Description

The Gorox (the singular and plural forms of Gorox are the same) are an intelligent species from Dasa, a planet with a highly elliptical orbit.  Dasa only spends five years of its thirty year orbit in the habitable zone of its star, the rest of the time it spends beyond the frost line.  As a result, the Gorox spend most of their time hibernating.  When Gorox hibernate, they do so in underground dens, usually built underneath the houses they live in during the warm season.

Gorox are large (average height is around 2.5 meters), omnivorous mammal-like aliens.  Gorox have thick coats of fur that they shed at the end of their hibernation cycle, when their home-world starts to warm up, and gradually grow back as the warm period ends.  Gorox have somewhat shorter arms than a human of the same height, and their hands have three fingers plus a thumb, and each of their feet have four toes.

Language

The Gorox have a form of communication that is foreign to humans, based on blinking their eyes (Gorox have four eyes), in a fashion similar to semaphore.  One Gorox looks at another, and blinks/winks in a pattern that signifies meaning.  This even works in darkened environments, as most Gorox have slightly bioluminescent eyes.  This form of communication is believed to have developed significantly before spoken language in the Gorox.

Several spoken languages had developed when first contact was made with the Planetary League.  The Gorox had just begun to develop agriculture and cities, so their spoken and written languages existed only in a relatively simple state.  The only culture with a formal written language, also had the only significant city on Dasa, and was known as Sagokara.

The name "Gorox" comes from a slight modification of their name for themselves (pronounced "Gorokoso"), and Dasa is a direct transliteration of the local name for the Gorox home-world.

Reproduction and Life-cycle

The Gorox mating season (like that of the majority of life-forms on Dasa) happens shortly before hibernation begins.  The offspring gestate during hibernation in a pouch on the mother’s body.  During the pregnancy, the nervous systems of mother and child are directly connected, and the young emerge with a substantial fraction of their mother’s knowledge and memories.  Gorox spend one warm season as juveniles, gaining practical experience under the watchful gaze of their elders, but after their first hibernation are considered full adults. The lifespan of the Gorox is long by human standards.  A healthy Gorox can live more than 1,000 years.

Generally, when death (like birth) comes for the Gorox, it happens during hibernation.  Consequently, they have a deeply mystical view of this aspect of their lives.  Hibernation is both the undefined beginning and the unknowable ending of existence for the Gorox.  Due to the long time-frame of their lives and slow pace of their progress through history, the Gorox home-world has only one major city.  The center of the city is the city of the dead, where the homes of the deceased lie undisturbed, and the living reside around the edge of the city because that is where the available real-estate is.  Those who die during the active season are interred in their hibernation burrows, as it is the most natural place for the dead to reside in the Gorox world-view.