The Nassians

“Mother, where did we come from?”

“My child, let me tell you a story. Long before our time, in the ancient days of our planet, great serpents roamed the lands. They were mighty, strong, beautiful beasts.”

“What happened to them?”

“They loved our world, but in their great size could not interact with it how they wished, and especially not when every other creature feared them. So they shrank down to meet them on their terms, and grew arms to hug them with. That is how we, the Nassigussa, came to be, child.”

“Wow… I want to meet those ancient snakes!”

– An old Lyssthrophivonian folk tale

The known universe of Contingency is filled with a variety of life that you have been sworn to protect. So far, the only known sapient life is found on the planet of Mythhaler.

The Nassigussa are the primary organic sapient species that players will encounter in Contingency. They are a serpentine people that originate from the planet of Mythhaler; at the time of the Contingency’s founding, they inhabit both of Mythhaler’s moons. They are fully scaled, with scale colour mostly depending on the habitat they reside in: those living in more forested environments often have greenish or brown scales, whereas those in more arid climates tend to be more reddish or sandy. With no legs, they instead having a remarkably long tail they use to slither around, as well as four arms: the two 'greater' arms, so-called due to their larger size, are located above the two 'lesser' arms. The lesser arms are six-fingered with two opposable thumbs, lending them well to tasks involving dexterity and fine motor skills such as painting and writing, whereas the greater arms are three fingered and used more for tasks requiring strength such as mining or logging. All Nassigussa are also considered 'intersex' by human standards, with no sexual dimorphism and thus, no gender binary. Hence, gender expression and pronoun use is very free for the Nassigussa, based off of other various physical features and societal roles.

Nassigussa are very expressive creatures, able to show emotion not just through facial expression or body language but also through the hoods on their heads: a sad Nassigussa will droop their hoods, an angry one will flare them out while a happy one will often lift them to show more of their face. Emotions and affection is also frequently expressed through physical touch: it is not an uncommon sight to see Nassigussa holding hands, leaning against each other or even hugging while walking around. When stationary, you may even see many of them coiling their tails together in a multitude of different ways depending on the relationship between them. Physical affection holds a special place in Nassigussan culture: while warm-blooded, they do not produce enough body heat to warm themselves during the cold nights on Mythhaler, so early on the Nassigussa took to sleeping close together to preserve heat and survive. 'Sharing heat' became such an important thing that the idea of physical affection became intertwined with that of life, such that it is present throughout all Nassigussan cultures on Mythhaler.

There also exists a large population of synthetic Nassigussa, known as Nassoids, that have long been fully integrated into Nassigussan society. It is common to see organic Nassigussa and synthetic Nassoids in the same environment throughout day to day life: interacting, forming relationships, cuddling. Fundamentally, a Nassoid is a Nassigussa in all the ways that matter. They are afforded all the same rights and all the same responsibilities as organic Nassigussa, and there is often little distinction made between Nassigussa and Nassoids. If you ask any random one on the street, they will say that they are one people.

Breakthroughs in synthetic materials, electronics and artificial intelligence enabled the creation of Nassoids, yet their inception was an unlikely solution to a long-standing problem: the Nassigussan reproductive cycle. The long gestation time of Nassigussan eggs, paired with their harsh toll on the egg-bearer, resulted in a slow population growth, especially when paired with the Nassigussa's short life span. Hence, Nassoids were developed as a means to bolster the population of Mythhaler, while also allowing for larger families and children for those who could not bear their own.

Hence, Nassoids aren't exactly built: they're raised. Each Nassoid, when 'born', is taken into a family and raised as one of their children. This serves several purposes. Practically, the sheer complexity of a Nassigussan mind means that explicitly engineering one for a specific purpose is an impossibility. There are far too many active processes in a brain to replicate directly, so the Nassoids are given the tools to learn as a child would, and a family structure facilitates this learning and growing. Secondly, and more importantly in Nassigussan culture, Nassoids are also sapient. Simply producing them and throwing them into the world is immoral. Furthermore, doing so takes away the right to make their own decisions, thereby taking away their agency. Raising them from childhood gives a Nassoid the background needed to make an informed choice about their life, giving them a support network to fall back on regardless of what path they choose to take.

However, this does not mean that Nassoids do not have certain special abilities. Their synthetic nature gives them an increased processing capacity as well as the ability to easily integrate with machine networks. Furthermore, their chassis are very modular due to the need for upgrades as a Nassoid grows older, which also enables a vast amount of attachments organic Nassigussa cannot handle. However, being synthetic, their life cycle is not the same as a Nassigussan's, and the death of a Nassoid is typically less peaceful and calm.

The Nassian language is a very sibilant one, with very few hard sounds. 'T's and 'P's are softened into 'th' and 'ph', 'd's are softened to 'v' and every 's' is doubled. Nassian first names are composed of three syllables: one long one at the start (e.g. 'Thei', 'Zass' or 'Phin'), followed by two shorter ones, (e.g. 'va', 'ro' or 'ni'). Example names include Ssreniya, Mossrune or Lathressi.

Nassian last names, however, are traditionally formed from two of the long syllables ('Callrais' or 'Furssen'), although recently some Nassians have started constructing last names as they would first names.