Beat Lizards

Small tribes of sentient lizards living in the Oor (pronounced Uh-er) Desert. They are known for wearing headphones and transistor radio backpacks, and their radios are tuned to OorWaves. OorWaves is a Beat Lizard station broadcast desert-wide from a mobile radio tower that changes hands between various Beat Lizard tribes. The OorWaves Tower (or just The Tower) is a prize given to the Beat Lizard tribe who can make the best playlist in a competition called WaveBup. The radio station is connected to a giant iPod shuffle which fell through an enlarging Drip. Through unknown means, the music on the Shuffle changes randomly every seven years, and around this interval the playlist competition revolves. While the songs and artists are always changing, the genre is electronic music from 1989-2006. The iPod belonged to a rave DJ back on Earth, and is apparently stuck in some kind of time loop. The Beat Lizards will act as mounts for travelers trying to cross the desert, asking for radio parts, musical instruments, or sound-making objects as payment. Beat Lizards have yearly gatherings called BumBups where they jam and make music. During BumBups Beat Lizards will both replicate the music on the iPod and create their own songs with improvised instruments. Beat Lizards are nomadic, and scattered throughout the Oor desert are storehouses filled with music-related junk. Beat Lizards keep a loose social order in the Oor Desert, allowing lifestyles and behaviors which may not fly in some of the more settled areas of Wable. They are, however, intolerant of violence or extreme antisocial behavior, engaging in bounty hunting if the criminal is violent or dangerous enough. Beat Lizard tribes are ruled by a chief, who is elected by all the adult members of the tribe every 14 years, or every other WaveBup. Beat Lizards have a shamanistic culture, venerating ancestors and Oori, primordial entities believed to exist in Drips. Each tribe has a shaman who does not wear headphones, in order to hear the voices of the spirits. Beat Lizards are among the most heavy intoxicant users in Wable, frequently eating the root of the Wuub (wohb) Bush, a powerful psychoacitve not unlike Peyote on Earth.