Grazerite
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Grazerites hail from the planet Vacca III, also known as Grazer, a planet of large, flat continents and temperate climate orbiting a yellow dwarf star surrounded by a pinkish hydrogen "halo." This halo cuts much of the harmful radiation from the star Vacca, while increasing solar heating; Vacca III is a warm, fertile, clement world.
Personality
Grazerites are optimistic and placidly confident, with high self-esteem. They make few snap decisions, being thoughtful and contemplative by nature. Grazerites are hard to anger, and seldom show it openly even if furious. Grazerites prefer consensus to conflict, and are distressed by others unhappiness. Extremely patient and highly resistant to boredom. Grazerites excel at tasks requiring a long attention span and close detail work.
Physiology
Grazerites are heavily-built humanoids, but not unusually so. Their thick hide has a flat layer of hair all over it, usually amber in color, but white, beige, and black Grazerites exist, as do piebald or mottled ones. Grazerite facial features include a pronounced, deeply furrowed brow and a bovine snout. Two slightly curving horns, which may reach four inches in length, crown their skull. Current fashion calls for a tight-fitting cloth cowl to cover the horns.
Culture
The basic social unit among the Grazerites is the upsol, a conglomeration of anywhere from a hundred to five hundred individuals who work, relax, eat, and ruminate together. They are often related to one another by blood, but upsols consisting entirely or unrelated individuals also exist, and behave no differently than their more common counterparts. Grazerite life centers on the group, not the individual; privacy, for example, is a concept unknown to them except as a topic in one of Vacca III's prestigious Outworld Cooperation Symposia (the equivalent of academies for Grazerite diplomats, starship crew, and scientists).
The upsol plays the primary role in raising, tutoring, and sheltering of Grazerite children. Although Grazerites usually retain some affection for their blood parents, all adult members of the upsol share equally in child-raising duties. Herds of adult Grazerites carefully shelter the young from even the minimal dangers of Vacca III, and shower them with love, food, and affection. Grazerites grow up emotionally secure and certain of the benign nature of the universe. With the birth of their first child, Grazerite parents attain full citizenship and can participate in their own upsol's deliberations and in Vacca III's consensus democracy. Like all important Grazerite occasions, a communal ritual involving the entire upsol marks first-birth.
Grazerites enjoy thinking and talking together, as agreement comes easily. Grazerite debates, such as they are, resemble long-winded rodomontades in which each speaker agrees with the last while slightly restating and refining the previous arguments. Grazerites can while away endless hours in this fashion, never getting bored, solemnly agreeing with each other for hours while jointly ambling toward a consensus. Their self-image as scintillating conversationalists is not shared by other species, but they prosper in Federation governmental circles.
Palava is the traditional Grazerite unarmed combat method. It is centered on the use of horns to smash one's opponents off-balance. It descends from the primitive contests Grazerite males used to fight for admission to, and leadership of, the upsol. Palava exists solely as a Grazerite athletic sport, similar to Earth wrestling.
Reference(s)
- Hite, Kenneth. Star Trek Roleplaying Game: Starfleet Operations Manual, Norfolk, VA: Decipher, 2003.