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Alien Name: K’khk’Nak*~~** - can be translated as "We Who Are Here", but is not usually. an acceptable non-clicker or flasher pronounciation is "Kahinkna"

Planet of Origin: Malegara

Ecosystem Component: pure-nutrient eater and bacteriavore/symbiont- thus, high on a very small food chain

Base Habitat: in the depths of actively volcanic trenches

Grouping: Hive: 1 Queen, anywhere from 100-1000 larva nesting on the queen with others placed in nearby cavern rooms, about 5000 in their ‘Rooted’ forms in the caverns or near the vents at any given time, and about 5000 other ‘mobiles’

Intelligence Level: They have a hive mind that can reach the intelligence that could be considered to be far off the human intelligence scale. Individually, if somehow separated from the hive mind, all but the queen appear barely able to vocalize on their own, much less think. Without the hive-mind, instinct drives them to find another available hive mind, otherwise they are likely to be eaten due to the disorientation and brainlesness. However, only the sudden death of a lone queen or the movement of an adult individual out of range of the queen or of a significant grouping of members of the same hive mind can cause such a separation from the hive mind.
Separate ‘intelligences’ do occur, usually the result of a very synchronized group of individuals within a hive. All are controlled by the queen or queens.

Typical adult size: The mobile adults can be about 6 feet from head to tail, Queens can reach about 7-14 feet, depending on the cave they’re rooted in and diet.

Lifespan/Reproduction: Queens live for a very long time, the healthiest and luckiest reaching up to 40 or 45 Malegaran years.
Queens produce offspring at a rate of about 10-200 larva every hour. Larva, within 1-4 Malegaran days, are ready for planting.
Their plant stage is their next stage. The larva grows a holdfast and begins its development. Its adult body rests curled up in a ball near its plant-stem base. This lasts until the attending adults have managed to begin a successful colony of vent bacteria in the newborn. The time for this stage varies from 10 days to 7 years, depending on the strain of bacteria, its competition, and the environmental conditions. After it has gained enough nutrients to sustain it, its stalk shrivels and the new adult breaks free from its protective covering and enters the hivemind. Adults, after finishing the metamorphosis, can live for 10 malegaran years.

Note: Currently, there is only one queen left. She is able to reproduce through part fission and part selective modification of her offspring’s DNA to form genetically diverse offspring. She discovered a way to do this after a long time in the high-pressure dome… although the truth was that she had been modified by the keepers.
Originally, however, they would assimilate the genetic material of rival hives of K’khk’Nak*~~**.

Appearance and Physiology:
Adults: Adult K’khk’Nak*~~** are vaguely shrimplike in body structure. They are smooth, with only the hint that they have three segmentations, which can be labeled as: Head, Thorax, and Abdomen. They have many light sensing organs hidden discretely throughout their body surface. However, they are the most concentrated along the head segment, forming a large ‘eye’ that can see some color- to differentiate various types of bioluminescence from the constant lava-glow. They can also detect shapes, patterns and distance, an adaptation to the presence of some light, even at this depth. All segments are covered with complex designs in both boilumenescent tissue and in a lightly pigmented swirling pattern. Their mouths hinge right where their head segment ends and is covered with many small tooth-like structures. When the teeth are opened or removed, many leaf like structures can be seen ringing the large gullet that seems to extend well into the tail segment. The teeth are used to scrape rocks and chew various other surfaces. Muscles surrounding the inner gullet are able to suck in water and release it through millions of microscopic pores in the K’khk’Nak*~~**’s exoskeleton. Both are methods to give their resident colonies of bacteria nutrients either in the form of other bacteria ground from their symbionts or living surfaces, or as pure nutrients from the vents. The bacteria metabolize it, use what they can, and excrete the rest into the K’khk’Nak*~~**’s bloodstream, thus feeding it. It gains oxygen from this exchange as well, since the bacteria produce oxygenated water as a byproduct. In the body segment, six large appendages sprout from the base, each patterned with luminescence and pigment.
two pairs of differently shaped bony fins, and two sets of fine consciously-controlled tendrils. The fins are used for locomotion, aiding in steering and enabling a slow and controlled mode of propelling the K’khk’Nak*~~** through the water. The tentacles are the K’khk’Nak*~~**’s way of interacting and manipulating its world. They are used to build whatever technology and tools the K’khk’Nak*~~** hivemind feels it needs, from pressurized bubbles for upper layer exploration to rock-cutting lathes. The tentacles also can, at will, gain a razor-sharp edge for self-defense and for scraping off samples of interesting bacteria colonies for consumption or for the bacterial installation in the plant stage K’khk’Nak*~~**.
Along its underbelly it has a series of small clacker-like organs, like elbow joints with hollow balls attached. It strikes two opposing clackers against each other, producing a sound. Each part of the set produces a slightly different sound. On top of its head section is an appendage resembling an anglerfish lure. However, it contains many light nodes and is not used for angling. Both the lure, or ‘lantern’ as its known, and the clackers are its mode for communication.
Coloration of the main segments range from clear to ink black.

Plant-stage: Plant stage K’khk’Nak*~~** are just out of the larval stage. They have a long, thick, oddly flower-like appendage growing from the head section, which is the most visible section at this stage. The ‘flower’ heads take in whatever nutrients they can from nearby currents and vents, as well as any bacteria floating by. The ‘flower appendage’ consists of a long white stalk with a circularly arranged series of four triangular ‘petals.’ It is usually pink or orange in color, though sometimes white. The stalk seems to continue down to the ground where root-like holdfasts keep the plant form K’khk’Nak*~~** safely on the floor. The developing K’khk’Nak*~~** can be found curled up in an egglike little ball a few inches up from the base. It appears to be a small and overly simple version of the adult, though in the early days it is without bioluminescence and appendages. As time goes on and as it establishes a bacterial colony inside it, the egg-ball that is the K’khk’Nak*~~** will grow bigger and begin to gain some adult traits. The flower portion will begin to shrink in size, gradually melding into the face and coloring until it is finally the adult mouth. Once fully developed, the baby slices its way out of it’s protective covering and cuts itself free from the holdfast with its tentacles.

Larva: larva are the youngest of the K’khk’Nak*~~**. Just born, they live off the queen’s secretions and grow fat. Later, they begin to grow holdfasts from their tail and are moved to another room by the adult K’khk’Nak*~~**. They are wiggling blobs of constantly bioluminescent, and change color depending on their needs. The larva stage doesn’t last very long, and they swiftly grow to plant stage in a matter of days, though there is no real night/day cycle in the trenches. The change is very quick, and they lose their bioluminescence early on in the process.

Queens: the K’khk’Nak*~~** queen is a huge creature. They have 5 segments, each wide and disklike with a huge holdfast at her base. She has many openings ringing her segments, which give birth to larva every few minutes or so. In the places where two segments meet, a nutritious fluid is secreted, ingested by her offspring. It is milky and very thick, full of everything the larvae need to survive until they can feed themselves in the plant stage. She is dark brown to black on her upper layers and yellow-brown in the lower layers. On top of her fifth segment rests a head. Its mouth is much like the plant-stage mouth and is covered with hundreds of different types of bacteria. Her gut is segmented, allowing for many more colonies of bacteria to grow within her. Substances are sorted and used by her body. She makes sure her lair is built on top of vents so she can devour nutrients as much as she needs to. As a result, the inside of her mouth is stained black. She had lengthwise bands of luminescence that bar each segment, though they are mostly not visible due to the sheer number of larva clinging to her. She cannot move unless effort is taken by her adult K’khk’Nak*~~** to remove her holdfast and carry her away. This happens rarely. On top of the head segment are two odd-shaped organs resembling jointed antennae with bristly bulbous tips. These are used for sensory purposes and may have to do with the hivemind.
Even more rarely is a queen superseded. This usually happens when the old queen is ill or failing. She begins to send out pheremonal and luminescent signals of her failing health. This triggers the offspring already on her body to grow teeth and begin to eat both each other and the old queen. Eventually, only one is left, grown huge and glutted. It quickly puts down a holdfast and develops into a queen. She is able to tap into the original hivemind and aquire knowledge that previous queens had stored in the shared mind. She also gains all the necessary strains of bacteria from the queen’s flesh, and is able to continue the colony. New, secondary queens are born from a still-successful queen by creating a gooey sample of the bacterial colonies living in the queen and feeding it to a larvae. The larvae is carried to the best place possible- which could be anywhere from the other side of the trench to the same room. It matures quickly into a queen and begins reproducing and influencing the hive mind.

Territory: 2.3 cubic miles

Known Predators/Dangers: lava burns, poisonous bacteria, large carnivores in the trenches

Language: their language consists of clicking and clacking from their ‘Clackers’, picked up by their fins, as well as the flashing of their lights, most notably the lantern lights on their head stalk. The body lights are more identification and emotion than actual linguistics. The separate clacks and clicks are separated by apostrophies, as in “Kt’Kaak’k”
Light pulses are shown as asterisks and pulses where the light is kept on for a few ‘beats’ before being deactivated are represented by the symbol for about. For example: “***~*~” is three pulses, a long pulse, a pulse, and another long pulse.
So the name the species has for itself, K’khk’Nak*~~**, is three different kinds of clicks, a pulse, a two-beat pulse, and two short pulses.

Tools/technology: most of their technology deals with their immediate needs: food and living space. They farm specific bacterial colonies and carve away at stone with hard tools to build living space for their hive. However, the hivemind is fond of exploring, and they have even managed to create a bubble of membrane-like glop housing bacteria that keep the interior pressurized. A single K’khk’Nak*~~** rides in this all the way into the dark waters where not even the light of lava reaches. At this depth and pressure, they would normally die horribly, but the bubble prevents them from dying. However, there is no way to bring them down, so once their bubble bursts, which occurs after a certain depth has been reached, the individual dies, leaving its discoveries with the hivemind… if it did not go out of range. The queen’s range spreads throughout the whole dome and beyond, so on the keeper’s ship this is not much of a problem, especially since most of the domes are uninhabitable for the K’khk’Nak*~~**.

Note: The hivemind currently extends for about a 2000 mile in radius sphere from the queen, with no decreasing intensity of connection. However, a few individual K’khk’Nak*~~** have the ability to broadcast the hivemind to a new radius. this strengthens and expands the hivemind and allows for exploration of the ship. also, the queen's range can extend with experience and number of individual K’khk’Nak*~~** supporting or broadcasting it, as well as the number of queens, should she produce any new ones.
The hivemind means that the queen's personality rules, and so her reaction is the reaction of all K’khk’Nak*~~**.

Note: Any mental modification either by genetic modification or the anti-rejection procedure done by the keepers that relates to the K’khk’Nak*~~** has a chance of connecting that individual with the hive mind in some way, if they are in range of the queen or a broadcasting K’khk’Nak*~~** individual.

Note: The queen is curious about the domes and seeks any deep-water species with the technology to see whatever lies beyond her kin's pressure zone. (so any adjacent deep-ocean species might be approached.)
She also seeks stationary technology to broadcast the hivemind to a greater extent, much like a radio relay tower.