Gorgon (World Guide, Sapient Species) (Patreon)

The Gorgons of Gorgenna are arguably the most terrifyingly dangerous humanoid species in the whole of the Fey’li Empire. At the same time, they’re also totally undeserving of their reputation for ‘killing’ anyone who so much as locks eyes with them. No visitor ever returns from the arid, largely desert covered world alive. At least not in any recognizable sense of the word. That isn’t the gorgons’ fault, of course. They just can’t help it.

Gorgons all appear as women of average to tall height, with pleasingly attractive physical proportions. Their skin is pale lavender, marked by patches of darker speckles on their backs, over their shoulders and upper arms, and down their rumps and outer thighs. Their eyes are said to be glowing purple, though no one has survived to say for sure, and technologically acquired imagery is always too distorted to tell for certain.

Rather than hair, a gorgon’s head is covered with a crop of prehensile tentacles with serpent-like ‘mouths’ on each end. This gives the appearance of a head covered with snakes, though they are in fact equipped with two types of glands that present the first of their natural born perils. The tentacles always emit a lovely, jasmine scent that ensures their environment is quite pleasantly perfumed at all times. This odor includes powerful pheromones which serve to relax most other sapient humanoid species, but have no effect on gorgons themselves. Each tentacle can also spit a spray of much more powerful chemicals with tend to cause fascination with the gorgon, making it almost certain for the victim to gaze into the gorgon’s eyes, should the gorgon turn their head in the victim’s direction.

Anyone who looks directly into a gorgon’s eyes finds themselves irresistibly compelled into instantly shift into a stable pose. In the next instant, with a sudden, hissing pop, their body is flash-transformed into solid marble. Gorgons themselves are immune to this effect, unless they willingly, actively submit to it.

Being petrified by a gorgon is not actually a fatal experience. It is merely the manner that nature has provided to allow gorgons to trap and preserve an important means of supplementary sustenance. A gorgon is able to feed off the soul energy of their own petrified victims, as long as they’re within a few hundred meters. They can also share this energy with other gorgons by channeling energy the energies of their own victims through themselves.

Sharing energy is one of the core elements of gorgon society. Barring accidental death, all gorgons give themselves up for petrification, typically offering themselves to those in their community who lack their own statues to feed from in communal submissions that take place every month. If there are already enough statues to go around, they instead offer themselves ot esteemed individuals within their community. These powerful individuals act as keepers of society’s food reserves. They are expected to share their collections during the cyclical famines caused by the orbits of Gorgenna’s two moons, an essential act that means the difference between survival and the total extinction of the species.

The rarer the type of marble that any given gorgon victim is made of, the more intrinsically powerful the victim’s soul, and the more energy that each of a gorgon’s victims can provide over the course of one day’s time. The most common material of the marble statues are white with soft gray streaks. Uncommon are white with a web of distinct, dark gray inclusions. Rare are white with dark green inclusions. Very rare are dark gray with distinct white inclusions. Extremely rare are black with distinct white inclusions, or green with white inclusions. Extraordinary are black with golden inclusions. Legendary are green with golden inclusions.

According to the gorgons’ own reckoning, if a full meal consists of 100 points of energy, then a common victim provides 1 point per day, uncommon 2, rare 4, very rare 10, extremely rare 25, extraordinary 50, and legendary 100. All victims can be ‘sucked on’ for more energy, but there is a risk of placing the victim into a state of dormancy, or even killing them. Doubling the energy draw creates an 80-20 chance of 3-30 days dormancy or death. Tripling the energy draw creates a 50-50 chance of 3-60 days dormancy or death. Quadrupling energy draw creates a 20-80 chance of 5-100 days or dormancy or death. Quintupling the energy draw means certain death.

While the marble of a gorgon victim’s petrified body is virtually indestructible, it will deteriorate over time, eaten away by the soul energy which flows to the gorgon who created it. Only the base material slowly dissolves. For common victims, this means all of the material, but for others the distinct inclusions remain intact and hold their shape. As the base material vanishes, this leaves behind a very different kind of statue consisting of an open web of intensely colored stone. Drawing extra energy accelerates the process.

Over a normal lifespan, a common statue will last for about 20 years, uncommon 50 years, rare 100 years, very rare 250 years, extremely rare 750 years, extraordinary 1500 years, and legendary 5000 years. Every double draw dissolves the equivalent of 1% of the statue’s maximum lifespan. Triple draws dissolve 5%. Quadruple draws dissolve 25%. Quintuple draws dissolve 100%. Once the statue’s base material is 100% dissolved, the subject’s soul peacefully departs the mortal realm.

Gorgon statues have no senses besides a dull sense of touch, and a purely mental sense of the connection between themselves and their maker. No communication can take place, but it does offer a certain comforting companionship to the captive soul. They have no awareness of other statues the gorgon has created, nor are they aware if their gorgon is sharing their energy with another.

When a gorgon is themselves petrified, or should they die beforehand, their own statues automatically connect to their creator’s eldest daughter. If there are no living daughters, the statues will randomly link to other nearby gorgons. If there are no gorgons within the normal feeding range, the statues will go dormant until a gorgon approaches within range.

Gorgons have extraordinary metabolisms, and their bodies are highly efficient at recycling wastes back into nutrients using the soul energy they absorb. They aren’t completely without need for physical sustenance, however. They require at least half a normal meal a day to survive so long as they have sufficient soul energy available. In times of plenty, they will consume a much larger proportion of their diet as physical food. In times of famine, they will try to get by on half a meal. If those in any given community can’t manage this, then enough will sacrifice themselves for the common good, as noted above, to reduce burden on the physical food supply, and to supplement the soul energy available to their family and neighbors.

Due to the gorgon’s potent natural hazards, their people have had little useful direct contact with the outside world, even though they’ve been part of the Fey’li Empire for over five hundred years. This was arranged as much to prevent unacceptable intrusions onto Gorgenna by unscrupulous actors as it was to consolidate a previously unaligned territory sitting in the heart of Imperial space. That hasn’t prevented countless visitors going to the planet in hopes of partaking of the exotic culture, all with very predictable results.

The reputation of the gorgons for hostility toward outsiders has been moderated in recent years thanks to the more open attitudes toward xenoexperience in general. Gorgenna is no longer the only world where visitors are free to come, but never to leave. That said, only a trickle of xenoexperience tourists make their way to nearby Gorgenna, while millions upon millions are willing to travel far to the edges of the Empire to offer themselves up to the rowa. Though the latter are much more active in making sure that no visitors ever leave their home worlds, the passive, natural qualities of the gorgons seem so much more insidious that significant suspicion about their motivations remains.

The development of biogel has triggered a change to the typical gorgon equation. When a gorgon gets themselves a suit of biogel, it automatically covers their eyes. They can still see perfectly well, but it blocks their petrifying power. This has allowed at least a few dozen gorgons to visit other worlds, and experience other societies. Perils still remain, however, and it is quite common for even biogel clad gorgons to amass a small collection of statues as they live their lives beyond Gorgenna.

A biogel clad gorgon can, with considerable effort, cause their biogel suit to thin enough over their eyes to allow for petrification. However, due to the nature of the biogel, it will only work on victims who deliberately focus into the gorgon’s eyes for at least ten seconds. The kiss of a gorgon can also be petrifying. This occurs when more than a few drops of fresh saliva make their way into the victim’s mouth. While the victim is instantly compelled to take a stable pose, the petrification itself isn’t instantaneous. It generally begins at the tips of the victim’s lower extremities, and spreads upwards over the course of 3-5 minutes. Due to the more more physically intimate nature of this sort of interaction, the gorgon runs a risk of becoming entangled with the victim in such a way that freedom might actually require sucking their souls straight into the realms beyond.

All of a gorgon’s other body fluids have a similar effect to their saliva, should they be extracted through the biogel suit. These effects can even survive most forms of processing, resulting in events like the Mashiva Mariners’ University Cheese Incident. During this even, seven students and sixteen of their personal guests were petrified by ‘gorgonzolla’ cheese made from the collected milk of a gogron student, who’d been doing it because she’d heard fey’li and some others did it and wanted to fit in. She’d forgotten to mark the container with a warning, however, and ended up with quite a collection of statues to fill her private room, and much larger ‘museum space’ in the subbasement of the library as well.

Anyone can travel to Gorgenna, though it may be difficult to find a ship that’s willing to land on the world. The best bet is to get a passenger billet on a postal freighter, though a few small charter vessels advertise one-way trips in hopes that xenoexperience tourism to the world will take off at some point. The natives generally stay clear of the landing points themselves, trusting on automated freight systems to take care of unloading and primary sorting. A few enterprising communities have set up little ‘temples’ adjacent to the landing points, where visitors can approach safely, spend a little time seeing the sights from a safe distance, and then enter ‘ritual’ chambers where natives in need of new statues for their collection await.