Slylandro
| Slylandro | ||||||||
| Slyhome_comm.png The Slylandro Speakers | ||||||||
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The Slylandro are the only known race whose homeworld, which they call Source, is a Gas Giant. They cannot travel through space due to their physiology, though they have bought a self replicating Probe ("Catalog Item 2418-B: Self-Replicating Robot Explorer Probe") from the Melnorme to explore space for them and report back to them. The Slylandro have had contact with the Precursors, the original Ur-Quan and the Sentient Milieu.
They are essentially sentient bags of gas that float through their homeworld's atmosphere. Their bodies are incredibly fragile. Their vision is in a range that is different from most races and it is to their great dismay when they realize that they are transparent to human vision. They evolved from simple, unimodular consumers which thrived in atmospheric convection currents. Originally mindless but social creatures, they developed language to better coordinate efforts to herd their food source into dense concentrations. Despite the variety of life on Source, the Slylandro claim to be the only ones to have evolved intelligence.
They have an egalitarian society but this, as Content to Hover comments, "doesn't stop some people from being stupid fools or jerks." Inhabitants of Source deal with bothersome individuals by simply going somewhere else on their massive planet. Because of the limitations of their world the Slylandro have no native construction, technology or written records. Attempts to create objects from animal carcasses are futile, as the construction becomes too massive and dives into the Depths, its bouyancy being overcome by gravity. Unable to maintain written records, the Slylandro employ long songs called History Chants, whose patterns and rhythms help prevent the record from being corrupted. Also linked to their peculiar habitat and physiology is the Slylandro Timekeeping system, based solely upon the rotation period of their planet, Source. Their units of time are the Drahn, the Drahnasa, and rotations.
The Slylandro have very long lifespans. Content to Hover, a Slylandro speaker, claims to have been a nymph when the original Ur-Quan visited their homeworld more than 20,000 years ago.
The current Slylandro Speakers are Content to Hover, Joyous Lifting, and Sullen Plummet.
Gameplay notes
Sources of information
Both the Thraddash and the Zoq-Fot-Pik indicate the direction from which the probes come, but not the exact star system. The Arilou, while not providing any clue on the location, hint that the Slylandro live on "a world with no surface," a gas giant. One of the probe's responses in the PC version gives the probe's position coordinates relative to the Slylandro homeworld (but with x- and y-coordinates reversed). However, only the Melnorme have current and complete information on the Slylandro.
Relevance to the plot
Though not necessary to completing the game, the Slylandro have a destruct code that makes fighting the probes much easier and reduces the overall number of probes encountered in space.