Nogan
The nogan (pronounced /ˈnoʊgən/) is a breed of kake resembling a human brain with a single eye on the bottom. More specifically, it resembles a human cerebrum; there is no exterally visible cerebellum or medulla. Although its shape bears a close resemblance to a cerebrum, the coloration may be different; some nogans are the same pinkish-orange color as brain tissue, but others tend toward white, silver, or lavender.
Nogans have an innate power of flight, and spend all their time in the air, never touching the ground if they can avoid it. If possible, they try to stay above any other creatures in the area, the better to bring their powers to bear against them if necessary. A nogan somehow deprived of its flight ability is completely helpless, lacking any means of motion.
Abilities
Aside from its flight, which seems to work through similar principles, the most obvious power of the nogan is its telekinetic ability. The nogan can produce a force up to about 1.8 newtons within a distance of five meters or so, or about half that force up to about twice the distance, which is the maximum extent of its range. Although it can and frequently does use this ability to lift and move small objects, it can also use it offensively. While it can manage a crude attack by telekinetically throwing things at enemies, with practice a nogan can focus the force over a very small area, creating a high pressure capable of stabbing through skin and flesh. Because this takes some amount of concentration on the part of the nogan and is not an instantaneous process, the nogan finds it difficult to use this telekinetic impalement against a fast-moving target, and it can in principle be dodged.
Another standard power of nogans have is that of electroreception, though technically this is not a true power in the celemological sense, since its cause is entirely biological, not magical. In any case, nogans can detect electric fields around them, and in this way have some awareness of what lies in directions they cannot see with their one eye. Because of this, nogans are not as easy to take by surprise as is often assumed; while many people with little or no direct experience with nogans assume you can take them unawares by approaching them from the direction opposite their eye, their electroreceptive ability prevents this.
Many nogans can and do develop additional powers—in fact, they cannot appreciate without doing so. While there may be other powers possible to nogans beyond these, the powers most commonly observed include the following:
All of these powers, where applicable, seem to emanate from the kake's eye.
Nogans grant a weaker version of their telekinesis as their obverse power. The obverse kake often appears to have a slightly swollen head, often with a corrugated, brain-like texture.
Anatomy
The nogan's encephaloid appearance is not coincidental or misleading; the nogan actually is composed almost entirely of neural tissue. It has no muscles of any kind except within its eye, and moves entirely by magic. Even the eye itself is loose within its socket—a hemispherical depression in the ventral surface of its cerebriform body—and is held in place and rotated by the same telekinetic ability that enables its motion rather than being moved by extraocular muscles. (The fact that the eye is not physically connected to the rest of the nogan's body leads many etorists to consider it a pleote, though the fact that its parts always remain in contact makes it a borderline case.) The only actual muscles the nogan possesses are the sphincter and dilatator pupillae muscles that control the size of its pupil.
The amount of cerebral tissue in the nogan, and the pattern of sulci and gyri on its surface like those on the human brain, lead many to assume that the nogan must be especially intelligent. In fact, it is not; while the nogan is perhaps more intelligent than the average kake, it does not approach human intelligence or true ellogy. Part of this discrepancy is because some of the space within the kake is taken up by its cerebellum and medulla; while these parts are not externally visible, it does have them, internally embedded within its cerebrum. Also, part of the nogan's tissue is devoted to bringing about its abilities. Still, neither of those factors, nor both combined, are nearly sufficient to account for the disparity between the nogan's amount of cerebral tissue—and the additional surface area provided by the gyri and sulci—and the creature's intelligence. One possibility that has been bruited is that the excess brain matter does not directly benefit the individual nogan, but facilitates some kind of coördination between them, that each nogan, while still an individual organism, is also in some sense an organ or appendage of a greater being. While on the surface this may seem a far-fetched idea, some studies have claimed to find evidence for it—though other etorists do dismiss it as strained speculation.
Behavior and environment
Lacking a mouth or any obvious digestive system, the nogan does not eat in the conventional sense. In part, it sustains itself magically. It does, however, require some physical sustenance, in the form of certain gases usually released from decaying matter. Because of this, wild nogans are most often found in places where such decaying matter is plentiful: stagnant swamps, waste heaps, bat-infested caves with plentiful guano. They are sometimes seen on bloody battlefields and near mass graves, where they get their nourishment from the gases released by the putrefying bodies.
When more than one nogan is in the same vicinity, the creatures have a tendency to move around each other in complex patterns, an activity that is often informally called the brain dance. The purpose of this "dance" is unclear; the leading theory is that it has something to do with their jointly altering the surrounding electric fields and then moving through and electroreceptively experiencing the new field configuration.
Reproduction
Nogans have no obvious external reproductive organs, but they do reproduce sexually, using their telekinetic ability to facilitate the process. The nogans do have two sexes; they cannot be visually distinguished by external inspection, but apparently have slightly different electrical fields that allow the nogans themselves to tell them apart. Both sexes have a sexual aperture which, again, looks identical in the two sexes, but serves a different purpose. The male nogan ejects sperm from its aperture and then uses its telekinetic ability to move it into the aperture of the female. After a day or two, the female nogan will lay a couple of dozen small, pearly eggs that eventually hatch into tiny larval nogans. Aside from their size, these newly hatched nogans look similar to adults, though their eyes are covered by skin for the first week or two of their lives. The mother looks after her young for a few months, by which time they will have almost reached their adult size.
Appreciation
The nogan is a germinal breed which does not appreciate from any other breeds of kake. It does, however, have the potential to appreciate into more "advanced" breeds. It cannot appreciate, however, without developing at least one additional ability beyond its initial telekinesis. It still must also accumulate sufficient keki before appreciating; developing an additional ability is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. A nogan that has focused on one additional ability appreciates into the gegan. This includes the common case of a nogan that has already accumulated the requisite keki and then learns an additional ability just for the sake of appreciation. A nogan that has diversified its abilities appreciates into the tagan. These two kake can further appreciate into the geme and the aibar, respectively.