Famous for their cumbersome medieval armour and for the slender candles that crowd in variegated clusters spanning from between their shoulders, the Uecuht are from an ossuary world in the galactic far-west that was inhabited many thousands of years before their time by somebody else. It was their forerunners who reduced most of the planet’s surface to undulating plains of smooth stone, slick with a milky liquid that forms lakes or oceans in deep impressions, and mere puddles where the climate is slightly less oppressive. Humidity is cloying the world over, and there are no arid regions to dispel the stuffiness. Visitors often complain of a choking feeling that they get from breathing, and are reduced sometimes to panic attacks when they fear that they will suffocate on the too thick air. Locals on the other hand find the sultry atmosphere soothing, and they delight at the fact that there are no winds to stir up into gales or storms - the weather is only complacent here. They like to mount candles atop their armour, but do not know how to make them, instead looting them from the halls of their predecessors. Luckily there is an endless profusion of candles yet to be cut away from their ancient resting places.
Much as other amphibious species are born, the Uecuht do not initially resemble their adult counterparts and instead grow over the course of a few years from tadpoles into the two legged, pale skinned beings that the wider galaxy is familiar with. Incapable of speech even once fully mature, their people rely on an implacable familiarity with one another to anticipate each other’s behaviours. This creates very tight knit communities who traditionally inhabit the towering structures left behind by their world’s previous owners. Often fearful of heights, most of their business takes place on the ground floor and in the near total tranquility which extends for miles around their inherited places of residence. This is because, eerily, animals refuse to travel within a few kilometres of the spires and live only where they can’t see any on the horizon. With the effect of making the Uecuht very patient hunters, this phenomenon also necessitates that they make frequent ventures out onto the less hospitable plains. They do this in mated pairs, and one of their traditional ways of assessing compatibility is to test how well a duo performs in a lone hunt, relying on each other for a few days spent away from the central township. Totally featureless apart from a pair of sunken eyes clouded over in sallow grey, they are lanky, diminutive, and able to dive for hours. Apart from not needing to breathe, they only require sustenance about once a week or so and eat by disquietingly filtering things through the porous flap of skin they have in place of a mouth. Eating like this takes a very long time.
Although they care for their offspring no less than the parents of other species, Uecuht select a particularly deep pool in the vicinity of their home and lay a clutch of eggs in there, only returning once a month or so has passed to greet their singular remaining child, fat and happy after eating all of its siblings. Here they habitually return once or twice a week from then on, showering the tadpole with affection as another person might a favourite pet, and leaving it with chunks of meat to gorge on in their absence. The oldest of these tadpoles drag themselves up out of the water and follow their parents home on still developing legs, adventurous and eager for company after so long spent in isolation. Couples do not like to reveal the place where they have laid their eggs (the Uecuht are completely androgynous and can all bare children), and for that reason if the pair dies in a hunting tragedy on one of their lonesome forrays out onto the flats, their tadpole will die along with them. Most children still have not grown arms by the time they venture back to society and walk around absently while they wait for the weeks to pass and for the time to come when they can engage in rock-carving, one of their peoples favourite pursuits. The community likes to cluster around the tadpoles to try and discern which parent laid them, although it is impossible to tell without the aid of science and their guesses are mainly just to poke fun at one of the parents.
Practiced with a chisel or primitive handheld drills, most individuals begin after their skills are honed enough to fashion a suit of stone armour for themselves. Because fabric is almost completely non-existent on their world, only the most respected members of a community are allowed to wear it, usually the last tattered scraps of a flag or sheet looted from inside their ‘castles’. Others go completely naked until they are skilled enough to shape rock, but this isn’t a major issue because they have no conception of dignity whatsoever, all appearing nearly identical anyway. Away from home, the armour is never worn because of its toll on the agility of the wearer, although a person who kills a powerful creature wearing stone clothing is lauded for their bravery. Above the ground floor, most settlements have halls of shelved armour each carved by a now dead owner, empty if they died in the hunt or still containing their bones if they died back at home of advanced age. This might seem macabre, but the Uecuht do not fear death and are acquainted with it even from the moment that they are born and must outcompete their siblings, who are said in one way or another to be embodied by the one who survives. Aiding in their irreverence of death are the places where they live, appearing to be giant funerary structures literally carved from the enormous bones of the dead people they were once erected to memorialise.