Bingo: When a female soddit and a male soddit get together, they create something new. I don't understand how dwarfs, or wizards, or dragons – since they're apparently all part of the same creature – how they – how you propagate the species.
Mori: "Propagate." It sounds strange in my ears, that word. You mean: fill the world up with versions of yourself until the world is overcrowded and the landscapes are made a desert and crowds of the starving sway in time to their own moans?
Bingo: Well, not that exactly...
Mori: With us, we know exactly how many there are. The creator breathed a certain number of dwarf lives into the stone at the beginning of things. These are crystals of the divine, look you, and their coming to life is part of the self-becoming. The great sequence unrolls, and form follows form until the crystals – or those that have survived – achieve their ultimate form. The form of the creator itself.
— The Soddit
Amethyst: Yo, Amethyst here. It's time to find out how Gems are made. Okay, first, when a mommy Gem and a daddy Gem love each other verrrrrry much, PYSCH! There's no such thing as a mommy Gem or a daddy Gem! We're rocks! And rocks are made, not born. Like me, I was made on Earth. [...] So yeah, I was made on Earth, and what happened is some Gems from outer space came to here with these big machines! [...] Anyway, they put the machines on Earth and shot this junk into the dirt, and then BOOM! You pop right out!
— Steven Universe Internet short, "How Gems Are Made
"
"We now know a lot more about draug reproduction cycles. The locals get drawn out to sea. They drown, rise, get knocked up, and then plant themselves as pods on the shore.
How romantic.
— Kirsten Geary, The Secret World
William: So, when a Uryuom and a Uryuom love each other, they can create a shell using... stuff... from both of their bodies. A single Uryuom can't generate enough at one time to form a single shell.
Gillian: On it's own, the shell that results is nothing; it needs enough DNA from at least two different sources in order to develop an offspring, and this DNA is injected through little openings in the shell.
William: Which is why our eggs look like little meteors!
Gillian: Interestingly enough, these shells will accept DNA from more than two parents, and will even accept different species!
William: The current known record for number of parents to a single child is twelve, and only nine of those were Uryuoms.
Gillian: That kid needed some serious counseling.
Gillian: On it's own, the shell that results is nothing; it needs enough DNA from at least two different sources in order to develop an offspring, and this DNA is injected through little openings in the shell.
William: Which is why our eggs look like little meteors!
Gillian: Interestingly enough, these shells will accept DNA from more than two parents, and will even accept different species!
William: The current known record for number of parents to a single child is twelve, and only nine of those were Uryuoms.
Gillian: That kid needed some serious counseling.
Player Character: Githyanki look quite humanoid. How did you evolve to lay eggs?
Lae'zel: 'Humanoid'. How I despise the term. Githyanki are quite superior to humans. Our biology slates state that githyanki came to lay eggs after we escaped illithid enslavement and took to the Astral Plane. It's an asexual process - a favorable change, by any estimation. Hideous, to imagine a life where I couldn't partake in the pleasures of sex without the looming threat of bearing children.
Player Character: Who does the laying? I'm curious about the logistics.
Lae'zel: Shu'kyani. Githyanki chosen by Vlaakith herself to bear young. The queen assigns when and where they must lay, and how many eggs they must bear. The shu'kyani pass their eggs to the Material Plane. In the Astral, time barely passes. It is a meticulous process, carefully timed so that the eggs hatch at once.
Lae'zel: 'Humanoid'. How I despise the term. Githyanki are quite superior to humans. Our biology slates state that githyanki came to lay eggs after we escaped illithid enslavement and took to the Astral Plane. It's an asexual process - a favorable change, by any estimation. Hideous, to imagine a life where I couldn't partake in the pleasures of sex without the looming threat of bearing children.
Player Character: Who does the laying? I'm curious about the logistics.
Lae'zel: Shu'kyani. Githyanki chosen by Vlaakith herself to bear young. The queen assigns when and where they must lay, and how many eggs they must bear. The shu'kyani pass their eggs to the Material Plane. In the Astral, time barely passes. It is a meticulous process, carefully timed so that the eggs hatch at once.
