Outsider

"Manekin" is the closest we with tongues and teeth can come to pronouncing their word for their own people. Most call them Outsiders, Others, Oracles, or other culturally-appropriate monikers for soothsayers.

Outsiders are pearlescent space mollusks. With their absolute mastery of their own form and an ability to rapidly evolve the Self however they like, the Outsiders - as rare as they are - are like unto dragons or gods in terms of scope and ability.

Outsiders perceive themselves as an infinite expression of a single quantity. Their experiences in every moment are shared between selves from alternate realities or other worlds. This makes them very unreliable at times, but their capacity for resolving information per their present situation based on the infinite environments they experience at once denotes a certain degree of wisdom and intellect.

Outsiders walk on two legs, though they possess as few as five and as many as twelve limbs. The segmented carapace of an Outsider is not a true carapace but an enamelled bivalve clamshell, reshaped and reformed over time to resemble an idealized human appearance. The foot of an Outsider is not a single muscular body as it is in most bivalves, but innumerable muscles and tentacular arms and digestive apparati, which the Outsider weaves through its shell to manipulate its chosen appearance in a humanlike fashion.

Outsiders are known to be blind and deaf. This does not seem to present them any difficulty in perceiving or communicating with other species. Where humanoids have eyes, Outsiders instead have eyestalk-like scenting organs, similar to a combination of an elephant's trunk and the nose of a star mole. When retracted, they seem like black pits where a creature's eyes would be; when extended radial protrusions of flesh unfurl from the stalk. These scent-stalks are highly mobile. They also convey very accurate information regarding heat and thermal imprints, possibly in temporal dimensions as well.

Why the Outsiders have chosen to represent themselves as being humanlike is something of a mystery; the best analogy given to mortal peoples is from an Unborn scholar, "It is as if I chose to wear the skin and mechanisms of a dog." Their facsimile is intrinsically imperfect, thus making it a true conundrum. Even their voices sound more like the crooning of countless pipes than conventional humanoid dialog.

On the rare occasions in which Outsiders convene, their own language consists largely of scent emissions, the scoring of terrain, and bodily nudges. There are no known non-Outsiders who are capable of communicating in this way.

Outsiders are known to produce small pearl-like objects by some means, which, when eaten, impart knowledge directly to the ingestor. It is commonly held that these pearls are formed by some interaction between the brain and throat, as they are sometimes produced from the Outsider's mouth. These are commonly called "pearls of wisdom" and the term has entered metaphorical use beyond that.

Known Living Outsiders:

 * First-Among-Many
 * Calm-Within-the-Grave
 * Hers-is-to-Fold-Calamities
 * Indicator-of-Future-Tragedies
 * Multiplier-of-Tongues
 * Accountant-of-Spaces-Travelled
 * He-Gazes-Upon-Tone
 * Recalls-Only-Others
 * Ten-Thousand-Moons-Lay-Before-Us
 * To-Imply-Is-To-Doubt
 * Highest-Fief
 * Ardent-Agent-Of-Change
 * Last-Of-Few