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Description
The majority of upals remain on their homeworld. Known as Paliek in Arvonin, it has a tidally locked, almost circular orbit around a red dwarf star. However, perturbations from nearby planets makes its orbit slightly off from a perfect circle - this slight eccentricity generates tidal heating, making the planet very volcanically active.

It was only recently that they made contact with the larger Bubble. This gave them very little time to make progress in space colonisation, one of the main reasons for their relative confinement to Paliek. Although they are far from outliers in being new to the interstellar scene - there has been a boom in the rate of new species contacted ever since the start of the Age of Exploration. In fact, most currently known species were discovered in this timeframe, with an especially large spike in the last few decades. What made upals stand out, however, was that they were significantly more technologically advanced.

It goes without saying that this was an invaluable discovery. Different species often arrive at different conclusions when developing the same technologies and fields of science independently. This would allow them to offer unique perspectives. However, while this would serve as a good bargaining chip to quickly gain influence, ideological conflicts have hindered this.

Biology

A buoyant species, they make use of large hydrogen sacs to float in their homeworld's atmosphere. The atmosphere of Paliek is both extremely dense and low in oxygen, ideal for such an adaptation. Their ten tentacles, in addition to being good at manipulating objects, are used to cling onto surfaces and drag their floating bodies along. They can also stretch their tentacles to nearly double their resting size.

While they're a form of water life (using water as their primary solvent), and carbon dioxide is abundant, they are not oxygen breathers. Instead, they use the hydrogen sulphide released from volcanoes for energy. The abundance of sulphurous compounds makes the oceans acidic, and erosion from acid rain keeps topography flat. The surface is gloomy, a result of a near constant cloud-cover of condensed sulphur dioxide in the upper atmosphere, but enough light does reach the surface for photosynthesis and vision. Despite this, upals rely mostly on echolocation, very effective in a dense atmosphere, although they do also have photosensitive skin. This photosensitivity is most concentrated at the eyespots that dot their body, and especially those at the end of each tentacle. Nowhere are they able to resolve images, however.

Subdermal muscles allow them to alter their skin texture, which is not only used for camouflage but also communication. Specific patterns of textures are detected with sonar, each forming different words or serving different grammatical functions. This also results in there being a separate "listening language", since the use of echolocation pings can be used to determine how closely an individual is listening to what someone is saying. Over time, this developed in complexity, to the point its use can be used to indicate a wide variety of reactions.

Society and culture

By the time of contact they had already developed electronics, although they weren't able to produce it on an industrial scale. However, their biology is very compatible with implantation, and simple direct neural interfaces are surprisingly easy for them, so electronic implants were common fairly early on. While this practice was quick to spread, there is a large colonial power vehemently against it, seeing it as a threat to the purity of their species. Unfortunately, it was this empire that gained the most access to interstellar technology following contact, and they have the largest off-world presence.

Upals periodically engage in periods of rest followed by activity - only a small fraction of this rest is spent sleeping. Most of their rest consists of eating and thinking. This is due to a biological constraint where inactivity is required to properly digest food, both before and after its consumption (an exception to this being the fast-moving insect-sized organisms they supplement their diet with). They're very vulnerable during this time. While they enjoy privacy, they struggle to rest effectively unless others are in the area, fully alert and able to protect and feed them. The dependence on other individuals in order to rest means they are constantly alternating roles, and a lot of upal society centres around caring for the resting as a result. Some would argue this was why they developed intelligence in the first place.

Architecture tends to consist of sloping walls and low-lying structures, since even slow winds can be very strong on Paliek. However, in order to make efficient use of space, it is a common practice to extend buildings below ground-level. Since they can float, little heed is given to gravity outside of structural constraints. It is often only possible to reach certain rooms on the interiors of buildings by floating to them, with internal corridors being three dimensional with doorways at varying heights. The concept of different floors doesn't really exist, their tentacles able to scale walls just as easily as horizontal surfaces.

Description
The majority of upals remain on their homeworld. Known as Paliek in Arvonin, it has a tidally locked, almost circular orbit around a red dwarf star. However, perturbations from nearby planets makes its orbit slightly off from a perfect circle - this slight eccentricity generates tidal heating, making the planet very volcanically active.

It was only recently that they made contact with the larger Bubble. This gave them very little time to make progress in space colonisation, one of the main reasons for their relative confinement to Paliek. Although they are far from outliers in being new to the interstellar scene - there has been a boom in the rate of new species contacted ever since the start of the Age of Exploration. In fact, most currently known species were discovered in this timeframe, with an especially large spike in the last few decades. What made upals stand out, however, was that they were significantly more technologically advanced.

It goes without saying that this was an invaluable discovery. Different species often arrive at different conclusions when developing the same technologies and fields of science independently. This would allow them to offer unique perspectives. However, while this would serve as a good bargaining chip to quickly gain influence, ideological conflicts have hindered this.

Biology

A buoyant species, they make use of large hydrogen sacs to float in their homeworld's atmosphere. The atmosphere of Paliek is both extremely dense and low in oxygen, ideal for such an adaptation. Their ten tentacles, in addition to being good at manipulating objects, are used to cling onto surfaces and drag their floating bodies along. They can also stretch their tentacles to nearly double their resting size.

While they're a form of water life (using water as their primary solvent), and carbon dioxide is abundant, they are not oxygen breathers. Instead, they use the hydrogen sulphide released from volcanoes for energy. The abundance of sulphurous compounds makes the oceans acidic, and erosion from acid rain keeps topography flat. The surface is gloomy, a result of a near constant cloud-cover of condensed sulphur dioxide in the upper atmosphere, but enough light does reach the surface for photosynthesis and vision. Despite this, upals rely mostly on echolocation, very effective in a dense atmosphere, although they do also have photosensitive skin. This photosensitivity is most concentrated at the eyespots that dot their body, and especially those at the end of each tentacle. Nowhere are they able to resolve images, however.

Subdermal muscles allow them to alter their skin texture, which is not only used for camouflage but also communication. Specific patterns of textures are detected with sonar, each forming different words or serving different grammatical functions. This also results in there being a separate "listening language", since the use of echolocation pings can be used to determine how closely an individual is listening to what someone is saying. Over time, this developed in complexity, to the point its use can be used to indicate a wide variety of reactions.

Society and culture

By the time of contact they had already developed electronics, although they weren't able to produce it on an industrial scale. However, their biology is very compatible with implantation, and simple direct neural interfaces are surprisingly easy for them, so electronic implants were common fairly early on. While this practice was quick to spread, there is a large colonial power vehemently against it, seeing it as a threat to the purity of their species. Unfortunately, it was this empire that gained the most access to interstellar technology following contact, and they have the largest off-world presence.

Upals periodically engage in periods of rest followed by activity - only a small fraction of this rest is spent sleeping. Most of their rest consists of eating and thinking. This is due to a biological constraint where inactivity is required to properly digest food, both before and after its consumption (an exception to this being the fast-moving insect-sized organisms they supplement their diet with). They're very vulnerable during this time. While they enjoy privacy, they struggle to rest effectively unless others are in the area, fully alert and able to protect and feed them. The dependence on other individuals in order to rest means they are constantly alternating roles, and a lot of upal society centres around caring for the resting as a result. Some would argue this was why they developed intelligence in the first place.

Architecture tends to consist of sloping walls and low-lying structures, since even slow winds can be very strong on Paliek. However, in order to make efficient use of space, it is a common practice to extend buildings below ground-level. Since they can float, little heed is given to gravity outside of structural constraints. It is often only possible to reach certain rooms on the interiors of buildings by floating to them, with internal corridors being three dimensional with doorways at varying heights. The concept of different floors doesn't really exist, their tentacles able to scale walls just as easily as horizontal surfaces.