Pe Choi

The Pe Choi have three different languages. Chakan Pe Choi is spoken by Pe Choi from all over Tsolyanu and in the more settled parts of the Do Chaka countryside (with a 'rustic' accent), Western Pe Choi is spoken in Mu'ugalavya and Old Pe Choi is limited to those isolationist tribes living in the depths of the Do Chakan forest. These languages have been diverging for several thousand years and are no more mutually intelligible than Polish and Hindi.

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Facial Expressions

Since the Pe Choi face is entirely covered in chitin it is often difficult to tell what a Pe Choi is thinking or feeling. Urban Pe Choi have different facial expressions to others of their species as they make some attempt to communicate to humans. Thus a Pe Choi equivalent of a smile is a particular waggle of the ear flaps, though urban Pe Choi will open their mouths to some extent as well to let humans know they are happy, and make some suitably jolly clicking noises. The same mouth opening also applies to boredom, surprise and disgust and some humans therefore think Pe Choi are inscrutable, taking the mickey or have a very odd sense of humour.

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Pe Choi and Pachi Lei

These two species mostly get on; both have quasi-telepathic powers which help communication and the Pe Choi can do a reasonable job of speaking the Pachi Lei language. However both also prefer forested areas and though the forests of Do Chaka and Pan Chaka are different (each species has encouraged the growth of plants from their own original homeworld in their own part of the jungle) they are competing for territory, and there may have been war between them at some point in the past.

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Pe Choi Anatomy

The Pe Choi are NOT insects as we know them on Earth, they are aliens who happen to have a chitin-like outer covering. It is not even an exoskeleton as such, the Pe Choi have internal bones and joints and the plates of the exoskeleton do not articulate like a suit of armour as Earth insects do. This also means they do not have to moult; the plates of chitin grow at the ends in a similar way to bones and have active cells embedded that enable the plate to be partially reabsorbed and laid down again to resculpt the shape and to compensate for wear and tear, again in a similar way to growing bone. The Pe Choi jaw has especially substantial bone reinforcement and their teeth are socketed enamel structures very similar to an Earth mammal's.

The Pe Choi do not have nostrils; they have several sets of spiracles. The upper ones are in the neck just under the jaw, a second set have openings under the first set of arms and there are two more sets in the tail. Each spiracle leads to a lung; the upper two sets of lungs are interlinked and have a common set of pulmonary veins and arteries, and the lower two sets are likewise linked and have a subsidiary heart and their own net of pulmonary blood-vessels.

The uppermost set of tracheae are the source of most of the whistling noises that constitute part the Pe Choi voice, each having it own independent voice box. Most of the curious clicks emanate from the underarm spiracles and their chitinous flaps, and yet more clicks come from rubbing the plates of the abdomen together, snapping the finger joints of both sets of hands and from whistling through the abdominal spiracles. This makes it all but impossible for a human to emulate the noises of Pe Choi languages as they would need at least four larynxes, a maraca or two, the ability to click their fingers and their toes, plus a few other bits of percussion and a kazoo. This does not of course take into account the gestures made with the fingers, elbows and ear flaps that Pe Choi also use to communicate amongst themselves.

The Pe Choi spiracles do not have any equivalent of the human epiglottis as they are entirely separate from the oesophagus, and are thus unable to fully seal while underwater. Pe Choi are very vulnerable to drowning.

Author's note: I know all this is biology nerd stuff, but I feel it makes it easier to suspend disbelief if you make the science at least a little bit plausible.

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Secrets of the Pe Choi

Warning! Spoilers Ahead!

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The Pe Choi have had an ambivalent relationship with the Ito, sometimes allying with them and sometimes opposing them, but the Ito can still call on the 'wild' Pe Choi as reliable allies and have a knack of disappearing into the jungle to hide out with these unpredictable and strange beings when they have to.

This is because the 'wild' Pe Choi in fact worship a form of Sarku; it is long forgotten now, but the worship of this god started among the Pe Choi of the Chakas and was taught by them to their human neighbours.

The Pe Choi form of the god is called 'The Eldest', and its worship pre-dates both the Black Old One and the Father of Nests. When a Pe Choi ages its internal bones wither and soften in a form of osteoporosis and the exterior chitin becomes thicker and greyer in colour. Eventually it becomes unable to move and retreats further and further into a half-asleep meditative state, but is still able to use its empathy to communicate with the rest of the community. Those able to use psychic magic could still keep up reasonably coherent telepathic communication with their descendants. Such elders were kept as effigies in special huts and in the darkest and wildest days of the Pe Choi were stolen from rival tribes as trophies of war.

Before the isolation of Tekumel this chitinised stage ended in death through suffocation as the elder became unable to move their chest and tail plates to draw air into the spiracles, but after the isolation this stage lasted longer and longer. In fact the elder could last almost indefinitely without food or oxygen, and only 'died' totally when their chitinised bodies wore away or became mouldy, though their psychic communications became ever more vague and abstract. They were being sustained by other-planar power emanating from the entity now called Sarku by humans, and by using embalming techniques the Pe Choi could prolong this stage ever further, consulting their wisest elders in their tomb-huts for centuries.

The human settlers of the Chakas learned much from the Pe Choi, including certain arts of meditation. Those able to use telepathy followed the the Pe Choi elders mental path off into the psychic wilderness and thus met Sarku, who granted them much the same kinds of boon he had given the Pe Choi. The humans were more greedy and more pliable, and bit by bit Sarku gave them more and more elaborate forms of life beyond death.

The practices associated with 'The Eldest' and those of modern Sarku worship are now utterly different, but the wild Pe Choi recognise the Ito as brothers in faith, and acknowledge them as their superiors in the magic of life prolongation and the preservation of the wisdom of the ancestors.

Those Pe Choi who took up worship of the modern deities have forgotten this lore and their old age has reverted to the original form of slow paralysis and suffocation, though they have the solace of knowing that their spirit-souls will live on after them.

The worship of Sarku in the Kraa Hills around the City of Sarku may have had an independent origin; even now there are doctrinal differences between western and eastern sects.

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