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Sector General

Pathology

Races
Physiological Classification Scheme

Races

There are over 60 species represented on the staff and many more among the patients; more than a dozen are described in enough detail to produce racial templates, including two-ton juggernauts, microgravity-adapted insectoids, chlorine- and water-breathers, telepaths and amoeboids. These templates were designed using T. Bone's GULLIVER rules.

Physiological Classification Scheme

"The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution reached by the species when it acquired intelligence. The second indicates the type and distribution of limbs, sense organs, and body orifices, and the remaining two letters refer to the combination of metabolism and food and air requirements associated with the home planet's gravity and atmospheric pressure, which in turn gives an indication of the physical mass and protective tegument possessed by the being.

"Usually I have to remind some of our extraterrestrial candidates at this point that the initial letter of their classification should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, because the degree of physical evolution is controlled by environmental factors and bears little relation to the level of intelligence..."

-- Senior Physician Peter Conway, Star Healer

Prefix: Meaning:
A-CWater-breather
D-FWarm-blooded oxygen-breathers
G-KInsectile oxygen-breathers
L-MLight-gravity, winged beings
O-PChlorine-breathers
Q-UExotic types (radiation-eaters, cold-blooded or crystalline beings, entities capable of modifying their physical structures at will)
VAny being whose extrasensory powers make limbs redundant

"There are anomalies in the system, and these must be blamed on a lack of imagination and foresight by the originators. The AACP lifeform, for instance, has a vegetable metabolism. Normally the A prefix denotes a water-breather, there being nothing lower on the evolutionary scale than the piscatorial life-forms, but the AACPs are intelligent vegetables and plant-life came before the fish."

-- Senior Physician Peter Conway, Star Healer


This page originally found at http://www.elvwood.org/GURPS/SectorGeneral/Pathology.html
Last updated: 14 March 2002

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