The Karuses are a race of rather unusual physiology: they are incapable of speech. The sounds they produce cannot be used to carry information — the range of their tonalities is simply too narrow.
And so the Karuses developed a language of their own, built on their ability to change the colour of parts of their bodies. What emerged is a kind of colour alphabet — and it is with this that they converse.
The race has other notable qualities as well. Chief among them is the ability to sense many useful minerals thanks to an extremely fine sense of smell.
Karuses often join the expeditions of surveyors and geologists, finding the deposits other races need.
The Karuses are no less well known as traders in the various artefacts they turn up on their long expeditions.
The Karuses live in sector P-11 — a fairly undeveloped one, whose population consists largely of the Gnots, a badly degraded race whose empire was wrecked more than four thousand years ago by a crusade against technology.
With the Gnots the Karuses generally get along, since the Gnots have an interest in Karus trade. More than that, the Karuses hold influence in every state of the sector — even in the gvidanstvo, which needs their knowledge to press further into Gnot space.
A Karus is a squat creature on powerful legs, its body assembled from vivid segments — yellow, green, red, blue. It is precisely these patches that change colour when a Karus speaks. A crimson crest crowns the face, the eyes sit to either side of the head, and in place of hands and feet there are bunches of long crimson tendrils.
In the illustration he wears a grey apron lettered in Karus script, with a glowing green stone at the chest.