Woodwistler

Woodwistlers are a species of sentient, ambulatory plants from the planet Sunchorus. Their name derives from their natural mode of communication, which is based upon driving air through hollow branches, creating a flute-like sound. Their living memory is the longest in of all the peoples in the galaxy thanks to the ability of their extraordinarily long-lived elders to partially absorb the minds of the dead.

Origin

The ambulatory plants of Sunchorus evolved on the vast flood plains of its supercontinents marshy edges. It is believed that mobility was initially an adaptation to the shifting water levels, enabling the woodwistlers ancestors to chase the shifting waters. Predation was evolved as a defense against increasing levels of toxic minerals washing down the river from the highlands, giving rise to their peculiar arms and oral chambers, and enabling plants of this group to thrive independently of soil conditions.

Over the intervening aeons, the ambulatory plants of Sunchorus spread across the planetary surface, occupying many niches alongside its older animal lineages. Eventually, the evolutionary advantages of intelligence and social organization led to the emergence of modern woodwistlers, who proceeded to develop complex societies, first agrarian, then industrial, then spacefaring. They did not discover faster than light starheart travel and communication until their first contact with humanity in 163; their advanced scientific and industrial base allowed them to quickly become a peer society to the interstellar civilizations of the early old-imperial period.

Biology and Appearance

Morphology

Woodwistlers have squat, cylindrical, woody bodies between 45 and 60cm in diameter and similar height, completely covered in thick, brownish-grey bark except for a large opening protected by a fibrous membrane at the top which acts as both mouth and stomach. They support themselves and locomote on dozens of stiff, semi prehensile roots. They have three barkless arms which protrude from the edges of their mouth; each arm has six fingers tipped by a hard spine. The arms must be withdrawn for the oral chamber to close, and are used to process food during digestion. Their canopies are shrublike, growing from stubby branches up to a meter in length around the rim of their oral chambers; the largest contain hollow passages used for vocalization. When ambulatory, the branches and leaves are retracted and folded upwards, giving an overall height of up to 1.7 meters; when photosynthesizing, they spread out, creating a crown up to about two meters wide. Furling or unfurling of the canopy takes about a minute.

Senses

Woodwistlers are very nearly blind, having only sensitivity to directional brightness, but have extraordinarily acute hearing and sensitivity to vibration, and are capable of echolocation using several frequencies between 5 and 30kHz.

Neurology

The 'brains' of woodwistlers are composed of accumulations of semi-hardened sap near the center of their bodies, through which run microscopic channels created, accessed, and modified by tiny filaments protruding from the lining of the memory chamber. It is possible for woodwistlers to transfer skills, memories, and knowledge by consuming chunks of this neural sap, though this requires (or causes) the donor to be dead in order to access the material, though it is notably unreliable and effectively impossible to reliably target; the tissues between the oral chamber and brain case draw in the donated sap and incorporate it into unused volume. The consumption of more than a half-liter or so of neural sap causes woodwistler bodies to expand to make room. This causes them to become taller and wider at the top, eventually rendering them immobile, and is associated with slowed and fragmented cognition. Due to practical and philosophical considerations, very few woodwistlers consume much neural sap; the average individual only consumes a small fragment of the sap of their immediate ancestors as part of funeral rites. However, every community maintains one or a handful elder individual who consumes the majority of the neural sap of the deceased; these elders grow to immense size and can reach extraordinary ages when cared for properly. The oldest such knowledge-elder in history lived to 2109, and the oldest presently alive with a reliable age is 1756 (non-sap bloated woodwistlers typically live to about 130; elders live an average of 1500 years). As they age, knowledge-elders loose the use of their arms, and their whistle branches become lower pitched as they grow. Only a fraction of an elder's neural sap can be transferred to their successors, as the older material is too brittle to survive re-absorption.

The process of growth and transformation into an elder, known as enecanting, is most easily undertaken by adults of middle age and good physical condition.

Metabolism

Woodwistler metabolism is based on the oxidation of carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and water; however, unlike most species, they can produce all their carbohydrate needs via photosynthesis of carbon dioxide and water. A woodwistler can produce a day's worth of glucose with about 10 hours of photosynthesis, during which they can remain active but find their balance and manipulation affected by the extended canopy. They can survive between two and five days without access to sunlight before starving. The few hours of sleep they need per day is usually taken during photosynthetic periods. Woodwistlers can access carbohydrates from food, but the process is inefficient. Their protein and mineral intake must be entirely from food in adulthood, as their roots are incapable of uptake from the soil.

Life Cycle

Woodwistler reproduction involves three biological sexes: pollinators, seed-bearers, and root nurses. Pollinators and seed-bearers are analogous to the male and female sexes in many other species. Pollinators have hairy tufts which emerge from the tips of their branches, which can fertilize the fruiting nubs on the branches of seed-bearers through contact. The seed produced in this way must be planted in the ground and incubated by a root nurse, who embeds specially adapted roots into the ground around the seed for at least 8-14 hours a day; these roots convey both genetic information and nutrients to the seedling through the mycelia networks of symbiotic fungi (itself having a complex reproductive cycle relying on contact between root nurses over their lifespan). Once the seedling its sufficiently developed, it frees itself from the soil, though it is only barely capable of self-propulsion or communication at this stage, similar to the infants of other species. It is then cared for by its community until it is physically and mentally developed. At emergence, seedlings have no arms and a single branch with an airway useful for communication; as they grow over a 20 year adolescence they develop the full canopy and arms; the first arm usually emerges around 5 years old, the second at 10, and the third at 14. Woodwistler fertility is naturally seasonally cyclic, although the timing pathways are unreliable or totally nonfunctional outside their homeworlds biosphere; in modern times, fertility cycles are regulated pharmaceutically.

Culture and Language

Due to their complex reproduction, woodwistlers are bound into larger family groups than most other peoples in the galaxy. Woodwistler communities, from the smallest expat enclaves to interstellar polities, are centered on a handful of elders, usually two or three for small communities and up to a dozen for very large ones of variable age, who hold great ceremonial and political power thanks to their tremendous knowledge and accrued wisdom. As they age, however, elders become slower of mind and less communicative; at this stage, their social and political role usually becomes purely advisory.

In traditional Woodwistler polities, elder-led communities are the base unit of political life, and the higher positions of government are held by a combination of elders and adults, each progressing through a largely separate series of offices. When the time comes every few generations to choose a new individual to become an elder, the selection is usually made according to a combination of endorsement by other elders, social rank, and an election or other traditional contest. Bias in the selection of new elders is a major form of inequality in many woodwistler societies.

In non-woodwistler dominated polities, elders rarely hold formal offices, but are often influential members of society and are sometimes granted special status by the government in recognition of the tremendous value of their memory. In autocratic polities, the selection of elders by the government is often used as a means of asserting control over their woodwistler citizens.

Woodwistlers speak a number of different languages, all descended from the four dominant languages of their society during their early spacefaring period, with limited mutual intelligibility.