Beast

The word beast refers to any fauna aside from ellogous races, with which beasts are frequently explicitly contrasted. While often used figuratively to refer to ellogous beings of particularly vicious or violent voyes, in technical contexts the word always implies alogy. Synonyms sometimes used for the same concept include "brute" and, rarely and archaically, "unman", but "beast" is the most common term.

Diagnostic features

A particular life form qualifies as a beast if it meets two criteria: first, that it is a faunum (as opposed to a florum), and second, that it is alogous. Since both fauna and ellogy are somewhat vaguely and subjectively defined concepts, however, the same is true of the word "beast". Certainly there are creatures that no one would question calling beasts, such as most Euterran animals (humans, of course, excepted). But there are some creatures for which the categorization is more problematic, because they straddle the borderline either between fauna and flora or between alogy and ellogy. Still, such constestable cases are the exception rather than the rule, and "beast" continues to be a much used term, seldom with any problematic ambiguity.

Two special cases which still have no settled terminology occurs when a specimen of a normally alogous species is somehow granted intelligence and ellogy—or when an ellogous creature is transfigured into a member of an alogous species but retains its former ellogy. In both of these cases, the entity in question is physically the same as beasts of the same species (barring perhaps any not superficially obvious alterations of the brain or equivalent organs), but is ellogous nonetheless. The question more or less comes down to whether the designation of a particular life form as a beast should be made on the basis of its species or of an individual case-by-case judgment, and it is a question on which different scholars and writers do not necessarily agree—and on which any particular scholar or writer may well be inconsistent.

Relations with ellogous races

There are known worlds where beasts dwell but no ellogous races, and there are even some—though few—where all inhabitants are ellogous. On most lifebearing worlds, however, the alogous and the ellogous coexist, and so they often come into contact. When the beasts in question are large carnivores, they may prey on their ellogous comundanes. The intellectual advantage of the ellogous races may not be enough to overcome the beasts' natural weapons; even if possessed as a race of well-developed technology that would make it more than a match for a brute beast, an ellogous being taken by surprise caught in the wild without access to its technology may still be vulnerable. For that matter, it's not only large carnivores that may pose a peril to ellogous races; smaller carnivores with venom or other special weapons may also be dangerous or deadly, as may belligerent or territorialherbivores. Even tiny parasites can bring down ellogous beings as thoroughly as they can other beasts, though modern medicine may mitigate this menace.

This relationship between beast and sophont can go both ways, however, and if anything more often goes the other way—at least on worlds where the sophonts have attained some level of civilization. Ellogous entities may hunt beasts for their meat, their hides, and other resources. After the development of agriculture, they even raise them in farms and fields, the better to harvest other goods not as readily gleaned in the wild, such as milk and eggs.

But not every benefit that ellogous races get from beasts is so tangible. The beasts may be put to work pulling ploughs and pilenta, turning millstones, or performing other useful labor. They may be used as mounts, supplying the sophonts with convenient transportation. They may be trained as guards, or even be kept as pets that provide no service but companionship. And some sophonts simply appreciate beasts æsthetically, for their beauty and for the richness they bring to their worlds.