Partly inspired by the Rikchicks, I've decided to add a very different, non-humanoid species of sapients to whatever the planet with all my other languages is called (henceforth, The Planet). Enter the tribrachids (tribracchium sapiens); water-dwelling predatorial tentacled animals which evolved sentience - and language - through a completely different path to humans. They act and appear very differently to humans, and their languages are unlike human languages. Unlike the stereotypical sentient, they're not highly social, rarely interacting with more than one other tribrachid at a time. Their reproduction is more of an r than a K strategy¹ compared to humans, although they are less r than octopuses. They're shorter lived than humans as well, but nevertheless display developed cultures and languages. While it's difficult to compare tribrachid and human development because of how differently they've evolved, the tribrachids' level of technology is roughly analogous to that of a stone age hunter-gatherer society. They use a variety of tools and artefacts made from plant materials (e.g. driftwood, seaweed, floating large seed husks), stones (including some shaped stone tools), coral or animal remains (shells, cuttlebone, beaks of the dead) and they occasionally scavenge from humanoids' garbage or shipwrecks (giving them access to metal, glass and pottery).
Anatomy
Tribrachids are invertebrates, with a central sac containing most of the vital organs and digestive system, to which are attached eight tentacles. The sac is about two feet long and a foot wide, while the longest tentacles are about four feet long. Of the eight tentacles, five can broadly be considered "legs"; these are shorter and thicker and are connected to the adjacent tentacles to about halfway up by webbing; these are used for locomotion. The remaining three tentacles are considered "arms" (hence the exonym tribrachid). Two of these, the "major" tentacles, are about twice as long as the legs, and are highly dextrous and covered with suction cups. The other one, the "minor" tentacle, is only about 1.5 times as long as the legs, and is less versatile the the major tentacles. The arms are used to manipulate tools, move objects, hunt, perform mating displays, express language and create artworks or writing. Their entire skin is covered with chromatophores, colour-changing cells which evolved for camouflage purposes but have since developed to express emotion and communicate. Their mantle is also equiped with hundreds of sub-dermal muscles which can create complex three-dimensional textures on their skin for heightened camouflage and paralinguistic communication.
In the centre of their tentacles they have a beak which is connected to their digestive system; waste is expelled through a siphon. Near the base of the sac there are two large eyes with dumbbell-shaped pupils to facilitate their highly developed colour vision. They have a complex nervous system, only a relatively small part of which is contained within their brain; the rest of their neurons are distributed throughout their body. This means that their tentacles can move semi-autonomously; they can walk or swim even when asleep. They have nine hearts in total; one large one which maintains blood flow to their organs and over their gills, and one small one at the base of each tentacle. Oxygen is absorbed through the entire skin, which is supplemented by gills; while performing more strenuous exercise these gills become more active. This decentralisation of organs means that if a tentacle is severed above its heart it can continue to live for several days or weeks, having its own circulatory and nervous systems, until it dies of starvation. Severed legs grow back quickly, while severed arms partially regrow with lessened mobility after several years.
Here's a badly drawn and worsely photoshoped picture of an adult tribrachid, in black and white because their colour can be basically anything. Note the three "arms", the one on the right being the smaller minor tentacle.²
Behaviour and life cycle
Tribrachids live pretty isolated lives, living in individual or paired territories as adults, although they communicate frequently with neighbouring individuals. They live up to around thirty or forty years, although the average age is much lower due to the high death rate of individuals in the larval stage³. Young are born from large clutches of eggs, emerging as non-sentient larvae about an inch in size. These drift instinctually to the deeper ocean, where they grow over the course of about three years to juveniles. During this time they move back to shallow regions, increasing in size to about 20 inches and developing their intelligence through hunting. While still juveniles, they return to the shore and attempt to find a mature individual of the same sex to learn behavioural traits from. Only about 20% of juveniles are successful in finding a "master" tribrachid; the remaining 80% return to the deeper ocean and do not develop further either cognitively or physically. Those which are successful remain with their master for up to a decade, developing abstract thought (after a fashion), language, learning cultural rituals and practices and growing into a sexually mature adult. At the age of 15-20, they move out of their master's territory and attempt to find one of their own. They can either take an empty spot left by a dead individual, purchase territory through barter of valuable items like tools, or expand into previously non-tribrachid territory. After establishing their territory, males leave and attempt to mate several times in their lives. They perform a complex mating display for females, which if reciprocated is followed by the male injecting voluminous quantities of sperm into the female's mantle, after which she lays a patch of 30-70 eggs. The eggs are then carried to a random place and dumped there, subsequently being ignored by both parents. Most tribrachids never see their biological parents; hence family has no significant role in tribrachid behaviour.
Culture
Tribrachids aren't divided between cultures as distinctly as humans are, not having distinct groups that live separately. Culture is probably better described using something more like isoglosses - cultural practices spread easily between genetically distinct individuals, but not passed down genetically. Probably the most important aspect of tribrachid cultures is the extended coming of age process, which takes up about half their lifetime and involves a massive cognitive and physical change from the larval to adult stage. This is treated somewhat differently in different locations, but relies on the same basic principles. Also important is hunting, often highly ritualised. Language, art and religion hold important places in most tribrachid cultures; more on tribrachid cultures later.
Intelligence
Tribrachid intelligence was most likely motivated to arise through the complexity in mating and food-gathering processes. Their language itself may have partially developed from complex courtship displays, an area in which some of the most complex language usage is still seen. The primary food source of adult tribrachids is a species of large, aggressive crustaceans which bear a passing resemblance to coconut crabs. These creatures, while an extremely valuable food source, are equiped with relatively high intelligence and fearsome defense mechanisms. Tribrachids evolved greater intelligence to more effectively hunt them; although archaeological evidence is extremely scarce, it seems probable that they reached a tipping point after which intelligence greatly expanded and sentience began. Sentience develops quite late; in the larval stage, they are not sentient and display no signs of developed intelligence. Juveniles rapidly become more experienced even before interaction with adult individuals. However, tribrachids are not considered sentient until they can skillfully perform language by the age of about 7-8.
Tribrachids have managed to coexist with the humanoid sentients on The Planet for hundreds of thousands of years, mostly because both species occupy completely separate niches and rarely compete for anything. The scientifically advanced cultures mostly leave tribrachids alone out of a non-interference policy, while the few pre-scientific cultures which live near the coasts generally ignore them. Tribrachid food sources are too labour-intensive for humanoids to extensively hunt, and they make dangerous adversaries for humanoids if they are provoked. Tribrachids themselves are inquisitive, but can't last very long on land and rarely reach humanoid settlements. They will often swim up to passing boats hoping for gifts, receiving mixed responses from humanoids. Attempts in the past have been made sporadically to communicate with them, but tribrachid languages are too non-linear for humanoids to understand in real time, and they have a poor sense of hearing which makes spoken language seem indistinct to them. Recently⁴, Earth humans have begun communication efforts with varying degrees of success. Much of our knowledge of tribrachids comes from deciphering their written artefacts rather than by direct testimony.
Language
Tribrachids have the ability to communicate through a visual medium; they do so through complex movement of their three arms, or through a written representation of this — really a point half-way between writing and art. Tribrachid languages are, like their cultures, defined better through isoglosses rather than distinct languages and language families. As individuals don't generally travel far once they've acquired language (except sexually active males), there is pretty extensive dialectal and idiolectal variation. Tribrachid languages can be considered a dialect chain running along the entire coastline they inhabit, with varieties becoming mutually incomprehensible after only a few miles.
While tribrachid languages are "signed" rather than spoken, they can still be analysed as having a "phonological" system, with defined patterns on which more complex symbols are build. They make use of colour, tentacle position and pattern to create a wide range of distinct symbols. These are almost entirely arbitrary, more so than sign language, with only a few "ideophones" being clearly symbolic⁵. Different languages make use of the ranges of colour, shape and pattern in distinct ways, with varying degrees of differentiation much like how human languages have smaller or larger phonemic inventories. Grammatically, tribrachid languages often function unlike any human languages, making use of their decentralised intelligence to produce different words with different tentacles simultaneously. This means that syntax must be described, at least in part, spatially rather than temporally; for example, instead of placing the subject before the verb, they might place the subject to the right of the object (in as much as these terms are relevant in tribrachid linguistics). Some varieties even orientate sentence constituents based on absolute direction, e.g. towards vs. away from the shore. Tribrachids also handle abstract ideas differently to human language - purely irrealis concepts are primarily expressed through simile and metaphor (think a toned-down version of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra). While tribrachid psychology has not been significantly studied, either by Earth psychologists (most of whom can't swim well enough) or indigenous humanoids, it seems likely that this reflects a fundamental difference in thought processes.
1. r type animals reproduce early and often, and don't care for their young. K types reproduce slower and produce less offspring, but invest more in their care so they have a higher chance of survival. Most intelligent species are
2. In this individual, the right tentacle goes on top of the left one. This reflects a tendency similar to handedness; some tribrachids always place their right tentacle on top, others their left one. This doesn't reflect a difference in dexterity or strength however.
3. About 85% of larvae die; of the 15% which survive to become juveniles, only 20% make it to adulthood. Overall, less than 3% of eggs will survive long enough to reproduce. By my calculations, mean life expectancy is about 2.70 years, with a median of about 2 years. This, while brutal, is effective in limiting their population growth; being primarily carnivorous, each individual requires considerable land resources.
4. "Recently" being some unspecified time in the future shortly after human-The Planet contact has been established.
5. For example, in all languages colour "terms" are ideophonic and don't fit easily into any part of speech or indeed the syntax as a whole. Tribrachids mostly consider these colour representations to be imitations rather than actual words, something akin to onomatapoeia.
![[>_<]](./images/smilies/icon_meeh.png ">_<"){kind=icon}
.