Rift Station: Open Worlds
Setting out with a guide and a handful of others with the same purpose in mind, you climb aboard a hover platform and lean against the railing while it glides slowly through the business district. Outside of the reception area, the architecture isn't quite so dramatic. Here it tends to faux wood paneling and bright colors, while still being remarkably spacious for a deep space habitat. Hardly the grimy corridors of riveted steel that you're used to.
After taking a lift up to the administration area, a pair of Emittier guides take over and lead you to the orientation room.
The Emittier are sometimes called 'skinflints', which has nothing to do with the old fashioned term for a miser. They're herbivorous quadrupeds, rather stocky and powerfully built, from a world of taigas and tundras. Their hairless skin is white or some shade of grey, and half an inch thick, capable of exuding some kind of thin gel under duress that hardens into a glossy protective coating that can make them take on a distinctly boulder-like appearance. (Emittier never developed fur or hair, and there are no native mammals on their planet.)
Male Emittier are differentiated from females mainly by a set of bony protrusions curving back and down from behind their eye ridges, to make a kind of set of mock horns jutting out at jaw level. The toes of thier front paws are long and flexible enough to handle object manipulation, and they frequently stand up to work, although actually walking about on all their short, stubby hind legs is difficult. In addition they have a prehensile tail, split at the end into a pair of lightly armored graspers.
These guides are wearing kilt-like garments, as are most of the Emittier that interact with Humans, as a concession to Human modesty. Emittier rarely wear clothes of any kind under normal circumstances, preferring to adorn themselves with a dazzling array of jewelry. As these two are at work however, their adornments are significantly more tasteful and refined.
Volunteers are taken into the orientation room for about ten minutes each, one at a time, and in the meantime the guides keep everyone chatting. Their names are Uhuaygh and Kahyahg and they prove to be quite friendly and funny, sharing details about the creation of the station and teaching this group of mostly Human volunteers how to say a few words in Emittier. Because the deep bellows and guttural notes of the language is difficult to reproduce, most of them don't fare so well. In fact, with tone and pitch often meaning as much as the words themselves, most Humans are quite hopeless at it; a subject frequently touched on for comedy in Emittier entertainment.
The Emittier word for Rift Station translates to the much more poetic sounding 'Possibilities', which is something everyone is struggling to repeat when you get called into the office.
After taking a lift up to the administration area, a pair of Emittier guides take over and lead you to the orientation room.
The Emittier are sometimes called 'skinflints', which has nothing to do with the old fashioned term for a miser. They're herbivorous quadrupeds, rather stocky and powerfully built, from a world of taigas and tundras. Their hairless skin is white or some shade of grey, and half an inch thick, capable of exuding some kind of thin gel under duress that hardens into a glossy protective coating that can make them take on a distinctly boulder-like appearance. (Emittier never developed fur or hair, and there are no native mammals on their planet.)
Male Emittier are differentiated from females mainly by a set of bony protrusions curving back and down from behind their eye ridges, to make a kind of set of mock horns jutting out at jaw level. The toes of thier front paws are long and flexible enough to handle object manipulation, and they frequently stand up to work, although actually walking about on all their short, stubby hind legs is difficult. In addition they have a prehensile tail, split at the end into a pair of lightly armored graspers.
These guides are wearing kilt-like garments, as are most of the Emittier that interact with Humans, as a concession to Human modesty. Emittier rarely wear clothes of any kind under normal circumstances, preferring to adorn themselves with a dazzling array of jewelry. As these two are at work however, their adornments are significantly more tasteful and refined.
Volunteers are taken into the orientation room for about ten minutes each, one at a time, and in the meantime the guides keep everyone chatting. Their names are Uhuaygh and Kahyahg and they prove to be quite friendly and funny, sharing details about the creation of the station and teaching this group of mostly Human volunteers how to say a few words in Emittier. Because the deep bellows and guttural notes of the language is difficult to reproduce, most of them don't fare so well. In fact, with tone and pitch often meaning as much as the words themselves, most Humans are quite hopeless at it; a subject frequently touched on for comedy in Emittier entertainment.
The Emittier word for Rift Station translates to the much more poetic sounding 'Possibilities', which is something everyone is struggling to repeat when you get called into the office.