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the Xa
I wasn't planning on revealing another sophont, but it's a creature I have a decent amount of information and sketches on, so I decided to post it while I work on some complex 3D art for this world.
The Xa are tall black birds you may have seen in the Intro to Total Convergence..?.
These two meter tall avians use their wings for walking. Their thumb has increased in size and the claw has re-appeared and modified into a hoof. They primarily use their beaks for manipulating with objects, but their feet, which the Xa leave off the ground when walking, greatly assist with this. Another ancient feature that has re-appeared in this bird are the teeth, but they aren't used for eating. The teeth of the Xa have bright golden and dark red stripes and are flattened, resembling our incisors, and are used as a dispaly structures during communication.
Normally, a Xa would walk around with their head resting on the neck, their beak covered up by their thick plumage. This one got startled by a distant noise and is looking around.
I'm still deciding whether to keep the "lip pads" or not.
A Xa's perception of reality and the rate at which they take in information is also remarkably fast. An average Xa, for example, is able to read one A4 page full of text in circa five seconds. This means that a Xa can graduate way faster than a human, making up for their short lifespan. This is one of the reasons why it can be hard for them to enjoy movies, the ones that were made by non Xa are unwatchable because of the "low frame rate".
There is almost no sexual dimorphism in these birds. On normal occasions the gender nor sex of a Xa is not distinguished at all, and probably no Xaian cultures have different social roles for men and women. The only way to tell the sexes apart is through pheromones, which are only released on special occasions. Only Xa are sensitive to these pheromones, and non avians wouldn't be able to tell the difference at all.
The Xa are relatively short lived, maturing at the age of seven. In the prehistory, they could live up to be twenty years old, but thanks to modern medicine, their lifespan has increased to be up to thirty years. When hatched, a baby Xa is born featherless, growing a coat of ash-brown downy feathers after ten months. A "pre-teen" coat - black contour feathers - begins to appear at the age of four, and at the age of seven, the "adult" plumage with its characteristic white eye pattern and contrasting, irridescent black feathers on the Xa's crest appears. These white patterns typically fade to gray with old age. The irridescence is also a lot less striking in older Xa.
Due to their plumage, they don't really need soft fabric to make their clothes comfortable, they mostly focus on making waterproof and elegant garments. But soft fabric can sometimes be a sign of the wearer's status. Because of their reliability on their beak as our equivalent of hands, the great majority of utensils and tools are made to be carried in and controlled by the beak. Tools and guns specificaly are mostly attachment based - there are several types of universal helmets that are used to attach a variety of tools to them. A lot of guns can be operated with both beak and hands. Shooting a gun is a lot easier when a Xa uses their beak, but hands are more practical when they need to quickly draw the weapon.
More on their evolution later!
