by Christopher L. Bennett
In this special blog post, delve into the worldbuilding behind the Biauru, Christopher L. Bennett’s alien species that features in some of his newest work for Analog. You can read “Aleyara’s Flight,” Bennett’s continuation of the Biauru saga, in our [November/December issue, on sale now!]
“Aleyara’s Flight” continues the saga of the Biauru, the colorful, flamboyant aliens introduced two years ago in “Aleyara’s Descent” (Analog May/June 2023, now collected in Aleyara’s Descent and Other Stories from eSpec Books). The new novella expands my worldbuilding for the Biauru and their hot, lush planet, expanding from the original rainforest setting to explore other climates and cultures. So I thought I’d offer a glimpse into the relevant part of my extensive history notes for the Biauru, the first part of which is available on my Written Worlds blog and my Patreon (with the rest getting revised as my story plans evolve from my original intentions).
First, to recap the basics: The Biauru are the sapient natives of Rulenau, the fourth planet of Eídi (Gliese 198), a main-sequence G0 star about 81.6 light-years from Sol System and slightly older. With 82.4% of Earth’s gravity, an orbital period of 1.464 Earth years, and a local day of 27 hours, 23 minutes, Rulenau in this epoch has a hot, wet, oxygen-rich climate with abundant megafauna even larger than Earth’s dinosaurs, driving the evolution of equally gigantic vegetation. The Rulai trees, over 150 meters tall, cover nearly two-thirds of Rulenau’s land surface, their canopy so densely interwoven as to resemble solid ground, covered in soil from the decay of the abundant flora atop it. When the canopy grew solid, the Biauru’s ancestors—scaled, endothermic brachiators with gliding membranes and wind-sensitive, heat-radiating dorsal crests—developed into larger bipeds, freeing their hands for tool use, which promoted higher intelligence. Their gliding membranes remained in diminished form as brightly colored “mantelets” used in mating displays. Biauru average 2.1 meters in height, with gender differentiated by the size and coloration of their mantelets, crests, and inflatable throat pouches. Like tropical birds, they’re colorful and loud to stand out from the canopy’s visual and aural clutter.
Protobiauru are known to have used crude wood and bone tools, but the Biauru’s first major technological innovation is believed to have been the use of vines as safety lines, leading to the invention of rope and fabric. In the oxygen-rich rainforest canopy, the Biauru were slow to harness fire until some 200,000 years ago, when they learned to use the flame-resistant resin of the Rulai trees to keep fires under control.
Over the millennia, the Biauru developed advanced uses of textiles, wood, bone, skin, foliage, and resin, as well as techniques for horticulture and small-animal husbandry, allowing them to breed canopy flora and fauna into useful forms. Yet technology was slow to disseminate due to the irregular and ever-changing terrain of the Rulai canopy, which tended to isolate Biauru populations and eventually break those links that did form between them. Innovations remained local, or were lost and only later rediscovered elsewhere.
This changed in the first millennium BCE (Earth time), when the Biauru began to domesticate a species of ruyui—bipedal pterosaurian “dragons” with batlike wings and sharp-beaked, teardrop-shaped heads, their bodies covered in featherlike, vaned and semibarbed “flightscales.” Ruyui were originally bred as hunting beasts, but by 200 BCE, the Biauru had created a breed capable of carrying a mounted rider and supplies across considerable distances, with the large twin crests on the head and tail able to fold down and serve as airfoils for added lift. The power of flight greatly increased interaction and trade, accelerating the dissemination of knowledge and technology.
For ages, Biauru near the edge of the rainforest sought to explore the Nilyoro, the solid ground, but the vast dinosaurians living there made it too dangerous. Brief forays brought back only limited samples of stone and metal. The domestication of ruyui enabled deeper probes into the Nilyoro, retrieving enough copper to create weapons and armor, allowing the Biauru to repel dinosaurians and settle the land around the start of the Common Era (CE). Defense against saurians drove rapid advances in metallurgy. Herbivorous saurians were domesticated as draft animals or livestock. The invention of bronze in about 500 CE enabled the Nilyoru to conquer greater territory, develop plow-based agriculture, and achieve a stable economic surplus. To manage that surplus and direct the labor of the growing population, government and religion became more organized and authoritarian, taking over the leadership role from the traditional clans. This led to social stratification and the emergence of ruling, gentry, and peasant classes.
The ongoing battle against the giant saurians, along with the competition over land and resources, led to the emergence of warfare as a major part of Nilyoru life, as it had never been for the Rularu beyond brief, rarely fatal skirmishes between canopy villages. Thanks to ruyui, air power was an integral part of Biauru military strategy from the beginning. Yet the husbandry of flying beasts is resource-intensive, so ruyui were reserved for the elite dragon knights, military leaders, and monarchs. The bulk of combat was conducted by peasant infantry and mounted cavalry atop gaulioro, long-necked saurian herbivores able to locomote on two or four legs, whose twin headcrests were fused into a sharp unicorn-like horn.
In 921 CE, Orihinu Aleyara Diu and her companions, raised to believe that the dark “Under” beneath the Rulai canopy was the bottomless realm of the dead, undertook Aleyara’s Descent, proving that the rainforest rested on solid ground, and more importantly, devising a novel philosophy that truth should be discerned through observation, experiment, and self-questioning rather than faith in traditional lore. Upon returning home, the Descenders’ tales of adventure in the Under, as chronicled by the bard Baralihu Narrayo Lya, were met with interest but dismissed as fiction or allegory, for they conflicted with the Biauru’s beliefs about the afterlife.
Frustrated at their failures to disseminate Aleyara’s empiricist insights, the Descenders retreated into an isolated life in the wilds, relying on the survival skills of hunter-scout Hanilitya Mirele Diu. While there, Aleyara developed her insights into a formal belief system. She was aided by her first husband, Daranui Tirenu Rai, who had been a priest-in-training prior to the Descent. Since the Rularu inhabited what they considered the living body of the Goddess, they had always associated the study of nature with the study of divinity. This tradition, combined with Aleyara’s experimental method, formed the basis of their new religious teaching, Aleyaraule, or the Aleyarist Method. Aleyarism accepted that Biauru were fallible and could easily misinterpret divinity as shown to them through nature or even through spiritual visions. It taught that the truth of divinity/nature (the concepts are identical in Aleyarism) could only be discovered through a careful process of observation, experiment, and skepticism equivalent to the human Scientific Method.
These beliefs were initially rejected by the masses of Rularu, though not to the point of active persecution. Rulaist traditions were basically inclusionist, readily adapting to accommodate variant beliefs. Aleyarism itself incorporated much from Rulaism, so there was little overt conflict. The problem was simply one of convincing Biauru to accept an objectivity that ran against their highly imaginative nature. But when that imagination was disciplined by evidence-based reason, it became a powerful tool for innovation.
Over their years of wandering, the Aleyarists used their discoveries and inventions to assist Biauru where they could, winning over disciples as they went, but still remaining a fringe movement within Rulai. From time to time, their explorations extended to the Nilyoro, where at first they met even greater resistance from the Nilyoru’s more authoritarian religions, dualistic systems defining the universe as a game between gods of good and evil. In time, a young, ambitious Nilyoru king saw the Method’s potential and gave the Aleyarists his backing. “Aleyara’s Flight” chronicles the eventual consequences of that alliance.
As you can see, the Biauru have a far younger civilization than humans, yet the abundance and perils of their lush, oxygen-charged biosphere have driven them to advance far more rapidly in some ways. The development of scientific methodology in their Bronze Age would jump-start even swifter progress. How long before they catch up with us, and in what ways will their further technological and social development differ from ours? Hopefully I’ll get to write enough stories to reach that point, if I don’t cheat and jump ahead.
Homepage: https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/
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