Wayfarer

The Wayfarers are a sapient species of starfaring amphibians in the Orion's Arm science fiction universe. They were first discovered by humans on spaceships belonging to another alien race, the Meistersingers.

Etymology
The English word wayfarer means one who travels on foot.

Anatomy and physiology
A Wayfarer is about two metres high and four metres wide. It looks like a three-pronged starfish with a large hump in the middle, which hosts the brain. It does not have bones, but the more important organs are protected by cartilage. The base of the body is covered by protective plates. There is a head, but it only hosts the sense organs: the eyes, giving nearly 360-degree vision, and hair-like strands able to sense sound and motion. There are also two big tentacles in front of the body, serving more or less as an equivalent to human arms. They end in four smaller tentacles, used rather like human fingers. Between the big tentacles there is the Wayfarer's mouth.

Environmental requirements
Wayfarers prefer to live in shallow water. They resort to a moisturizing gel when spending longer periods in a dry environment.

Psychology
Wayfares are very dedicated to honesty and trustworthiness. It is considered dangerous to lie or break a promise given to them. They are however friendly and curious creatures, more intelligent than man. Wayfarers change their skin colour to express their emotions, for example purple means happy or excited while yellow and orange express anger.

They do not seem to care about their personal space. When Wayfarers and humans first met, the former touched the latter's hair out of sheer curiosity.

Culture
Little is known about Wayfarer culture. It is known that their language is very literal and has a large vocabulary (they consider human languages to be vague). It is made of clicks, whistles and chirps impossible to imitate by a human. They also possess a writing system, spelling all words exactly as they are pronounced. The Wayfarers, as a starfaring species, do obviously have advanced technology. That includes various gadgets adhering to the skin on their horizontal surface, as well as mechanical translators which are believed to contain high-level artificial intelligence because of their ability to understand even "transapient" (superhuman) concepts.

Because of their eight finger-like tentacles it is probable that they count in base 8, but this is speculation.