Anon Species: Overview

SPECIES
The 'Anon' race, as they have come to be known on earth, are a rare species of parasitic extraterrestrial composed of emotive energy cocooned in ambient matter.

NAME:
Unpronounceable by human standards.  Best translated as the feeling of something resting in the small of your back, just where you can’t reach it, mingled with a sensation of acceptance and mild weariness.
ALIAS(ES):
Anon(s).
ORIGIN:
There are myths and rumors among the Anon that they once had a homeworld, which they shared with a largely passive species.  Some believe this world was destroyed due to the thought of the Anon as an infestation, others believe the Anon made war among themselves, and more believe that a neighboring star supernova’d, breaking apart the world on which they once resided and catapulting them to the far reaches.
HOME STAR SYSTEM:
Gutterspace, beyond the edge of charted star systems.  Leading expert Quwren Arkhas has dubbed the space in which the Anon home asteroid cluster resides as Gutterspace due to the fact debris from planetary collisions, intergalactic wars and chrono-dimensional schisms tends to end up there.  This name has yet to catch on.
HOME PLANET:
Endstone, a cluster of asteroids.  Leading expert Quwren Arkhas has dubbed the asteroid chain Endstone because it resides at the far end of existence as little more than a cluster of rock and debris.  This name has yet to catch on.


CULTURE
RELIGION:
N/A.  The Anon do not have ‘gods’ as such, though a number of those born on the Endstone do revere the Elders, Anons who have lived and thrived so long as to advance into a higher state of being.
GOVERNMENT:
N/A Endstone is largely a lawless cluster of space-rock and debris, lacking in anything akin to government.  Small clusters of Anon sometimes band together and create rules, but these are fleeting social structures and not true ruling governments.
TECHNOLOGY:
The Anon are a scavenger race.  While they have very few technological innovations of their own making, their current residence is littered with the technology of many dead and active pan-galactic species, some of which they have adapted to learn how to use or build for themselves.  As such, they are technologically advanced in comparison to a backwoods planet such as Earth, but relatively middling as far as the wider universe is concerned.  That said; due to their adaptivity some Anons who venture to other worlds have proven extremely technologically adept.
LANGUAGE:
The Anon are capable of communicating in a largely non-verbal language, utilizing gesture and the emission of direct emotions in order to get ideas across.  When those residing on Endstone do choose to speak it is largely in a jumble of different loan-words taken from across the universe’s lexicon.
ALPHABET:
N/A. The Anon have no written language.
CALENDAR:
N/A. The Anon have no need for a calendar, largely capable of intuiting and adapting to the solar, lunar, tidal or cultural perception of time as it relates to the worlds they visit.
MILITARY:
N/A. There is no formal military on Endstone, but each Anon is a capable spy in their own right, with certain broods being extremely capable of aggressive action should the need arise.  Some worlds known to the anon employ them as spymasters or special forces.
EDUCATION:
N/A. While the Anon do not have schools as such, these things are largely unnecessary.  The species adapts to language and skills at such a quick rate that often merely spending some amount of time on a world and around its people is enough for an Anon to be capable of communicating and picking up at least the most basic of learning necessary to be able to anchor themselves in society.


TRAITS:
APPEARANCE:
Anons forms and figures vary wildly, as do their capabilities, but they can typically be broken down into broad categories called 'broods' which share significant features.
There are several major broods, which have been given simple titles by the peoples of Earth.

These are Creep, Hater, Cutie, Null and Vainglorious.

POWERS AND ABILITIES:
Being parasites, it is the general goal and intent of members of the anon species to leave their home asteroid and find residence on an inhabited world where they can feed on other species.  In order to assist in this primary instinct all members of the anon race share a core set of traits and abilities as follows:

Anons are empathic to one degree or another; capable of registering the emotions of beings around them, and subtly influencing them.  To this end most of the species is capable of eliciting the sort of emotion from their prey upon which they feast.  The capability with this varies, with some simply being able to more easily nudge individuals towards their target emotion and others capable of causing a powerful emotional response that does not require further interaction.

Anons are motuvores, meaning they feed on emotional energy.  The precise type of emotion which sustains an anon varies, but this feeding typically causes minor exhaustion in their prey: there are, however, old stories of anons who could fully drain prey of their emotional capacity, leaving them a husk of their former selves.

In order to better blend into the cultures and the dark corners of the homeworlds they come to inhabit.

Anons are hyper-adaptive; capable of picking up language and skills at an increased rate, especially in the intermittent months just after coming into contact with another species.  On worlds where their presence would be deemed an issue they can use this adaptation to learn how their prey move and think and better avoid direct confrontation with them.  On worlds which have become accustomed to pan-galactic relations they can use it to find work, or trade which allows them to thrive and have a regular food-source.

While capable of breathing, drinking or eating if they so choose, the Anon species sustain themselves almost solely on emotional energy; as such they do not require air, water or food.  Furthermore their bodies are capable of surviving in the vacuum of space, though contact with celestial bodies which reside there tend to end poorly for them.

WEAKNESSES:
The Anon, due to their adaptive nature, have very few natural weaknesses.  This is not to say they are inherently powerful, but at the very least there is almost nothing innately strong against them.  Minor exceptions include beings with no  capacity for emotion, such as robots of some species of underdeveloped or emotionless alien races, but even then this merely puts such things on an even playing ground when confronting an Anon.


HABITAT
TERRAIN:
The Anon home is a series of asteroids drifting through space, largely rocky and pocked with craters.  There do exist spires of debris and ice which can, at times, be quite pretty in the right light… but are usually viewed as what they are; junk.
GRAVITY:
Gravity on Endstone is less than a tenth of that found on Earth.
ATMOSPHERE:
There is no atmosphere on Endstone.
POPULATION:
There are relatively few Anon in existence at this time, numbering only a few thousand or so.  They are broadly split into two categories; Starspawn, born and raised on Endstone, or Terrestrial; which come to be on a host-world.  It is estimated that one in 50 anon are Terrestrial in nature.


MISCELLANEOUS
REPRESENTATIVES:
Quwren, Maless, Genko, Puell, Cosmix; among others.
TRIVIA:
There used to be a brood simply called ‘loud’ and another which feasted on sorrow, but they were largely written out as those who invested effort into their creation left the project.
The Anons were originally made by a bunch of homestuck nerds, and interacted with fantrolls and the like on occasion.
Seeing as the creators of the Anon species have terrible memory most of this information is pieced together from half-recollected conversations, and as such is subject to change.