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== Nicassar == <div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> The Nicassar are a species of gasbag sophont, in which their organic components are wrapped around bladders or other containers filled with a lighter-than-air gas (usually hydrogen or helium) to form what is effectively an organic blimp. The Nicassar also supplement their natural hydrogen buoyancy with their psychic powers. The Nicasssar themselves are best described as broad, furry saucers with bear-like heads and six arms spaced evenly around the 'disk' of their bodies. Their bellies are covered in tough plates of skin — similar to an armadillo's carapace — which allows them to drop to the ground to rest or hibernate unharmed. Their reproductive biology is similar to that of Earth marsupials; the young are born small and underdeveloped, and crawl into the mother’s pouch during their frequent hibernation bouts. They will suckle in the pouch while the mother’s deflated body hangs from the ceiling like a bat, and will remain in the pouch until the mother reawakens. Because of their status as gasbag sophonts, the Nicassar tend to have a rather ethereal, “breathy” voice, even when communicating telepathically. Through an unusual quirk of evolution, life on the Nicassar homeworld evolved in such a manner that their physiology produced hydrogen gas as a waste product. The development of bladders that allowed this waste gas to be captured rather than dissipated resulted in a whole evolutionary radiation of floating organisms. Lightning strikes are 'fun' on this world. The Nicassar homeworld’s gravity is higher than that of Earth (which actually improves the flight ability for large animals due to the denser atmosphere). <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> Nicassar are driven by an insatiable curiosity, and are compelled to travel and seek out new experiences. This is as much rooted in biology as anything else; as large airborne organisms, such behaviour encourages them to disperse further than their ground bound evolutionary competitors. Between their psychic powers, ability to hibernate, and three-dimensional thinking, it was rather easy for the Nicassar to develop space travel. They had spread out pretty widely — but thinly — over the area near Ultramar and the Tau cluster when they were first discovered by the broader galactic community, and were well-known to the Imperium before they began allowing alien races join. Even after the Imperium began incorporating other species, the Nicassar were almost deemed Xenos Independens because of their wanderlust and curiosity. When the Tau were still a power independent of the Imperium, it was hard for Tau authorities to keep the Nicassar out of Tau space. In many respects they were like the Hrud, except unlike the Hrud one could get the Nicassar to repeat a task they were capable of — if they really had to. The primary fear at the time was that the Nicassar would travel to an off limits Chaos-corrupted system, become corrupted themselves, then spread their corruption to the rest of the galaxy. Some even worried that their curiosity and desire for new experiences was a ready-made gateway for Slaaneshi subversion. Though there are Chaos Nicassar — like there are Chaos everything else — the isolated nature of their conclaves makes it difficult for Chaotic corruption to spread between them, and the initial fears of the Nicassar being a vector for Chaos corruption seem to have been unfounded. Indeed, as the Nicassar are a psychic species, they had long known about Chaos — and that its dark touch is ever but a shadow’s width away. To the Nicassar, Chaos was never some forbidden fruit tempting them to come into its embrace. They had gazed upon it already, and turned away. The Nicassar are an inquisitive and cerebral species by nature, requiring a consistent stream of interesting ideas to consider and peculiar thoughts to ponder. Indeed, there is speculation that the Nicassar felt they had exhausted the potential for this on their homeworld and developed space travel purely to stave off the boredom. To this end, the Nicassar are fond of stories, as stories offer a multitude of ideas and thoughts to contemplate — and due to their psychic nature, consider people to be walking storybooks. The Nicassar are a common sight throughout Tau space — not because they consider the Tau to be a more interesting group of people in and of themselves, but rather because their homeworld and primary breeding grounds are located on the border between the Tau Empire and Ultramar. The Nicassar region was never extensively developed by either civilization, and thus is only intermittently travelled by Tau or Imperial ships — thus the novelty of psychic floating bear saucers looking for a good story has not quite worn off for the Tau. The Imperium, for their part, barely bat an eye at Nicassar ships passing through Ultramar's space — the long and 'colourful' diplomatic histories between the Imperium and the Tau proved ample opportunity for the Nicassar to introduce themselves, and the Imperium as a whole are no strangers to the bizarre. Overall, the Nicassar operate in a manner similar to the Diasporex, in their tendencies to wander endlessly and their nature as traders — though the Diasporex travel predominantly in the northwestern corner of the galaxy whereas the Nicassar are centered on the Eastern Fringe, so actual interactions between the two are relatively rare. In more recent years, the Tau have utilized the services of the Nicassar as a method of training humans and other species in their domain as psykers when no alternatives are available. The problem with this approach is that the Nicassar are often unreliable and somewhat flighty — though they are more than happy to allow interesting new people onto their ships they won't usually stop their ships in any one place for long, thus prospective psykers will more than likely complete their tutelage on the other side of the sector. Nicassar ships are not particularly fast but are capable of travelling without stopping for extended periods of time, as they are extremely efficient and low maintenance, which suit the hodophilic Nicassar just fine. The upshot of the Nicassar psyker training is that it's free; the presence of the new person on the ship is a new book to read and a new ear to listen, and the Nicassar love to tell stories as much as they love to hear them. Gifts of sugary food are likely to please any Nicassar playing host. Honey in particular. The ships of the Nicassar are not the most advanced in the Imperium, as they are built for efficiency and rugged durability over most other concerns. For much the same reason they aren't the most well-armed or armoured. The Nicassar prefer to run their ships at minimum capacity, thus they typically do not travel very quickly. When startled, Nicassar ships are more likely to flee than fight; though the Nicassar might appear somewhat frightening in their bizarre countenance, they are not naturally aggressive or belligerent. In this, at least, the Nicassar are quite adept; Nicassar ships have a surprising turn of speed when commanded to do so, as the crews can shape their minds and psychic presences into something akin to giant sails to harness the deep warp currents — deeper into the warp than most will go — to travel with remarkable quickness. The technology that allows for this method of warp travel is non-transferable, as it is linked directly to the Nicassar's psychic ability in some way. Attempts by both commissioned adepts, hereteks, and Earth Caste specialists to build an analogous system for human or other species have met with only failure. </div> </div>
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