[ Excerpt from Beast Bazaar — Shoplins!: ]
On their original homeworld of Ikana, the species we now know as Shoplins were just one of many. In Ikana's Age of Adventure they lived on the edges of civilization, where they raided fringe settlements to survive. Even then, many young shoplins were slain by sword-wielding heroes.
But the shoplins survived. Such scrappy little fellows!
In the more civilized Age of Progress, they even managed to integrate into Ikana society. However, most of them could only find low-ranking jobs in retail and hospitality.
From the trade city of Cador to the kingdoms of Terminak, whenever customers pretended to hate the food they just ate so they could demand a discount, tried to enter a grocery store two minutes before closing, or messed up a whole table of folded shirts... a shoplin was there.
Ikana tutorial malls came with lot of shoplins, who would do very well once they realised they could vent their frustrations on the invaders. After one particularly impressive tutorial with a 90% survival rate, Management did something extraordinary: they contacted the Low Priests of each of the shoplins' ruling religions, offering permanent residency to the entire shoplin species. They would still handle customers... but in their own way.
Every Low Priest accepted. To allow the shoplins time to settle their affairs on Ikana, their departure was scheduled for the following Thursday.
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Five seconds after the shoplins were transported to the ZETTAMALL?, a shoplin-built thaumonuclear bomb obliterated Cador and triggered a global war which killed 95% of all life on Ikana.
[ Excerpt from Beast Bazaar — Lanari!: ]
The plantoid Lanari are masters of biological science. Even in their primitive era, long before they discovered the wonders of money, they were selectively breeding fungi and developing medicines. Today, Lanari can reshape their body into almost any form they wish. Most choose to retain their central mass, a greenish bud with six sensory pads, but the rest can be modified for any occasion, from the practical to the artistic.
Lanari society used to have a caste system—every citizen, from Workers to Merchants to Leaders, was grown and trimmed for a specific purpose. After they unlocked the secrets of genetic engineering and private enterprise, this system improved drastically: anyone could get any modification they wanted, from extra prehensile vines to bulging sacs of genetic material, as long as they had the money.
Merchant Lanari in particular began deploying a wide variety of bio-augments to entice customers, from luminescent fungi in calming colours to impulse-spend-inducing pheromones. Other Lanari began developing countermeasures, kicking off a biological arms race which only intensified in the wake of Merchant-backed laws restricting online shopping. Soon the rich were hiring heavily augmented Shopper Lanari to make their purchases, while the rest rented robotic surrogates to make their purchases remotely.
As a result, Lanari tutorial malls tend to be approximately 10% Merchant Lanari, 20% Shopper Lanari, and 70% expendable remote-controlled robots. From a human perspective, Lanari malls closely resemble a tower defense game.
Zettamall Lanari abandon their old castes and develop new ones, using Zettamall's improved augments and ranking systems. Few Lanari are encountered outside the Lanari's ring segment. Those that are tend to be considered... unusual by their peers.
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