The Rocks shall Cry Out

Think of a silicon based humanoid.  What comes to mind?  An android, perhaps, like Data from Star Trek, the Next Generation?  How about one that's based in the Masters of the Universe?  Ram Man, Trap Jaw and even Man-E-Faces are carbon based lifeforms.  I wonder whether you might be able to call beings such as Roboto, Blast Attak and Multi-bot silicon based, since I have no idea what materials Eternians use to make transistors and computer chips.

However, there is a whole race of silicon based humanoids on Eternia/Etheria.  Rock People.  There were only two characters made into toys - Stonedar, a wise elder of the race and Rokkon, a youthful buy impulsive lad.  The cartoons name at least one more - a Rockwoman called Granita.  The minicomic "Escape from Slime Pit" showed a whole village of Rock people.

These beings could change their body into meteors, are rock hard, can transverse through the vacuum of space, have special reflective armour to "blind" enemies and is probably super strong, although not as strong as He-Man.  They might have a weakness to magic as well.

So, what about the biology, or the xenobiology, if you prefer, of these beings?  Do they eat, do they sleep, do they do all the things that we do?

Let's start off with the building blocks of life.  No, not Lego!  I'm talking about DNA here, well, at least in humans and other Terran life we have DNA.  What about the Rock People?  Well, DNA are carbon based, so I doubt they will have that.  What they might have that could be analogous to DNA are clay molecules.  Well, clay molecules have an aluminium oxide/silicon oxide base, but also areas for binding metallic ions like Iron and Magnesium.  These metallic ions could determine the building blocks of the Rock People.

How do they get their energy?  I believe it is stated that the Rock People obtain energy from radiation.  This makes sense as well.  Our skins utilises UV rays from the sun to convert lipids to vitamin D.  A similar process could work with non-organic substances, perhaps even on the atomic scale - to use radiation or energy from any star to excite the atoms near the "skin" of the Rock People which can then be converted to useful energy.  Glow-in-the-dark or Phosphorescence already uses this to "store" visible light when the light is shining and to emit the light when it's not there.

Obtaining energy from radiation - Radio, Infra-red, visible, Ultraviolet, Gamma or whatever range the electromagnetic radiation is in, means that the Rock People do not need to respire, or at least respire in the way that humans do.  Thus they do not need to breath at all, since oxidation is not their main source of energy.  This is rather useful when they have to transverse through the vacuum of space.

They might not respire, but surely they do ingest and digest?  Well, I've never seen them eating, so I'm not sure what would they eat.  I'd suspect silicon and aluminium oxides rich materials perhaps, like sand and alum?  Mineral ores like haematite and galena could be their equivalent of vitamins, perhaps.  And to digest it all?  Well, humans use a mineral acid in their gut to break down food, so should the Rock People use anything different?

And finally the interesting bit - reproduction.  How do Rock People reproduce?  Well, the Rock People obviously do have gender, so it must play a part somehow.  On Earth, those lifeforms that reproduce assexually have little to no difference.  Only those lifeforms that reproduce sexually have rather different forms, ranging from the almost similar human genders to the insect world where the male and females are so radically different that they might be mistaken for different species (think Queen Ant - hyge big ugly ant and male ants - slender little things with wings).

So, what purposes are female breasts and male muscle mass to the Rock People?  Do the Rock People need to copulate to produce, or do they exchange genetic material externally?  Do the offsprings grow inside the female, male or outside the Rock People's bodies?  Hmm... interesting questions...and ones I'm not sure I have the answer.

The ultimate question though, is this, Why don't Rock People wear furry pants like the other citizens of Eternia?!  I guess we'll never know the answer to that question.

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