The first Slater most people meet is usually a wall. You round a corner on some deep-crust mining station, and there it is -- two and a half metres of crudely humanoid rock, radiating enough heat to fog your visor, watching you with no eyes whatsoever. They have three fingers per hand, each one thicker than your forearm, and they use them with surprising delicacy when they're not using them to punch through bulkheads.
Silicon-based. Fusion-powered. Functionally immortal. The Silicoids refer to Humans as "Bags of mostly water" and they're not wrong, but they say it the way you'd describe a sandwich -- mildly interesting, ultimately forgettable. Slaters don't hate you. Slaters were ancient before your species discovered fire. They just don't think about you much. Try not to take it personally.
Ignaar-Crucis; one of three planets in the Tri-Lithis system, alongside the Nanocoids' Nythex and the Om's Orathan. Ignaar-Crucis is a volcanic world sheathed in a thin, toxic atmosphere that smells like burnt copper and regret. The surface is a blasted hellscape of basalt plains and active lava flows -- the Slaters call it "outside" and consider it approximately as interesting as Humans consider the vacuum of space. You can go there. You shouldn't.
The Slaters live in the deep crust, where temperatures hover around 800 degrees Celsius and the pressure would flatten anything with a skeleton. Down there, they've carved cities into the mantle rock over geological timescales -- slow, deliberate, permanent. Slater architecture doesn't have doors. It has tunnels that took decades to bore. A Slater's home address is technically a set of depth coordinates and a rock composition index.
Lithovox -- a language transmitted primarily through subsurface vibration and low-frequency resonance. Slaters press their hands or feet against stone and talk through it. Surface conversations use a grating vocalisation that sounds like two boulders arguing -- technically audible to most species, but universally described as unpleasant. Lithovox has no words for "hurry," "rush," or "deadline." It has eleven words for different types of geological patience.
Slater names are vibrational patterns that translate poorly into phonetics. Most adopt simplified versions for dealing with other species: Korrath, Bassal, Grannix, Thromm, Vedrik, Skarn, Pylith, Crusten, Moldek, Ignis
Silicon-based humanoid life form. Looks like a large biped crudely carved from stone.
Houses a small nuclear fusion reaction inside there rock carapace. There main diet is carbon rods which maintains this reaction and delivers nutrients to there internal organs by way of a semi molten silicon fluid which also distributes nutrients and energy around their body.
Slaters burrow into the ground to breed, selecting a mate they keep for life. The burrowing process is slow; about an hour for a Slater to sink into loose earth and move through it. They cannot pass through solid rock, but they can tunnel through it by increasing their core temperature and melting a path. This takes months to years, but since Slaters do not appear to die from old age, time is not something they generally concern themselves with.
Igneous Slaters are formed from melted rock deep inside their Home Planet. As such they come from a mixture of Rocks and impurity effects there choice of future Mate, The off spring of an Igneous Slater is forever another Igneous Slater and they must complete the bonding deep beneath the there planets crust where the temperatures are the hottest.
Legends tell of a pair of Outcast Silicoids completing there finial bonding before casting themselves into the molten core of there homewold as the origin point for the Igneous Slaters historians have been unable to verify the validity of the legend.
While there is no concept of elitism within the Slater race Igneous Slaters are the most common and while they do socialize with pure Silicoids life bonds are incredibly rare.
Both your Parents were Silicoids, the unique composition of your silicon structure makes integrating AI and complex Mod chips a brease, you can literally have them Tattooed and etched into your carapace.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: Your internal fusion reaction can be channelled through your fists. Uses Weapons Melee Unarmed skill. Your unarmed melee attacks deal +1 Hit (Thermal) in addition to normal Hits. On a hit, the target gains Suffering(1) -- Burning.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: When you die, you can choose to trigger a fusion runaway. Your body detonates -- all creatures within 5 squares take 8 Hits (Thermal) , within 20 Squares 16 Hits (Radiation). This is a deliberate choice, not automatic. Your remains are radioactive slag. There is nothing left to bury.
On their homeworld, this would occur naturally when a Slater ran out of their specialised carbon diet. The detonation instantly fossilised nearby trees and timbers, providing more carbon to the remaining Slaters. Efficient, in a grim sort of way.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: Your stone carapace provides natural DR 2 (Blunt, Pierce, Slash). This stacks with worn armour DR.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: You can move through loose earth and soil at half your Speed. You can tunnel through solid rock by superheating your core, but this is slow (1 square per 10 minutes) and leaves a permanent tunnel behind you.
Requires: Silicoid Slater.
Effect: You do not require an AI neural Interface -- the AI assistant can be etched directly into your outer Silicoid crust. However, your AI assist has a Quality level (normally 6 at installation) and if you are subject to a critical hit, roll a 1d4 -- on a four, the Quality level drops by one. If this occurs you must roll a Glitch Check before you use your AI Assist.
Requires: Igneous Slater.
Effect: When standing on or carrying a source of clean natural rock, a Slater can absorb a portion of it to repair itself. As a 3+ Action Manoeuvre, for one Medium slot worth of rock (about 3-5kg) you can restore 2 HITS. It takes a minimum of 3 Actions to generate enough heat from your inner-core to make the rock malleable. Once this process has started, you can continue to restore 1 HIT for every additional Action you spend, as long as you have a supply of clean uncontaminated rocks as raw materials.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: You can disguise yourself as a rock, and gain Advantage when hiding in rocky terrain or against natural stone.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: Your fists curl up to form two effective stone pummelling weapons. Uses Weapons Melee Unarmed skill. You gain a melee fist attack that deals 2 Hits (Blunt) per fist. Each fist attack requires 1 Action.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: Your stone carapace has been hardite-fused against corrosive compounds. Gain Resistant to Chemical damage; take half Hits (round down) from Chemical sources. Acids that would strip the paint off a starship hull leave faint discolouration on your surface and nothing else. Slaters who take this feat are popular on hazmat details. They are also popular in bars that serve drinks strong enough to etch durasteel, for related reasons.
Requires: Any Slater.
Effect: Slaters communicate through subsonic resonance transmitted directly through stone, metal, and dense matter; a low geological rumble that predates spoken language by several million years. You can speak silently to any creature with Tremor Sense, or to any other Slater, within 100m, provided you are both in contact with the same solid surface (floor, wall, bulkhead, bedrock, hull plating). The message passes through walls, decks, and solid rock without interruption. Non-Tremor creatures hear only a distant low rumble they cannot decipher and generally attribute to the building settling.
Additionally, your bones remember every stone you have ever touched. You gain a RankedBoon to Intel - Aliens, Artifacts & Objects checks involving geology, mineralogy, structural analysis, load-bearing assessment, or identification of stone, mineral, and deep-time samples. A Slater can tell you what a wall is made of, where the mineral came from, and roughly how long ago it stopped being magma. You remember rocks. Rocks remember you.