Physiology
The Tethysi are a very odd sight to most other nations. In order to avoid overpopulation in the limited resources of their barren home, they chose for their children to take much smaller forms. As a result, Tethysi appear as small shelled creatures, usually less than ten centimetres in length. Snails are the most common, but nautiloids, isopods, aquatic beetles, crabs, turtles, and many other forms have been seen, in a dizzying array of colours.
The Tethysi often show some deviations from their base animal shapes, however - often in the form of more developed silver-flecked eyes, useable hands or tentacle-equivalents for writing, and more complex mouths for speaking.
They normally cannot breathe air, but with their astonishing technological advancement, have designed survival pods that enable them to traverse many kinds of hostile environment in a small bubble of their preferred sediment like a floating fishbowl. Not all Tethysi rely entirely on this bubble however, as the Tethysi have discovered four sources of power - technology, magic, eldritch truth and souls - and some take on or fully adopt aspects of these powers, leading to the likes of cyborgs and liches being fairly common sights.
Language
Tethysian is a language of bubbles, that has changed a great deal since the days of the Aquatic Librarian Knights, the few remnants of which still speak the archaic form. When 'spoken' among modern Tethysi, they shape the water in their mouths to form bubbles within bubbles, in careful and complex configurations that compose the alphabet of the nation. The advanced perceptions and intellects of the Tethysi are able to produce and track these bubbles at considerable speed, enabling full communication, albeit still considerably slower than most cultures would be used to.
Many Tethysi have narratechnology built into their survival pods that automatically reads these bubbles and converts them into sounds, to enable communication with other species.
Autobiokochies
Another vital aspect of the Tethysi is their Autobiokochies. When two Tethysi become a couple, they can choose to create a new book, and write within it the introduction - in this way they craft their child, who manifests most commonly as the physical equivalent of a pre-teen, with the attributes and traits written within their book - though, often, the words shift and change from what the parents intended. This is how the Tethysi went from humanoids to what they are now. The book is then transformed into the shell of the child, with that introduction forming the first microscopic letters dotting its surface, more appearing to record everything the Tethysian does. Once the Tethysian dies, the shell is left behind. Anyone listening at the opening of the shell will hear the former inhabitant's life story played out like an audiobook, and so most shells - or Autobiokochies, as they become known - find their way to the Grand Libraries, where scribes listen and write out their life story to accompany the shell on the shelf.
Thirteen
There are no 'Tethys 1-12'. The '13' in the nation's name refers to the planet. The Nation first developed on the 13th planet of the Tethys star system, and so that was the planet's name. One day that ocean world broke orbit under its own power, and began to maraud throughout the galaxy ringed by a massive fleet. When it met its end, the Tethysi split into thirteen fleets, each with their own distinct culture, and then replaced those with thirteen spacefaring Grand Libraries, before their planet was mysteriously rediscovered.
Culture
The Tethysi have a strong dramatic and literary culture, extolling honesty and novelty above all, lauding accomplishments and embracing hobbies and obsessions to extremes. Literature is upheld as the finest part of their culture, but music and theatre are also very highly regarded. Modern Tethysi pursue peaceful lives, though their tremendous technological and narrative capabilities ensure they are by no means defenceless. Tethysi are predisposed towards extremes of scholastic introversion or adventurous extroversion, often in some combination with those Tethysi who adventure alone into dangerous ruins to learn all they can and expand the nation's knowledge. That knowledge is stored in the Grand Libraries, which are always open to visitors from (almost) all civilisations.
Tethysi have a strange relationship with religion, being both scornful and often rude towards the idea of worship, but devoted themselves to The Story, the idea that there is a proper narrative their lives should follow and all of reality should be guided down, and great power that can be drawn from it.
Many Tethysi choose to pursue the Thirteen Ways. These are four sources of power and three methods of power, in combination.
Sources:
These are the sources of power, all aspects of The Story.
- Tech: The pursuit of Narratechnology, devices powered by narrative convenience and powerful symbolism.
- Magic: The rational pursuit of means of altering reality to one's whim, drawing from tried and tested runes and diagrams.
- Souls: Drawing on the power of stories past, interacting with the dead, and bridging the gap between them and the living.
- Cosmic: Finding where logic fails, the dark parts of the universe where sanity is a hindrance and reality a splintering veil, beyond which beings of incomprehensibility and madness watch and wait.
These are the methods used to interact with those powers.
- Controller: The Tethysian acquires power through domination and separation, by creating or receiving a construct such as a robot powered by their source that they then control.
- Symbiont: The Tethysian alters part of themself to accept their source of power without wholly giving themself over to it, such as bionic components or cosmic mutations.
- Incarnation: The Tethysian wholly gives themself to their source of power, becoming a living (or often not quite) embodiment of that source, such as a spirit being or android.
Some Tethysi eschew any of the above to pursue narrative power in its purest form. It is by far the most difficult path, with most followers barely advancing beyond their starting point, but those who have managed to pursue it have often become some of the most notable Tethysi of their generation.
