
Respect Eridians (Project Hail Mary)
Hailing from the planet known to humans as 40 Eridani A b (or more simply just Erid), Eridians are an intelligent species that live under intense pressure in an air of ammonia. When their sun started to be cooled by an alien microorganism, they discovered one star that bore the signature light caused by the Astrophage yet none of the cooling, leading to them building a spacecraft in hopes of uncovering a secret that would save their planet.
#Biology
Physiology
- Grace describes Rocky’s appearance, initially thinking of him as a rock-skinned labrador-sized spider
- Rocky explains to Grace how Eridian bodies work with them consisting of only a few kilograms of biological matter inside an oxidized carapace, moving through using a dual blood ‘system’ similar to steam power, and their internal temperature sterilising any incoming pathogens
- Rocky weighs 168 kilos, in part due to having mercury blood
- Adapted to living in 20.48 m/s gravity
- Live in temperatures hot enough to instantly melt Grace’s measuring tape’s case, but not hot enough to melt its aluminium
Senses
Other
- Speak in a language consisting of notes of various pitches spoken in chords
- Eat by tearing their food into small chunks, excreting the remains of their previous meal, then flipping on their back and dropping the food chunks in
- Breathe ammonia and live in atmospheres 29 times stronger than humans
- Have a photographic memory, with Rocky being able to understand Grace’s words after having them translated once, and at least Rocky is extremely good at maths
- Sleep anywhere between 3.5 and 12 hours approximately every 86 hours
- Greatly increase their body temperature to fend off any pathogens they may receive while eating or giving birth, not being exposed at any other time due to the strength of their exterior
- When severely injured, an Eridian’s body shuts itself down to focus entirely on healing itself
- Live for an average of 689 Earth years, with Rocky being 291 years old
- Are hermaphrodites with pairs laying eggs next to each other, the two combining into one before hatching in one Eridian year
#Blip-A
The ship created by the Eridians to travel from Erid to Tau Ceti in search of a solution to the Astrophage, lacking a name until given one by Ryland Grace.
Mobility
- Directed through space towards the Hail Mary
- Matches the Hail Mary’s velocity
- Matches the Hail Mary’s spin as it activates its centrifuge function
Other
- Is 319 meters long
- Has a robot to allow Rocky to make actions alongside the outside of the ship, using it to send a capsule at the Hail Mary at the exact velocity it had been moving
- Set to periodically flash its engines, allowing it to be located after being left
- Was built with an Astrophage sampler, though it broke off during its travels
- Was not designed to have any radiation protection
#Scientific Knowledge
Xenonite
- Can make a strong material out of xenon, a noble gas
- Described by Grace as being nearly indestructible
- Allows the Hail Mary’s four Beetle drones to tow the ship
- A large flat panel forms a barrier between the Hail Mary’s and Blip-A’s atmospheres, despite one being 29 times stronger than the other and the Blip-A being hot enough that a capsule travelling through space was still too hot to touch
- Used to construct an elevator to space
Other Discoveries
- Eridian steel is extremely durable, though not to the extent of xenonite, and can be cut by diamond-cutting tools
- The AstroTorch can dissociate xenonite
- Invented a camera that displays various light wavelengths on a monitor to allow them to ‘see’ it, with Rocky adapting this to the visible light spectrum
- Farmed Astrophage using their planet’s oceans
Lack of Knowledge
- Rocky describes human science as being better than Eridian science
- Don’t have space suits, instead using robots to act in space for them
- Haven’t invented transistors
- Never discovered radiation
- Planned their trip to Tau Ceti using Newtonian physics, having no framework for relativity
#Rocky
”Machines break. Show me. I fix.”
One of twenty three Eridians sent on the trip to Tau Ceti, Rocky was the group’s mechanic, sleeping within the depths of the ship by their Astrophage fuel source. By luck this protected him from the radiation of space, something the Eridians did not know of and therefore did not account for while building the Blip-A, making him the only survivor as the others died from radiation poisoning. He would complete the trip to the star alone where he would meet up with an alien from the planet Earth, Ryland Grace, and the two would work together to save both their species.
Physicals
- Slashes restraints and frees Grace from a chair as it’s crushing him in increased gravity, though being out of his bulb causes his body to stop functioning and requires him to spend an extended period recovering
- Unharmed from having melted rubber on him
Engineering
- Reinforces the connections between the Hail Mary and its Beetles
- Creates an extra fuel tank for the Hail Mary
- Creates a power converter, allowing a human laptop to be charged by an Eridian power source
- Makes a sample extraction device
- Combines a camera and a monitor on his ship to create a means for him to ‘see’ visible light
- Designs a winch that pulls up segments of chain before expelling it out the other side
- Makes a tunnel which connects the Blip-A with the Hail Mary, including a wall in the middle to separate the two ends
- Sections off a portion of Grace’s living quarters to survive on the Hail Mary, including redundancies for edge cases
- Creates a device to allow him to move around the Hail Mary without issue
- Builds a sampler probe to collect air on an alien planet while maintaining the planet’s conditions, allowing him and Grace to search for an Astrophage predator
- Made several automated farms to breed and keep alive Astrophage’s predator
Other
- Makes models of Grace and the Hail Mary
- Performs an atmosphere analysis
- Guides Grace through total darkness
#Other