Ekkridai

Crew of USS Victory
Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Rank
Gender: Male Position: Chief of Cetacean Sciences Ship: USS Eagle Rank: Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Rank Race: Dolphin PNPC of Katy Orman Edit this nav

Ekkridai is a PNPC on board the USS Eagle.

Stats

• Full Name: a frequency-modulated narrow-band signature whistle that humans can't hear most of, much less produce. But Ekkridai will do fine.
• Current Rank: Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Rank
• Race: Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin
• Age: 11 years
• Place of Birth: Earth, Pacific Ocean, near the Emperor Seamounts
• Gender: Male
• Telepathic status: 0

Appearance

• Length: 8'10"
• Weight: 526 lbs
• Colour Pattern: silver-grey, white underbelly.
• Eye Color: Dark grey irises, horseshoe-shaped pupils

Family

• Pod: 3 other males in the cetacean tank onboard the Eagle. One is named Crtaka and is good with computers.

Backstory

Ekkridai was born to a pod in the South Pacific. He first encountered humans while still at his mother's side, and was fascinated by the way they used so many tools to aid them. This fascination, once he left his mother's pod, led him to the Cetacean Center at the big island of Hawaii. It was there that Ekkridai learned to communicate with humans, through the use of translation machines. By a happy coincidence, not long after Ekkridai arrived there was a call for a group of cetaceans to join a Federation research project, and Ekkridai jumped at the chance. Thus began his Starfleet career. Since then, he has done many projects, and has taught himself as much science as he could. Currently his pod (himself and 3 other anthrophilic fen) is conducting a long-term study onboard the Eagle, and he has several side projects of his own as well.

Senses

• Sight: Like other dolphins, he has 20/20 vision both in and out of the water, but less refined colour vision than humans. He sees better in dim light than a human, and can adjust very quickly to changes of light level.
• Smell: Ekkridai has no sense of smell whatever.
• Taste: He can distinguish tastes, but his pallate is far less complex than a human's.
• Tactile: Equivalent to most humans.
• Sound: Imagine perfect vision in 360 degrees, plus x-ray imaging, plus hearing even the tiniest noises, plus hearing in a range far beyond what you know, plus knowing the details of every structure around you for a hundred yards, and you'll begin to have a glimpse of what a dolphin's hearing is like. A few details: Their ears are not attatched to their skull, which allows for far greater sound location. Their normal hearing range is from 1 to 160 kHz (a human's is .02 to 20), and they can hear sounds below 1 kHz if they are loud. They can recognise even tiny objects at a range of 120 yards. In short, their sense of sound is so much more advanced than a humanoid race's as to be a different sense altogether.

Linguistics

Ekkridai speaks Delphin, which overlaps somewhat with most other cetacean languages. Cetacean languages are incomprehensible to humans (and indeed any lifeform that isn't naturally aquatic, sonar-focused, or more realistically, both). Even if a humanoid could hear or reproduce the necessary range of sounds, the conceptual basis and perspective are far more foreign than any humanoid language--including Tamarian.

He also speaks Finglish and its offshoot Finfon, which are essentially a (word and phonic based, respectively) mapping of specific cetacean sounds into English. Using Finglisn and Finfon a dolphin may whistle inaudibly at a specially designed translator and in so doing 'speak' English.

He can understand English reasonably well (exceptionally well, for a cetacean--cetaceans are able to understand humanoid concepts, but often have trouble with the perspectives), but lacks the ability to speak it directly.

Important notes

1. A cetacean brain is somewhat different from the brain of a humanoid, and their way of thinking rather different as well. As such, while telepaths can read their thoughts and emotions, the foreign brain structure and nonhumanoid perspective makes them often very difficult to understand or interpret.
2. Dolphins like Ekkridai use sound imaging, not reflected light, as their primary sense. As a result, they have casual access to information that humans do not. When Ekkridai encounters a person, he can tell that person's relative densities (the practical upshot of which is that he knows your anatomy, your heartrate, any implants or tumours you have, whether you're pregnant, whether you're hiding a weapon, what you've got in your pockets, what you're holding behind your back, etc., and will have known this long before you turned the corner and saw him.)