Appearance

Neefla resemble Earth Dolphins, porpoises, orcas and other small whales. Their average height is about 5'6", with 5 to 6 being the range, not including the tail which adds a couple of feet in the water. They're heavy, not very quick on land, but agile. They are any color from white to pink to shades of grey with other colors along the head that streak over the eyes and lateral lines. They have the ability to use sonar.

Politics

The Neefla territories form an important neutral zone in Cyanthia Undersea. They separate the deeper waters of the more violent Craih from the shallower waters of the Raiey. Not incidentally, they separate the two people as well, forming a political and mercantile go between. It is quite probable that had the Neefla fallen, the more dominating Craih would quickly have overrun the Raiey civilization, and both Raiey and Neefla are strongly cognizant of this fact. This has won the Neefla much support from Raiey, and resulted in favorable trade between the two races.

The Craih on the other hand are well aware that if they ever aggravated the Neefla beyond a certain point, the Neefla would shut down all trade of new technologies between the Raiey and the Craih, and the Craih would quickly suffer. In return, the Craih have access to deep water supplies of petroleum, a substance that fuels both Neefla and Raiey technological production in the same way that sources of steel and coal fueled the industrial revolution. This relatively stable balance of power and influence has endured for a long time, and seems stable enough to endure for a good time to come.

Economy

The Neefla local economy is primarily a craft based one. The Neefla contain few fishermen, and produce very few raw materials, but they excel at producing a variety of artists in all fields. The primary fields of Neefla art are Medicine, Sculpture, Biostruct engineering, War, Politics, Entertainment, and trade. Most Neefla classify themselves as belonging to one of these Colleges. Most Neefla are also linked by complicated family structures.

Within these colleges, rank is determined by the degree of confidence and admiration bestowed upon one by others within the college and to a lesser extent by those outside the college. One garners admiration by creating something both artistic and useful, and gifting it to someone who will use it, thus drawing attention to your works. It is considered unbearably crass to use one of your own works to draw admiration. One shows admiration for a person's accomplishments by gifting them with items.

Food is generally plentiful, as the fish gardens are frequently gifted with new types of nets by the sculptors, and with new breeds of fish by the traders, medical services by the Medics, etc. (One of the easiest ways to get a creation noticed is to donate it to a fish garden. Fish gardens are open to all, only closing down when necessary to prevent over grazing of the population.)

The Neefla government, such as it is, is presided over by the College of politicians, who rule by consent of the war college, who are supported by the good will of the populous and by incredible complex Kin ties. Since the only way to rise in government is to govern well, promotion tends to be somewhat free of corruption, though of course no society is perfect.

Family

Neefla typically regard family as one of the strongest possible ties. This is at least in part because every Neefla receives some part of its knowledge directly from its parents at the time of birth. Neefla have between 1 and 5 children over the course of their life, or between 3 to 7 children if in the War college, birthing one child at a time with twins being very rare. Neefla children are apprenticed to their parents and will typically be brought up in their career. Rarely, a Neefla child will be apprenticed to a family that for some reason has no children, or to a family in a different college from it's parents in order to spread family ties toward that college. (Thus a family looking for some political favor, might apprentice a middle child to a political family.)

A family will almost never apprentice a child unless they are planning to have more. Usually a child thus apprentice is a "sport." A sport is a child born without receiving any genetic knowledge. They are rare, and no one knows what causes them - they are both valued and pitied. They are valued because they have a much easier time learning crafts other than those of their parents, and thus provide a mechanism to expand the family across colleges. In addition they have a tendency to become great innovators. It is not clear whether this is caused by the same factor that prevented the genetic transfer of knowledge, or whether it is a learned skill needed to compensate for the late start they get compared to their fellow Neefla.

Because the knowledge transferred is based on the knowledge of the parent, Neefla will tend to delay child bearing if they can, hoping to learn as much as they can to give their children the best possible start in life. For this same reason, inheritance is most frequently passed primarily to the youngest son, with the understanding that it is to be shared amongst the older brothers. The youngest child is regarded as the parents final repository of knowledge. This can frequently lead to a great deal of stress surrounding the death of a parent, and all Neefla doctors who are either general practitioners or geriatrics specialists are very heavily trained in the field of counseling the children of a dead loved one (frequently the children receive more support than the spouse, but they generally need more as well.)

Technology

Neefla technology comes in large part from developments by the Raiey. It is based almost entirely around Biology and plastics. (hence the strong reliance on petroleum products.) Where the Raiey are acknowledged masters of theoretical biology and biostruct creation, the Neefla are the more practical engineers and do more with Plastics. Unlike the Raiey, Neefla have almost no formal training program, preferring apprenticeships.

Neefla Tool Knife

Their most prominent creation is the Neefla Tool Knife. Neefla tool knives are semi-living knives existing somewhere between the plant and animal kingdom. The hilt is actually grown, much like a plant, and possesses a single taproot. During the maturation process, the hilt is taught a set of signals and trained to release specific chemicals from specific parts of it's taproot at each signal. When the hilt has matured, the taproot releases its hold on the soil and the hilt may be pulled free from the ground without damaging the taproot. A plastic honeycomb is formed around this taproot and shaped into a blade, then edged with carbon composite to form a cutting edge. At this point a number of colonies of biostruct are implanted into the honeycomb, each keyed to respond to one of the chemicals the hilt is capable of releasing. These colonies themselves tap into the taproot and draw sustenance from it - advanced colonies may even send chemical signals of their own up into the hilt. The hilt then passes on these signals either by texture changes, localized temperature shifts, or throbbing sequences. A given blade may carry between five and forty different colony types. Typically, blades given to children will be unedged, or lightly edged, and will contain five relatively harmless (generally entertaining) biostructs. Blades used by sculptors may have between ten and twenty, depending on how many specialized tool structs they use on a regular basis. Traders and politicians usually do not have more than ten colony types. Fighters and Medics often have twenty to thirty, though their knives are generally trained to have three or four signals that can be assigned to different colonies, since they don't have time for complicated signals. Biostruct Engineers typically have the most different types of colonies. Biostruct engineers are constantly trading colony cultures, and will often have knives trained to respond to over fifty different signal combinations, any thirty of which may be in use at any one time. A biostruct engineer once developed a tool knife capable of responding to sixty discrete signals, with 50 different colonies, each of which communicated back to the user. It had a foot long handle, a three inch wide blade two feet long, was utterly impractical for day to day use, and was widely regarded as a triumph of engineering over common sense. Tool knife size is dependent on how many colonies it is to contain, how much skill is possessed by the designer, and what its intended function is. Larger blades are used for combat, or for large sculpture work, medics or biostruct engineers use smaller blades. (Military Field Medics typically carry two blades, one large for self-defense, one small for medical purposes.)

Toolknives would be edged with advanced carbon composite blades. These would be blades made up of advanced carbon structures hundreds molecules thick at the edge, tapering back to the width of the polymer blade. The composite is made up of hexagonal bonds arranged in a manner similar nanotube bonds. (Nanotubes are basically elongated buckyballs, also known as fullerene tubes.) This composite retains most of the strength of nanotubes, but lacks their elasticity. The composite is highly resistant to damage, and only rarely needs to be "sharpened." Such sharpening involves rebuilding any chipped or damaged portions of the composite, rather than smoothing them down. It can be done by anyone with experience, and the right biostructs. The practical effect of this is a blade one sixth the weight of an equivilent steel blade, and 100 times the strength. (Note that the polymer core is likewise lighter than steel, but doesn't posess the same high degree of strength, A tool blade over all is about as strong as a steel blade, but requires 100 times the force to chip the edge.) The edge of the blade is 5-10 times as sharp as an equivelent steel blade. The knife will slice through kevlar and plastic armors with about one tenth the force a steel blade would require, and will score ceramics and metal armors. these blades are non conducting, (with regards to electricity) though conducting blades can be made with essentially the same techniques

Tool knives used for combat are typically designed to be one cut lethal, and a simple squeeze of the hilt as the knife makes a thrust may release any of a number of nasty poisons, or even offensive biostructs in more advanced blades. Truly advanced blades may be trained to respond to contact with blood by releasing agents. (This is part of why medics use separate blades for self defense and for treating patients. Knowing your surgeons scalpel is also capable of acting as a close contact hand grenade tends to make the patients nervous.) These blades are always designed primarily for thrusting strikes (swings just aren't vary effective underwater.) It is rumored that someone is working on a tool knife capable of projecting a force blade, which had been rather a moot point, as neither Neefla nor Craih have ever had much use for armor.

Tool knives are typically given as presents by close relatives, and are rarely traded outside the family. Each family has its own collection of signals passed down via inherited memory. It is very rare for a new signal to be added. Tool knives are almost never gifted to anyone who isn't a Neefla. (There are a small number of specially made knives in the hands of Raiey diplomats.) Tool knives are generally treated with something like the care lavished on pets. Even though they are by no means sentient (they barely qualify as living) Neefla often refer to their tool knives as if they had personalities of their own. This is especially prevalent among biostruct engineers.

Tool knife maintenance can vary from simple feeding for simple tool knives, to the endless tinkering done by biostruct engineers. They must be kept sheathed in special scabbards when not in use. The scabbards contain a "feeding medium" - a thick gel that the knife can absorb through the honeycomb into its tap root. Scabbards for medical knives will typically contain decontaminating agents as well. The scabbards themselves must be restocked once a week typically. Tool knives can be designed to function on any sort of protein, but designing one to function on anything but vegetable matter is highly illegal. At one time some medical knives were designed to function on blood. This allowed surgeons scalpels to be built smaller and more compact, given the greater efficiency of the nutrient processing organism and allowing the nutrient processing to be combined with diagnostic organisms. The disadvantage was that if the doctor was not operating regularly, the knife would die. After a couple of very messy, and highly sensational, incidents, this was deemed not only a conflict of interest, but a generally stupid idea, and the breeding of "bloodknives" was strictly outlawed. There are of course still rumors and urban legends about psychotic killers wielding bloodknives, but there has not been a confirmed sighting of a bloodknife in over 500 years.

Most tool knives will not function well outside water, though some families with children capable of leaving the ocean have taken to breeding multi-enviroment knives.

A look at some of the common biosuites used in tool knives:

(Further comment: the monocrystal blades of tool knives are formed with needle sharp tips. Theses tips are hollow, allowing the biosuites described to exude their chemicals through the tip. In addition, the edges are generally formed with "micro pores" that allow biosuites to direct their output to coat an edge or portion of an edge.)

Lume

Used by: everyone

This colony can produce bioluminescent spores, which float free of the blade. This is typically one of the first biosuites given to young children. It comes in adhesive and non-adhesive versions. (The adhesive versions are used for marking things, the non adhesive is generally only used for special effects) Adhesive Lume colonies will generally be housed near the tip of the blade, or along an edge, so that the knife can be used as a brush.

Buffer

Used by: everyone

This biosuite exudes a layer of monostructs that cling to the polymer portions of the blade, coating them, and buffering them against other biostructs. This is useful when using other biosuites which may be harmful to plastics, (such as slice or bond) or when operating in environments hostile to the biostructs within a tool knife. Buffer colonies should be evenly distributed about the blade for efficiency.

Slice

Used by: anyone, primarily sculptors.

Slice creates a thin stream of monobots designed to cling tightly to the monocrystal edge of a tool knife blade. These monobots will react to contact with plastic by breaking the polymer bonds. Slowly drawing a Slice activated tool knife along a polymer surface will result in a smooth, clean cut, and a very small amount of heat. Varying the amount of slice activated will produce wider or narrower cuts. It is important to move the blade slowly with slice activated, or portions of slice monobots may be knocked loose, to land on other surfaces where they will damage the plastics. To limit potential damage, Slice monobots (not colonies) are designed for vary short life times. Slice colonies are ALLWAYS located at the interface between polymer and monocrystal. Buffer is highly recommended in any tool knife with a slice biosuite.

Bond

Used by: everyone, primarily scultpors.

Bond, like slice, creates a thin stream of monobots along the tool edge. These monobots will bond to any polymer surface they contact. If another polymer surface comes into contact with them, they will fuse the two surfaces. This must be dome before the monobots die (approximately five minutes in saline solution, about 30 seconds in air, there are some that are designed to last longer in air.) This fused joint will remain even after the monobots are dead, and is extremely strong. If the monobots do not contact two surfaces, they will flake off when they die. The surfaces to be joined must be an extremely exact fit for most types of Bond, though there are types that will fill gaps etc. Bond colonies are ALLWAYS located at the interface between polymer and monocrystal. Buffer is highly recommended in any tool knife with a Bond biosuite.

Etch

Used by: Everyone

This is a specialized form of slice, used not only in tool knives, but also in writing styluses. The amount of monobots created is much smaller, and much more controlled, for delicate etching work. This is used when making written records. (generally recorded onto polymer sheets.) In addition to creating a slight ingraving, etch will also alter the color of the polymer sheet.

Stamp

Used by: Politicians, traders

Traders and politicians typically have an engraved stamp on the hilt of their tool knives. This stamp will contain a version of etch engineered specifically for that merchant. Small quantities of the biostruct will be deposited on the document, and merged with the polymer to form a signature stamp that is almost impossible to forge.

Disrupt

Used by: Warriors, Criminals, Kika and Anka

Disrupt releases a voracious swarm of biostructs that consume any carbon base organic (but not most polymers) they are in contact with. They are used in combat knives, with the result that any strike that reaches flesh will dissolve the flesh around the wound, in an exceedingly painful fashion. The Biostructs are intended to be short lived, they literally eat until they burst. They are typically used for disabling strikes as they do to some extent cauterize the wound. (There are other suites used for killing blows.) Other nastier versions, are designed to be self replicating. Those versions are strictly illegal. *Any biostruct designed to be self replicating MUST be in an enclosed system, and must be designed for sustained size, (no growth.) These regulations exist among all three Ocean races because of the mutual danger posed by a potential runaway biostruct suite.* This colony can be located anywhere along the blade, but should be near the point or edge to have any effect. It is dangerous to have this suite activated except when the knife is actually scoring a cut, due to the risk of drifting Disrupt spores coming into contact with yourself or your allies before they are quite dead.

Coagulate

Used by: Medics

This colony produces a first aid powder comprised of bioplastic, and miniature biostructs. Exposed to blood, this powder will bond the plastic with the blood to form a shallow seal and stop bleeding. Experimental versions of this powder have been designed to work on Cyantian blood as well as Neefla, Raiey, and Craih blood. (Note that the experimental versions are not "supposed" to be in common use, but K&A have gotten their hands on some?they are still supposed to be in testing.)

BioSeal

Used by: Medics

This active colony is an advanced form of Coagulate. It actually produces biostructs that will extend themselves along a non biological intrusion into a biological entity, and will metabolise the blood released by the wound along with a plastic powder to form a seal that covers the intrusion, and seals off the inner surfaces of the wound. This allows the intrusion to be removed without allowing the wound to continue bleeding.

BloodBreather

Used by: Medics, emergency personel

This colony metabolises blood and other bodily fluids into breathable oxygen. It can also process water, much less efficiently. Useful for cleaning out wounds, as well as being useable as an emergency measure. If a Neefla is trapped far below the surface, and the emergency responder cannot get them to the surface, then as an emergency resort, they can insert the tool knife partway into the blow hole, (being careful to neither slice the blow hole or allow water in with the knife.) The knife can then process either water or nutrient fluid, releasing the oxygen into the trapped Neefla's lungs. This is not very efficient, but it will keep the Neefla alive. (Note that many emergency personel and kits contain blood breather straws, these are also used in surgery to keep the incision free of blood during operations.)

Dissolve

Used by: Medics

This is a specialized form of slice. The biostruct is keyed to the bioplastic and biostructs from Coagulate and BioSeal. Emergency personnel tend to have wider spectrum Dissolve colonies so they can deal with the different variants that have been created by different Colleges. The disadvantage of the wide spectrum Dissolve colonies is they are less efficient and slower than narrow spectrum or keyed Dissolve colonies. In contrast a keyed Dissolve colony is able to break up a Coagulate or BioSeal in moments, but is only able to do so on a specific variant. If a toolknife has either Coagulate or BioSeal colonies, it almost always has the keyed Dissolve for the colonies.

Biostructs and more specifically monostructs typically have chemical tags on their surface, identifying the cells as artificial, and often telling something about the purpose and maker of the biostruct. Among Raiey these tags are codified, such that everyone uses the same basic tag to indicate artifical creations, etc. Among Neefla, Families will use similar sets of tags, but other than that there is no standard. If you are familiar with the field, you can recognise the maker of tags by the style used, and often from that you can determine the biostructs purpose.

Phage

Used by: Biostruct engineers

Phage colonies produce swarms of hunter killer monobots designed to dismember only biostruct cells. They recognise chemical tags, and either dismember the cell or leave it alone based on those tags. Among Raiey, Phages are designed that will eliminate all biostructs, biostructs of a certain class, or specific biostructs. Among Neefla, Phages will typically be designed to target specific biostructs or else classes of biostruct belonging to a specific maker.

Advanced Phage (AKA: Purify)

Used By: Medics and Biostruct engineers

Purify performs in the oposite fashion from a true Phage. Purify identifies cells belonging to a certain class, such as all cells with a given genetic marker, and leaves them alone. All other cells are destroyed. (These are basically super immune cells.) Purify is used as an anti biotic, created as a specific for each patient. It is also used by Biostruct engineers to prep lab fish prior to testing, to insure that there are no other bacteria that the biostruct being tested might react with. Most Biostruct engineers also carry a small suply of Purify tuned to their genetic code in case of lab accidents.

WarPhage

Used By: Kika and Anka, possibly others

Created origionally as a game, and as a technique to polish there skills, WarPhage is the biostruct equivelent of battle bots. Two biostruct generation colonies are placed in a petri dish, and they create miniature phages to go out and do battle. Often a small amount of plastic will be placed at strategic locations, this can be utilised by the colonies to improve it's little phage warriors. Maximum size that a war phage colony is allowed to produce is five cells, though Anka is experimenting with creating five cell phages that hook up to form giant fighting phages. (someone has been watching to much earth TV.) On side wins when it has destroyed to other colony. Kika and Anka record the battle feild under a microscope, play it back, and go and design whole new colonies of destruction.

Encode

Used by: Diplomats, Traders, students

Encode is a way for a neefla to record agreements or take notes rapidly and discretely. It converts a series of pulses or taps against the knife hilt into a chemical string, similar in structure to DNA. The chemical string can later be read by a chemical stenograph, and trascribed to paper. Most modern computers have chemical stenograph readers.

Some traders and diplomats with ancestors in the biostruct college will sometimes write important agreements such that the sequences formed by encode actually generate real, useable DNA sequences. These sequences are then implanted into seeds, and grown as living sculptures memorializing the pact. It is considered very bad form to use "boilerplate" sequences, or to shuffle the agreement inot inactive portions of the DNA. Of course the death of such a living structure is NOT a good omen. This is generally undertaken only by the most confident and skilled of negotiators, and frequently they will call in a biostruct engineer to consult and help them design it.

The colleges

Medical

Responsible for all things medical, they are nearly unparalleled doctors, given their ability to actually "see" into the body. The creation of Gene-matched Biobots in recent years for use in surgery has given them an even greater edge.

Sculpture

Artisans of this college are responcible for all crafts having to do with the transformation of raw plastics into utilitarian works of art. This field includes the entire civil, structural, mechanical, and material science branches of engineering, and lately has come to include the aeronautic branch as well. There are few if any Neefla space ships at this point, but the aircraft they have designed and built are works of art.

Biostruct engineering

Biostruct engineering is a science created by the Raiey but developed jointly by Raiey and Neefla (and Craih?) See the section on Biostruct Technology.

Among the Neefla, the art of the biostruct really is an art, persued with equal reliance on technique and intuition. A biostruct researcher and lab staff can work for twenty years to produce a single new type of monobot. Only about six months of that is in the creative process, the rest is involved in testing determine exactly what was made. The testing process also insures the monobot is safe for use, stable against mutation, and not dangerous.

War

War College includes the entirety of martial arts, tactics weapons design and all other things related to war. This also includes all forms of personal combat. Most Neefla have had at least one ancestor in the War college, and Neefla families will often vie for mates from the war college to guarantee that the knowledge remains up to date in the family.

All members of the Neefla War College are technically reservists, and are part of a rigid hierarchy of command that often supersedes loyalty to their Family. When a member of the war college marries outside the war college, the children are given a choice at an early age of whether to enter the war college or not. There is a not insignificant amount of pressure brought to bear to ensure that at least some children reenter the War College. Members of the War College have their children early and often, unlike other Neefla, and are required to have at least two children before they are posted to any active duty post.

Politics

The college of politics is the Neefla concession to the fact that some times people just cannot get along together. The college of politics is organized as a sort of academic hierarchy, with promotion granted by ones peers in recognition of achievement. A group of Neefla about to take on a large project would approach a Neefla of the political college, and request assistance in organizing the endeavor. That Neefla would become responsible for locating resources for the endeavor, and settling any personal conflicts that arose in the course of the endeavor.

The upper levels form the judicial caste, they 'discover' the laws, in much the manner of senior physicists discovering the principles of the universe. For the most part, there are very few criminal laws, even such things as murder trials tend to be civil affairs. Only when absolutely necessary would a Neefla politician call a criminal hearing. At that point, a request would be made to the War College to arrest the accused criminal. For this reason, corruption within the War College is the political college's worst nightmare, and a constant vigilance is maintained to ensure this does not occur.

Entertainment

Any form of art that involves live performance belongs to the Entertainment college

Trade

The Trade college handles any contracts or trade deals between members of the Neefla culture and other cultures.