Tipua

Tipua, also known as Bloomers, Moldies and Deadwoods, are among the most unusual peoples of the Federation, occupying a space between organism and memory, between plant and person. In their natural state, they are not fully sapient. They exist as living growths more akin to flora than fauna, rooted, photosynthetic entities composed of stems, fibrous structures, and leaf or flower-like formations used to absorb light and sustain themselves. In this state, Tipua possess only limited awareness, guided by instinct, mild telepathic impulses, and an exceptionally strong genetic memory that carries the accumulated impressions of countless prior generations.

This changes during an optional but transformative phase of adolescence. At this stage, most Tipua will seek union with a meat-based living entity, but many will not be successful, dying out. The proportionally few that succeed in such a union, using vivid floral displays and subtle psionic influence, to lure a potential host into close proximity, encouraging contact, coaxing the host to place the growth against their head or upper body, beginning the bonding process. The Tipua is capable of a single, sudden lunge, driving hardened root-structures toward the host’s central nervous system. If these roots successfully integrate, a struggle for dominance begins. Failure means death for the Tipua; success results in the dissolution of both original forms and the emergence of something new.

The resulting being is neither plant nor host, but a fusion of both. The Tipua absorbs a majority of the host’s memories, instincts, and learned behaviours into its genetic continuum, even if some is lost, while the host’s body becomes the physical vessel of the new entity. This process is irreversible. Completion of the union typically takes 24–30 hours, after which the original host is definitively deceased. The Tipua survives, now fully sapient, carrying forward not only its ancestral memory but also the lived experiences of the host. While the plant component can survive destruction of a body and later claim another host, the host cannot survive separation from the Tipua once bonding has occurred.

Before Federation contact, Tipua primarily bonded with the non-sapient creatures of their homeworld, Hinewalla of the Rūaumoko Nexus. These unions produced beings capable of movement and simple tool use, but culture remained tribal, communication relying heavily on telepathy, magic and instinct rather than spoken or written language. True sentience emerged only after first contact, when Tipua bonded with Federation explorers. The fusion of vast genetic memory with fully developed social cognition produced the first modern Tipua — beings capable of self-reflection, language, and participation in interstellar society. Though this period was marked by loss, the memories of those first true hosts persist within the Tipua people to this day.

Physically, sapient Tipua appear as small plant-like organisms — typically 15 to 30 centimetres in height and weighing only a few kilograms, integrated into the flesh of their host species. The plant growth most often encircles or crowns the head, where it can best absorb light and draw nutrients directly from the host’s brain or equivalent processing organ. Plant and flesh merge into a shared physiology, indistinguishable at the point of union. In this state, Tipua lifespans expand dramatically, often drawing close to or potentially matching that of their hosts, extending from mere Marks into full Ages. What begins as a rooted growth ends as a living archive: a single body carrying the memories of many lives, layered and alive.

Culture

Tipua culture exists in layers, shaped as much by what might be as by what is. The vast majority of Tipua never take a host. They remain as plant-life, living out simple cycles of growth, nourishment, seeding, and decay. These Tipua are not considered incomplete or lesser; they are simply unawakened. Their genetic memory, vast, ancient, and detailed, lies dormant beneath instinct, waiting for the conditions required to surface. These Tipua do not have culture so much as potential, waiting to be tapped. Tipua do not mourn those who never advance beyond this state. From their perspective, this is efficient, natural, and correct. As long as a single seed survives, the lineage continues, and with it, the memories of what came before, reborn not as copies, but as continuity.

The moment a Tipua completely merges with a host, however, everything changes. That union does not merely create a sapient individual, it creates a new branch of Tipua existence. The memories, instincts, values, and experiences of the host permanently alter the genetic record, influencing all descendants that grow from the seeds of that union. In rare cases, Tipua born of particularly dominant personalities develop strikingly similar traits across generations, as though a single will echoes forward through time. More commonly, the host’s memories reshape the Tipua so profoundly that no two awakened Tipua are alike, even when descended from the same ancestral line. To Tipua, individuality is not a contradiction of continuity, but its most meaningful expression.

Once awakened, Tipua integrate into Federation life much like any other people. They concern themselves with sustaining their host bodies, pursuing interests, forming relationships, creating art, earning credits, and navigating the everyday complexities of society. They are not defined by inherent morality or alignment; they are as capable of kindness, cruelty, joy, grief, ambition, and doubt as any other sapient race. Though the host body is technically deceased flesh animated and sustained by the plant entity, it retains full functional capacity, allowing Tipua to live seamlessly among other species.

Tipua psionic traits make them particularly adept communicators. They often gravitate toward roles that benefit from empathy, perception, and layered understanding — diplomacy, law, mediation, magical disciplines, therapy, and the arts. Their perspectives are shaped by multiplicity: the long memory of the Tipua lineage and the intensely personal experiences of their host. Responses to this duality vary. Some Tipua maintain close relationships with the host’s family and friends, honouring shared memory and continuity. Others find such ties overwhelming or inappropriate, choosing instead to form entirely new identities and social circles. Both paths are culturally accepted. To the Tipua, growth does not require clinging to the past, but neither does it demand forgetting it.

Role in the Federation

Tipua participation in the Federation has never been unified by territory or ideology, but by survival and continuity. For much of their history, Tipua did not conceive of themselves as a nation at all. Instead, they existed as dispersed lineages and local collectives, bound loosely by shared biology and memory rather than governance. Early interaction with the Federation revolved around a central point of tension: the right to take hosts. Some Tipua fought to preserve traditional hunting grounds, where unions occurred as they always had, while others advocated for emerging practices that allowed sapients across the Federation to willingly donate their bodies, ensuring their memories would persist in a new form. This divide was never clean, and still, both ideologies remain strong in the culture to this day.

Formal unification came only after catastrophe. In later Epochs, a group of Tipua researchers attempted to solve ethical and logistical concerns surrounding hosts by creating cloned bodies for implantation. The results were disastrous. Hosts without lived experience produced malformed Tipua, beings with severely diminished mental capacity, capable only of basic labour or violence. These creations, later known as Ramat Warriors, were weaponized by a radical faction that attempted to force a galaxy-wide unity by implanting Tipua into all sapients, believing a shared memory-network would end conflict permanently. The Ramat Wars, as they become known, came close to shattering both Tipua society and the Federation itself.

The crisis ended not through annihilation, but through memory. A coalition of Federation peoples, from all federation races but predominantly the orcish peoples, entered active Tipua regions and allowed themselves to be taken as hosts. Through these unions, their memories, strategies, and values flowed directly into newly awakened Tipua, enabling coordinated resistance against the Ramat leadership. Telepathic communication and shared experience allowed hostilities to cease without genocide, and the Ramat program was dismantled. The creation of such beings is now universally condemned within Tipua culture as an unforgivable violation of continuity and personhood.

In the aftermath, surviving Tipua scientists reorganized with a singular purpose: to ensure such transgressions could never occur again. This group spearheaded the construction of the Tipua D’jumpship, securing Tipua recognition as a sovereign people and earning them a seat on the High Council. Their research pivoted toward preservation rather than domination, producing major breakthroughs in cryogenic stasis and long-term biological stability. In the modern, privatized era of the Federation, these efforts coalesced into BioTopia Ltd, a powerful pharmaceutical and medical conglomerate with deep cultural ties to Tipua values. Though its reach now extends far beyond medicine, BioTopia’s origins remain a reminder of the line Tipua once crossed, and the lengths they went to ensure it would never be crossed again… or so their marketing says.