A Brief Preliminary Treatise on the Koup'ira

A Brief Preliminary Treatise on the Koup’ira

Written by Tiberius Clodius Faustinianus

While I was in Argoport preparing to travel to Sylvanor to study the otherworldly creatures that call it home, I witnessed a most curious sight. A group of four creatures that looked like nothing less than human-sized, upright shellfish dragging nets of fish up onto the docks. One of the dockhands was kind enough to inform me that these giant crustaceans are a race called koup’ira. They trade fish and pearls for red meat and copper-rich alloys, and will swiftly correct anyone that confuses them for beasts.

My transport wasn’t due to leave for several days, so I decided to take the opportunity to learn about these strange entities. As the sun began to set, I drank a potion to ensure that I could understand them and set about questioning the koup’ira.

Language

Their language is…strange. Every language that I’ve had the chance to study operates under the same mechanics: air passes through the throat and lips to make sound. The koup’ira language instead uses a combination of claw snaps and mouthpart gestures. I later was told that the koup’ira are physically incapable of speaking any surface language.

Life Cycle

The koup’ira reproduce by the females laying a clutch of ten to twenty eggs that the males then fertilize by releasing sperm into the water containing the clutch. Occasionally a current will bring sperm to the eggs from something other than a koup’ira. In the overwhelming majority of cases, nothing happens and the egg is unfertilized. The only time that a hybrid has resulted from this is an ancient legend. The newborns once hatched look like smaller versions of the adults.

As the koup’ira grow, their shells periodically need replacing as it doesn’t stretch and grow like the skin of humanoids. Thus when their shells are no longer big enough, they molt. A koup’ira will molt up to four times in their first year, slowing down after that until the time between molts is measured in decades.

It was at this point that I learned a fact that shocked me. The koup’ira that I was conversing with wasn’t even an adult yet. Standing upright it would have been able to look an elf in the eye and it wasn’t done growing. The oldest and largest living koup’ira that my informants knew of is supposedly larger than the flagship of the Unbound Fleet!

Names

According to my informants there are several different styles of names amongst the koup’ira, largely determined by the kingdom that one is born in. Their home kingdom is named Kaibaw wa Tupakig, and they themselves are named Paakiga, Koulang, Hinatisao, and Manea’kailang.

From what I have determined by comparing my notes with what I know about the effects of the potion I used has on names, their names roughly translate to Hard-Shell, Swift-Tail, Shadow-Mind, and Dream-Swimmer while the kingdom name translates to Shallow-Waters.

Physiology

The koup’ira possess a strange anatomy, though not the most bizarre that I have heard of. Their bodies are long rather than tall, though when on land they tend to pull the front of their bodies upright.

Except for their various joints, the koup’ira lack a flexible skin like our own. Instead they possess a thick hard shell like crabs, insects, and spiders. My four informants each had different color patterns on their shells, which ranged from pale tan to a nearly black green.

Unlike all the civilized races that live on safe, dry land, the koup’ira possess four arms. The upper, stronger pair ends in claws like those possessed by crabs or scorpions. The lower pair is not as strong, but is capable of fine manipulation akin to that of our hands.

Their four legs are more akin to those of insects than our own. Each consists of softer joints between hard shell plates covering the thighs, shins, and top of their feet.

The koup’ira lack lips and cheeks, instead they have mandibles that grind and shred food as it is drawn in. The best that I can think to compare it to is a combination between straw and a mortar and pestle. Whatever it is that they are eating is drawn in like liquid from a straw, where the various rough and barbed mouthparts contract.

Roughly an hour and a half into my interview of the koup’ira, I learned that my initial assumption that they breathed air was mistaken. Paakiga explained to me as the other three submerged that while the koup’ira could remain on land for hours at a time, their “lungs” would dry out if they didn’t go back under water. In addition, while they can breathe air, it is not as comfortable as breathing water like a fish.

Religion

I initially assumed that the koup’ira would worship gods that while different would still be more or less recognizable as the ones that the Green Coast worships. To my surprise, that is not the case. The koup’ira do not worship gods or goddesses, instead they revere their ancestors.

Regular prayers are made to deceased family members, asking for good fortune or other such things, with offerings of food left at shrines dedicated to the relatives in a given family. Some particularly religious koup’ira will decorate their shells with the names of their ancestors, adding in the names of those in the family as they die.

Magic

From what I have been able to determine, the magic that some clergy of the gods are known for is rare underwater. Rarer still is the magic of mages and sorcerers. In their place is a strange form of magic that stems from the mind. Filling the role of archmages are strange mages that draw their power from dreams or faith.

Paakiga told me that arcane magic is looked at with suspicion due to a civil war centuries ago. The side that lost was led by an undead koup’ira mage the size of a dragon. Despite being killed in more than a dozen battles, the mage kept returning until a strike force infiltrated its stronghold.

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