.)
Greeting: Mellanoid Slime Worms react poorly to friendly insults. At first their righteous indignation might seem like a positive response, but be fair warned! You are not befriending them.
(Boimler note: wait, who wrote this?)
(Mariner note: looks like the uh, Zaldan who made first contact with them in the 30s?)
Taboos:
Eating in public, uncovered skin, abducting their children as pets. They do not take kindly to any kind of romantic advances.
(Guz: ...)
(Tendi: ...)
(Mariner: Girl.)
Important Biological Facts:
* Mellanoid Slime Worms are composed of a single amorphous cell which can shapeshift into any number of revolting forms, but which do seem to be willing to take on a bipedal appearance when dealing with aliens.
(Tendi note: actually mellanoid slimes are multicellular!)
(Guz note: ...wait what? We've always been mostly humanoid! And nonhumanoid forms aren't revolting! They're beautiful! Some of my best friends have nonstandard features.)
* Mellanoid slimes have no sex
(Mariner note: wow, sick burn)
and no gender
(Guz note: I am a woman. So that's not quite accurate. Mellanoids are assigned agender at birth but a growing movement is recognizing that some of us do experience gender.)
and reproduce asexually.
* Not much is known about Mellanoid Slime Worms. Their biology and evolution are still a mystery.
(Tendi footnote: Mellanoid Slime Worms are multicellular organisms comprised mostly of visceral slime with a gelatin skeleton made of skeletal gelatin. Their nervous system is highly redundant and spread throughout the body, with slightly darker regions corresponding to regions of higher nerve density. All sensory cells can feel all senses, so they experience touch, taste, sound, sight, and other senses in their whole bodies, but form sensory organs to concentrate those senses. The biomolecular composition is--)
(Boimler: ok Ada Lovelace, we don't need the footnote to be *that* big.)
Cultural Context:
The Mellanoid Slime Worms posses a highly repressed culture, lacking in entertainment, interpersonal interactions, and with individuals living in even the richest and most technologically advanced nations on their planet being confined to abject poverty. Their technology is rudimentary, with steam propulsion still in common use on land,
(Guz footnote: We don't live in poverty! We just have movie theaters instead of televisions, public kitchens instead of restaurants and dining rooms, libraries instead of computers. And Advanced Steam engines are cool, ok! They were cheaper to run than diesel engines for many years.)
and their spaceflight manifests as small capsules incapable of even safely making the journey to the nearest gas giant without assistance.
(Don't even get me STARTED on the rockets of the time. Oh globs, the things we were able to do with only chemical rockets back in the 30s and 40s! Probe missions to Glerbuh and Rabbit, crewed missions to Omen and Oldsky... And that's before the latest warp drive prototypes. When I was in the astronaut corps, they were working on a warp-2 drive! And that's transwarp-2, so that's like 26% faster than human warp drives were at the same point in development. Mellanoids pride ourselves in our space exploration, which is why even now we're in the Federation we still have our own space program.)
(Boimler: Huh. That's it? I thought there'd be more. You know, like, something about the history, maybe native animals, why the taboos are the way they are. Just something about steam trains and rocket ships?)
(Guz: No actually I think they pretty much hit the nail on the head. I can't think of a reason anyone would need to know more about my species if they can't just ask. I mean, Tendi's medical research is pretty thorough.)
(Mariner: Hey I just tried to access the research, why is it uh. Age-locked?)
(Guz: Ohhhh...)
(Tendi: Ok we can stop talking about this now!)
(Boimler: Eh, it's probably fine. I can't think of a reason why a minor would need to know critical biological details about a mellanoid slime worm.)
(Guz: You'd have to be like, an alien raising a mellanoid all on your own. And there's not many baby slime worms off-planet!)