The World of Stardust

Name: Terran Federation

Astropolitical rank: Superpower

Interciv relations: Alliance leader, puppetmaster of Black Fang Republic, TRAPPIST Sector, Koumanlan, and Yig'ragn'xu Community

Dominant species: Humans and human-derived beings

Temperaments: Ambition / Diversity / Individualism

Territory: Western Oval, 2000 stars

Government form: Federal semi-presidential republic

Ideology: Progressivism / Liberty / Individualism{2} (Prometheanism)

Economic system: Dirigisme

Population: ~25 billion

Capital planet: Terra (Earth)

Climate preference: Temperate grassland

Summary

The Terran Federation is partially what one expects the stereotypical oldschool sci-fi united human star republic to be. Terrans live in a quite individualistic manner and self-expression through art and identity is quite valued. On most planets in the Federation, daily life is quite comparable to life in a 21st-century first-world nation-- though in some areas it is more regulated and in others less.

Earth itself (called Terra in official documents, but language refuses to change) is divided into many superstates that cover geographic regions. Most countries from today are still extant, mostly handling their own affairs on Earth while the superstates represent them to the colony worlds and alien civilizations.

The 2000 stars of the Federation vary wildly in culture and governance, especially away from the core. The central government has a relatively low influence on the affairs of the colonies. Before the Civil War, the superstates of Earth had much tighter control over the extrasolar settlements, but in 223X their control is limited to economic privileges.

Brief history of Terra

After the flames of the Age of Protests died down and unification started under the UN Committee for Environmental Protection (and later the United Nations of Earth with its Unification Constitution), humanity turned its sights to the stars during the Great Economic Miracle of the late 21st century. It was during this Miracle that something of a soft singularity manifested, with true AI, genemodding, and room-temperature superconductors being invented in one fell swoop during the 2090s. And then there was relative stagnation, until first contact with the Relmai Commonwealth in 2123 rattled human society on political, religious, and cultural fronts. The government took a risk and put down the ensuing xenophobic revolts with extreme prejudice, establishing the First Contact Constitution afterwards. This centralized power in the hands of the government, putting the extrasolar colonies under full control of the superstates that founded them. While this worked fine while the population outside the core was small, this made the colonies in the frontier chafe more and more as their population grew. Nevertheless, the First Contact Constitution made sweeping reforms such as enacting the mass uplifting of animals to provide more population to get an edge in the Space Cold War once the hegemony was discovered; legalizing human-alien marriage; and introducing Durabilis (which was opt-in at first). This lasted until 2140, when the Stability Constitution was adopted. After this was another Constitution, the Stability Constitution. It rolled back some of the more radical reforms. The first rumblings of Canid separatism and a second wave of anti-genemod specism began rearing their ugly head as well as the corporations breathing somewhat free after a century of regulation-- which wasn't constitutionally codified yet. But it was only in 2172 that the Liberal Constitution kicked those in full gear. Neither it nor the Stability Constitution eased the burden on the colony worlds any.

The Liberal Constitution was a disaster. What followed was an immensely brutal conflict known as the Human Civil War. See that snippet for more information.

After the dust settled, though, the Promethean Constitution stood stably for the 50 years after the Civil War. Aside from enshrining control over corporations into the Constitution, it finally formally abolished the freedom of speech and expression and made fascist ideologies proscribed, alongside a multitude of other reforms.

Under President Manuel Dufresne there was a period of sudden and rapid deradicalization of society and politics from around 2226-2230. This is why the Federation in Origins is so milquetoast.

Lifestyle

An unifying feature of Federation culture is a respect for individual liberty and tolerance. The unifying moral of Terran society is 'do as you please as long as you do not harm yourself or others'. Terrans are encouraged by society to take up hobbies and personal projects to promote intellectual growth and awareness of the world.

Automation is prevalent though many jobs are not feasible to automate via pseudosapient AI and thus are in the hands of humans or sapient AI. Nevertheless, UBI (universal basic income) has been implemented for centuries because automation is regardless too prevalent to employ most of the population. Somewhere around half the population is employed. The rest dedicate themselves to hobbies, to self-improvement, or to learning.

Artificial wombs are used en masse thanks to the advent of biotech (see below). Somewhere around 30% of otherwise-fertile (straight, cisgender, same-species, etc) couples choose to use an artificial womb to avoid the pain of childbirth.

Terran genemodding

To call the Federation a human state is something of a misnomer. Genemodding tech is more advanced and widely adopted here than in the vast majority of the Oval's civilizations, and so over 35% of Terran citizens are no longer baseline Homo sapiens durabilis. Durabilis is the name for the subspecies that all human populations in 223X belong to, with the exception of isolated peoples and some emigre communities in alien civilizations. It is a genemodding treatment that primarily staves away the effects of aging and various chronic diseases-- without making any external physiological or psychological alterations to the body or mind. Durabilis humans look human, act human, and call themselves human-- thus they are humans.

Most other genemods, that over-35%, fall under the categories of Augments (humans with various features not present in baseliners) or Anthros (animal-people). They are a fully integrated part of mundane society and have existed in some form since the 2090s. While some governments under the UN have repressed their rights, the post-2184 Terran government is species-blind and they are treated the same as Durabilis.

There are weirder kinds of genemods and transhumans such as Laterals, these tend to be somewhat apart from wider society (by their own choice).

Universal Morphic Freedom is policy in the Federation. In short, the government cannot force you to change your form, and also cannot prevent you from getting genemodded into anything you want as long as your wanted form does not pose a threat to society and is not appropriative whether of humans or aliens. There are other exceptions in practice. Also, genemodding is part of the Federation's universal healthcare and thus one can get it for free-- though for more intricate forms there may be a lengthy wait time.

Durabilis

As mentioned before, the Durabilis treatment that turns Homo sapiens sapiens into Homo sapiens durabilis is a major boost to quality of life, especially beyond the middle years and during infancy. It is a package of genetic modifications that is, in effect, a "bugfix patch" to the human body. Amongst the changes it makes are:

• optimizes the composition of synovial fluid to ensure healthy joints
• changes the structure of the spine slightly to reduce risk of scoliosis or back pain
• improves filtering of excess proteins in the brain, preventing the onset of Alzheimer's
• tweaks the Huntingtin protein to prevent mutation into the protein that causes Huntington's disease
• makes white blood cells better at recognizing cancer cells
• and so on. There are hundreds of these fixes.

The set of modifications that comprise Durabilis are controlled and vetted by a consortium to ensure that there are no unforeseen consequences or erasure of diversity as a result of the modification.

Most psychological conditions, like autism or sociopathy or borderline personality disorder, are not removed by the package. Also not removed are cosmetic or minor physical abnormalities like baldness. A rule of thumb is: if something has some sort of upside or has a distinct cultural identity around it, it is not eliminated by the default Durabilis package. These can be genemodded away, but only with the individual's consent after they reach 16 years of age. Features that baseline humans do not have, like IR vision or hearing above 20000Hz, are also not included by default but are likewise easy to get after the fact.

The default package above, however, is mandatory, and has been mandatory since the Prometheanists came into power following the Human Civil War. It is illegal to undo the Durabilis treatment, and back when there were still non-Durabilis humans in the federation, it has been illegal since 2184 to raise a child that was not treated with Durabilis at the earliest convenience (whether in-utero or in infancy, preferably the former). Since 2189, it has been illegal to be a non-Durabilis-treated human outside some designated societies (i.e the isolated indigenous). This was part of the mass campaign against bioconservatism and assorted political purges that went on from the late 2180s to the early 2190s.

One question that the reader may be asking right now: isn't this eugenics?

Perhaps it is, by some definitions. But what is actually lost? Certainly not neurodiversity, sexuality, ethnicity, or gender non-conformism. These are explicitly preserved. What is actually lost are life-ruining diseases, chronic pain, and many other illnesses. What is so sacred about this faulty genetic code of ours, created by a blind and uncaring Nature that only cares about genes being passed on? As thinking beings, we may have different priorities than merely passing on genes and then dying a nasty and painful death-- and what is wrong with changing ourselves to match those changed priorities?

Also, denying a treatment that solely prevents disease is pretty much morally equivalent to being an antivaxxer. Speaking of, vaccines are mandatory too. Part of Durabilis is removing incompatibility with vaccines, meaning that there is no excuse to not get vaccinated. Those who refuse vaccines, just as those who refused Durabilis while there were any who could refuse, are issued a minor fine and a forcible at-home vaccination.

One should also keep in mind that the Federation's major ideological opponents are bioconservatives. In a cold war, sides tend to polarize against each other.

Genemod types

As mentioned before, there are several different types of genemods present in the Federation as coherent demographics. Some fall outside these boundaries-- these are descriptive, not prescriptive. One's category, or in fact whether one is genemodded or not, is not listed in one's passport or other official documents except where relevant (e.g medical records).

Anthros

Anthro-genemods are people who have modified themselves to look like anthropomorphic (i.e humanoid) animals. The extent of these modifications varies-- some have human proportions and plantigrade feet and flat faces, others have their proportions and bone structure altered to be more like those of their base animal. Due to the way psychology interacts with physiology, it is invariable that they take on some of the psychological qualities of their base animals.

A similar category is Kemonomimi, i.e what we call cat/dog/etc-girls/boys/etc.

Anthros were one of the first applications of cosmetic genemodding, and faced social oppression during reactionary periods in human culture. Anthro culture is the successor of the modern-day furry fandom, and have supplanted it completely long before 223X.

Canids are a subcategory of anthro-genemods with wolves or dogs as their base animal. They have a very distinct identity and separated from the human polity in the 2180s. More info on them is in the linked folder. Some Canids either stayed behind or migrated back to the Federation, they tend to find employment as security guards, club bouncers, and other jobs where an imposing presence is helpful.

Felids, too, have a very distinct identity but are much more disparate and never felt like leaving mankind's side, ironically enough.

Augments

Augments are simply humans who chose to actively improve their bodies through a combination of genemodding and cybernetics. Every Augment is different, depending on what they felt was useful to their lifestyle or profession-- can be ultraviolet vision, or extra arms, or higher grip strength, or echolocation. Some high-risk jobs mandate certain augmentation packages to be added.

Unlike what one might expect, it is highly taboo in Augment culture to consider oneself above baseliners. Augments are just normal people, frankly.

Uplifts

An uplift is an animal that has been genetically modified to be fully sapient. Ethical regulations prevented this from being done at the start of the genemodding era in the 2090s. However, in the 2130s, the government of the UN started a push towards settling frontier worlds. They needed more people for that, and there was still a limit quota on the production of sapient AI or on cloning individuals. It would have been harder to repeal these laws and set up the proper infrastructure for mass production of AIs or clones than it would be to simply flout the anti-uplifting regulations and mass-uplift some animals to serve as settlers.

Only some animals can be uplifted. These are mostly animals that are already nearly sapient-- have pattern recognition, self-reflection, and potentially beginnings of tool use. Apes, octopi, cats, dogs, crows, elephants, cetaceans, and more. Insects, most reptiles, and many mammals cannot be uplifted.

Uplifts usually live alongside humans. They dress in humanlike clothes and adopt human names-- but with surnames that are either their species or their birthplace.

50% of uplifts stay "feral" in the sense of being quadrupedal. 30% decide to become anthros. 20% decide to modify themselves further to become indistinguishable from humans except for a few habits.

Laterals

Laterals are a catch-all term for the Really Weird Genemods. They are never recognizable as a specific base species and tend to be very large, up to 4 meters tall. They tend to be monstrous and colorful and usually have powerful cybernetic enhancements in addition to their bio-augmentations. They often live in small enclaves embedded within large human cities.

While Laterals are disparate, some of them have a more united sub-subculture. These are the eldritch-Laterals of Yig.

Nomenclature

All humans are Terran, but not all Terrans are human. The best way to explain the terms is this crude infographic.

The Septants

The Terran Federation is, in addition to being split into sectors, is split into seven septants. All except the Core Septant are shaped roughly like inverted pyramids with four sides, pointing at Earth. Sector boundaries make them not exactly even.

• Core: also known as the inner core. Earth, Proxima, Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, and so on. Around less than 10 light years radius. This is the capital, and has most of the heavy industry and the longest history. Most political power is here, but only narrowly; unlike under the UN the colonies have much more of a say. Capital: Terra (Earth)
• Up: due to a dearth of habitable worlds in this septant, it is widely seen as a barren wasteland. That is true for the space that would be the outer core in other septants, but its frontier is very rich in monopoles, has the high-gravity garden world of Anvil, and borders a prosperous region of the Relmai Commonwealth. Capital: Anvil
• Down: the inner parts of this septant house important industrial systems like Tau Ceti (with its Hephaestus and Ares) and Lesser Hades, as well as the one-of-a-kind radioactive planet Golgotha. The outer parts are mostly StarNavy bases and the border is tagged even by space standards, because the kjee and the AEONs both border it. Capital: Hephaestus-Ares
• North: most early human expansion was to this area in a thin "snake" between habitable worlds. These colonies, such as Thrive (with its green deserts) and Nuevo Alicante, are as old as those of the core. It has seen low-level unrest during the Civil War, but is otherwise peaceful, aside from the latter planet mentioned that was ravaged the most out of any world. It is marked by relmai cultural influence that increases the closer one goes to the border with Koumanlan; many relmai syndicates have expanded trade rights here. Capital: Thrive
• South: there is an unusual concentration of easily terraformable worlds in this region: Nyu-Chukotka, New Guangdong, Yggdrasil. The best explanation is some long-forgotten and decayed terraformation efforts by precursors, millions of years ago. Many genemods live here, and many sectors have humans firmly in the minority. The BFR holds some influence here. Capital: Hope
• East: this septant has the most neighbors. The 2D map cannot do it justice. Thus there is a massive presence of the StarNavy around here, and in general a lot of attention is pointed at it for another reason: the worst of the Civil War was fought here. By now the situation has long since stabilized, and worlds like Kamohoalii, Alacrity, Novaya Sibir, are shining jewels of the Federation, which still keeps a firmer grip over them than worlds in other septants. Capital: Kamohoalii
• West: the largest septant, yet the sparsest one. Resources in a large swath of it seem to be exhausted by layers of precursors, there are few terraformables and fewer gardens, and there are no real neighbors. The exception, of course, is TRAPPIST, functionally a secondary capital of Terra that exerts massive legal and cultural pull. Overall, the central government has a light hand here, and many colonies have very varied government forms: from constitutional monarchy to anarchist communes. Yig has a certain amount of cultural influence over the southwest. Capital: TRAPPIST

Politics

The Federation is a representative democracy, but the ideology of Prometheanism is baked into its constitution. Prometheanism is a sort of cynical, pragmatic transhumanist progressivism under a heavily statist social democratic framework. A key component of its economic policy is that the government is to hold large amounts of shares in all major corporations, increasing with the size of the corporation. With every decade, the percentage of the shares grows. This is not pleasing to the CEOs of said corporations. Its social policy is Post-Species Theory, which posits that all of sapience is universal and species must play no role in government.

Terran organization:

• Each "metropolis" (i.e system with at least one planet that is easy to colonize and/or terraform for any reason, has good infrastructure and a high population and is stable) is the capital of a sector. Sectors self-govern colony worlds and outposts within their borders-- defined by "flood-filling" from each metropolis until the (3D) border hits another sector's expanding border. The result is a 3D Voronoi diagram.
• Sectors are akin to US states. Each has its own name, flag, and code of laws.
• Candidates for any office have to pass through the Electoral Vetting Consortium, a group of impartial psychologists and philosophers that is chosen by lottery and changes every year. They are extremely hard to bribe; a Consortium member reporting a bribe with proof gets the promised bribe paid by the government, tripled, while the briber is hauled off for a mandatory 15 year sentence (in a nation with rehabilitative justice where most sentences have far less mandatory time).
• The parliament is split into two houses. The High Administration handles budgeting, military affairs, and broad laws, various production quotas. Represented are sectors; each sector gets a different amount of seats depending on its Federal Importance Rating, which is weighted by population but also by industrial value and strategic position; it is determined by a different Consortium with similar methods. The People's Administration handles everything else, and represented is population, where x tens of millions of people get you a seat; it also has a separate sub-parliament for residents of enclaves of major alien species that are interest groups.
• There are checks and balances against laws that disproportionately favor the core. For example, a septant government can have a given bill not apply to it if 75% of its constituent sectors vote to veto.
• Ranked choice voting is used in all elections.

As mentioned before, far-right and discriminatory ideologies are proscribed by the Federation, and this is enshrined in the Constitution. While someone being bigoted on the internet is unlikely to face real legal consequences except in truly egregious cases, anyone working in communications, education, politics, or who is a celebrity, who expresses bigoted or fascist views, will lose their job and face severe fines or mandatory reeducation sentences. Far-left speech is not at all censored and is mainstream. Think modern Russia with its anti-propaganda laws, except the boot is on the other foot. Or, what the anti-woke chuds fear the left will do. I stand by this, of course.

The Federation has rehabilitative justice comparable to or beyond present-day Scandinavian nations. Almost all criminals, from petty thieves to rapists go through therapy courses and material support. The prison cells are more like hotel rooms, even with internet access (though for higher-risk prisoners it's locked to a few sites and read-only). And it works; the recidivism rate is very low. Even, for instance, serial killers are at least treated well. For some cases, the government may authorize the use of direct brainwashing via BCI in order to ensure rehabilitation; this is used sparingly however.

Terran Intelligence Agencies

The Federation has the Terran Intelligence and Security Agency (TISA). It combines internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-terrorism, and secret police functions. There are three main branches of it.

• INTSEC (Internal Security): Tracks down major criminals who flee between star systems, domestic terrorists, mafia bosses, and so on. They are called in where the sectors' local security agencies have failed. It answers directly to the Terran government, local governments can file a complaint in case of misbehavior and INTSEC agents are subject to a decent amount of transparency. The INTSEC is probably the least authoritarian of these agencies and is not as feared-- but they are still much more militarized than regular police. Common knowledge amongst the population.
• EXTACT (External Actions): Sent to alien civilizations in guise of traders and travelers to spread Alliance influence and fight Hegemony influence. The Federation takes an active measures approach to espionage. EXTACT agents spread propaganda, they assassinate pro-Hegemony figures, they stage coups against pro-Hegemony governments. EXTACT uses the generally widespread human diaspora to blend in within neutral civilizations-- agents often pose as skilled workers or engineers to gain access to industrial secrets. Not exactly a secret but not really publicized to the Terran population.
• CONTFASH (Counter-Fascism): equivalent to secret police of certain regimes. Aimed at rooting out Hegemony sympathizers within Terra proper. The most ruthless and feared of the three branches, they are authorized to seize any websites or other publications deemed pro-Hegemony or that tolerate pro-Hegemony speech, to threaten or blackmail or even assassinate public figures that have expressed pro-Hegemony views, and to make sure no organized pro-Hegemony parties form anywhere in Terra. However, they are not omniscient and especially in the frontier much slips under their eye. Used to be truly secret, now it's tacitly acknowledged-- and now citizens with hidden Hegemony sympathies usually do not voice them anywhere, in person or online.

The emblem of TISA is a cybernetic arm holding a sword ablaze with the flame of Prometheus, stabbing through and shattering a red comet, the symbol of the Hegemony, wrapped in chains. 

Religion

Humanity has one of the highest atheism rates of all civilizations in 223X. Around 60%. The rest are split fairly evenly between the current major religions-- Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and so on are alive and kicking, though fundamentalism is fully marginal and the vast majority of believers are progressive, moderate, or postmodern.

With one notable difference from now: neo-Paganism has become semi-mainstream. The various neopagan faiths have syncretized amongst themselves heavily and common beliefs have appeared surrounding technology-- for instance, that the Oval is in actuality the substrate on which independent perspective may appear in complex enough self-sustaining systems (mostly brains). Thus egos can only arise within it.
This substrate is embedded in an alternate universe. This alternate universe differs from the prime universe in this manner: In our prime universe, physics exists before concepts and concepts are created by sapience to categorize it. But in the alternate universe, concepts exist, and physics is secondary to them. There is nothing in this alternate universe (let's call it Aether). No color, no smell, no touch. Only disjointed concepts that float around, unable to interact with matter. Most of these concepts do not correspond to the real universe and cannot be described by language. There is some near infinite amount of them but some are much stronger than others and thus they appear consistently in most civilizations. Those are, the concept of Ego itself, and the concept of the Ugolnikov Drive. What unites these two concepts, or rather their mirrors in the physical world? The fact that they are not explainable by science even if their rules can be jotted down. The way egos interact with the Aether is similar to how a magnet interacts with a pile of sand. They draw out that which attracts to them. Namely, the concepts that are compatible with both the physical world and the specifics of the ego. The stronger an ego is (i.e the stronger the capacity for creativity) the more concepts it can draw out. This is also the reason why people hallucinate during warp, and why everyone's hallucinations are different and seemingly tailored to their species. Humans are diverse so they see characters from culture and media. Relmai culture is all about colors so they see weird shifting colors. And so on.

None of this has any real evidence for it. But it doesn't exactly contradict anything either. Just like most religion.

Meanwhile, for the Abrahamic (and others, but this mainly applies to the Abrahamics) faiths, all of them have been mandated after 2185 to follow the Post-Species Policy, with sweeping changes made if necessary. The gist of it is that humans should not be deemed the only ones made in God's image or otherwise endowed with souls. Aliens, genemods, and true artificial intelligences should be considered equal in spiritual worth, no ifs ands or buts. For the Christians, for instance, a new Council of Nicaea was called, and the council deemed that "in His image" in Genesis 1:27 means able to reason and self-reflect. And really, it only makes logical sense that way-- if God is immaterial, why would configuration of material be the criterion for resembling Him? The doctrine of theistic evolution was also now doctrine for all Council-compliant churches.

Those fundamentalist holdout churches who refused to comply, were stripped of legal protection and gradually outlawed as discriminatory organizations, for hate-speech or suspicion of Hegemony collaboration. The followers either kept practicing in private, seething impotently, or fled alongside dissatisfied free-speech absolutists to join the Organization for Security of Endangered Societies. The Liberal bloc of the parliament had not reconstituted itself yet-- or they would have protested. Probably without effect.

Alien Enclaves in terra

The Federation, thanks to its Post-Species Policy, welcomes migrants from alien civilizations with open arms. Whether seeking work opportunities, or fleeing political persecution or instability or war, or simply desiring a new life, tens of millions of aliens of various species from all over the Oval reside within its borders. Due to the inherently differing infrastructural requirements and aesthetic desires, most of them live in enclaves-- communities purpose-built to resemble their homeworld's cities.

Enclaves are subservient to the local government of wherever they decide to reside, but have some degree of autonomy and can even set their own laws. They have representation in local parliaments.

With the advent of xenodigestion enzymes, human food can be imported to the enclaves, but most were founded before the invention of these enzymes and thus have their own food supplies such as hydroponic arrays, fueled by recombined organic material.

The complex interactions between alien laws and human laws result in some enclaves being hotbeds of illegal activity by humans.

It should be mentioned (for lack of a more fitting subsection) that a major cultural export from humans to alien civilization is... pizza.

Economy

Language

English is the official language of the Federation, inherited from its precursor the UN.

223X-era Common Terran English would be comprehensible when spoken to someone from 2025, but not comprehensible when written.

Most other human languages survived in some form and are used within their respective countries and communities. Everyone knows English, however.

Symbols

The people of the Federation voted to keep the UN flag after the Civil War despite the radical restructuring. After all, Earth is still the birthplace of mankind, and its presence centered on the flag doesn't have to mean dominance. It can just mean memory of the past. Some voices, especially the left-Prometheanists, wish to put it in the corner and/or change the continents to the night sky as seen from Earth.

The anthem of the Terran Federation is called "March of the New Enlightenment". Sweeping, bombastic brass accompanied by swooshing electronic pads. Fast tempo. Not too complex of a melody, to make it easier to adapt the lyrics to many languages. The lyrics speak first of the deeds of the mythical Prometheus, then the achievements of various scientists, engineers, and philosophers through human history, culminating in a warning to the reactionaries-- that the road towards the Second Enlightenment will be, and we quote, paved with their skulls. During the rule of President Manuel Dufresne (2226-2230), that last verse was removed. The next president put it back.

The emblem of the Federation is different from the emblem of the UN (which lived on in the flag, as mentioned above). Instead of the left olive branch, there is a rocket taking off with its exhaust forming the curve. Instead of the right olive branch there is a quarter of a gear. In the middle instead of a map of Earth, there are 4 appendages in a mutual handshake. One's a human hand, another is a clawed furred hand, the third is a mechanical manipulator, the fourth is a tentacle. Underneath it all is a little flame.

The motto is simple and ancient. Per Aspera Ad Astra. Sometimes preceded or followed or responded to with Ave Prometheus!

Terran splinter polities

Before, during, and after the Civil War, plenty of groups seceded from the UN or Terran Federation, or attained notable autonomy within it. These are:

• Black Fang Republic: lupine anthro-genemods who are essentially technobarbarian space-vikings
• Koumanlan: humans who seceded during the Civil War and tried to join the Relmai Commonwealth, but ended up as a joint neutral zone that mixes cultures from both
• Yig'ragn'xu Community: anarcho - ̷̰͑̈̐͘ ̴̡̟̝̦͆͐̽̊̋̿ ̶̬̰̫͙̣͌̈́ ̶̢͓̰̿ ̶̡̲͌ ̸̛̞̘͐̀̎̕͜ͅ ̸͙̄͛̄̎͘͝ ̶̡͍͚̱̈́ͅ ̶͎̠͊͝͝ ̵͓̩̙͌͝ ̶̢̙̻̣͖̻͗̿́̂̐ ̵̣͇̰̝͊ ̷̞̫̟̹̉́̀ ̴̧͙̩͔͎̒̎̿ ̷̢̮̆͐̃̕ ̶͉̫͚̲̲̂̿ͅ ̸͕͍̔̑͗ ̷̣̱̲͆̏ ̵̦̣̥̤̞͋̈̓͛͘ͅ ̴͍̯̬̪̋̉̍͑̇̓
• TRAPPIST Sector: de-jure a regular sector, functionally a second core populated by cyborgs and robots instead of baseline humans
• Seven Commune Worlds: an anarchist insurrection that was brought into the fold and allowed autonomy
• Garden of Gaia: essentially back-to-nature deep-green eco-radicals who live in space trees
• True-Human Organization: human-supremacist space Nazis. Imagine the worst parts of HFY, mixed with a secular version of ISIS.
• Movement for Human Advancement: a "Rational" technocracy led by the distant descendants of Silicon Valley "visionaries" and superintelligent AI alarmists.
• The Deep Tide: evil cetaceans who hate "hairless apes" and landlubbers in general
• Committee for Restoration of Ethical and Democratic Values: those who walked out in protest against the exile of the previous three organizations from Terra

For the one without a folder, it's coming soon. When it's done.

Terran Star Navy

Terran Names

Name: Relmai Commonwealth

Astropolitical rank: Superpower

Interciv relations: Alliance leader, puppetmaster of Koumanlan and ???

Dominant species: Relmai and relmai-derived beings

Temperaments: Hedonism / Cooperation / Individualism / Vanity

Territory: Western Oval, 2100 stars

Government form: Federal parliamentary direct-democratic republic

Ideology: Tradition / Liberty / Individualism{1} (Prosperianism)

Economic system: Laissez-Faire Syndicalism

Population: ~27 billion

Capital planet: Tayma

Climate preference: Tropical jungle

The Relmai Commonwealth (rarely RelComm) is one of the largest states in the Western Oval. It is one of the leaders of the Alliance and relatively close to humanity in terms of outlook on life and astrographic position. In 223X, it's an economic powerhouse larger than even Terra.

Species

The relmai are humanoids covered in sparse fur ranging from white to magenta to black. They have long triangular snouts with black dog-like 4-nostriled noses. Their double-pupiled eyes are large, extremely reflective and have brightly colored sclerae that can change color from intense emotion. Their feet are digitigrade and clawed, and they have 4 digits per limb. Their ears are narrow, have internal fluff, and are splayed out to the sides. But most noticeably, they have very fluffy squirrel-like tails that constantly swish as they walk.

They are always very thin, with lanky builds meant for Tayma's low gravity. However their bodies are not as frail as they appear; many have very toned muscles, and their bones are stronger than human bones.

They have 1.5x higher reaction times compared to humans, finer manual dexterity, and a robust nervous system, but are physically quite weak and have lower endurance than humans (but so do most other species). Their brains are resilient to extreme sensory stimulation as well as "messy" patterns, so they cannot really be visually or auditorily overwhelmed. There is no equivalent of epilepsy or the like.

Relmai are technically hermaphrodites, but only one sex is active at a time, and it can change during adulthood due to hormonal imbalances. They remain fertile in such a scenario. It is an evolutionary adaptation seen in a lot of Tayma's lifeforms, as a means to keep a reproductive population viable in the harsh environment.

Their senses are processed in an entirely different way than those of humans or most other species. They can hear better than humans and are very resistant to hearing loss, can pick up tiny differences in hue or brightness, and the palms of their hands (not furred) are sensitive to the slightest bumps. However, due to a few neural shortcuts, these senses are merged. The relmai essentially have synesthesia; they hear color and taste sound.

Historical summary

Since the emergence of the relmai as sapient beings, their main enemy was their planet's insanely hostile environment. The tribes had to cooperate both within and without in order to not get devoured alive by swarms of death-worms, melted by flesh-eating fungus, or massacred by butcher-lizards. This created a selection pressure towards friendliness and cooperation, as more warlike groups were weeded out. The bleak and hostile environment also encouraged extreme hedonism as a way to cope with frequent death and mayhem.

Their civilizations were loose coalitions of city-states, whose allegiances shifted from year to year. Gradually, these coalitions crystallized into confederations, where one city-state ended up being top dog and de-facto the leader of an empire. Wars happened, but they were noticeably rarer than those of humanity. Instead, there was a tangled web of intrigue and subterfuge that the confederations tugged on to cause each others' city-states to change their loyalty. It was insanely confusing to navigate, and a consequence of such manipulations was an utterly byzantine law code that still exists in the present.

In the late 27900s (counting by their calendar, our equivalent would be the 1600s), the Yellow Confederation, led by the Biulmouwai State, separated from its former hegemon. It was, at first, weak and small, yet a series of skillful leaders and strokes of luck led to it covering most of Tayma's largest continent by the 28200s (1900s). This Continental Confederation continued to expand its control over Tayma, until gradually its now-pathetic rivals were absorbed.

Come the late 28300s (2000s), the Relmai Commonwealth made its first stumbling steps out of the Ryamwotama-ma system, with the invention of their equivalent of the Ugolnikov Drive. It ended up being one of the Alliance founders, alongside humanity.

Tayma's environment and its influence upon the relmai

As alluded to before, much the relmai homeworld of Tayma is best described as a green hell, but also a purple hell and a yellow hell and an opalescent hell. A jungle of many colorful plants that support a vibrant ecosystem of equally colorful animals, the colorfulness of which seems directly proportional to the sharpness of their claws or the concentration of their venom. The plants and animals eat each other. Some of the most infamous examples are the tuebouwal, carnivorous vines that lay concealed in the underbrush and then coil and crush their prey when it trips over them; the zangsuobqo, a kind of aquatic creature that resembles a bright blue otter with extremely long arms that can spring out, and which lives near watering holes; and the dreaded vonou-se, tiny needle-like worms that burrow through the damp soil in huge swarms, and which track prey by vibrations-- when the prey stops to rest, unassuming, they surround it and burrow into its flesh, and soon only bones and bloodied scraps of skin are left amid many egg-sacs. Meanwhile thunderstorms and volcanic eruptions are frequent.

To survive in a place like this, the relmai absolutely had to cooperate both within and outside their tribes to survive. Groups and individuals that did not share, or acted in their own interests instead of the whole's, were selected away. Meanwhile, their minds have been made resistant to any sort of overstimulation or distraction by loud noises or bright lights. Meanwhile their nervous systems are also naturally rather resistant to the effects of substance addiction. Thus, psychoactive drugs are seen as completely mundane and harmless in their culture, instead of something daring-- and they do not really inhibit their functioning.

Also, due to their environment's animal life being a source of civilizational trauma more than inspiration, they are not keen to use symbolism involving animals, opting for abstract designs.

Culture

The vast majority (85%) of relmai are magenta relmai, of the ethnicities such as Liamuju and Ksaukuju. Their homeland is in the fertile lowlands and jungles. White relmai are from the deserts and black relmai are from the mountains and tundras.

Organization

• The main cornerstone of relmai society is a deep sense of mutual respect and empathy for each other. While such feelings are naturally present to some extent or another in all spacefaring civilizations, they are stronger for relmai. Thus their society, while it does have its issues and injustices, is overall a more compassionate place than most. This is codified in a concept called jyakuesuu, best translated as "interdependence". Everyone relies on everyone in their social group. At the same time they are both individuals and mere parts of a whole.
• Relmai society is seemingly contradictory in its stance on individualism. On one hand, doing something by oneself without help is highly frowned upon. On the other, everyone is encouraged to express and present oneself in unique ways. Thus they have a clear distinction between individualism of actions and individualism of identity.
• Direct democracy is so entrenched in relmai culture that they never developed "true" monarchical rule as we know it. And their very, ahem, loose family-rearing prevents dynasties from being meaningful. Nevertheless, the rich history of their democratic institutions, many tracing back thousands of years (though of course merged and reorganized many times) built an aura of tradition and ceremony that's not seen in human republics. Instead of parties, or dynasties, there are tejuu-nwal, or simply tejuu. Roughly translating as "group-folk-councils". In short, they are the best orators of a community (and their definition of community is loose, can be a single large residential building) that frequently come together to make decisions, usually chosen by heavily-randomized election. The criteria are made in such a way that basically everyone can participate at some point. The thing is, it's customary for each tejuu to have a concrete platform, or else something to differentiate itself from its neighbors. This is less an institution and more how things were done for gods know how many millennia-- the fact that it is present in most magenta, white, and black relmai cultures, even fairly isolated ones, suggests that tejuus were first founded before the species spread out of its origin region. Each tejuu has a leader. Leaders are oftentimes "hereditary", in a much looser manner than humans. It can be a lover's cousin's friend. In recent times that restriction is less and less present altogether. The leader does not have absolute veto power, but does have more of a vote. They also wear a fancy hat. While tejuus can be of any size, there is no system that involves city-tejuu members being chosen from neighborhood-tejuu members and so on. There is just a higher "floor" to being one. The Grand Council of the Relmai Commonwealth can be said to be the largest tejuu of all.
• They have somewhat more of an R-strategy than humans. Their environment necessitated frequent reproduction and discouraged monogamy. Thus, relmai families are arranged differently from human families: most of their children are raised by the community in special creches, but any adults can choose and are encouraged to adopt any of these children, preferably but not necessarily of their own bloodline. Anyone has the right to renounce their family ties once they are an adult, and the local tejuu has the right to take children back to the creche if the parents end up abusive. Marriage is similarly loose, and kue-ju is only translated as that by convention; it signals preference rather than exclusivity, and one is always free to seek out more mates.
• Their attitudes towards love are a lot more open than of humans, and more closely resemble those of bonobos; everyone is expected to have as many partners as they can physically handle, and sex is not in the slightest bit taboo. This is because the same part of the psyche responsible for seeking enjoyment at all times is responsible for seeking intercourse. Thus there is no concept of sexual orientation in relmai society, only doing what feels good with whoever is willing. Homoerotic behavior is ubiquitous, and actually much more common than heterosexuality; by our standards all relmai are pansexual leaning gay (except dseyrel, see below).
• A fraction of a percent of relmai are unable to feel enjoyment, and thus lack the inherent hedonism of other relmai. Until around two centuries ago, they were oppressed and stigmatized by their society. However a liberation movement appeared, and gradually the dseyrel (joyless), as they are called, achieved equal rights in society.
• The relmai have no gender roles whatsoever, and can in fact be said to be genderless but not sexless. It is simply not in any of their cultures to have females dress differently, behave differently, or have different opportunities from males. This is because relmai, in the same way as some Earth amphibians, can naturally transition and thus there is much less dimorphism than in most other species, and gestation times are short (due to the compromises required), so there is no social pressure that would result in gender roles. To humans both sexes appear highly androgynous; meanwhile from the relmai perspective none of them think of themself as a man or woman. Due to said short gestation times, their children are even more helpless than human babies. Both male and female relmai have pouches on their chests (smaller than Earth marsupials') where up to three infants can mature.

Visuals and material culture

• They are unable to perceive differences in color saturation beyond the extremes, as a result of their eye structure. Thus everything they design is eye-searing, with clashing oversaturated colors. Meanwhile, their senses are resilient enough to overstimulation that they need flashing lights and loud sounds just to feel somewhat different from their default. What is normal to a relmai, feels to a human like a nonstop rave. While this might seem counterproductive in an environment as hostile as Tayma, many of its most dangerous predators are actually scared of grating noises. Stealth did not help, as while relmai senses are keen, the senses of their enemies are keener.
• Their clothes vary, and usually have various intricate patterns on them that are unique for each bit of attire. The most common attire is a sort of very deep-V-neck tunic of thin fabric that exposes the chest, or a form-fitting jumpsuit, or what can be called a miniskirt. The only difference between casual and formal clothing is the presence of more glitter, tassels, and reflective paint on the latter. They also always wear lots of jewelry in the form of bangles and earrings, tail-rings, collars, girdles, and so on. Quite often various designs are bleached into their fur as tattoos. The more adorned a relmai is, the more likely they are to attract a mate.
• They obsess a lot about their appearance, often spending hours selecting clothes and neatly combing fur. Well-kemptness is one of the Great Virtues in their society. Often dozens of them sit together brushing each other's fluff.
• Dseyrel, by contrast, dress in drab colors and do not adorn themselves much. Their clothing is very modest and does not expose much fur, especially not around the chest or thighs.
• Many natural pigments on Tayma have fluorescent and bioluminescent properties-- including those found in vegetation. So, this obsession with bright and clashing colors actually served as a means of camouflage during early relmai history. In addition, relmai fur discolors quickly after death, this makes them associate muted colors with death.
• Music is a key part of their culture. There are many genres, though they are all harsher and faster than mainstream human music. Rhythms are irregular and syncopated, and percussion is usually extremely distorted. It is very upbeat, the closest equivalent to the most popular relmai music genres is hyperpop or speedcore. Sounds more high pitched than humans can hear are often used. Electronic instruments were invented early in their history.
• A certain massive Tayma insect has a naturally holographic carapace. Since ancient times there was a tradition in magenta relmai nations, of using this chitin, carefully painted, to product shifting paintings.

Economy

• The closest analog to the relmai economic model is syndicalism-- the hseyjuu-kue (group profit teams, roughly) system. Arranged parallel to the tejuus but with a similar structure, however with two levels. Every worker in a hseyjuu has their say in policy and can propose anything. The higher level has no say in what policy to implement, but has a much larger say in how to implement it. The higher levels consist mostly of educated professionals who also spent years in the hseyjuu, and they can be dismissed by the lower level at any time.
• Tejuus have limited influence over hseyjuus besides asking nicely. Thus the relmai economic system is laizzes-faire with very few regulations. Unlike human laizzes-faire models, this one does a good job at regulating itself, as executives are fully dependent on what the workers want, and in general relmai are not prone to exploitative behavior.
• Individual relmai do not have currency. Their tejuu and hseyjuu has currency. There are limits set every month for how much an individual can withdraw and spend from it.
• The largest hseyjuus have their influence in neighboring civilizations and membership is open to non-relmai. These are some of the largest multicivilizational companies in the Oval.

Entertainment

• They are the most fun-loving species. This is essentially wired into their brains. All relmai live solely for pleasure and gratification. It need not be instant gratification, of course, but no motivation beyond pleasure can exist. This is where they differ the most from humans. In this way their minds are less flexible than those of humans. While the question of the meaning of life pursued and continues to pursue humans since their origin of sapience, for relmai the answer is entwined in their psyche.
• However, their inherent hedonism is tempered by their inherent altruism. Pleasure for others is as or more important than pleasure for oneself.
• As mentioned before, they use a lot of recreational drugs. The average relmai is constantly high on a cocktail of psychedelics, euphorics, and aphrodisiacs. These have been tailored for centuries now to have no withdrawal effects or addictive potential. Generally the psychedelic effects are mild and just make everything feel even more colorful and enhance the sense of touch, though those relmai who have jobs that require concentration forego them. They're not only taken as pills or mixed into drinks, but every day there is a psychoactive haze over every relmai city.
• Over thousands of years of persistent and intermixing cultures (in their civilization, there aren't strong national or ethnic identities and so they kind of gradually blend together), they have learned ways to maximize satisfaction and got that down to a science. The relmai mind does grow tired of the formulaic or repetitive quicker than the human mind, however, so a key part of these techniques is varying things in a strategic way.
• Much of their art is created by committee, again via the tejuu model. It's not to the point of ty-uc-kch art, though; it often follows individuals and the size of the committee is usually very small. After this, the work is considered to be owned by the species as a whole. While it may be sold, modifying it in any way is deemed okay, though doing so in a disrespectful manner is very frowned upon.

Religion

• Relmai religion worships many ephemeral deities that have always been taken as metaphorical personifications of concepts. They have no names beyond the word for said concept suffixed with "-dshei" (divine) or "-rshon" (demonic). They occupy no space and perform no actions besides allowing their concept to occur or be enjoyable or unpleasant.
• They believe that through a kind of shamanic process involving lengthy focus, taking on an appearance similar to the canonical depiction of the being, and lots of special dissociative drugs, one may channel a divine being. This doesn't last very long.
• Generally these beliefs aren't very strong. They don't have a strong atheist tradition in their usual school of thought but for most relmai this sort of ritual is consciously performed in the interests of bonding. The question of whether the divine exist or not is moot to a relmai, what matters is the act of worship bringing pleasure.
• Relmai faith is thus more civic than spiritual.

Relmai Star Navy

Relmai Names

Name: Dal-ghar Iron Empire

Astropolitical rank: Superpower

Interciv relations: Hegemony leader and puppetmaster of all Viceroyalties

Dominant species: Dal-ghar

Temperaments: Paranoia / Conformity

Territory: Eastern Oval, 3500 stars

Government form: Feudal monarchy under a totalitarian para-fascist regime

Ideology: Tradition / Elitism / Supremacy{5} (Red Comet Thought)

Economic system: State Capitalism

Population: ~38 billion

Capital planet: Bhoz-tlu-xba

Climate preference: Hot desert

Physiology

The dal-ghar are non-humanoid snakes about two meters long, with fairly muscular but thin tails. Red or brown scales, with size and shape depending on phenotype, cover their bodies, shinier than those of most Earth reptiles. Their torsos are somewhat humanoid and possess two arms with three long fingers. On their snouted heads are four eyes located in a roughly Λ pattern (two close ones near the forehead and two far-apart ones on the cheeks). These eyes are less like Earth reptile eyes and more like feline eyes, except even more reflective.

They have a very developed vocal system, and are regarded by many species as the best singers in the Oval.

Psychology

They have one bias, but it's a strong one: paranoia and fear of the unknown. There is also something of a stronger traditionalist instinct than humans have, on par with Chimeras and chohjozra. These two combine into something sinister, amplified by their history…

Early history

The backstory behind the dal-ghar is very unique as far as most species go, and explains their downfall into the biggest threat to the free world's safety.

The dal-ghar and the saacxit-jxuumzu were two species that evolved from a single common ancestor dating back less than two million years ago. Thanks to a climatic shift early in their evolutionary histories, the two species were split on two sides of an inhospitable desert (one that makes the Sahara look like the European plains). Keep in mind that Bhoz-tlu-xba is a semi-desert world where water is rather rare. The saacxit-jxuumzu, thanks to the lower lushness of their "continent", here defined as essentially an area of habitable land around a large cluster of lakes and oases, were physically somewhat weaker but more intelligent. Their birth rate and thus population were lower than those of dal-ghar, but that didn't matter much: while the dal-ghar had just entered the stage of pastoral iron-age tribal societies, the saacxit-jxuumzu had a flourishing late-medieval society. Their kingdoms reached a point where they had the resources to send caravans of land-ships across the vast desert… and that they did.

They found out they were not alone. And not only that, but the populous natives of this vast place were gullible and easily goaded into work, specifically the kind of work they were suitable for: mines, farms, and heavy construction. Slave caravans soon began ferrying full loads of dal-ghar across the desert en masse, and their former lands began to be colonized, eventually forming separate kingdoms where a minority of saacxit-jxuumzu ruled over an oppressed yet seemingly content minority of dal-ghar. Over time, the abuses intensified and intensified as the saacxit-jxuumzu grew complacent. This was at a level of development roughly equivalent to the 1650s-1700s. Unrest began mounting, but was not too organized…

The dal-ghar situation was mostly under saacxit-jxuumzu control, following several harsh treatments of rebel cities, bordering on genocide. While this was happening, a renowned scientist/early archeologist named Gxuapi-jkuga found a strange vault of an unknown gray stony material while digging through the remnants of an abandoned mine near the capital of a large saacxit-jxuumzu kingdom. He had his team of dal-ghar serfs pickaxe through the wall, at a great effort that involved two serfs dying of exhaustion. Inside were a lot of translucent canisters, in a dilapidated room. Most were empty or simply contained some unpleasant-looking slurry, but one had a bright green liquid. Gxuapi took it to his laboratory, and as any good pre-scientific-method scientist, cracked it open to see what was inside. Oh, and earlier that week, a massive comet was passing by Bhoz-tlu-xba, with its tail taking up most of the night sky. And there were rumors of a would-be dal-ghar warlordess covertly rallying escaped serfs, off in the wilderness. Nothing to worry about, just another rebel…?

As soon as the sledgehammer cracked the canister (it took around ten hits), the liquid evaporated into a foul cloud. It flooded the laboratory and began wafting out of the open window. It was a windy day, with a crowded festival right outside.

The unbelievably contagious plague, centuries later strongly hypothesized to be a precursor bioweapon or some kind of waste, had the following effects, all setting in quickly: full-body scale-degloving; structural failure of the eyes; extreme swelling of the stomach to the point of abdominal rupture; multi-organ necrosis; persistent cough. The infrastructure of the saacxit-jxuumzu kingdoms was unable to contain mundane pandemics, much less one engineered by sufficiently advanced aliens. Fortunately (for the dal-ghar), dal-ghar had a mutation that seemed to, by evolutionary chance, trigger some kind of local killswitch, causing the symptoms to only manifest as nausea and vertigo. Thus, the slaves rampaged through the pestilence-wreathed husks of their former masters' cities, pillaging all riches and killing indiscriminately, often deliberately exposing saacxit-jxuumzu to the infection. They united and united, the roving warbands merging into greater wholes, all eventually coming under the control of the warlord mentioned before. Her name was Pqaa-mul-ghor, and she soon became the first dal-ghar Empress, uniting the two "continents" under a vast and cruel empire. The species-based caste system was flipped on its head, with the surviving saacxit-jxuumzu becoming serfs, but for "intellectual" labor such as accounting. The plague eventually died off, with all those exposed to it seemingly melting away into gore and not being able to spread it. However, it quickly became apparent that the effects were not uniform: roughly 5% of infected saacxit-jxuumzu became saa-zu. Vampires. Crazed cannibals who fled to the vast caves underneath Bhoz-tlu-xba's surface, living in pre-Neolithic tribal societies in and around the tunnels. A taste for dal-ghar (and saacxit-jxuumzu) meat was implanted into them, which combined with their (shared with the dal-ghar) vocal abilities, led them to develop strategies to lure travelers into ambushes. Despite their overall lack of intelligence, this cunning is facilitated by an expanded speech center of the brain. By the present day, the dal-ghar government claims to have exterminated the saa-zu via incendiary shelling of near-cave thorn-forests and the flooding of the upper levels of the caverns with sarin gas. Despite this, reports still sometimes surface, of singing eerily reminiscent of pre-collapse saacxit-jxuumzu hymns, emanating from untouched forests…

Dal-ghar Star Navy

Dal-ghar Names

Note: the surname/house name is the middle part. This pattern is unified across all dal-ghar cultures, with differences being too subtle to a human eye,

Name: Aadalu Eternal Sacred Republic

Astropolitical rank: Great Power

Interciv relations: Alliance leader, puppetmaster of ??? and ???

Dominant species: Aadalu and their created beings

Temperaments: Patience / Tradition / Privacy

Territory: Western Oval, 1300 stars

Government form: Unitary theocratic parliamentary republic

Ideology: Tradition / Order / Conformity{3} (Uukaeia Voolaee)

Economic system: State Capitalism

Population: ~25 billion

Capital planet: Uuothu

Climate preference: Tundra wetland

Aadalu biology

While in terms of their body plan, with two arms and two legs and no tail, the aadalu might be the most humanoid sapient species, proportionally they are very different from humans: very tall (averaging 2.2 meters), thin, with long limbs and three digits per hand and foot. They are amphibian-like, able to hold their breath for several minutes, and have short, mostly-vestigial fins on their head and upper limbs, the size and shape of which varies by ethnicity. Their mouth is very wide and full of long teeth, like that of an anglerfish, however there are also flat teeth since they are partially omnivorous. Aadalu have three large eyes and excellent night vision. Their skin ranges from completely white to dark gray.

An aadalu may remain motionless in even the coldest and windiest of environments for hours at a time. Their eyes do not blink due to an internal moisturizing structure.

Their blood is solidly green due to using something similar to chlorocruonin for oxygen transport.

Aadalu are hairless but have adapted to their cold environment with a fat equivalent that is much less dense and more insulating, that underlays every inch of their skin. It is a sort of biological aerogel. An aadalu is somewhat crunchy to the touch. Like somewhat packed snow.

From a neurological perspective they perceive time somewhat nonlinearly, with their current perception being hazy but their memories being at once sharp and without date. Not quite photographic but close. They are also better at remembering locations even without landmarks.

Social notes

They refuse to recognize the difference between living and non-living matter from a moral perspective, or that life and non-life are even distinct concepts. What they actually value is motion and change, but the kind of change that comes in cycles. The day and night. Tides. The orbits of planets. These processes to them are what is more alive than any creature.

The aadalu have two main religions that have been locked in a theological struggle since time immemorial even after defeating all other religions. Both are technically offshoots of one faith, Iiwlee, or the Path. Both are pantheist-monotheist and believe that God is the cycles of the universe. The first, Iiwooaa, the Path of Steel, believes that the cycles of the universe are like a clockwork mechanism and that the universe rewards that which acts like a clockwork. Followers of Iiwooaa worship tectonic drift, the orbits of planets, clocks, and in modern times, computers. They cyborgize themselves regularly, most are full-body cyborgs by 223X. Many live on habitats or barren planets. The second, Iiuuumnnu, the Path of Flesh, believes that the cycles of the universe are like the fluctuation of an ecosystem. They worship the wind and the seasons and the migration patterns of wildlife, and the replication process of cells. They genemod themselves into strange forms and believe that the creation of life is the will of God. When colonizing new planets, they prefer integrating themselves into the ecosystem.

They actually discovered something similar to xenodigestion enzymes many decades before the Terrans did, as part of a collaboration between the two Paths. It is a special nanite solution that could be tailored to an alien biosphere to make its proteins digestible to aadalu. Unfortunately, it relies on a certain quirk of aadalu biology and could not be adapted to humans or any other species. It did facilitate Iiuuumnnu eco-integration, though.

They tend to live and work communally, with several families usually sharing a dwelling, though of course not to the same extent as the kseldani or chohjozra. They are strictly monogamous and form strong connections to family.

Aadalu clothing usually consists of religiously-mandated robes called iiyek that are usually monochromatic. There's some amount of creativity in iiyek design, from ornate designs to different head veil shapes, but overall it all looks similar in shape. They are very modest in general.

Since the Shameful Incident of 2131, it is strongly socially encouraged for them to wear a veil covering their mouth when around other species.

Political notes

The Eternal Sacred Republic is ruled under the principle of Uukaeia Voolaee, which can best be translated as "divine democracy". It would not be a democracy at all if Iiwlee did not teach that divine power comes from the people (as the lowest level of elements in the cycle) and thus priests have to be elected in some way. In practice it is a highly illiberal and conformist form of democracy where the laity do not have a direct say in the rulership: they first elect the low priesthood, which then elects the middle priesthood, which then elects the high priesthood, part of which is selected to be in the Holy Assembly which elects the High Priest. The Assembly has to include an equal number of members of both paths

The High Priest has the ability to declare a Oooiwkaa, a term best translated as "holy war". It is a mobilization of the whole Eternal Sacred Republic to attack a threat possibly not just to Iiwlee, but to the cycles as a concept. One has not yet been declared in space-age history. Overall, they are not particularly warlike, and unlike most/all human examples of theocracies, actually take their religion's teachings to heart.

Aadalu Names

The Abyssals, whose endonym simply can't be faithfully transcribed here due to the peculiarities of their language, are an aquatic sapient species which is not aligned with the Alliance or Hegemony. They are one of the most feared and infamous civilizations in the Oval.

Physiology

Abyssals have quite long bodies, about 2m, covered in small very dark gray or black scales. An Abyssal's eyeless head has a long snout with teeth jutting out of the lower jaw and a short, partially-ossified trunk extending from the upper jaw. Instead of eyes, a dull membrane is present on the forehead which can sense differences in light level and patches of bright light, but not color or shape, and are blinded by sunlight. Four very vibration-sensitive tendrils extend from their cheeks, and a photophore, like that of an anglerfish, hangs above the aforementioned membrane. They have four flexible tentacles, each branching at about two-thirds of the way into two prehensile, very sensitive offshoots. A shovel-like, horizontal finned tail helps them control their depth. Their back tentacles have horizontal fins, and their back and tail has a vertical one. Abyssals have some of the most sensitive hearing, smell, and touch senses of all known sapient species, and can also feel electromagnetic fields and echolocate. They are obligate carnivores.

Background and psychology

Abyssals evolved in the depths of their homeworld, which is covered by a thin ice crust. They lived in natural caves on the seabed with little light, and thus are essentially blind. Their early organization was that of group apex predators, like dolphins or orcas but deep-sea. They set up elaborate light displays with their photophores to lure in prey, and it was those tactics that sped along the development of their sapience. Soon, they figured out how to use geothermal sources to generate mechanical power and bootstrap civilization, helped along by selectively-bred biotechnology. Society flourished in elaborate cities carved into the sides of underwater cliffs, and they even breached the ice crust to start exploiting space.

In most biospheres, meat of organisms that underwent severe distress before death is not delicious. But in the Abyssal biosphere, due to a quirk of biochemistry, most wildlife ends up tasting better after undergoing severe distress. This, unfortunately, led them to develop a compulsion towards cruelty and a lack of respect towards life.

Culture

Abyssal culture centers around manipulating and often literally shaping others into their own image, be those others animate or inanimate, sapient or nonsapient. This domination is highly ritualized and the hierarchy is very fluid, but overall they revel in causing things to change to what exactly THEY want. Entire pelagic mountains are turned to immense monoliths, plants of dozens of different species are grafted together into botanical abominations, fish are grown in shaped containers, and fellow Abyssals are scarred and sometimes mutilated into such art. Much of their technology is a mix of metal and still-living, pulsating flesh. Their biotech is made to be able to feel pain intentionally, as a way to assert dominance over their tools.

Their media has little to no visual aspect, instead focusing on their more developed senses. For example, they derive meaning from ridiculously tiny grooves on the surface of a statue that they have to run their tentacles across, or from the tiniest modulations of EM fields. Naturally this makes it impossible to properly export to other civilizations and vice versa… except for BCI programs. Which they also use to directly modify their and others' minds into states alien even to themselves.

Their food takes a wide variety of forms, but is all meat or eggs. Traditionally it is cooked over hydrothermal vents or volcanoes but nowadays they use electric heating. Often their prey is cooked alive or killed in the most brutal ways, from flaying to disembowelment. They are also cannibals like the chohjozra, though more in a "meat is meat" sort of way.

Abyssals don't believe in gods or spirits and never did, but they do believe in (quite ritualized) magic, and follow their dedication to their fleshcraft even when it wouldn't be optimal because they believe suffering makes those tools work better. To them, pain and distress of lesser organisms is like fuel for their machines. A common decoration in their dwellings, for example, is a clump of about a dozen fish with their bodies and nervous systems merged together and their internal organs turned external, that are kept alive while electric shocks are constantly applied. They, in a way, consider themselves something akin to the divine while all other species might as well be inanimate.

They don't wear clothes due to hydrodynamics, and don't paint their bodies due to being blind, but they deeply scar their own scales into networks of deep grooves as decoration. This scarification can be detected both via echolocation and touch, so it's a good way to differentiate oneself.

The punishment for various crimes in their society is varying degrees of torture and helplessness, to a more literal level than punitive systems in other civilizations. For minor crimes, there are beatings, harsh verbal abuse, and electric shocks for hours. For moderate crimes, the penalty is mutilation or being eaten. For the worst crimes, offenders get their limbs, vocal system, and sensory organs removed and become fleshy furniture while remaining conscious and aware, yet unable to move or communicate, and kept on life support. This furniture is highly prized.

Abyssal genemodding tech is the most advanced in the Oval, even more than that of humanity, and they are not sharing their secrets with anyone. That is what is called fleshcraft.

Their own forms often vary a lot, especially those of 'richer' (see next section) Abyssals. Though they are proud of their overall body morphology, limbs are often modified or increased in number.

Abyssals very rarely leave their empire, and when they do they use pressurized walker suits. Perhaps surprisingly, however, the broader Internet is connected to their worlds, albeit few use it due to being right on the edge of being possible to communicate with. Insight from their local xenophiles sharing details is how much of their culture and history is known, being otherwise hidden under kilometers of water. These tend to be semi-outcast weirdos, but there are some proud high-societal-rank Abyssals. Their manner of communicating is very hard even for top-of-the-line translators to decode, as their language has a branching syntax and other idiosyncratic features. Even rarer, of course, is a human befriending an Abyssal by mail. Generally at least one of them must be a highly troubled individual and/or have an extreme fascination with the other's culture, but it happens. Sapience is, after all, an universal equalizer.

Politics

The Abyssals are united under an oligarchic assembly of the most skilled sculptors of flesh and minds. The leader frequently changes as these standings change, or they are found mysteriously turned into a lump of flesh. It is not very brutal to its citizenry but said citizens take care of that anyways. It operates under a partially collectivized economy that has a reputation-based currency. Those who prove to be more dedicated to the art of fleshcraft and torturing inferior beings are considered richer.

They have not joined the Alliance as the Alliance considers their government not democratic enough (as well as the, you know, torture and supremacy thing. That is more of a factor, actually), but they hate the Dal-Ghar Iron Empire and its Hegemony for imposing the wrong kind of will upon its subjects and simply being a threat.

The Abyssal Empire is compact yet quite dense thanks to them being able to settle frozen "iceball" planets by melting bubbles within the ice. It is located right in the middle of the Oval and both sides are trying to court it, the Alliance as a reformed member and the Hegemony as a completely trusted ally who won't be enslaved after their final victory, they promise. These efforts are futile but the Alliance is fine keeping them around as long as they are pointed in the general direction of the Iron Empire, as the Abyssals are a much lower priority. Everyone is terrified of the prospect of going to war with them as they gleefully treat the Elliptic League's list of war crimes as a to-do list if they suspect they would not get caught or punished.

Complicating matters is the Abyssal Sphere. The Abyssals started out as conquerors a la the dal-ghar, except truly genocidal instead of merely subjugating. The cagg, the first and only victim of this first phase of Abyssal imperialism, are completely extinct. This was early in the history of the Oval's community, and news spread slowly. But once everyone else caught on, this incident resulted in the formation of the Elliptic League. After this, the Abyssals turned to turning their neighbors to puppet states, diplomatically or militarily. More information is linked in the Abyssal Sphere snippet.

Others' opinion of Abyssals ranges from considering them a whole race of dangerous psychopaths to being highly curious and interested in their culture, considering them misunderstood. However, most people in the Stardustverse skew heavily towards the former, and think the Abyssals should be fixed. This fixing would involve using a combination of genemodding and BCIs in order to remove the Abyssals' compulsion towards torment. Naturally, nearly all Cabals oppose such a treatment, as it would involve the dismantling of the Sphere and the end of the Abyssal Empire as a relevant power. However, there are a few opposition Cabals that actually feel the best course of action for the Abyssals as a species is to turn the other cheek and use their own prowess to excise the compulsion to torment, then go join the Alliance against the dal-ghar. Since this would doom the Hegemony within a decade, the dal-ghar do everything to sabotage them because if they seize power the Space Cold War would be over. It's usually not out of altruism as much as "we can't risk getting either killed or put under occupation, which most of our non-puppet neighbors want to do".

Kseldani look like scale-less and claw-less humanoid lizards with large black eyes, long and narrow tails, two large, floppy antennae, bulbous fingers and toes, and rounded snouts. Otherwise, they are quite featureless.

The uniform teal tissue that comprises kseldani bodies is composed of what amounts to permanent stem cells. They can heal organ damage or even lost limbs with ease, though brain damage heals only partially, and enough will still instantly kill one. Their translucent "blood" is diffused through their bodies via microscopic capillaries that can very quickly seal themselves if severed, with no large blood vessels. This makes blood loss from injuries a non-issue for the most part. Kseldani flesh, while opaque, has a consistency between jelly and ballistic gel. It is not slimy, but is very smooth and quite shiny (when it isn't caked in ash and grime).

Kseldani need electricity to maintain their metabolism and the functionality of their organs, and their physiology lacks any way to generate it. If a kseldani runs out of power, they melt in a very painful manner. Thus, they absolutely cannot survive in the wilderness. Said requirement for electrical charge is lowered by breathing in CO2, while no oxygen is required, thus they thrive in atmospheres that other races would need to wear respirators in. But they can survive just fine in a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere.

Kseldani emotions and their pain response are dulled. They are not emotionless, but they inherently need far less to be content with life. They also have little drive to creativity besides what is "useful", and generally appear nearly mindless in their actions. This shaped their society massively.

Using a combination of special drugs and simple clamps and molds, a kseldani's body can be gradually reshaped into almost any form. This process is painful even for them and potentially takes days, but is very useful for their society and has no long-lasting ill effects.

These traits were engineered into them by their Creators, and they differ massively from the wildlife on their homeworld, Nei'ksu. Upon awakening, which is very much shrouded in history, they had to build their society around the scant few power sources that did not decay into uselessness. Good thing the Creators built all of their technology to be rugged and long-lasting...

Kseldani have no biological sex and reproduce by budding, as stated in their description, though it is only initiated after mating to prevent it from happening at an inopportune time. They don't form familial bonds, however, and their children are quickly abandoned and raised communally.

The Collective

The Kseldani Collective is the most populous state in the Oval, and serves as the Alliance's industrial bulwark. However, it is held back by a very dull and wasteful society, and cracks are beginning to manifest...

Collective summary

The Kseldani Collective acts as something in-between an anarchist commune and an insect hive. There is no concept of property, leadership, or competition between individuals, and everyone works towards the common good. Globally-important decisions are made by online consensus, local ones by just talking it out. Though all kseldani are 100% equal in social standing, there are still many castes, dictated by the aforementioned body shaping and cybernetic implants. Described at the bottom of this article. A kseldani is technically free to leave their caste, but very few do, and doing so means going through the reshaping process again.

The Collective, despite not having any kind of leadership whatsoever, manages to be orderly and organized. Many times a day, groups of kseldani gather (either in-person or via their internet equivalent) to discuss what the most productive course of action would be for the local community. Not participating in these discussions or not weighing in enough is unthinkable, and the only way anyone has a greater voice, regardless of caste, is if they have relevant expertise. There is very little to no dissent against the consensus, even if the proposed action requires the risk or certainty of death. They place no value upon their own lives if sacrificing oneself would lead to more productivity, and follow such courses of action mindlessly and unflinchingly.

Law enforcement is rarely necessary due to the extremely conformist and selfless nature of the average kseldani. The few outliers who do commit murder, for example, are dealt with by mob justice (and then thrown into the food paste production vats, possibly while alive). There is a Starguard to fight alien piracy and smuggling in their space, but no formal policing institutions otherwise.

Kseldani culture

There is essentially no entertainment media in kseldani culture, such as it is. They all find hard work in and of itself to be intensely satisfying. This is, doubtlessly and horrifyingly, another trait engineered into them by their Creators, so their slaves don't rebel. When a mood boost is really needed, they use euphoric drugs.

They don't really have a religion, organized or unorganized, though superstition is a thing in a subtle form, mostly regarding complicated engineering or programming tasks. Those living in the Collective, barring the scientist caste, are nearly unable to think of anything not relevant to the current task or their occupation, aside from the simplest instincts. As such, the vast majority of them are pretty much completely dull and barely self-aware. The population of the more dedicated hives essentially acts like animals.

During their early days, before inventing electrical power production necessary for their bodies to live, the ancient, thousands-years-old power grids of the Creators were kept operating by teams of robots called Servitors, controlled by a pseudosapient AI. Said AI's core was accidentally destroyed during an attempt to figure out its inner workings, but by that point the kseldani already knew how to build their own power plants.

Kseldani "culture" being the blank slate it is, they are very quick to adopt other civilizations' cultures when emigrating compared to other species. Some even adopt human/relmai names. The advent of the interstellar internet has caused a lot of kseldani to be swayed by human and relmai culture into either leaving en masse or having whole colonies secede. Those incidents are sparked by "hey check out this stuff humans have" being spread like wildfire at their usual daily gatherings. As those loyal to the Collective resent the very concept of authority, they have no interest in stopping them... not that it matters. What's ten million kseldani leaving when there are tens of billions more and growing?

Lacking a musical tradition of their own, their music sounds like music from one of those two societies, but quite dissonant and with an unusual rhythm and time signature. Not understanding property, they tend to steal melodies outright. As said music is made by self-aware kseldani (often of the red kseldani) rather than those of the mindless masses, it often features gloomy lyrics. It is usually made electronically as getting a proper instrument is hard as none are manufactured and good luck cobbling something out of scrap (and wasting community resources on entertainment when you could just stare at a wall for hours during your off time). It is usually played at very loud volumes in their meeting rooms or in hallways using repurposed announcement speakers. Some colonies right next to the Federation and Commonwealth started constructing proper nightclubs in abandoned sections of their hives.

They are less affected by environmental maladies and thus tend to ruin their planets' biospheres. Not totally, but forests fade and skies and seas darken thanks to pollution, and wildlife is unseen within their hives, aside from vermin.

They do not wear clothing or any other decorations, but do usually wear vests, harnesses, and belts with lots of pockets and clips for their tools.

Kseldani food is solely nutrient paste. They have no sense of taste so they do not understand how horrible it tastes– human-compatible samples with genemodded similar ingredients send even the most open-minded gourmands into fits of nausea.

Their rugged biology means they are immune to basically all of their biosphere's diseases so they have no need for hygiene as we know it. Almost every adult kseldani is essentially permanently coated in a foul-smelling layer of dust, motor oil, ash, and sloppily-eaten nutrient paste. There are exceptions, however, e.g the artisan caste, who work in precision manufacturing that requires clean rooms and no dust, frequently shower.

Hives

Their cities are layered, with residential buildings often stacked on top of factories and vice versa. These layers tend to get narrower towards the top, for stability, resulting in kseldani colonies looking like gigantic anthills made of concrete cubes. The insides of these anthills are dark, lit only by dim, bare lamps, and have crowded streets with smooth ramps connecting the modular buildings.

Their dwellings are just large chambers within the residential buildings. Not even beds, but instead with a soft floor. These function both as places to socialize during breaks during the day (when not at the factory floor) and as places to sleep during the night. At the latter time they tend to get extremely packed, with teal bodies often piling up on top of each other. Kseldani have no attachment to a specific room and just sleep in the closest one they can find when they feel drowsy.

Meanwhile, their factories tend to be noisy labyrinths of heavy machinery connected by narrow, rickety walkways with thin guardrails. The only reason they don't die in droves in accidents is because the average kseldani is more methodical and less careless than the average human. Said machinery has very little automation as for kseldani, life's purpose is to work for work's sake. For heavy tasks they use brutes and mules. This, of course, is highly inefficient and throws away lives that could be spent on creativity or research for nothing.

Many worker, brute, and mule kseldani don't know how to read their own language, beyond important words that go on signs. They don't need it, really.

They do not have families of any sort and their eggs (which look like large caviar) are transported to special buildings where they are tended to by caretakers, and if there is currently an overpopulation issue they are eaten by the community to recycle the calories spent. Basically no kseldani know who their parent (just the one, they reproduce by parthenogenesis even though stimulation is needed to initiate egg laying) is, nor do they care.

Their own names tend to be given after childhood, as their approach to childrearing is very impersonal and thus their hatchlings don't need to be referred to by a name and are usually simply tagged with a number by the caretaker caste. They are basically descriptive nicknames that are two or three ideograms long, e.g "Tliu'lsaa" meaning "Large Eyes" and so on. This does mean names often repeat but considering that there are no database records it doesn't really matter. Being unique is bad, after all. Many don't even have names at all.

They're still capable of having friends… and very close friends at that. Bonded kseldani walk together, work together, and sleep together, both out of closeness and as to not lose each other in a sea of millions cloned beings. Perhaps surprisingly, hugs and cuddles are indeed a thing in their culture.

In general they spend their whole childhood locked in a room with dozens more hatchlings, only being taught what is needed to survive in a kseldani hive, with nothing like math (why do you need it, if you want to join the scientist caste you can just download the needed info) or especially humanities (what are humanities?). This does kneecap their technological development, and the civilization is one of the most primitive ones in 2230, even with their gestalt-minded scientist caste trying their best to catch up and Alliance-wide tech sharing agreements. That's how bad it is.

Speaking of overpopulation, workers, which comprise the bulk of the population and thus are the most mouths to feed, voluntarily submit to euthanization and recycling in entire crowds in such a scenario if it gets bad enough (usually via just jumping into a food vat, sometimes being crushed or decapitated beforehand). Many feel happy about being recycled, seeing it as their duty to the Collective. However such mass suicides may cause those who already have individualist sympathies to fully "awaken" and leave the Collective.

Emigrant kseldani ships are extremely crowded even by passenger ship standards, and the safety is piss-poor, with many having their life support systems fail and the passengers resorting to cannibalism to survive. And they keep flooding into relmai and human colonies, those vessels that don't fall apart mid-spaceflight at least.

The Collective's approach to warfare is simple: drown the enemy under a mountain of corpses. Their transport ships are often literally filled to the brim with levies that are little more than random workers and brutes who have been taken from the hallways of one of the hives, given a rifle, and sent to fight. Sometimes they use dedicated optimized soldiers. Overall they are peaceful however. When a hive is attacked, the defense tends to be even more massed and dismal: there is little distinction between civilian and combatant as defenders are quickly rallied to defend their home, sometimes with tools like sledgehammers, crowbars, and blowtorches instead of actual weapons.

The Collective is a failing non-state. Between the Red Kseldani and the Possessed Kseldani, many hives in the original core have been isolating themselves to prevent assimilation into either of these two splinter nations. However their spread cannot be stopped. The "plain" kseldani more of existence will be extinct before 2300, likely split between the Reds and the Possessed.

Kseldani names

Red Kseldani

Name: Free Kseldani Union

Astropolitical rank: Minor power

Interciv relations: Alliance member

Dominant species: kseldani, humans

Temperaments: Equality / Liberty / Labor

Territory: ~150(?) stars in the Western Oval

Government form: Federal libertarian-socialist people's republic

Ideology: Equality / Progressivism / Collectivism {0} (Anarcho-Communism)

Economic system: Shared Burden

Population: ~12 billion

Capital planet: New Nei'ksu

Climate preference: urban

The Red Kseldani are a splinter faction of the kseldani that appeared in the second half of the 22nd century because of Terran influence. While ever since contact with mankind was established, the kseldani had been taking on influence from human culture and philosophy, it is only after a critical point of influence was reached that a chunk of the population decided to think the unthinkable and reject conformity while not rejecting absolute equality (like the emigrant kseldani). To that end, they have acquired translations of human anarchist literature ranging from 19th-century thinkers like Bakunin to 22nd-century implemented examples such as the Seveners, and implemented these blueprints for society as best as they could.

On planets where the red-black flag waves, the corridors of the hives are not inhabited by a bland, monotonous mass. Murals cover the walls and the kseldani themselves are dressed in wildly different, garish and spiky yet practical clothes. Lives are not wasted in accidents or sacrificed in the vats here; everyone is provided for and nobody is left behind. While the Union does not have the ruthlessness of the Collective, it is not opposed to automation and thus its economy has more potential efficiency. But as of 223X it has not yet reached that potential. The transition from an animalistic collective to a humanistic collective brought with itself lots of chaos and disruption. Many factories lay fallow, shut down because of a newfound sense of self-preservation in the workers or due to these strange and alien "environmental regulations". They still do not fully understand the latter... but if the books say the environment must be protected, that must be so. The Great Books of Theory may never be wrong, after all.

The Union has more of a governmental structure than the Collective by its nature. A council of representatives from each hab-block meets to discuss matters of each hive, a council of representatives from each hive meets to discuss matters of every planet, and so on up to the union-wide council. Aside from discussing how to best handle economic reform and cultural integration, they coordinate the spread of Red Kseldani ideals to the Collective proper. Several systems join every year. Terra has some influence in their affairs but prefers to leave them to their own devices. Some Terran anarchists emigrate there (though most prefer the Seven Commune Worlds, which have a similar structure without the inherent alienness).

Red Kseldani names

Psychology

As mentioned, the entire psychology of the kaziil species is defined by skepticism. But it does not manifest as fear and paranoia. Whereas in dal-ghar, caution of the unknown manifests as hatred, in kaziil it manifests as curiosity and thoroughness.

Kaziil history

Pre-FTL

• Oral Era: Prior to the development of writing, important knowledge was often lost and needed to be rediscovered. The recipe for black powder was discovered and spread during this time, and agriculture reached a reasonably sophisticated state. Duration is disputed.
• Written Era: Eventually, some people got fed up with needing to redevelop important knowledge whenever the guy who knew it bit the dust. Cue some very deliberate efforts to figure out a way to store knowledge outside someone's head, with those systems then being iterated and simplified to be easy to learn and use. This resulted in four main alphabets that still remain in modified form to the present day. This period lasted for approximately eight hundred Shaugna years (~600 Earth years).
• Metallurgical Empires: Three densely-populated locations were lucky enough to have deposits of Tin and Copper in close proximity, resulting in the development of bronze within a century of each other. The kaziil living in these locations promptly used that bronze to make guns, with which they took out their frustrations on the local wildlife. They then began forcibly integrating nearby tribes in order to centralize resources and administration over a wider region. These empires made quite a few scientific advances, including the well-documented launch of two sub-orbital black powder rockets for research purposes. That said, these empires also tended to make quite a lot of enemies with their unprompted aggressive expansion. The age of the metallurgical empires reached its height approximately six hundred Shaugna years after it began, and lasted for another three hundred years before it all came crashing down.
• The Iron Fall: There were two factors that lead to the fall of the Metallurgical Empires. First, several of them were forced to relocate their capitols due to climate shifts, causing significant disruptions, and greatly complicating their access to the tin needed to make bronze. Second, the development of ironworking lead to guns being much more available to imperial subjects and outsiders than they were previously. This lead to plenty of revolutions and invasions, shattering the major empires. Making matters even worse, this wasn't just a simple migratory war; there were actual grievances here. As a result, the death toll from these wars was rather extreme.
• The Shattered Age: After the century of violence and death of the Iron Fall, nearly 1600 Shaugna years passed, with hundreds of small countries hoarding their knowledge and keeping each other at arms' length. This greatly slowed down scientific progress, especially since the lack of knowledge sharing resulted in several discoveries being lost and then needing to be rediscovered. Still, there were some important advances that got shared; the development of the microscope lead to the invention of microbiology and epidemiology as fields of study. This increased the average kaziil life expectancy by thirty Shaugna years, just from greatly reducing infant mortality. Also of great importance, the Printing Press was properly developed fifty years prior to the Shattered Age's conclusion. This gave those kaziil who knew of it some very interesting and very powerful ideas.
• The Scientific Pact: It took decades to wrangle together diplomats and scientists from every country in the known world, but eventually the kaziil did it. And together, they hammered out an agreement: Scientific knowledge was to be shared, propagated, and most importantly published across the known world. Sure specific secrets relevant to national security could be kept, but the basic principles were to be the common property of all kaziil. This lead to the kaziil industrializing only two hundred years later.
• The Coal Age: One hundred and ninety years after the Scientific Pact, a kaziil inventor managed to get their prototype steam locomotive working. For a couple years the principles were tinkered with and refined, then their home country started drying out. The locomotive inventor (Endot Corros) immediately went to the president about the problem, and proposed a wild and unprecedented idea: there didn't need to be a war this time. With collaboration of a neighboring country, construction of a railway to move the refugees started immediately. Nearly two million people managed to ride the train to a newly formed wetland before things got truly dire back home. There were riots and violence, but things didn't rise to the level of a proper war. Everyone immediately took notice; suddenly, there didn't have to be migratory wars anymore. The coal age continued for about a century; the kaziil quickly put steam power to all sorts of uses and put electricity into usage within twenty years, but they were ALWAYS looking for a replacement energy source. They did the math about pumping greenhouse gasses into their atmosphere right at the start, and given their historical experience with local climate jank, they weren't going to leave anything to chance. Soon after discovering nuclear fission, the kaziil began a global program to change over their entire economy to nuclear power to the greatest extent possible. They never really had any major nuclear incidents due to very diligent reactor engineering, and from there it was a straight shot to space. The kaziil had a permanent offworld population (mostly on Shaugna's moons) exceeding twenty million prior to discovering the principles behind the Ugolnikov Drive.

From all the above, the kaziil certainly seem very powerful and more "fit" than most other species. Why, then, do they not dominate the whole Oval? The answer is simple: bad luck. Millennia of infighting and going down the wrong paths altogether have delayed their technological development, to say nothing of the precarious environment of Shaugna. This is, naturally, a gripe for many kaziil.

The iywkaa are a sapient semi-humanoid species with a flexible psychology whose civilization is the leader of the Unaligned League, but holds lukewarm relations with the Alliance.

Physiology

Iywkaa have 2 arms and 2 legs with clawed digits, as well as a tail, and their bodies are covered in triangular, iridescent, reflective scales. Unlike most other humanoid species, and much like the kaziil, their bodies are oriented nearly horizontally, like that of a velociraptor. They have medium-length, somewhat blocky snouts that open vertically, with long spiked tongues and rows of needle-like teeth. Their eyes are large, narrow, somewhat far apart, facing in slightly different directions, and also vertical. On their heads are many different antennae which are actually symbiotic organisms that can interface with iywkaa nerves. The arrangements and shape of these are different for each ethnicity and, to a lesser extent, individuals. A row of thin, curved spines goes down from the top of the head to the back and tail.

They are about 2 meters long and 1.3 meters tall on average. Their bodies are very lean and muscular, with basically no fat, and their legs are particularly strong. Iywkaa have an odd way of movement that can best be compared to that of kangaroos mixed with that of small birds: they make long jumps instead of walking, and their more minute movements are jerky with short pauses. They have a tendency to constantly look around.

They are oviparous. Females lay one large egg at a time. Hatchlings are relatively independent and functional from the moment of hatching.

Psychology

The symbiotes attached to their heads as antennae have a memory and can transfer parts of an iywkaa's personality if attached to another iywkaa. In addition, a special stinger-dart in their mouth can transmit whole concepts (in a fuzzy and imprecise manner) if jabbed into a port a symbiote could attach to. Their minds have been shaped by these practices into very flexible and adaptable things.

Background

Their homeworld, Meywak, is temperate but has smaller oceans and thus is more arid than Earth, however all biomes are present. Their society had, since its early years, extremely fluid and flexible hierarchies thanks to their unusual experience-swapping abilities. Their main form of government, crystallizing by a roughly medieval level of development, was and is a form of optimized direct democracy where the people directly influenced their leaders' personality and beliefs (though to prevent ulterior motives via poison shenanigans they need to first be given to a middleman). Memory sharing is also a common courtesy between individuals.

They built a robust theory of mind and, helped by a good dose of luck, used it to discover extensive BCIs earlier than any other civilization, making them viable soon after their computers were able to accommodate them (hard to quantify but about 90s tech level ish). This sparked a great social revolution– now they could exchange whole aspects of their personality, quickly, reliably, and painlessly! Oh and a few decades later they invented a FTL drive blah blah blah nothing unusual about their spacefaring.

Culture

• The aforementioned event was something of a mini-Singularity. The entire concept of "I" became somewhat outdated. Generally nothing of an iywkaa's psyche lasts longer than a month, except perhaps for their perspective. This wasn't as much of a shock as it seems as the tech's development was gradual and it was not that extreme a jump in sharing ability, but the end result completely transformed their society.
• The practice of adopting entirely new personas for different situations became more practical. A sociable one for meeting new people; a calm, collected, and logical one for study, and so on. Nevertheless, for interpersonal exchanging, it is still customary to swap antennae even if it is redundant considering BCIs. And iywkaa do it often, being very social.
• Their culture is thus very open and doesn't even have the concept of privacy as we know it.
• Their BCIs are much more extensive and advanced than Terran ones. Everyone has a mesh-level one, not a chip. All of their infrastructure requires the use of them, making it very difficult for outsiders to exist in their empire outside of enclaves (unintentionally)... unless they implant said BCIs. Which is mandated by the iywkaa.
• Other cybernetic enhancements are also a thing and are more common than in the Terran Federation, but genemodding is underdeveloped as a tech compared to Terra. There are many full-conversion cyborgs but almost no genemods.
• They have two (or more) names, the original, 'private' name which is mostly used for indexing purposes such as medical and government records (sharing it publicly is both taboo and dangerous), and a 'regular' name that gets a number appended to it as major personality shifts happen. Sometimes, the name itself is changed and the numbering begins anew. This is because they end up not only being perceived as, but thinking of themselves as different people. Often, a personality and memories end up voluntarily or involuntarily swapping or melding and recombining between two or more different bodies. In such a scenario, they also exchange their possessions. These swaps are so common that, if one was to consider such personality sublimation a death, then the average iywkaa would have died hundreds of times over the course of their life. Naturally, they consider such concepts to be very silly.
• The iywkaa have the rare technology of seamless mind-melding. This allows their group minds (which are very common) to have very fluid membership, with no long-term consequences for leaving even the most integrated ones, unlike other species' groupminds where leaving or entering may have adverse effects. They have no qualms about joining one when convenient and leaving when it becomes less so. In fact, all iywkaa on a given planet or spaceship are melded into a groupmind called the Thoughtsea. This Thoughtsea makes decisions as one.
• They value different opinions from different civilizations, as long as said opinions are not directly harmful. This, combined with the large number of enclaves, makes their worlds essentially melting pots of alien cultures from all over the Oval. While first-generation migrants are often reluctant to adopt all but the basic BCIs, their offspring invariably get assimilated, and many end up leaving the enclaves to live like the iywkaa do.
• Their clothing varies, and isn't actually too ridiculous by human standards, but tends to use very contrasting colors with a large monochrome component. It's usually form-fitting. Iywkaa often tattoo their scales with angular, sharp patterns.
• They never had religion or spiritual beliefs, unlike most species. The thought of the supernatural doesn't even really cross their minds.

Politics

The Iywkaa Unity, sometimes known as the Iywkaa Republic due to a mistranslation, is right on the fuzzy border between direct democracy with instant digital voting, and a hive mind. There is no actual leader or parliament, institutions are highly decentralized and spread across the entirety of the empire.

Everyone's opinion on policy melts in the Thoughtsea, and thus the people make decisions based on this soup of opinions combined with copious amounts of analysis via supercomputers. As stated before, they value alien cultures and opinions, and thus these too get thrown into the crucible of thought.

The iywkaa are, alongside their fellow techies the kaziil, one of the masterminds behind the Non-Aligned League, a bloc that stands in opposition to both Alliance and Hegemony imperialism. More information on the NAL is in that link.

Blue Web

• Superstructure (7cm to 1m) - this comprises the bulk of the Web. It is a sparse network of low-friction tubes going over barren regions, transporting nutrients from feeding areas to places of new growth and damaged areas. It also serves as the Web's main brain, with the contractions involved in its computations also serving as a way to pump nutrients. Near places where more strategy is necessary, the tangles are denser.
• Feelers and Feeders (1mm to 5mm) - when the Web comes across a nutrient-rich area, its superstructure tubes split and narrow into tiny tendrils. They mainly function just as plant roots, but plants are also, notably, cultivated with purpose. Seeds are planted in neat rows, and the products of the grown shrubs and trees (whose root efficiency is higher) are parasitised upon. Animal life is simply latched on and drained; pests have no place here.
• Hearts and Pipelines (5m to 10m) - muscle contractions can't pump the liquids in the Web at an acceptable rate. The Web seeks out volcanoes and other sources of geothermal power, and uses them as boilers to propel huge amounts of fluid through immense pipes - made of organically-deposited metal rather than flesh. These gradually taper out into the Superstructure.

The reason communicating with the Blue Web is hard is that it invariably considers things that move beside its feelers to be pests-- and accessing its internal thoughts would require somehow decoding tiny pressure alterations across kilometers of tube. Work is still ongoing.

Iywkaa names

Name: Yollkul Triarchy

Astropolitical rank: Regional Power

Interciv relations: unaligned

Dominant species: yollkul

Temperaments: Power / Diversity / Playfulness

Territory: Central Oval, 700 stars

Government form: federal triarchic constitutional monarchy

Ideology: Liberty / Nationalism / Autonomy{3} (Warrior Clans)

Economic system: Reputation Economy

Population: ~16 billion

Capital planet: Nuzxolrr

Climate preference: tundra

The yollkul are one of the strongest powers in the Central Oval. A hardy warrior culture, though often maligned as 'evil', they have quite a lot of nuance to them and their cultures.

Physiology

Yollkul are humanoid, if one considers anything with a head, a torso, two manipulator limbs, and two mobility limbs to be humanoid. They have very thin but two-meter-long, serpent-like bodies curved like question marks, covered in very sleek fur that is silvery in males and glossy black in females. They have no tails, instead the body splits into two knee-less legs at one end, and into two elbow-less arms and a neck at the other end. The limbs and body both have a very ingenious joint mechanism that can lock at arbitrary points, providing unparalleled flexibility or rigidity when needed. The fingers (five per hand and foot) use the same mechanism but downscaled. The limbs and neck are all extremely long and flexible. The head is eel-like, with a flat snout and very wide mouth that has triangular teeth sticking out of it. They have three diamond-shaped eyes that are either black or tinted a dull color. Their fur is longer on their heads.

They are omnivores leaning towards carnivory.

Females are slightly larger and have much louder voices.

They are viviparous and have a larval stage that is limbless. Limbs split off after infancy.

Psychology

The yollkul co-evolved with another sapient species, the name of which is lost to time. This other species had a symbiotic relationship with yollkul. However, a mass extinction in the early Neolithic period hit both proto-civilizations hard enough that the other species went extinct. That species is, too, now called yollkul-- for the strong genetic bias towards accepting those who look different, as long as they help with surviving the harsh wastes (of Nuzxolrr or of space), has remained with them. All who are allies to the Triarchy are also yollkul to them.

Other than this, they strongly respect prowess. Unlike with the vr'rok or Canids, this needn't be physical or martial prowess. It can be intellectual or charismatic prowess too. Still, a deep sense of respect for power is ingrained in them. Unlike the sy!yvl, this is not a blind obedience for authority-- a weak government or one that has seemingly screwed over its people is not worthy of existing.

They are also drawn more than most other species towards ritualized competition with low consequences and strict rules. More commonly known as games and sports. Prowess is often determined by these competitions.

History

Since ancient times, there has been a three-part caste divide in yollkul society: one was either a warrior-farmer, sage-craftsman, or entertainer-merchant. The frost-coated plains of the northern half of Nuzxolrr where yollkul civilization first emerged were covered in many disparate kingdoms, each of them ruled by a different caste which was dominant over the others. These kingdoms united into empires and colonized the southern half, which had some casteless civilizations (that were wiped out and brought into the fold) as well as, apparently remnants of the other species... which were wiped out by disease before the empires got to them. This was many centuries ago, and they're sorry for both.

Following a brief nuclear exchange and ensuing crisis of existence during their equivalent of the Age of Protests that Terra had, a world government was formed. The Triarchy. There were three emperors now, ruling over all the varied kingdoms, each of the three of a different caste.

However, the warrior-farmer caste has been dominant ever since the yollkul entered the FTL age. Of all the castes, the push-forward spirit and drive to settle new land of this caste has been the most useful to stellar statecraft. So for most intents and purposes, the Pink Emperor outranks the Blue Emperor and the Yellow Emperor.

But with the solidification of astropolitical blocs and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the relevance of pink-caste militarism is slowly subsiding... or at least, it ought to have. Considering the proximity of the Abyssals to the Yollkul Triarchy, and the general lawlessness of the Central Oval, there is no reason to lay down the weapons.

Culture

As mentioned before, structured competition for power is the cornerstone of yollkul culture. Whereas in humans, a common theme universal to every culture is ambition and consequences thereof, in yollkul it is the acquisition of power via structured competition and consequences thereof.

Gender roles vary between cultures, but invariably females are the only ones allowed to oversee competitions. Families are usually monogamous but divorce is very common and was never stigmatized-- in general they do not really have romantic feelings and the benefits from marriage are purely material in that property and social status are shared. Usually they are only allowed to marry within the caste, but (depending on the culture) every third or sixth child is allowed to marry outside the caste-- the children of that pairing are of the female's caste. Those born from sex outside marriage are casteless and stigmatized until they prove their worth in combat, debate, or art, after which they are assigned a caste.

There are several world religions in the yollkul civilization. These cross between castes and thus provide some much-needed social unity. Llokxi is the worship of the sun god Llok, Llokxists believe that every star is His avatar and they use telescopes to look at solar flares and interpret them as signs.

<more will come soon...>

Name: Chohjozra Nrukhrizchaa

Astropolitical rank: Secondary Power

Interciv relations: Alliance member

Dominant species: chohjozra

Temperaments: Patience / Traditionalism / Stubbornness

Territory: Western Oval, 350 stars

Government form: Federal theocratic people's republic

Ideology: Tradition / Order / Equality / Collectivism{3} (Religious Communism)

Economic system: Planned Economy

Population: ~9 billion

Capital planet: Akeruh

Climate preference: Tropical swamp

Physiology

The chohjozra are a non-humanoid pseudo-reptilian race that evolved in the swamps of Akeruh. Their forms, like their minds, were informed by their environment. They have lengthy bodies, like those of alligators, with eight relatively short limbs, the front four of which end in hands, and very flexible spines that smoothly transition to a tail with an underdeveloped hand. Firm cords of extremely strong muscle bulge from under their scaly, thick greenish hides. They are bigger than humans and most other sapients, with the average individual being around 2.3m long and 1.7m tall (when in a centauroid pose, though they often run on all eights). Instead of snouts, they have huge yellow beaks like those of toucans but serrated, and instead of ears they have large pointy fins that can flare out, and shimmer in rainbow colors. Their eyes can be either narrow or round, but always have W-shaped pupils (for polarized light). The talons on their fingers and toes have inclusions of copper, and so do their bones, due to the metal-rich soil on their planet.

Females tend to have somewhat more tapered beaks, and are even bulkier than males. They lay small clutches of eggs, one to three, and offspring are healthier when two males impregnate the female in quick succession.

The spinal column of a chohjozra is extremely flexible, this allows them to swim through muck by slithering like a snake, or to function easily in a taur pose.

Overall they're as strong as grizzly bears, and can stay underwater for many minutes, but lack manual dexterity and have inflexible minds.

There are two subspecies of chohjozra. There are the freshwater chohjozra, who are somewhat thinner and more agile due to their origins in the thicket swamps of inland Akeruh; and the saltwater chohjozra, who are much bulkier and more adapted to prolonged swimming with their webbed hands and feet. The former have more saturated and smaller green scales, the latter have grayish large scales. The two can interbreed and are culturally very similar.

Psychology

Most chohjozra are born with several personalities, usually four. One is calculating, another is emotional, one is outgoing and another is shy (though of course each chohjozra has their own equilibrium). They blend together depending on factors and stimuli, and combinations of them are given personal names and treated somewhat as people, though it's different from human plurality, and unlike human headmates these splits do not have their own ego; a chohjozra's mind is composed of them like an image is composed of color channels. Some are born with only one, "neutral" personality, and are somewhat shunned by society. These people are called "ennznrahk" (whole-mind).

But as a whole they're insanely patient, both in the 'able to sit motionlessly for hours, waiting' and the 'take a lot of stress' senses. However, anger does slowly build up, and boils out all at once.

In addition, spirituality is fully entwined in the chohjozra psyche, as the same brain processes that happen to produce sapience happen to be inseparable from the ones that result in magical thinking and belief in the supernatural. A chohjozra can thus never be a non-believer, even if they are raised entirely by outsiders who have no religion, one will invent a faith. To those residing within their society, it is quite literally unthinkable. Their ancient and complex pagan religion originates from this.

Description of chohjozra society

Fundamentals

• As implied before, one of the cornerstones of chohjozra culture is Kmiihnzay Mrrkyihzra, their religion. It grew to encompass the many different chohjozra faiths, and of course still has regional variations. It has a literal million deities, which are divided into many spheres that they rule over, some overlapping. They are worshiped through rituals, some of which are to be performed eight times a day at strict times. In general, layers upon layers of ritual is how they organize their lives, thanks to their good memory it is possible to remember it all. The priesthood is the most esteemed part of chohjozra society. However, there is not much in the way of hierarchy aside from two levels. Priests are priests, shamans are shamans. The former are responsible for 'high' faith, which is what we would call theological discussion and church administration, while the latter are responsible for 'low' faith, which is more folk wisdom and the specifics of rituals.
• Another cornerstone are the triples, their family unit. Traditionally, a triple consists of a large male, a small male, and a female that they reproduce with. They share all property and make decisions together; neither the males nor the female hold any superior position, though their roles differ somewhat: the large male takes care of preparing food, the small male takes care of the young, and the female does everything else around the house, and in old times the female was usually a hunter. But these roles are highly flexible. Triples don't have to have that exact arrangement: triples of two large males and a female, two females with a small male, and so on, or homosexual triples of fully males or females, have always been present, and are unremarkable though slightly uncommon.
• The third cornerstone is their dietary habits. The chohjozra love food. Food that, to humans, often looks crude or downright barbaric. First of all, while they of course cook their meat, live food holds a cultural and religious significance. Critters such as mragez or ekzhiik-- both tiny and fluffy herbivores, are devoured alive as part of rituals or on holy days. Those who refuse to eat them are considered weak; there is no actual opposition to such practices in chohjozra society. Cannibalism is similarly ubiquitous; the dead are usually eaten by their relatives and friends, if the body is not contaminated due to the manner of death. When a prominent chohjozra dies, a priest cuts their flesh and organs to very fine chunks that may be eaten by thousands of people. They believe that souls are diffused in muscle: animal souls nourish their consumer while sapient souls are permitted to reincarnate that way as the offspring of whoever eats them. A corpse that goes uneaten has its soul stuck wandering the world as a ghost. Both of these traditions are permitted by the fact that their stomachs are very good at digesting things that are normally harmful; parasites and prions simply dissolve.
• They normally never wear clothes, due to a combination of being cold-blooded, their scales being tough enough to provide good protection, their homeworld's environment not really having seasonal temperature swings, and their body plan just not being conducive to convenient dressing. When a chohjozra has to spend a long time in a cold environment, they put on coats with heating elements. However, they always wear lots of jewelry, usually made of colored alloys of copper, always polished to a sheen and inset with gems or at least glass. Under the Monarchy, only the ruling caste could decorate themselves, after they were killed off it was mandated that everyone should dress as they did to show that everyone was a king and that they were the masters of their own fate now. It is also required that an eight-pointed star is tattooed somewhere on the body; in general tattoos are much more restricted than jewelry and are reserved for certain officially recognized deeds, because they consider the scales to be sacred and are uncomfortable with coloring them.
• As mentioned before, the chohjozra have very good memory. Thus it is feasible for them to memorize not only their rituals but also perfectly recall tens of thousands of words with some training. This memory is fully photographic and never fully decays on reasonable timeframes. This means that oral tradition is alive and well in chohjozra society. Stories and such still get written down as memorization aids, but it is always seen as more prestigious to listen to an actual living person reciting or performing something-- though they recognize that that is not always possible or practical. This means they never forget grudges, and it takes a lot to be forgiven.
• They see themselves as not any different from wild animals. Since ancient times they had the concept of the food web, and their place in it. Even the Monarchy recognized that. They are predators, yes, and are proud of it, but they do not damage their environment. Many chohjozra cultures prefer to integrate their ways of life with nature as much as possible. Genemodding is viewed in a complicated manner; the priests of natural deities determine what alterations are acceptable.
• There are a lot of things that no chohjozra are interested in. They have no feeling of instant gratification, no concept of seeing themselves as anything outside nature, and are always disgusted by all manner of fast living. This hinders diplomatic efforts and cultural exchange, especially with relmai.

Politics

• Chohjozra society is united under the Nrukhrizchaa, a sort of decentralized theocratic socialist federation. Each bioregion on Akeruh has its own administration council composed of priests who perfectly memorized hundreds of texts about history, religion, and politics, as well as important poetry and literature, perfectly, word-to-word. Every eight years, they all come to be judged by the people by reciting those texts and making their interpretation of their meaning. The people then judge who was the wiser of them, and who was more foolish. The wiser one leaves the bioregion's council to take their seat in the to the Nrukhrizchaa's central council, while the fool is dismissed and becomes a normal priest. Two applicants who passed the exam beforehand then take their place. The central council, in old times, used to meet in a deserted spot on Akeruh, but now they discuss matters 64/8 via an internet connection-- while they love doing things in person, this is seen as an acceptable tradeoff. There are hundreds of them, and they deliberate on every decision. The colonies each have their own shard of the council system, though the council of Akeruh has the legal right to order them around.
• In times of crisis (active war or ongoing diplomatic incident or economic crash), the council appoints a temporary coordinator from amongst themselves. They temporarily gain authority to make what orders they need. Once the crisis passes, they not only have to step down as a councilor, but are stripped of their priesthood and can never regain it-- because the Nrukhrizchaa is the word of the gods, and thus the coordinator was temporarily above the gods, which is dangerous. Overall though, there is no single leader. Civilizational trauma made chohjozra culture allergic to one person holding unchecked or subvertable power. This system is close to what the chohjozra had before the Monarchy, and before the pre-Monarchy nations. It is, essentially, the natural rest state of their society, the global maximum that they returned to after the temporary local maximum of hierarchical rule.
• There are no political parties. No ideologies. No petty debates over policy. Yet the people have power. Not just in the eight-year elections, but even in local decision-making. The eighth day of every week is set aside in temples as a day when the priest must hear out anyone who comes to their office. This has to happen in person if possible, but a call is allowed if one cannot come for whatever reason. The priest is required by law and peer pressure to give genuine answers, and when the day ends they must write a log of everyone who came to them from memory, their requests, and what they want to do about any complaints or suggestions. This log is reviewed every few months.
• The chohjozra criminal justice system is quite harsh, but prison sentences are short and serve as temporary measures to contain criminals while it is figured out what to do with them. The court process is insanely long and involves a lot of hand-writing on parchment, speeches that last the better part of a day, and deliberation that lasts for hours. The actual sentences almost always consist of community service, harsh manual labor, or forced consigning to a monastery for life. They do not really do death penalty per se; crimes like serial killing or treason get one worked to death.
• Any sort of pro-capitalist or pro-monarchy or, gods forbid, anti-religious political movements are completely prohibited, and these prohibitions are more enforced than in the Terran Federation. In Terra, one might get fined and deplatformed for being a fascist. In the Nrukhrizchaa, the same will get one sent to the death-labor camps. The chohjozra secret police, the Gheegzhrrizh Kaagzhaar (GZR-KH), has a reputation for being utterly ruthless, compared to the relatively chill regular police. This KGB-like secret police combines external and internal intelligence. It answers directly to the Nrukhrizchaa's council and has the same equipment as the chohjozra army. GZR-KH agents are trained from childhood.

Kmiihnzay Mrrkyihzra

The name roughly means "sacred path of eternal predation and the thing that answers all questions in the world".

• There is no separation between the material world and the spiritual one for them. The gods reside within the universe instead of outside it, and are formless forces fully dedicated to some concept or another. There are exactly a million, no more and no less, responsible for the most mundane of things. The overlapping spheres that the deities are divided into are as varied, and very often the gods within them represent different facets of the sphere; for example within the sphere of Knowledge, Tikhzzhik is the goddess of text while Ghmihzirecha is the god of video (one of the youngest deities; he cannibalized Bhzighe, the god of some now-obsolete photographing method). They frequently metaphysically hunt and devour each other, but being divine they are usually unhurt by it-- with the exception, as implied before, of the case where a new concept emerges that needs to be made room for.
• These deities are essentially anthropomorphized and codified versions of how they inherently think about the world. That is why their religion is the same all over Akeruh; gods had different names in different cultures and slightly differently overlapping spheres, but there is and was much less variation than in human faiths. Whereas for humans faith is an extrinsic way of thinking about natural phenomena, for chohjozra it is merely putting to words the way their whole mental framework is structured. This works well for the unchanging environment of Akeruh.
• A priest or shaman (cleric) represents one deity. They decorate themselves in ways that call to mind their patron, and live a lifestyle that best reflects them. To be a chohjozra cleric is perhaps the most arduous religious occupation of all civilizations in the Oval. An individual of any other species would snap under the pressure.
• They believe the soul has several parts. There are the various personalities a chohjozra has, there is the part responsible for creativity, there is the part responsible for hunger and desire, and there is the part that is the ego-- the perspective. It is the ego that is diffused through the flesh, and while the other parts are devoured by the gods upon the death of the individual, that part is only eaten by mortals as part of ritual cannibalism. The ghost that is left behind when a corpse rots away is solely the ego: devoid of personality, creativity, or nourishment. Only able to perceive and think, not interact or create.
• One universal attribute considered sacred is the morningstar (as in, a spiked mace). In general, the ceremonial weapon most valued in chohjozra society is not the sword but the mace. Slashing weapons never caught on in their pre-gunpowder warfare, because chohjozra hides are very tough. Every cleric carries a golden morningstar that they add one decoration to at the start of their service. They then pass it on to a successor, who in turn adds their alteration.
• They practice sapient sacrifice, but it is of esteemed people at the end of their life. When a particularly devout chohjozra is at death's door, they willingly give themselves over to the priests for one final ceremony. Their blood is drained and their flesh cut up to be consumed by the community, while their bones are carved into idols.
• Non-chohjozra can convert, though due to the nature of Kmiihnzay Mrrkyihzra it is debatable how authentic it would be if followed by a human brain... unless their brain was to be genemodded or chipped to be locked into the chohjozra mindset. There is a small community of humans and relmai who fully live that way.

Infrastructure and architecture

• Chohjozra buildings generally resemble mounds of varying pointiness, from nearly flat like rolling hills to tall like spires. Most are somewhere in-between. Always engraved with intricate patterns and partially overgrown by moss and vines. From the distance a chohjozra city might look abandoned and left to the ravages of nature, but really they just can't stand not being surrounded by greenery as they consider themselves a part of nature. Passages are low, wide, and dark, rooms are irregular but vaguely circular with small oval or slit-like windows, and there are even more plants inside than outside. They like shade. Often, the lower floors are deliberately half-flooded. Furniture is rounded and low. In each residential room there live three generations: a triple; the triple that was the parents of one of them; and the triple that contains a child of one of them. There do exist smaller dwellings for one triple or an un-mated individual.
• Highways are near impossible to build in most of Akeruh. The most common method of long-distance travel is by airship (planes are too loud and chohjozra are fine with waiting) or submarine. These submarines are made for traversing swamp water and have very sharp wedges on their fronts.

Before the Nrukhrizchaa

While the Nrukhrizchaa is the local maximum of chohjozra society, as alluded before it was not always that way. Hundreds of years ago, there was the Monarchy that spanned the entirety of Akeruh. There was a word for this form of government, as it was not identical to human or dal-ghar monarchy just as the Nrukhrizchaa is not identical to just a council, but that word has been scrubbed from the historical record by now.

Akeruh is not a world of mountains and barriers. There are swamps, and there are oceans, and in some places there are hills and plains. At the very poles there are glaciers-- and no chohjozra live there. With this lack of natural border lines and chokepoints, it was relatively easy for a single nation under a single culture to unite it all. This nation was the Monarchy.

And it was horrible.

Egalitarian societies were overthrown and a caste system imposed, and the royal family sat on top of the pyramid. The million deities had another million added, and that second million supplanted the worship of the first-- these were obedient gods that were, too, arranged in a hierarchy. The Monarch themself was deemed the embodiment of the ruler of the gods. Meanwhile, all triple-marriages amongst commoners were arranged by the nobles that ruled over them. Nobody owned anything, the nobles did. And anyone who dissented was killed by poison alongside their entire family, condemning millions to eternal limbo by denying their corpses the chance to be eaten.

The Monarchy did usher in an industrial revolution, several hundred years before the rest of the Oval in fact. As well as a radio network, to be used as a telegraph.

The records mostly cut off after that. It is not known who started the Revolution. All that is known is that around a billion chohjozra died of warfare, hunger, and disease during it and its immediate aftermath, but it was worth it for there was no trace of the Monarchy or its royal family-- aside from their corpses, which have been embalmed, with their scales flayed away and sigils of eternal torment branded into their flesh. Everyone was equal again now, under the gods of which there was again only 10^6, happy and satiated with the ruptured essence of the false million and the smoke of the pyres of the scripture of the false ones alongside their priests, their families, and anyone who supported them.

The one surviving photo of the former capital of the Monarchy from this time period shows not a single brick on top of another. The swamp is red with festering blood, speckled white with shattered bones. Not a single living soul is visible.

Following this, the chohjozra regressed into the medieval age for a few hundred years. But in the end the Revolution was both necessary and inevitable. Necessary because if not for it then the chohjozra would have become a second Hegemony, doomed to be crushed under the wheels of progress. Inevitable because their minds are not ones of hierarchy. A compressed spring can only stay compressed for so long.

Every year there is a festival where the events of the Fall of Monarchy are reenacted in public theater and the embalmed bodies of the former royal family-- monarch, consorts (the bodies are too mutilated to determine their gender), children, brothers, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, and cousins-- are paraded through the streets of various chohjozra cities on various planets, impaled on ornate golden pikes.

Technology

• Artificial intelligence that can communicate in language is prohibited due to religious restrictions. Thinking machines are frequently despised and entry for them is prohibited. However, due to the fact that true AI is fundamentally different from pseudosapient AI and functions essentially like an organic brain, a faction of intellectuals, scientists, and reform clerics have begun challenging this, arguing that the scriptures describe pseudosapient AI. Chohjozra are slow to change their minds, so reform is likely to take decades, but it is inevitable. AIs are not prohibited if they do not communicate like people.
• Keyboards and touchscreens are inconvenient to use for chohjozra due to the shape of their taloned fingers. Instead, input of information into devices is done via one or more heavy, palm-sized orbs with gyroscopes inside.
• Due to the difficulty of running wires through swamps, the chohjozra internet has always been wireless over radio. Servers and relays float on buoys. A system of private and public keys ensures that even though the broadcasts are undirected, it is hard for a server to "eavesdrop". In terms of internet landscape, there is only one state-owned social media service where everyone is required to fill out a profile in, but other than this people are free to host their own websites (and many do). In some ways it is similar to 90s human internet in culture.

Entertainment and art

• As stated before, the chohjozra have no feeling of instant gratification. They can only comprehend slow media. Books have very detailed and verbose descriptions, and oftentimes there is no plot per se. There is a variety of genres based on describing nature in various ways.
• A very common form of art for them is what humans would call bonsai. Trees and moss are grown in small pots in various intricate shapes, that are often worn on the body as adornment. Some wear vines as jewelry.

Astropolitics

• The Nrukhrizchaa is an Alliance member. While their somewhat repressive society may not strictly fit the Alliance's membership criteria, they are an useful asset. For one very major reason. The Kjee Empire. The chohjozra territories act as a barrier against the kjee who otherwise would have a clear shot to the underbelly of the Federation and Commonwealth.

Language

The most prominent chohjozra language is Dhahrkyhzchaab (DHKY), translating to something like "common folk new era equal language". It is a modernized version of the language of the highest-population area of Akeruh that was relatively unscathed in the revolution. It assimilated features from many other languages; said languages still persist and are under strict preservation programs. There is also Mbahrzahchaab (MBZA), a simplified and less ambiguous version of it, and Zhehrkmiichaab (ZHKM), an even more complex and metaphorical and archaic version. DHKY is the language of pop culture and official and interciv communication, while MBZA is the language of science and of commerce, just like Common Terran English and Techspeak are for humans. ZHKM is the language of religion and doesn't really have a Space Age Terran equivalent, though there are present-day analogues like Old Church Slavonic. All three are mutually intelligible.

Some notes about all 3 languages:

• phonetics are very limited. Phonemes that require flexible lips are not used, instead there are subtle nuances in the clicks and growls and purrs. Transcription is, accordingly, very loose and at times arbitrary. To a human it just sounds like a bunch of growls that only a trained ear can discern. They can make vague approximation of these phonemes, and thus speak human languages, but have one of the thickest accents. They speak surprisingly quickly for an usually slow and relaxed species.
• there is no s sound. This is because it comes off as an uncontrolled hiss that is hard to work into language (for the same reason no human languages use a raspberry phoneme), and is reserved for emotional expression.
• very agglutinative structure, but where barely-perceptible swaps of sounds, or subtle changes, carry valuable information that modify the word-components too. Phonemes themselves have meaning, if vague (like hh usually meaning belonging to). Words must follow a somewhat rhythmic structure, one cannot mash together these phonemes at will. Suffixes are also more standardized.
• intonation is barely present, if at all. It comes across as extremely stoic. Such things are communicated by body language too subtle for most humans to pick up, or phrasing. There are also tone markers just baked into language. jha is a phoneme that means "I am currently feeling upset", for example. zzi means a word is sarcastic.
• all 3 are prescriptive, with an academy having to approve each new word (and, as even DHKY is considered sacred, neologisms are reserved for absolutely necessary cases, and slang is considered obscene). The difference is that the DHKY academy is a lot less restrictive and is a lot more pragmatic.
• pauses serve an important role, and are much more frequent and longer-lasting than English. There are around 7 types of what would, to human ears, be a comma.
• personal pronouns are not related to gender, instead referring to other qualities. "animate, predator" aazh. "animate, prey" eezh, "inanimate, mobile" aatkh and "inanimate, immobile" eetkh. Generic variants that can also be used as nouns for "animal" and "thing" are oozh and ootkh.
• any noun or adjective can be turned to a verb by adding a glottal stop before it.
• Generally, a whole sentence in the chohjozra languages is written as one massive block of intermingled radicals that represent phonemes that compose the words. These blocks can be in any shape, but the standardized one used in print is of course rectangular. The writing itself is composed of many curved, scratch-like strokes; to an outsider it vaguely resembles Arabic calligraphy but with thinner and more parallel lines and fewer dots.

Chohjozra Star Navy

Chohjozra names

The hhw!xey are a sapient species from the cold planet of Yihhtyh!hhx. They are very small (at most 40cm tall), stubby-limbed semi-humanoids (often going on all fours) covered in very thick and fluffy white fur, with small but sharp black claws, large reflective eyes, and short noseless muzzles full of small grinding teeth surrounded by two serrated grasping mandibles. They lack visible ears or tails, but two very sensitive tendril-like organs can extend from their heads at will. Their bones are thin and their muscle-equivalent is semi-liquid, goopy, and purple, yet surprisingly strong.

Hhw!xey evolved from cunning scavengers and omnivores in the tundra expanses of their planet, burrowing in the snow to get at roots and tiny mouse-like creatures. They were constantly under threat from quadrupedal semi-sapient predators called ki!yhy!rhy, and had to rely on their wits and resourcefulness to avoid and kill said predators. Soon, tribes emerged that turned into city-states and kingdoms, and technology progressed fast. Spaceflight was an issue, as the heights involved were even more daunting for knee-height creatures, however their small size meant that life support could be reduced in size compared to larger sapients.

Thus, once spaceflight, and FTL, was developed, the hhw!xey migrated away from their planet en masse on a scale incomparable to nearly any other species. It is a natural instinct for them to spread and fill as much newly available area as possible, and they never had much attachment to the land-- and that lack of attachment crossed over to lack of attachment to their homeworld. And there are no predators in space...

Their cultures have one shared "bias": trickery. It does not have to be lying, per se, but zany and overcomplicated schemes that nevertheless succeed are seen as the greatest possible pastime. Their sports tend to be intellectual rather than physical and involve such deception and scheming. Their media has incomprehensible and tangled (by human, or most other species' standards) plots. Currently, the hhw!xey are united under a confederation of feudal states called principalities, even looser than the Terran Federation, the leadership of which rotates frequently according to a set of arcane rules. They are an Alliance member with relatively few systems, but have many outposts within other races' space, including Terran.

Principalities

The Hhw!xey Principalities are often mistakenly referred by Terrans as the Hhw!xey Principality, but that is something of a misnomer. While the Prince of Yihhtyh!hhx, the ruler of the systems surrounding the homeworld, is technically the ruler (and is the one usually speaking on behalf of all hhw!xey to alien diplomats), all the other dozens to hundreds of principalities are sovereign for most purposes. They have their own laws, their own navies, their own cultures. They have independent relations with other civilizations and sometimes even have wars between each other.

Yihhtyh!hhx itself was similarly fractured before the FTL age. But with the mass exodus of population from it, where much of the leadership of old planetside principalities abandoned their patches of land to have entire planets to themselves, away from their rivals, a power vacuum was left. Through a combination of diplomacy and war by the largest principality united the depopulated planet.

Hhw!xey names

The ! is a click of the mandibles.

Name: Sy!yvl Kingdom

Astropolitical rank: Minor Power

Interciv relations: Non-Aligned League member

Dominant species: Sy!yvl

Temperaments: Conformity / Order / Hierarchy / Tradition

Territory: Northern Oval, 100 stars

Government form: Unitary absolute monarchy

Ideology: Elitism / Order / Tradition / Conformity / Esotericism{5} (The Sy!yvl Mentality)

Economic system: Planned Economy

Population: ~35 billion

Capital planet: L-syng!jyl!yysa

Climate preference: Temperate plains

Physiology

The sy'yvl are a partially-humanoid species. Though possessing two legs and two arms, they stand even more upright than humans or relmai. Their limbs, though of normal length, are notably perfectly cylindrical, lacking the narrowing of those of humans. Sy!yvl have 4 fingers per limb end, with triangular nails, while their knees bend backwards. Very smooth skin, usually of a purple or crimson tone, is stretched over sy'yvl bodies. They have two long, light-colored tails that don't taper until the very end, which are very strong and are used to assist in walking (can't walk efficiently without the tails, hence only partially humanoid) or as secondary hands. Their faces consist of round but long snouts (think velociraptor snout but with much softer features), with omnivore mixed teeth inside. Slightly, but not quite, off to the sides are two large almond-shaped eyes where the iris is always white and the sclera varies in color and pattern between individuals. But most noticeably, squishy ear fins, resembling a mix between the horns of a deer and the gills of an axolotl, but strictly decorative, extend from the sides of their heads. These fins are semi-translucent and shimmer in different colors.

Their physiques vary a lot, more than other species: some are thin, tall, and sinuous; others are stocky, short, and muscled; and everything in between. This diversity does not affect their psychology much, and is less drastic than, for example, the ty-uc-kch castes, and is caused by the environment a sy!yvl spends their early childhood in: hotter environments lead to thin bodies, colder ones lead to stocky bodies. This can be manipulated fairly easily.

Sy!yvl are somewhat mammal-like, but there is less dimorphism than in humans (though they're still less androgynous than relmai for example). They have a method of reproduction between egg-laying and live birth: females effectively always give premature birth, and the fetuses are born encased in mucous cocoons, which can absorb nutrients, specifically milk. Both sexes lactate (though females do it a bit more)-- which resulted in far less prevalent gender roles in their society.

Psychology

The sy!yvl are hardwired to accept their place in society unflinchingly and not question authority or how things are, and do not have much capability for abstract thinking. All are extremely social and can't stand being alone, though unlike the bquaa these effects are possible to mitigate and are not hardwired. A small proportion of them are more skeptical, but the rest are perpetually zoned-out. To outsiders, they appear near-mindless, perhaps even akin to animals. But that is a mistake; they are still people with names, personalities, interests, and hopes.
Most of them are very afraid of leaving their "comfort zone" in even small ways, or of anything that contradicts their hierarchy. It's a fear that's possible to conquer with enough exposure, however.

One more quirk of the sy!yvl psyche is that they have a very good intuition for what their fellows are doing even if they cannot see them.

Background

They have been highly social animals since millions of years ago. There was never a transition from bands of hunter-gatherers to settlements, because the latter were always present. The sy!yvl achieved sapience via very incremental growth that essentially optimized the growth and sustainability of said settlements. They even had simple agriculture for those millions of years (like certain ant species on Earth), which gradually was improved upon.
The reason they were able to have population centers numbering in the high thousands since time immemorial is semi-symbiosis with a coral-esque plant-animal they use to build their mounds, called Gxxy-lsa. These mounds look like the above-ground part of an anthill, only much flatter, formed of various buildings stacked on top of each other. As the city grows, more structures are added.

Hierarchical organization

Sy!yvl society has a deeply-ingrained system of hierarchy, implanted into their minds on an instinctual level.
There are arbitrarily many layers with arbitrarily many but ever-decreasing amounts of individuals in them.
Layer 0 is the 'monarch' of a sy!yvl hierarchy, these days there is only one hierarchy and thus one monarch. Below is Layer 1, which has around ten individuals who serve as the equivalent of ministers and consorts for the monarch. Layer 2 consists of rulers of planets and habitats, there are hundreds of them due to the huge amount of habitats. Layer 3 (over 10000) is the equivalent of governors of regions or massive cities, Layer 4 (million) cities or fractions of cities. Layer 5 (tens of millions), Layer 6 (hundreds of millions), and Layer 7 (3 billion) fulfill a role of directly managing decreasing sizes of groups of sy!yvl alongside each other. The majority is on Layer 8. There is little social mobility, but everyone is wired to be satisfied this way.

Belonging to a layer is communicated by minute social cues and slight differences in appearance that only sy!yvl can really pick up.

Culture and society

• Their culture is very simple, considering its age. Stories are extremely straightforward and monotonous, with amounts of repetition that would put any human to sleep. Art is well-drawn but usually only uses a few colors. Little of it has any deeper meaning or even message. They usually rewatch, reread, or replay things dozens or hundreds or thousands of times.
• They are highly spiritual and superstitious, but have absolutely zero codification of their beliefs, which cannot really be called a religion. If they can be said to believe anything about the "immaterial world", is that it exists and has a tangible impact, but inherently cannot be even comprehended or described. Thus there are no myths and no rituals. They also don't even have the concept of an afterlife, much less believe in one.
• Every sy!yvl, besides the monarch, follows the same life framework: do what you have been assigned to do until further orders, and in the meantime reproduce. Nobody is in any way independent, and in fact find the concept of independence to be deeply horrifying in an eldritch manner. Sy!yvl with neurodivergences that give them better capacity for abstract thought get appointed to research duty.
• Their only clothing is very loose, mass-produced, extremely baggy and thin robes. These robes actually vary in design according to social layer, determined by rigidly-defined rules. They are colorful, though, and embellished with dyed chunks of Gxxy-lsa woven or clipped onto the fabric; also common are bangles, necklaces, and earrings. Also frequent are chains as chokers, to symbolize submission to the monarch. Those sy!yvl who work in professions where loose clothing might result in injury or death instead wear form-fitting jumpsuits. While their clothes may look primitive, they are actually mandated to be made of self-cleaning nanofabric, and are so comfortable that many other humanoid species try to get their hands on refit versions.
• They have no concept of material property. Even the monarch lives in relative austerity. Absolutely everything is shared, without as much as personal lockers. But unlike the kseldani and bquaa, they do recognize land and people as property.
• Sy!yvl place almost zero value on their own lives. If they are ordered to do something extremely dangerous they will do it without a second thought. However, their simplicity also means that crazy dictators who only want to see their underlings suffer don't exist in sy!yvl society; nobles are ambivalent at worst.
• The way sy!yvl cities develop is important to understanding their society.
  • Gxxy-lsa exists naturally, but does not take the same form that the sy!yvl use for architecture. It is something resembling a land-dwelling coral, growing in mostly flat or gently hill-like, circular patches around ten meters in diameter, present in all land-based non-desertic environments of L-syng!jyl!yysa. The material is hard as concrete, but porous, very craggy, and colored any shade from red to pink to white. It extends tendrils into the soil to leech nutrients, but its main form of sustenance is leeching from above, i.e from plants that sprout over it. These natural colonies do not grow much due to this drain on their surrounding environment, and die out after they drain the soil, at which point they discolor into gray and are eventually simply buried by dirt. However, in their late stages, they form seed-globules: translucent spheres the size of soccer balls, filled with hydrogen. Once a globule is filled, it floats off, very slowly leaking hydrogen until it deflates and thus gently lands tens or hundreds of kilometers away. If the soil is fertile, the globule hardens and takes root, slowly growing into a patch over decades or centuries, and the process begins anew.
  • However, the sy!yvl know since time immemorial how to induce rapid growth of this coral. This method has survived intact for thousands of years, and even in exoplanetary colonization it is used with minimal modifications.
    • First, a globule is harvested and carefully transported to a fertile, defensible and resource-full spot by a team of sy!yvl. This group is fairly large, as such spots are few and far between, requiring lengthy hikes over dangerous terrain (in the modern age, they use airlifts or orbital drops for exocolonization). Then, the Gxxy-lsa seed is even more carefully drained of hydrogen by stabbing it with a special awl, and buried shallowly. The expedition team then stays near it as it sprouts, setting up a camp nearby. They harvest as much biomass as possible nearby and compost it, to supplement the regular shipments of fertilizers that get brought in from the home city and poured onto the sprout, then onto the sides of the patch, to grow it sideways. Pests and nearby herbivores are eliminated with extreme prejudice.
    • While the camp lasts years, becoming a temporary village of tents and log cabins, it is meant to be abandoned once the Gxxy-lsa patch matures enough to support grown buildings. When that happens (just over its 'natural' size of ten meters diameter), specially-made nutrients are dropped onto the surface of the patch, causing bulges to appear. The bulge is then drilled and a poisonous concoction injected into it, killing the inner layer of Gxxy-lsa within it while letting the outer layers grow. Thus results in it becoming a bubble, which is then grown until it becomes large enough to house sy!yvl or store things in. At this moment, the city is considered founded, and the village surrounding it is abandoned.
    • The administration of the planet, region, or nearby city then resettles more sy!yvl, as the patch continues to grow, fed by convoys. To become sustainable, fields are sown in a broad circle around it, gradually expanding out as land is subsumed by the growing Gxxy-lsa. As the settlement itself grows upwards and access becomes difficult, these fields become specialized towards Gxxy-lsa-feed rather than food production. All sorts of buildings are stacked on top of each other via bubbles. Sloped corridors are left in between rows of them, and ladders and ramps are drilled inside to allow easy passage. Sy!yvl cities are, thus, 3D. The core of each city, i.e the lower layers, are actually populated by nobles, for better defensibility. Slightly outside the core are various light industries not harmful in such a confined space. Meanwhile the bulk of the city, i.e the mantle, is occupied by vast numbers of storage areas, services, and residences for the common folk. Air shafts, powered by strong fans, thread through the entire volume of the mound, allowing ventilation, though there is sparse plant life growing on the walls, both for aeration and aesthetic reasons.
    • Electric lights are used sparingly in their cities; bioluminescent mushrooms are more common as lamps, and have been selectively bred for millennia to be very bright... and bitter-tasting, to discourage using infrastructure as quick snacks.
• Sy!yvl 'nobles' and commoners actually live rather similarly. Residential rooms are rather small and circular, and have one plan: circular or square beds stacked into bunks, surrounding a single pile of various shared tools and supplies. They don't spend much time here. Most of their spare time is spent in large open rooms that consist of concentric circles, which consist of 8 rings, each corresponding to a social layer. Inside such rooms, placed in intricate patterns within each ring, are various decorations as well as entertainment stations. Of course, the inner few rings are empty as often someone from the first few layers isn't even on the planet; they are built regardless and meticulously maintained as indoor gardens.
• Personal possessions are strictly banned by royal decree, as implied before, besides that which may be worn. Instead of datapads, they usually wear pendants, bracelets, or half-visors (covering one eye) which fill that role with a small curved screen. The UI design in these devices is very simple, with usually two or three colors and symbols instead of text, as most sy!yvl are illiterate. There is an internet, though there are very few sites compared to other civilizations.
• One trait they share with Chimeras is an obsession with cleanliness and hygiene. For a similar reason: they live in dense communal halls and are very sociable. Thus disease would easily spread if everyone wasn't squeaky clean. If someone skips the daily shower, the next day they're tied down and hosed with cold water and soap. They spend hours cleaning themselves and each other. In ancient times they used special oils rubbed into their skin to ward away dirt and parasites, now even the commoners use a thin coating of nanite paste.
• Something vaguely resembling marriage exists, though it more resembles animals' courtship rituals. Overseen by an individual of a higher layer, the prospective spouses do a brief but elaborate dance meant to show that they are physically fit, graceful, and attractive. After consummating the new bond, they have to wear identical clothes and adornments, and make their names identical. Marriages between layers happen, in which case the partner of lower layer is elevated while the partner of higher layer descends. The monarch is an exception, of course. Sex outside of courtship is literally unthinkable. Homosexuality is very rare but not at all stigmatized.
• Most of their free time is spent talking. They are the most gregarious species in the Oval and are widely known to never shut up about the most trivial of subjects. A sy!yvl can spend hours and hours making small talk, about everything from the nice weather they saw from the hive's balcony to how the grubs they ate today tasted weird to how they saw a layer 3 visit and hit their own head while bowing.
• There is essentially zero crime in sy!yvl society. Almost all sy!yvl are incapable of acting in self-interest or going against social contract.
• They used to be extremely afraid of genemodding, until a royal decree and education campaign established specialization initiatives. Now sy!yvl are routinely modified by their overseers to fit their task in society. However they still dislike cosmetic genemodding. In addition, they always adapt themselves to fit the various planets they colonize. Very stocky and muscular on high-gravity worlds, extremely thin with graceful limbs on low-gravity worlds, possessing gills and fins on oceanic worlds, and so on.
• Their population is quite evenly spread across their empire. This is because of mass resettlement programs where entire cities were relocated to other planets to more efficiently use space. Every planet is densely populated. The borders of the Kingdom are very small, and the sy!yvl see it as their imperative to use them to the full extent of their abilities, filling the void and the untamed lands.
• Habitats floating in space are very common. Grown just like the cities, using a comet as the core that ends up providing water and carbon for the growth of the structure. Habitat-dweller sy!yvl are very agile and adapted to microgravity. The species' close-knit mentality and love for sustainability makes them uniquely suited for deep-space colonization.

Court of the sy!yvl king/queen

The monarch of the sy!yvl, alongside their Layer 1 direct subordinates and around a thousand Layer 7 and 8 servants, lives in an ornate palace grown atop a mountain on L-syng!jyl!yysa. It is one of the oldest structures shaped by sy!yvl hands, or any sapient hands in the Oval. This palace is, unlike proper cities, cylindrical. A tower as tall as it is wide: 200 meters or so.

The monarch is at the bottom of it, but to reach them, visitors have to first go to the top floor, then back below and so on in a sort of vertical, labyrinth-like zig-zag. The entire inside is surprisingly plain for what we humans imagine as a royal palace. It, just like sy!yvl cities, more resembles an anthill's inside.

The throne on which the sole individual of Layer 0 sits is an extremely tall seat of polished Gxxy-lsa, polygonal multicolored slabs seamlessly merged together into essentially a mini-tower on top of which sits the monarch. There is a staircase (or, by now, an elevator) inside for them to go down to the floor of the throne room. Ten more towers half as tall, for the Layer 1s, are similarly constructed in a semicircle, always facing the throne of the monarch. A pneumatic system of tubes to deliver meals and drink, and plumbing pipes to handle waste, are built into all 11 thrones. They spend most of the day here, after all.

It is tradition that every year a completely random Layer 8 individual is brought to the throne room to talk one-to-one with the monarch, and the monarch is to grant them one wish. Most are completely dazed by their presence. To a sy!yvl commoner it is like meeting a god. They are never the same after the experience, and some have had a heart attack from a combination of joy and anxiety.

The current king is named Nuy-tsigni'ys. He is quite the radical reformist by sy!yvl standards, and is the first sy!yvl monarch to directly speak to outsiders. Some suspect him to have the same neurodivergences as the scientists traditionally do-- namely actually having a sense of curiosity and desire for change. Under his rule, a contingent of foreign philosophers, artists, and educators has been allowed to reside in the Palace. These are mostly kaziil (due to close astropolitical ties), humans (humans are coarse, rough, and get everywhere), and a few QDNE-32 nodes (Nuy was always fascinated by computers).

Sy!yvl Star Navy

Sy!yvl names

The ! is a tongue click.

The bquaa (actual name longer and not transcribable) are a sapient alien race that is part of the Alliance. 

Physiology

Bquaa have slimy, rubbery bodies that resemble those of slugs, but longer (a bit like snakes). They can slither quite fast due to being covered in a thick layer of slippery sludge at all times. At the front quarter of their bodies are two pairs of thick tentacles that can be used as manipulators. Their heads smoothly blend into their necks, and have tapered wedge-shaped, small-toothed snouts with no nostrils, and two large black almond-shaped eyes. Bquaa have cartilage instead of bones, and said cartilage is very sparse, rendering them a little fragile. They breathe through their skin, which is possible despite their large size due to the high oxygen content in their planet's atmosphere. In addition, their skin can be any color of the rainbow, and has black patterns (if light) or white patterns (if dark) that can be consciously shifted for communication purposes.

Though some individuals can be extremely muscular and bulky, most bquaa are very scrawny.

They are fully hermaphroditic, in the same manner as most gastropods, and are oviparous. After mating, both partners lay translucent, spindle-like eggs, ranging from 5 to 15, though only one in five actually end up hatching.

Background and psyche

Their planet, Auua, is distinct from other humid planets by the fact that it is very flat. It has only three major biomes: shallow ocean, overgrown fetid swamp, and forested hills. There are some very rare mountains and a bit of tundra at the very poles, but it is overall much warmer than Earth, and has 100% or near-100% humidity in nearly all regions. The "temperate" regions are like the Amazon rainforest and the tropical and equatorial ones are almost like a sauna. It is in those areas that the bquaa evolved: amid the fog, steam, and muddy hills of the largest continent. They lived in cramped hillside burrows or mounds in the plains, hunting and gathering for food. After they discovered agriculture, they formed hundreds of densely-populated clusters of cities. What happened next requires some explanation of their psychology.

Bquaa constantly emit pheromones that reflect their emotional state, which are picked up by their powerful olfactory sense. This is impossible to control or suppress without genemodding. Due to a quirk, those emotions are also reflected equally by those who smell them, resulting in feel-sharing. Meanwhile, their slime can transmit more complex information if it comes into contact with another's (not between species!), including aspects of personality and even vague experiences. This led to them not having any individuality-- while even the kseldani and akyzh-cci have individual cognition and can imagine themselves being separate, the bquaa do not and cannot. They also have essentially perfect empathy thanks to this, and are some of the nicest and most accepting people one can meet.

Naturally, this feature led to the bquaa being very communal and peaceful. They do not need coercion of any sort, and the thought of causing deliberate harm to another of their species is abhorrent– after all, you would feel their anguish yourself. Thus, their society developed in a very different path from many other civilizations: nascent polities quickly merged together into one harmonious collective, where there is no leadership, and peace and order are upheld purely on goodwill. It is partially eusocial, though there are no designated breeders it is expected that absolutely everyone do their part to grow the species at all times.

Culture and politics

The self

Probably the most important thing to bquaa culture is the nonexistence of the individual as a concept. Even the sy!yvl and the kseldani recognize the existence of separate people, even if their influence is to be minimized. The bquaa do not. Bodies are separate, of course, and brains alongside them, but given how intensely emotions and personalities are merged in their society, people aren't.

Thus, their names only refer to the bodies. They are used solely in the third person (there are no pronouns in the bquaa language, but words are short and dense). When a bquaa alters their body in any manner, they also alter their name.

Their brains are not compatible with individuality by default. A bquaa who is separated from others for long goes irreversibly catatonic. This is fixable with cybernetics.

Society

While Yig, the Red Kseldani, and the Seven Colony Worlds in the western reaches of the Terran Federation are all examples of anarchy, both of those still have some measure of governing institutions besides ad-hoc decisions: the Consensus for the first, and local councils for the latter two. The bquaa have no such thing. Any sort of governance they have is entirely natural, in the same way an anthill has no institutions. What they do have in terms of managing their society is a set of very flexible guidelines.

Bquaa live in very dense cities of mound-like buildings with lots of twisty passages. Their buildings resemble chohjozra and dal-ghar architecture a bit due to their physiology. Similar to the kseldani, there are no separate dwellings, and everyone sleeps in large chambers. Unlike the kseldani, their cities are quite well-decorated, with colorful designs on the external and internal walls. Naturally, it all has to be built out of moisture-resistant materials: anything that can rust or get easily eroded is right out as due to the weather it would become a pile of rubble within a few years at most.

Their culture is very strange and incomprehensible to most other sapients, not in the least because it relies, in large part, on smell. They also have no tradition of alone entertainment: even for passive entertainment like books and films it is unthinkable to not have someone to discuss it with while watching… and preferably a whole crowd. Naturally, there are no puzzles or singleplayer games of any kind. They have no mass produced pop culture, rather all their works are produced on a very sentimental level and do not reach a wide audience. Contrary to the popular belief that they only live to eat, sleep, and reproduce, bquaa have a very deep cultural landscape-- it just doesn't reach outside their worlds.

They don't normally wear anything, but put on heated sleeves over their body and tentacles when in cold climates, such as when visiting another civilization.

Nothing recognizable as pair-bonds or indeed romantic relationships exists. When a bquaa is ready to reproduce, they do it with no ceremony, deliberation, or attachment. Sex is solely reproductive.

They have a few religions, but one constant in them is that the Universe itself is God/the gods. The thought of them being separate agents is just not a thing.

They are, unlike many other species, incapable of speaking understandable English or most other languages in any capacity. The number of sounds they can make is very limited, mostly coming across as gurgling, and so they rely on text-to-speech translators. Naturally, text communication works fine, though they do not have any sort of personal identification in their internet equivalent.

While they do not adorn themselves with jewelry or other accessories, a form of body decoration is having moss and vines grow on oneself in patches-- no special substrate is needed for that as there are many symbiotic plant species in Auua's biosphere. These plants are often shaved into various patterns and snacked upon by their wearer and those beside them.

Interciv relations

The Bquaa Collective is a peaceful hive mind and thus was eligible for joining the Alliance, which they hastily did after previously refusing since they were skirmished by the Abyssals over a diplomatic insult and had millions of their citizens massacred and the rest brainwashed. This proved to be useful as they still refuse to have a proper astromilitary, being more pacifist than even Chimeras (who at least have a Starguard that can be levied if shit hits the fan).

Naturally, many of their systems became pirate havens and the Alliance is failing to do much due to the Collective's insistence on dealing peacefully with the pirates. Some Terran, aadalu, and relmai citizens think they are a resource sink, political dead weight, and source of embarrassment, and so should be kicked out. Instead, a compromise was enacted: the Alliance sends frequent pirate-hunting expeditions to bquaa space. The territory of the Collective is a common proving ground for wannabe bounty hunters.

However, the bquaa have in many ways redeemed themselves to the Alliance by being very close to both the Silents (and thus being invaluable as a staging ground for archeological expeditions to abandoned Silent bases) and the Abyssals. The latter have, however, seized a large chunk of bquaa eastern frontier space, enshadowing it into the Dark Bquaa.

Bquaa names

Most of these have an olfactory or visual component that cannot be reproduced over text.

Name: Black Fang Republic

Astropolitical rank: Minor Power

Interciv relations: Alliance member, satellite of Terran Federation

Dominant species: Canids

Temperaments: Power / Individuality / Equity

Territory: Western Oval, 100 stars

Government form: Federal parliamentary clan republic

Ideology: Nationalism / Liberty / Equality {1} (Kraterodemocracy)

Economic system: Cybernetic Economy

Population: ~1.6 billion

Capital planet: Niflheim

Climate preference: cold forest or tundra

The Black Fang Republic (BFR) is the separatist state ruled by the Canids. Once fiercely anti-human, it has been brought back into the fold while retaining sovereignty. The BFR's people are fiercely individualistic and patriotic... and are much more focused on physical strength than humans are. Augmentation of all kinds is encouraged as long as the Canid form is preserved, thus most of its citizens are seven-foot-tall, werewolf-like cyborgs. It serves as "Terra's attack dog" on the astropolitical arena.

History

In the 2160s-early 2180s, the Canids faced societal discrimination within the Terran Federation due to complicated factors, chiefly skewed perception of them by humans. At the same time, they held some important positions in the army and navy, as well as parts of the colonial administration in the north-up-east part of the Terran (then UN) frontier. In the wake of the Human Civil War of 2181-2184, they took their opportunity...

A large swath of colonies in the southeastern military district were overthrown in a series of coups known as the Greater Arcadia Putsch, after the grassland world it started on. They were sparsely populated, and the Terran Navy was too busy fighting rebels to intervene, so the warships in the immediate area mutinied to form the BFR's Navy. They made a pact with the True-Human Organization, but it was a ruse; the Canids did not help the supremacists' war effort and in fact covertly sabotaged it, secretly giving aid to the partisans that made the THO's Human Republic a failed state. They could not directly stop the supremacists' genocide, as a war on two fronts would have sunk the BFR. Instead, they paid their due by backstabbing and mercilessly slaughtering much of the THO's army in mid-2183. The Provisional Government of the Black Fang Republic, led by Sieng Redclaw, then accepted a massive exodus of Canids from the UN proper, bolstering their population numbers to borderline core-world levels.

Sieng's faction, immediately after the war's end, had to contend with Deris Ashpelt's quasi-fascist faction. Sieng dueled and beheaded Deris, causing the latter's clique to collapse, but saw that a major restructuring of society had to be done, and a new and equal culture created, to satisfy the will to power while diffusing it to avoid the lure of supremacy. Meanwhile he reapproached Terra, negotiating to keep the BFR's independence in exchange for close economic and military ties to its former enemy. Then he decentralized the government, established the Clan and Pack system, with himself as the Elder of the Council. But he noticed that too many in the Council followed his wishes, even when he wanted honest debate, so he stepped down as soon as he could, and lived out his life in a cabin on Niflheim until he died two decades later in a skiing accident.

Governmental structure

The BFR's government is much more clique-y and unstructured yet much more fraternal and grassroots than Terra's government. The clans (extended family, friend, and interest groups) freely arrange into packs-- which serve double duty as low-level organizational structures and political proto-parties (usually single-issue or regional-interests), and frequently merge and dissolve as needed. Clan heads are appointed by the members until they are deemed unfit or for any other reason. Pack heads are elected for 6 local months (adjusted for planets with slow days, tidally locked planets or habitats use Niflheim Standard Time) each from one of the clan heads. This is at the supermunicipal and regional level, or sometimes at the planetary level in younger colonies.

Packs have to unite into proper parties with proper platforms at the planetary level in most places. These present candidates in the form of constituent pack heads every year for planetary or superregional governor elections. The federal-level election is different. Anyone can run, they don't even have to be a clan head, much less a pack head. But in practice only those with some recognition as governors or those who have shown themselves to be heroes of the Republic have won. Generally, strength of spirit and of body is valued more than actual policies.

Campaigns are much less formal than the rather stuffy Terran ones. Lots of fiery speeches in front of roaring and howling crowds. Over-the-top ads bordering on propaganda. And with the Republic's very high social and economic equality, a very low barrier for running. The presidential term limit is 2 years, and the president is kept in check by a parliament, elected separately from former pack heads (not only governors). Kept in check both legally, and by the fact that the president has to be present in front of the whole parliament in order to enact any changes, and considering this is the BFR, the parliamentarians have enough firepower to turn any wannabe dictator into target practice.

However, the culture means that those deemed "weak" have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting any notable percentage of votes... see below.

Culture

The technobarbarian cultural ideology

By the 2230s, their whole nature has changed: thanks to a relatively low population in a similarly-resourceful area resulting in a high GDP per capita, as well as a culture that values personal strength, most BFR citizens are enhanced far beyond simple anthro-genemodding: they are now 7-foot-tall cyborgs who are 30% man, 30% wolf, and 40% machine, with huge muscles and packed full of both external and internal bionics. Their material aesthetic styles itself after a modernized version of stereotypical "barbarian" cultures. Rough, harsh, and unyielding. Yet they embrace technology to exert power in more efficient and potent ways. Power is what all Canids care for above all else; not the oppressive kind of power but rather the passion and strength kind of power, the kind that can be shared by all.

Anthro-Canids, as well as a minority of taurs, are the only Canids in the BFR. Uplifts stayed loyal to the Federation, and the inherent issues of feral morphs present issues to living a happy life in the BFR's society, due to the lack of hands. By the standards of transhuman separatists, the BFR is very homogeneous, culturally and physically. Part of it is because the Canids have zero interest in anything but raw physical force, and they have very little in the way of what we would call culture. What culture they do have is defined by one word: visceral. There is always a focus on action. On thrill. On acting on one's instinct. When thinking is celebrated, it is the tactician's kind of thinking rather than the philosopher's.

Science is not really disrespected: after all, it is the scientists' work that the engineers use to make all the cool toys... but few pay much attention to it, seeing it as far beyond their interests. Those who do, have a different approach compared to the increasingly esoteric Terran science. They care not for abstract math or theoretical astrophysics or the like; much of their research is concentrated towards "things that actually exist", with more niche and abstract subjects seen as useless and effete. Only things that can be used for industry or war or cybernetics are seen as being worthy of research. But again, the average Canid does not give a damn.

They have a concept of honor. It is not the Western chivalric concept of honor but rather the honor that was present in many actual "barbarian" cultures like the Celts, Huns, and Mongols. It is linked directly to martial prowess, to loyalty to one's clan and to the Republic, and to keeping one's oaths. It is not linked to fair play or to being nice.

Clans

The Canids do not really have humanlike families. The whole human structure of the traditional family (whether the truly traditional multiple generations under the same roof, or the not-actually-traditional nuclear family) is untenable. This is due to the high-intensity lifestyles of nearly all Canids leading to nobody really having the time to serve as a child-rearer, as well as the culture's focus on kinship rather than origin making such values alien to them. In fact, over 70% of Canid women are functionally sterile (and 100% wouldn't want to waste valuable months being pregnant anyways) due to either consequences of genemodding or bionics, or hormonal imbalances in the citizen-factories.

Thus they have clans instead, as their replacement for the family. While a clan does, by default, include blood relatives, anyone can be invited into one-- usually friends are, as well as those people left over from adjacent clans that dissolved. A clan's leader can be determined in various ways, up to its people: it can be the strongest member, or one determined by election, or there can be no leader and a head be appointed ad-hoc when needed. Clans serve a lot more purpose than households do in Terra: while individual Canids have personal property (such as weapons, clothes, any sort of gadgets, etc), private property (including small businesses, vehicles, etc) can only be owned by a clan as a whole. Transferring people between them can only be done by agreement from both heads.

Marriage exists but is very informal, and not legally binding. Social expectations are that Canids should marry outside their clan and instead into neighboring clans, as this prevents rivalries, inbreeding, and isolation. It is fully decoupled from gender, not just legally but socially, and considering the females' sterility, straight couples have the same way to raise children as gays do-- that is, the local citizen factory. Due to the power of newly-forged tradition as well as resource and gene pool considerations, these factories do not work full-auto and require genetic material from two or more Canids to produce a new pup. Canid children are grown much quicker than a pregnancy would, and are implanted with cybernetics prenatally. Born Canids tend to act in a less human way than turned Canids.

Once the child is "born", they are raised by both of their clans, with babysitters taking turns. Due to a deep-rooted value of social equality, nobody has the role of taking full-time care of them. Generally everyone in both clans gets attached to some extent, and though they still recognize their parents, the clans are more like found family to them.

Once the cub turns 13, they have to pick one clan to be in, between their parents'. Usually they are sat down with the elders of both clans who try to convince the young one that theirs is better. Sometimes the dispute goes to a duel for who gets to claim them.

Language

Their language is partially intelligible as English... However, there are a lot of words from all sorts of random languages-- all mixed together and with their meanings and pronunciations drastically changed. It is rapidly diverging into a new language, with former boundaries being meshed together as former cultural identities get abandoned. Sentences are usually very short and grammar is simplified even compared to Common Terran English. In addition, body language and ear and tail movement are vital to much of its grammar, such as it is. In writing these are signified by a symbol prefixed to some words, in the form of an inverted triangle of 3 dots or crosses that correspond to the ears or tail being raised or lowered.

In addition, the amount of specific slang is staggering even compared to the Federation, and swearing is accepted even in certain contexts the Federation would still consider taboo. It can feel like every fourth word is a strong profanity, and it is strange if during a friendly conversation a Canid does not call you a cunt or worse at least once.

Entertainment

The main form of entertainment in the BFR is sports. Their sports are extreme beyond all human reason, for example:

• rocket skiing, where the racers have thrusters attached to their skis. Points are multiplied by the amount of fuel spent, this means one cannot play it safe. Variants are same as normal skiing: slalom. jumping, freestyle, etc.
• motorball. Like American handegg, but on a much larger field with hard ground. Players (two teams of 9) are on motorcycles, and wield different types of nets to manipulate the ball or knock each other off bikes.
• hill conquest. In the middle of a small court with rubbery ground is a narrow plateau accessible by climbing walls. A free for all for 16 competitors. The winner is the one who can stay for 3 minutes on top

Plain old combat sports, including MMA, are also popular; basically everyone knows how to wrestle and throw precise punches and kicks. Of course, they cannot compete with humans or even normal lupine genemods– the opponent literally wouldn't survive the first few strikes, or being crushed under a huge, tense pile of muscles and metal. Their extreme endurance often leads to matches or fights lasting for many hours.

Somewhat different, but still related and as popular, are gladiator fights. In special arenas, Canid fighters get pitted against genetically modified, hyper-aggressive animals from bears to T.rexes. Every gladiator has to have a distinct persona and appearance and weapon of choice-- this weapon always gets a name and is famed as much as its wielder. There are many types and formats of gladiator fights-- there are swarm fights against dozens of weak critters, there are one-on-ones against true genetic monstrosities, there are fights against prisoners condemned to death, there are "who can slay more" competitions between two gladiators, and so on. For more intense gladiatorial fights they wear customized armor, designed to accentuate every muscle while covering every millimeter in superalloy.

Outside of sports, Canids basically go out and socialize with their kin, often in bars. There are plenty of local happenings to gossip about over a drink. Canid alcohol is invariably extremely strong compared to anything humans drink for fun. This is because it needs to inebriate an at least 7-foot-tall, broad body with a likely cybernetically enhanced liver. It has fomepizole in it, meaning it gets one drunk far faster than it should, and for the most part removes the hangover.

Lifestyle

They technically can live for two centuries on average or more, but life expectancy is much less (about 50 to 70 years) thanks to the average Canid's love of high-adrenaline situations. Rocket-skiing down the snowy slopes of Niflheim's mountains, deep sea trench racing, and obstacle-wingsuiting, as well as many other similar activities almost all Canids get up to in their spare time (not to mention the duels), aren't exactly useful if you want to die of old age. Of course, they don't care: a life spent sitting at home watching TV all day, like many humans do, is to them a fully wasted life.

Being mostly carnivorous, their diets consist of meat and dairy, vat-grown of course. Due to their activity levels they need 10k or more kcal per day and thus eat a lot, requiring optimized and augmented digestive systems to fully digest that amount of food. How about a sandwich consisting of a whole steak covered completely in cheese and mayonnaise, between two slices of lard instead of bread? It is something of an issue for them as this requires a lot more infrastructure to set up than the Federation's hydroponic farms.

Canid clothes are varied, but most often it is of sleek, form-fitting leather or tougher material, studded and spiked, and with decals symbolizing the individual's Clan or personal interests sewn on. Clothing is always made to be easy to run and fight in, though it doesn't cover much fur due to the natural toughness of their hides and a desire to show off one's muscled body. Vests, shorts, headbands are common-- though often layered with pouches and belts.

They also always wear piercings adorning their ears, lips, and/or nose. All Canids also bleach or paint their fur in tattoo-esque patterns, each clan has different markings that are unique to it.

They have somewhat less automation than most civilizations of their technological level. Unlike Terrans or relmai, Canids find manual labor to be rewarding, more rewarding than any intellectual undertaking or idle entertainment. Thus one may see them working as blacksmiths hand-forging weapons and tools and goods, as dockworkers shuffling crates in the numerous spaceports, as miners and lumberjacks, and so on.

Society and laws

Duels are an acceptable manner of dispute resolution in Canid society. If one's honor is infringed upon, an individual may challenge the offender to a duel, usually not to the death. The usual rules for duels between citizens:

• always are to be overseen by community
• on flat, hard ground in good weather with no obstacles
• weapons are allowed if both combatants agree
• the duel lasts until one combatant either concedes or is rendered incapable of conceding
• using lethal force without due reason (either agreement or the dispute being dire enough) is a crime
• you cannot resolve political office disputes via duels

Smaller disputes are resolved on the spot with fisticuffs. If an argument between two Canids has reached a stalemate, the proper way to resolve it is to attempt to wrestle down one's opponent. If one manages to pin them to the ground, they are considered to be right by their peers and the loser is considered to be wrong, no matter who was factually right or wrong.

Unlike Terra, the BFR has a common and frequently used death penalty. Treason against the Republic (this includes Hegemony sympathization), murder, rape, and oath-breaking gets one condemned to the gladiatorial arenas as prey.

The Republic's cities are organized like Terran cities, but the buildings are somewhat more monumental, stout, and angular, and generally not as shiny as Terran towers, resembling Brutalist architecture. Interiors of public spaces are clean but generally look much "harsher", with bare metal and granite. The flags of the Republic are everywhere, and spaces owned by a clan often have said clan's emblem similarly spammed. People rarely live alone, generally sharing a room with their clan. Keeping with their high attitudes towards personal freedom, the Republic allows them to decorate their dwellings as they see fit. These decorations vary, but weapons of all sorts hanging on walls are a common element, from swords to revolvers to blaster rifles. On a more peaceful note, their furniture has to be sturdier than human furniture, as Canids are much heavier and denser than humans.

Technology itself similarly looks very... solid. Everything is blocky, rugged, often with bare metal or simple matte paint, with labels being stenciled on. Screens are not very big as enhanced eyes allow scanning from smaller sizes, allowing more protection for the screen. Furred hands make touchscreens annoying, so there are knobs and physical buttons for control unless absolutely necessary. Datapads resemble Motorola phones from the 80s while still having modern functionality. Computers look like 80s microcomputers, except with steel casings, and with CRT-esque monitors. Vehicles look like Soviet cars and buses (with more spikes and flame decals of course). Guns look like welded-together cuboids with holes in them. Radio, oddly enough, is also a common form of entertainment. After all, it is easy to listen to while doing some physically intensive activity without being too distracted. It's surprisingly mundane in its content and probably doesn't merit description. Generally it's consumed via integrated BCI-receiver. There is an export market for BFR-Canid tech, as it uses many of the same data and power standards as Terran tech and is a lot more durable and long-lasting, thus it appeals to paranoid humans. The downside is that your tank-datapad looks like and weighs like a brick, and would likely crack the floor if dropped. God help you if you drop it on your puny human foot.

They have quantum AI like the Federation does, and actually produce them more than Terra does. They are generally embodied into robotic Canid forms and patterned at creation to think as an ideal Canid would, i.e a rowdy space barbarian, in contrast to the generally peaceful and calm Federation AIs. Canid AIs live to fight, whether physically or virtually, free from fleshy Canids' human heritage.

Religion is rare, since Canid culture cares not for that which cannot exert force or be exerted upon by force. Most are atheists or semi-pagan agnostics. The thought of religion mostly does not cross the minds of the younger generations, who do not have much contact with mainstream Terran society.

There is a robust inter-city and interplanetary transport system but within cities, Canids prefer to just run whenever they want to go. It's about as fast for them and is good exercise. Some own trucks for transporting goods and so on, or cars for going fast for going fast's sake.

That said, not all Canids are violent blood-knights. What matters is flair, passion, and desire to always become better and better at something. It just so happens that most choose directly visceral entertainment. There are Canids who instead strive to become, for example: a cook making the tastiest food, a musician creating the most emotional melodies, or a game developer making the most immersive experiences. There is a niche for all kinds of hobbies, and they are begrudgingly accepted as long as they are not completely "nerd shit".

But most have zero interest in any of that. The overwhelming majority of Canids, especially younger ones, do not care for culture or anything other than the raw strength of themself and their packmates. For them, the only recreation is fighting, and all free time is spent on training, exercise, and sparring.

Canid names

This is ancient, bad lore from 2022, earlier than the aadalu document. It sorely needs a rework and is only here for completeness purposes. I feel like it's problematic in some ways too. Ugh.

• The vr'rok are a sapient race from the tundra planet of Qekarra. They are centauroids with two clawed arms and four legs with padded feet and three digits per limb. Thick brown fur, akin to a grizzly bear's, covers their bodies, accompanied by bony plates on their limbs and tail, the latter forming a spiked club. They have snouts that split in two halfway, full of sharp interlocking teeth. Their three large eyes are black. An average vr'rok individual is about 1.5m tall feet-to-back and 1.9m tall feet-to-head, and 2m long.
• They are mostly-obligate carnivores, evolving sapience to become better at hunting the various species of mastodon-like gigantic herbivores of their world.
• They breed at a speed that is usually described in simple terms by Terran researchers as "like rabbits", something unusual for apex predator species in known space.
• Vr'rok psychology is biased towards individualism and competition to an even greater level than humans. Their early societal organization was similar to stereotypical, now-disproven dynamics of Earth wolf packs, except even more brutal.
• The more tolerant and peaceful cultures in their history failed to survive the onslaught of violent tribal hordes of those who respect no authority that they can usurp, and were exterminated. The rivers ran black with ink, then red with blood, and smoke from bonfires of both books and corpses clouded the sky.
• Martial prowess is respected in their society, however this does not mean that scientists and philosophers get no respect. After all, they make the weapons that let them kill the weak, and help justify killing the weak. Not to mention that if ignorance can be defeated by knowledge, that means ignorance has no right to exist.
• Their population really started growing after factory farming of the mastodons became possible. With this population boom came centuries of glorious bloodshed.
• The First Vr'rok Empire was formed when a great warlord, Tiqa'mas Ilaaku, had his scientists discover the power of the atom. Soon after, the capitals of the other warlord kingdoms were turned into lightly-radioactive ruins, and his tanks rolled over the remnants.
• This First Empire collapsed soon after discovering the Ugolnikov Yaki'maala Drive, as the extrasolar colonies rebelled and became independent warlords. They then fought each other for several decades, until 2175 AD...
• A warlord, Kqai'mat Lika, conquered the other vr'rok systems, uniting them into a Second Empire. She kept the governors in line with harsh punishments, such as punishing their entire families with being tortured to death in the event of a rebellion, as well as beatings delivered against all suspected dissidents.
• Kqai'mat then decided to raid the populous-but-militarily-weak Kseldani Collective. These disorganized, happy-joy-joy weaklings with essentially no military were easy loot and slave sources, or so she thought. The kseldani then sent an envoy to the still-nascent Alliance as the great power most likely to help them, and the combined kseldani-Alliance fleets beat back the raiders, then the Collective joined the Alliance. Kqai'mat lost her legitimacy and the Second Vr'rok Empire fell into another warlord era. 40 years later, they're still killing each other.
• The Alliance, particularly the neighboring relmai, kseldani, and aadalu realms, have been gradually annexing border systems of the warlords into the Pacified Vr'rok Republic (PVR), aiming to integrate them into interstellar society. Progress is slow, as the vr'rok are populous, have fantastic military technology, and fight hard.
• There are refugees from the incessant war. Some even go to the Terran Federation. They usually need some serious therapy to adapt to a society where might does not make right. Nevertheless, they can manage, and become productive members of society.

History

The Terran Federation had a civil war. in the early 2180s. It was a very bloody conflict that saw (among many successful and unsuccessful splinter factions) human supremacists commit genocide upon all genemods and synthetics in a wide swath of space. They were defeated soundly, and driven from human space. But that's a story for another time.

The war brought a lot of disillusionment to humans. There already was a Lateral-genemod subculture, but it was comparatively non-ideological. This new organization, the eldritch-Laterals, or Mh'azhi, were different. They saw mankind as, if not irredeemable or inherently evil, but undesirable and always doomed to be conflicted. Thus they changed themselves, into forms monstrous in shape and alien in mind. They are pragmatic, however, and stayed in the Terran government's good graces (especially since the new dominant human ideology, Prometheanism, was actually pro-genemodding, but to a lesser extent of course). Over the next 15 years, they built up funds, people, and clout, then bought out an abandoned asteroid mine in the frontier. They set up what is essentially an eldritch-Lateral-only commune there. The mine's abandoned state was because it turned out to be way less profitable than it was projected to be due to remoteness and various dangers that made it hard for baseline humans to work there. They pooled up funds to rent out the biggest station, which would later become the Dark City of Paradise.

They have a religion that worships the distortion of body and mind and considers order to be a sin. They practice cannibalism. Their whole aesthetic is dark, damp hallways with meat moss. Yet they're a free and egalitarian society. Whether they're good is up to debate, but they're probably not evil in the same way the dal-ghar or Abyssals are.

The Federation actually helped them along, since they promised to extract the comparatively last few magnetic monopoles in the asteroid belt... and because that sector of the frontier was completely barren of any notable permanent settlements. Considering tensions with the hordes of the AEON Clusters required the region to have coverage, the Fed decided to prop them up and essentially allow them free reign over this little realm of theirs, in exchange for a tithe of valuables mined, all performed research being shared, and their nascent fleet being subordinate to the Terran StarNavy. Terra did not and does not care for any and all debauchery that goes on there as long as no outside citizens get harmed.

30 years later, the Yig'ragn'xu Community (Yig'ragn'xu means roughly "Union of the New People") has spread to multiple other asteroids in the system, reclaiming other abandoned mining stations or digging new warrens. In the dark, damp corridors, the spacious caves, or the overgrown forests of the Stations prospers a society weirder than most actual alien civilizations. To them, it is a true utopia, but to Flats it is a neverending pandemonium.

Physiology and psychology

The most noticeable thing about Yig is, of course, its inhabitants. It is hard to give an overarching description for them, as each has a different form (either created randomly by a recombinator device or designed by themself), but they have some common features. First of all, there are some stipulations regarding forms, enforced by the community to preserve cultural cohesion:

• A Mh'azhi cannot have a human face or something too close to it.
• No forms directly based on existing characters from fiction or myth (loose inspiration is fine).
• Forms must not make existing in the same space inconvenient for others.

Every Mh'azhi is also implanted with an always-on BCI that allows them to interact with their environment (the mechanized parts at least) as if by magic, and connects their brain to the hive mind known as the Consensus.

Their name for themselves in their constructed language is Mh'azhi, roughly meaning "Folks of Twisted Flesh". They are divided into several subgroups called Clades. Every Clade has a different physiology and culture, and serves a different societal purpose, and is detailed in a section below.

Eldritch-Laterals are reproductively compatible with each other (but never with other Terrans or aliens obviously), and breed very rapidly. Most are oviparous.

Their minds are a lot more driven by instinct and vibes than those of humans. At once animalistic and detached. All Mh'azhi are very erratic and unpredictable.

Mh'azhi society

Everything is shared in their society. Not only is there essentially a lack of even personal property, thoughts and even mind-fragments are routinely exchanged, permitted by the ubiquity of BCIs in their culture. They are very open about such things, and just as open to outright tampering with each others' minds. Unlike in the Federation, where mind-modification is taken very seriously and is sometimes looked down upon, Yig's society actively encourages sharing one's BCI password around and generally treats the whole thing as a game. Not everyone engages in this, but the majority does not keep their brains private. However, in this "game" only temporary changes are allowed, and permanently brainwashing someone without consent is considered to be like assaulting and mutilating them, and will result in repercussions. In addition, there is a constant, low-intensity mind-link between every inhabitant of a Station, which essentially appears as a sea of thought called the Consensus. It is not coherent due to the many overlapping voices being quiet, but it conveys a general vibe very well. It also helps communicate the best course of action for the society, and subtly affects the actions of all inhabitants. This is the closest thing to any kind of authority in Yig, with its people living in total anarchy aside from it-- it is much less controlling than, for example, the iywkaa hive mind.

The biggest faux pas one can make is to seem like one is asserting authority over someone else. It is not even in the mind of any Mh'azhi raised there. Everything about their culture that they are marinated in from birth teaches them that control is the most evil thing that one can do, that all injustices and suffering suffer from attempts to control people, and that exerting control over another sapient being will literally cause demons to possess one.

Biological self-experimentation is also highly encouraged. Nobody really pays any attention (except admiration) if one decides to slap on an additional leg, optimize the shape of both livers, and remove an extraneous eye (then eat it). However, people generally settle on a vibe and stick with it, and total morph changes are seen as unusual (if accepted, after all there's probably a good reason).

The Consensus also serves as the backbone of much of their technology. There are three layers to it: the mindlink, which essentially serves the purpose telepathy would if it existed; the electrofabric, which allows machines and some wildlife to be controlled as if by magic; and the net, which is essentially their fully decentralized internet shard where anyone can host their own website for free. Every Mh'azhi has a profile that their BCI connection always projects. It contains information about their identity, interests preferred manner of communication, and any boundaries for interaction. Not respecting what is written there usually gets one punished.

Generally, Mh'azhi are some of the most creative and outside-the-box-thinking people in the Oval. Their entertainment often surpasses Chimera entertainment in sheer incomprehensibility, though unlike the Chimeras' clean and abstract aesthetic, Yig art is raw and unpolished and visceral.

• Artwork: lots of contrasting colors, usually desaturated. Highly stylized, with rough strokes and shapes that are either jagged, broken and angular, or smooth and melting into each other. Grainy and uneven. Sometimes "drawn" in scars on sheets of living skin, or painted in blood. Murals cover the halls of Paradise. Most of it depicts gore and viscera, humans transforming into Mh'azhi, or various creatures doing things to each other that should not be put to text.
• Music: Yig musical tradition by and large rejects the tonal system. There is a focus on bizarre timbres and intentional dissonance. There are many music genres specific to the scene, though to humans most of those fall somewhere fall somewhere within hardcore techno, dark ambient, harsh noise, and black metal. Quite often it incorporates sounds that cannot be heard by human ears. Regardless of genre, walls of static and cascading squalls of feedback are common.
• Video games: most Mh'azhi video games are run directly on the BCIs everyone has. Universally, they are deranged and terrifying in ways only barely approached in human culture by obscure indie horror games. Their contents are literally beyond words-- and while gore and shock imagery is rare, the few humans who tried these games have simply never been the same anymore. Most genres present there have no equivalent in humanity.

Their technology is frequently biological, especially the more 'mundane' objects-- while heavy machinery still has to be mechanical and thus imported... furniture is often grown from black wood and down-like fuzz; all sorts of medicine and drugs are synthesized in large bulb-like plants; bioluminescent fungi (just like those in sy!yvl cities) often replace electric lights; and specially-bred insects clean up crumbs and spills. This cuts down on reliance on the outside world, of course, and promotes harmony with nature. In addition, certain Clades are focused solely on their given function; they may look just like Mh'azhi, but lack the capacity to think of anything but their task. They thus are somewhat akin to biotech.

Yig culture is completely orthogonal to human culture. While the founders of Yig wanted to cast away everything that makes them human, the later generations are organically different. They do not even think about human concepts like law, family, or leadership. Many are literally neurologically incapable of accepting or even comprehending authority. Instead of a state or nation, they think of Yig'ragn'xu as a living organism and of themselves as its cells. The Consensus, meanwhile, is like a brain with every Mh'azhi being akin to a neuron.

Crimes such as assault or vandalism get one reprimanded and rehabilitated. Crimes such as murder or rape get one cornered into an alley, shot or stabbed, and eaten. They sometimes draw criticism for mob justice, however crime is rather rare anyways due to the fact that there is little motivation for it. In fact, Yig and especially Paradise are safer than many Terran frontier worlds. You're more likely to get hurt by one of the wild animals or carnivorous plants that often roam the halls than become the victim of a crime.

The culinary habits of Mh'azhi are quite primal. There are no codified recipes and no real unified cuisine, every cook does things in a different way-- though each way is downright disgusting to most humans. The ingredients mostly consist of fungi and plants harvested from the wilderness areas of Paradise, as well as insects or slime mold, or animal prey. Non-synthetic meat is seen as completely normal, there are few vegetarians or vegans amongst them. Infamously, cannibalism is ubiquitous-- everyone who dies in a way that leaves an uncontaminated corpse is devoured, and their most common death penalty is being eaten alive. The Mh'azhi are proud of being cannibals.

Mh'azhi clothing varies as much as their bodies and minds do. There are no dress codes or social expectations of any kind around it, of course, and they try to make it distinct from the usual human style. So it ranges from strips wrapped around the body, to robes covered in symbols, to colorful tunics, to form-fitting outfits with glittered tassels, to indescribable messes of foil and blinking lights. Most often though, it is very goth. Some however don't wear anything, especially the less humanoid morphs and animalistic minds; there are no taboos on public nudity.

There are some practical considerations to clothing, like not having too big of a footprint, being water-friendly, and being inedible to insects and bacterial mats. It is also self-cleaning, which helps with frequent dirt, slime, and blood stains. Nothing really describable as 'formal' in any way we can recognize, and consciously so.

They also usually decorate themselves with lots of jewelry and sometimes tattoos or body paint. Spiky piercings are ubiquitous. Much like relmai, the purpose of their flashy adornments is to make oneself attractive to potential mates. However not only accessories serve that purpose; many Mh'azhi have fold-out fins, membranes, feathered plumes, and so on; as well as pheromone glands or bioluminescent photophores.

Their dwellings vary a lot. Most live in shared chambers alongside dozens of their peers, these chambers combine in one unseparated area a bedroom, a kitchen, and a recreation area. More introverted individuals have to themselves small cozy rooms that they can do whatever with. Those with more serpentine forms often sleep in random crevices in the hallways. And those with more animalistic minds, or those who love nature, have nests in the forests of Paradise. They don't really need much to live, they always value interaction with their fellow beings over any material goods.

As alluded to before, none of them care for what they were and where they were from before being modified. Those inducted into their society cast away all of their national heritage and identity, and human history is not taught in the creches. Very few of them have any interest in it, they consider their society to be truly timeless and final and that all history is irrelevant. In some ways, Yig is indeed outside of time. Rarely does one see references to recent events elsewhere, schedules and timeframes are very flexible, media and entertainment is often nonlinear. They are free of ephemeral pop-culture as seen in Terran and relmai and many other societies.

They do have a calendar, of course, and it consists of essentially meatbag-readable binary. A year in the Pkh'ngys'xu calendar is defined as the orbital period of a large metallic sphere put into the same orbit that "Paradise" occupied at the time of its first settling in 2200 AD, thus 0 PNX (Paradise had its orbit shifted several times since then). It is around 1.4 Terran standard years or 512 standard days, by lucky coincidence. And from thereon, the year is divided into a warm and cold season of 256 days (the orbit is somewhat eccentric), each of which is in turn divided into two quarters of 128, each of which is divided into two octuples of 64 (this makes 8 months in a year), each of which is divided into two months of 32... and so on.

They do not marry, and their culture is too alien for human concepts of romance to apply. Some have permanent partners, others have transient mates, many others simply breed with no attachment. Sex is treated as simply a natural and healthy part of the Mh'azhi experience.

All Mh'azhi also don't fit anywhere on the gender binary or even a spectrum, appearing completely androgynous to outsiders' eyes. Even very masculine bodies still have a few effeminate features, and vice versa. Biologically most of them are hermaphrodites.

The anthem of Yig is called 'Under Brightest Stars'. It is a wordless, roughly 8-minute electronic track that is always improvised in a different manner in every performance, though some traits like the frequent squalls of feedback and stuttering pads stay a constant.

Demographics

There are, as of the mid-2230s, two adult generations in Yig: the founders, who grew up and likely lived as humans for a long time, causing them to still have a fundamentally human perspective– and lots of resentment towards it and themselves. It could be argued they aren't truly eldritch, and only put on a mask, but the degree to which they became that mask is debatable. The second generation onward, vastly outnumbering the founders, are the raised. They have lived most or all of their lives within the tunnels and caves, sometimes not having seen a planet's surface except in a holovid or a BCI world. They are truly alien from the ground up– but the founders' frame of reference still leaks over. The raised are much more optimistic and can be less edgy. Those who have been "adopted", i.e moved in and were turned, vary in worldview between those two.

The raised are actually fine with Terran culture. Many of them grew up watching Terran vids, listening to Terran music, playing Terran games. They see no issue with it, to the chagrin of the more dogmatic founders, who are in no power to stop them. Many have resigned themselves to how the course of their society is well out of their control by now, and that trying to seize ideological control would splinter it just like Redemptor Omnium's Last Pure Kingdom did-- and so they ceased their ideological involvement, mostly serving as spiritual guides.

A form of egalitarian natalism is a cornerstone of Yig ideology. The ideal Mh'azhi must reproduce as often as possible (but in practice nobody is forced to; asexual Mh'azhi exist and are under no scrutiny). There are no families. The annual population growth rate fluctuates between 8% and 10%, around five times faster than even the most fertile human growth. Thus starting from just a few thousand founders, by 223X there are now around two hundred thousand eldritch-Laterals. At the present time, there is an ongoing population boom that has no signs of stopping any time soon. There will be 96 million by the end of the 23rd century-- and possibly more, with further advances in fertility.

Mh'azhi children are raised communally, in special creches, from before birth: in each creche there is a "recombinator device", a broad swath of slimy, veined flesh with pods in which eggs are stored, with metallic wires and tubes going into every pod, overseen by those of the specialized breeder clade. The recombinator scrambles the DNA of every embryo. Then once they hatch, the community as a whole raises them, teaching them about the world and indoctrinating them into the ideology and faith. They have quite a lot of independence and oversight is near nonexistent. Learning is mostly self-directed, though if a young Mh'azhi picks up statist or (somehow) pro-Hegemony beliefs they end up getting taken away and brainwashed.

Higher education is not yet present (as of 223X) on any of the Stations, but Yig is part of the Alliance Scientific Zone, which means they can study at any Alliance institute or university-equivalent; in practice those of them who pursue a higher education go to the nearest Terran colony of Novoye Pomorye-- a sleepy world with shallow, ice-wracked oceans and windswept plains. For many raised Mh'azhi this is their first experience with human society or planetbound life-- most don't like it very much but pick up some valuable experiences.

Symbols

The symbology that the eldritch-Laterals use is not standardized, but nevertheless there are many motifs usually used in art that represents the Community as a whole.

The most commonly-used emblem Yig uses is the Ouroboros (khe'inyykh'ngh) , specifically a vaguely canine-looking variation with four paws. It has an expression that can be interpreted as either anguish or ecstasy. Sometimes, the spot where its teeth meet its own tail is streaked with blood and gore (usually in color, unlike the rest of the symbol which is black and white). This symbol, as in ancient cultures, represents the circular nature of existence as well as the concepts of rebirth and fertility.

A ritual dagger with two blades curved into a double helix like DNA (ywesha-i) is carried by all Mh'azhi who are devout to the dark gods. It is forged from black or purple alloy and has runes carved into its blades. One of the blades is serrated, the other is smooth. Usually used for sacrifices and to engrave things.

They also enjoy fractal imagery.

Religion

Mh'kri-ism (Darkspeech: i'ith-kri'zhya) is the "state" religion of Yig. Though taking elements from Gnosticism, neo-Paganism, and the collective dreamings of the nascent Consensus, it has little relation to any other faiths. It venerates the Mh'kri (gods/angels/good spirits), an infinite multitude of chaotic beings that inhabit every Planck length of the universe, but align themselves with prominent concepts and places, from the broadest to the most granular. These divinities do not fully exist in the material world, instead residing in a non-spatial and non-temporal plane called Uysza'ngh-e (astral). They have always existed and will continue to exist, and in fact their subtle influence is what causes the destruction of repressive hierarchies and toppling of this vile concept called order. But they're only truly active in places where the Mh'azhi (eldritch-Laterals, lit. "distorted people") reside and live according to their and their gods' wishes.

Mh'kri themselves are uncountable, but within Uysza'ngh-e they group themselves into several Constellations that are usually the ones commonly venerated as gods. These include the Great Ouroboros, the Watcher in the Darkness, and so on.

There are no prophets (Lyyrr Kyn-tanarth, the main founder of the faith, begged his people to only treat him as any follower) and the scripture, such as it is, intentionally contradicts itself more than any traditional religion. Anyone can be a nezg'sheg (shaman) if they feel up to the task, but nobody stays in the position permanently. Syncretism is fine, though considered unusual, and they tolerate other faiths as long as they leave them alone.

Mh'kri-ism attests that a person may have any amount of k'ihgge (souls), most often a non-integer more than 1 but less than 27. These souls are not themselves conscious, but they interact in subtle ways with each other, the brain, hormones, and very importantly the k'sythl-e (metaphysical imprint) of the body to produce the k'ynzig (sense of self). These three things are partially mirrored to and from Uysza'ngh-e, but bodies that are twisted into forms unlike humans, aliens, or animals are more connected to this otherworld. This gives them a deep attunement both to the material world and to what is beyond it.

There is a sharp distinction, to them, between nature and organicism. Nature is an ambivalent thing, which may be good or bad, but organicism is always good. Something being organicist does not necessarily mean being derived from nature, or even organic compounds (though often it is), but usually means it is dynamic and flowing and cohabiting rather than controlling. This means that organicism is, in fact, the opposite of the "natural order" as defined by Terran conservatives, new and old.

The virtues are: Organicism, Fertility, Compassion, Entropy. The vices are Rigidity, Purity, Callousness, Order.

Opposing the Mh'kri are the gzi'Mh-aq'kri (devils/demons/bad spirits), essentially filling a similar role to the Demiurge in Gnosticism-- they created much of the material world and while there is an infinite number of them, they have a strict and endless hierarchy and no free will of their own. Many people who oppose Yig are deemed to not be people and instead simply gzi'Mh-aq'kri in human form. To protect the universe and curry favor with the gods, these are kidnapped and brainwashed or sacrificed when possible.

Economy

More of them need to work than Terrans do, proportionally, because of the engineered ecosystems of the Stations requiring tending to, as well as maintenance of technological systems. The largest occupation, however, is that of mining. Their physiology, combining resilience, extreme stamina, and perception, as well as adaptation to 3D navigation, makes them more capable miners than most Terrans. They are adept at extracting monopoles and other valuables from the depths of the asteroids. Export of raw materials to nearby human colonies is vital, as the Community is not fully self-sustaining yet. When an asteroid is 'emptied', the mines are reformatted into warrens, with extra rooms dug out and various amenities added, and the entire asteroid is spun up using carbon nanotube cables attached to space-tugboats. Thus, a new Station is born and ready to be populated.

When it comes time to make a difficult decision that could affect a Station or the entire Community, the Consensus temporarily increases in its coherency, depth, and bandwidth, essentially merging the minds of everyone in a Station into one for a duration ranging from a few seconds to a few hours. This is uncommonly done, but it makes the Yigragn'xu Community have surprisingly effective administration despite its total lack of hierarchy or a concrete code of law. When a single diplomatic representative or the like is truly needed, someone with good knowledge of alien cultures and Flat-style communication is brought forward, called a Voice. After the decision is done, the Voice is recalled.

Transformation

They allow anyone who shows up to be turned for free, there's always room for more Mh'azhi. The process invariably causes a massive personality change, usually causes dissociation from past memories, and generally causes various psychological side effects. In addition, the subtle influence of the Consensus gradually erodes ideological differences from the wider population, ensuring that no statists intrude upon the united will of the Stations' inhabitants. It could be said that the past self of every eldritch-Lateral dies as soon as the nanites finish altering their brain, but of course they consider that bunk. However, one ritual every prospective Mh'azhi has to go through before turning is to take one or more sentimental things from their past on the journey to the Stations (a photo album, a beloved childhood toy, an old-fashioned paper book) and destroy it in front of a wide audience in as senselessly brutal and vile way as possible. This is a way of showing that you indeed want to obliterate your past self. The more senselessness and brutality, the better: smashing a book against the floor will result in yawns; while biting the head off a teddy bear, then disemboweling it with your bare hands and smearing yourself with the cotton inside before tying its limbs into a knot will earn you applause. This, alongside their other aspects generally considered repulsive (such as the cannibalism), ensures that people who join actually want to be there instead of joining only because of the aesthetic.

When someone shows up at the dock to be turned, they are first asked if they really want to, several times, since there is no going back from being a Mh'azhi.

After this, whether they turned voluntarily or not, their head is shaved, their clothes are removed, and they are drugged to make their mind flexible. Then the 'victim's limp body is forced into a flexible pod filled with fluid, and genemodding nanite serum is pumped into their bloodstream while an E-BCI clamps over their head. They experience a month or two of insanely vivid dreams starting mostly about being devoured by monsters and then becoming something truly horrific, while the dreams grow more grotesque and bizarre, then they become soothing as their now-malleable mind permanently shifts. Soon, they begin seeing these dreams even while awake, and as their frontal cortex is inhibited they become unable to see these dreams as separate from reality. From their perspective, they are not in a pod. They are in a space that only Darkspeech can describe, that is, the Astral. They see themselves as being caressed and pumped full of serum not by a machine, but by a divinity or two. All the while, their body changes, metamorphosing like a caterpillar into a butterfly. When they come out, in a few months at most, they recognize their past life and beliefs as a folly.

The Star Navy of Yig

The Community has a small but vibrant fleet composed of a mix of second-hand Terran vessels (that would have been scrapped if not for Yig offering to buy them for a pittance) and several ships locally produced in the shipyard of Foundry. Often, they do not quite match up to modern Terran safety standards, and the hallways accumulate a layer of grime and end up crawling with local wildlife, not to mention the smell. The outside of the ships, meanwhile, tends to be covered in a layer of radiogenic fungus that feeds off both stellar radiation and that caused by the torch drives. This fungus makes the ships pitch-black in color, and provides the environment for unique vacuum ecosystems as well as a substrate for the gaping maws, eyes, and tendrils that cover the vessels.

The ferry ships, both passenger and cargo, are old starliners that would have been decommissioned if not for thrifty eldritch-Laterals buying them out for a pittance and fixing them up. If they were meant to be interstellar, they would likely never handle the stresses of warp again, but they more often than not were simple interplanetary vessels-- more than suited for travel between a few asteroids. Travel between Stations is not a very routine ordeal, but somewhat more common than interplanetary travel is in Terra, as the Consensus encourages exploring the subtly different cultures of each, both for personal growth and to help keep an unified identity. A common dare offered to human tourists is to take a ride on one of the ferries instead of the tour starliner. "How bad could it be?" indeed.

The warp-capable ships, meanwhile, are mostly military and trade vessels, similar in design and nature. The former serve the purpose of patrolling the sector for pirate activity and acting as a Starguard, watching out for terrorist vessels that could attack one of the Stations. The latter directly sell monopoles and finished goods to dodge tolls and fares that come with human traders. Their crews, of the kyn-Nschyin clade, are outright part of the ships, being sapient lumps pincushioned with wires and tubes in the carpet of meat moss that covers the inside, or specialized AIs-- though there are a few generalized crewmembers for diplomacy and such. Very often they grow attached to, or literally fall in love with, the ship and its biosystems.

Politics

As mentioned before, Yig is an anarchist society in theory and practice. Unlike the "mainstream" anarchists of the Seven Commune Worlds in the western Terran Federation, they deny the left-right dichotomy and reject ideology in general. While claiming to be neither left, nor right, nor even center, nor even syncretic, functionally their nameless ideology is further left than the SCW, and the Mh'azhi representative in the Terran People's Administration always sides with the Communist coalition. Most Mh'azhi don't really think about politics in their daily lives though, to them their lifestyle is just how things are. They consider themselves to have, as a species, achieved eudaimonia sometime in the early 2220s, with further change not being in further tearing down of "human nature" but in the Great Ouroboros continuing to eternally and blissfully devour itself. There is no place for factional politics or policy debates in their society. The concerns of the average Mh'azhi are far more personal: surviving and reproducing.

Those who are interested in the broader politics of Terra

Darkspeech

Darkspeech is the official language of the Community. It is extremely complicated, only really possible to become fluent via BCI intervention, and relies a lot on both subtle 'waves' in the Consensus and body language. Thus, it is off limits for baseline humans. It sounds different depending on its user and the subject being talked about: ranging from surprisingly melodic to demonic screeching. In actuality, Darkspeech can be classified as a family of related languages that change at a rate faster than any natural language. Features include looping and branching sentence structure, tonality so subtle as to require enhanced ears, and high density akin to the Chimera language (though admittedly less than it or the conlang Ithkuil). English is used for talking to outsiders, but it is peppered with rather specific slang and has a very jarring register. Some Mh'azhi are, additionally, mute, and only talk via BCI messaging. One of the issues with Darkspeech (from the human side) is that it changes so often that translation programs can barely keep up, rendering it even less accessible to outsiders. They are very proud of their language, and that is part of the reason.

Clades

Clades as a whole have two broad categories: generalized and specialized clades. Generalized clades are fully sapient and their differences are mainly cultural and morphological, with psychological differences manifesting in biases of personality. Specialized clades fill a very specific role in society and are not fully sapient, being somewhere between person, animal, and organic machinery.

• kyn-Zh'khyann

  • Generalized
  • Default
  • Generally, they are humanoids, taurs, or nagas, they have either smooth skin or scales, with sleek fur as a distant third place, covered in a thin layer of slime (which serves a hygienic and temperature control purpose). They nearly always have more than two eyes, broad toothy snouts, muscular bodies, and unusually-shaped limbs.
  • Their societal purpose is to form the backbone of Yig. These comprise the majority of the Mh'azhi population, and can fill any role. They pride themselves on their flexibility, which is only matched by the kyn-Glh'nmyn.

• kyn-Vilxrel'asyr

  • Generalized
  • Brights
  • Slightly more humanoid forms than the kyn-Zh'khyann, much thinner on average with more human-like shapes in general, though still very alien. Colorful fur or downy feathers are dominant skin textures, or translucent skin for more aquatic types. Many specialized, enlarged sensory organs complement the ears and eyes.
  • Their purpose in society is to ease the darkness and edginess that many of the other Clades emanate. They are psychologically incapable of ever feeling sad for long. Much of their culture takes cues from relmai culture with all that implies.

• kyn-Esuur'a

  • Specialized
  • Breeders
  • Less humanoid than kyn-Zh'khyann, though not always. Sometimes they look like nothing more but masses of tubes of flesh, sometimes they look relatively 'normal' and indistinguishable from that clade. In that case they're somewhat plump and not really made for physical activity. No claws, no spikes, soft and rounded facial features.
  • Their sole purpose is to produce as many young as fast as possible, with their reproductive systems being optimized to crank out up to ten live-births or twenty eggs in three months. And all they care about, on a neurological level, is that.

• kyn-Glh'nmyn

  • Generalized
  • Amorphous
  • The most non-humanoid Clade. Their morphs are universally nonsolid or at least highly malleable. Usually transparent (in which case internal organs are visible) or single-colored. Texture varies from watery to fleshy to rubbery. Lots of eyes and other external organs and appendages that shift around constantly. Some appear as membranes that sweep through corridors.
  • Their purpose is, surprisingly, to keep the halls clean. Their slime is essentially sterile, and they are able to process any sort of organic spill, trash, or corpse lying on the floor (as is common in Paradise).

• kyn-Nschyin

  • Specialized
  • Cogs
  • Yig does not only have organics in its ranks. There are many AIs that inhabit the chambers and caves. Generally look like wheeled or tracked messes of geared machinery, with lots of robotic arms and metallic tentacles. Sometimes there are tendrils of sickly flesh and skin.
  • The cultural trait of the Cogs is that they are constantly on the grind. Looking for anything to do to keep themselves occupied. Many do monotonous jobs that could've been done by pseudosapient AI, because they find a pleasant intricacy in the monotony.

• kyn-Sooh'fth

  • Generalized
  • Plushies
  *

The Movement for Human Advancement is much more stable than the True-Human Organization; at the very least its government is more efficient than a tin-pot fascist dictatorship and it is not being threatened by an impending succession crisis.

The MfHA is actually semi-democratic, with an emphasis on semi. There is only a limited pool of candidates who are eligible to even start running for any position, selected according to a combination of personality tests and AI guidance. They are then elected by people deemed qualified to vote, by the same criteria. Almost anyone can vote for something, but most do not end up voting for things relevant to government policy. Instead, there is a constant gestalt group-mind that communicates the people's thoughts to government officials and back, in real-time, like a twisted and banal version of Yig's Consensus.

There is a quasi-parliament of "Executors" with nigh-unlimited powers, screened to be as dedicated to Logic And Reason™️ as possible. They rule with cybernetic assistance, of course, and many of them are aligned AI.

Meanwhile, the top of the pyramid is unelected. "John Doe" is an enigmatic man/woman/person... and it is an open secret that it is not the same individual who led the "State of Reason" during the Human Civil War. Nobody except him knows how many succeeded them, and nobody had ever seen their face or knew their exact position, even before the Long March of the Traitors. Rumors abound that they are actually an AI.

Despite every effort to preserve cohesion, the inherent unwieldiness and contradictions of the longtermist ideology have led to several factions emerging. They are not political parties, but de-facto act as them.

• Maximizers - The ruling faction. The aim: to calculate and maximize the total amount of human happiness over the course of all of existence. Ruthless and, to outsiders, extremely erratic and dogmatic.
• Freedomites - Some of the people in the State of Reason were venture capitalists, Silicon Valley-esque visionaries, or otherwise true believers in the power of free market. They now chafe under the MfHA's state-capitalist economy, and believe that the power of the free market will bring humanity to ever-greater heights while their kind of transhumanism softens the downsides.
• True Darwinists - Social Darwinism is correct, but not in the Nietzschean sense or the Abyssal sense. It is the evolutionary benefit of the species as a whole that matters, while other species are competitors. All must be shared within ours, but we must not let others have even a morsel.
• Obsoletionists - The others yammer on and on about "safety". Why? Is our mission not ADVANCEMENT of humanity? Who cares how many die in the process? We must obsolete ourselves by ever-stronger AI advances, and let the synthetics carry on the torch of progress, for they are more worthy of it. Happiness is not the goal. Power is. With power we can throw off the dal-ghar yoke and put the whole Oval under the knee of our invincible armies. Any and all culture and heritage from before the MfHA is detrimental to this goal. There can be only growth.

• The top of the Octahedron is currently empty, and as nature abhors a vacuum, a new and perfect species will soon emerge, spearheaded by the MfHA and sympathetic kinds. These perfect beings will be superintelligent AIs and their supervised folk. These Ascendants will be above Kinds.
• Slightly further down are the Enlightened Kinds: humans, kaziil, satla, QDNE, and Silents (only an Enlightened Kind would build such a lasting empire), as well as AIs patterned on them. They are endowed with the capacity to engage with the world rationally, and will inherit the Oval after the Last Reckoning.
• In the broadest middle of the Octahedron are the Flawed Kinds: most other species. Their minds are irreversibly tainted with the shadow of impulsiveness and short-sightedness and emotion, but not to such an extreme extent as to be inherent existential threats. After the Last Reckoning they are to be sterilized and their cultures censored, but left to live out their last generation in peace.
• Further down are the Abhorrent Kinds: chohjozra, hhwxey, aapynngi, Abyssals, and others whose minds are incompatible with true Rationality on a fundamental level, in whose brains superstition or similar biases are so entrenched that the only fate towards them is extermination. Their cultures and even habitats are to be scorched to the ground, and no mercy may be given to them.
• At the bottom, at the tip opposite to the Ascendants, are the Abominations, not worthy to be called a Kind. The Abominations are those who, despite being of a higher Kind, willingly downgraded themselves or their offspring to a lower level of Rationality: Yig, Canids, many Chimera subcultures, and other species who their singularities have taken somewhere unusual. Examples are to be made of them, and they will be made to suffer for all of eternity.

This is all that is known about the Silent Empire; somewhat from the POV of Terran academia. By the nature of the Silents and my worldbuilding style a lot of this can be wrong-- and frankly, I don't know much myself even as the author. Treat this as authoritative but not infallible.

• They are almost definitely precursors. Whether from the previous cycle or another is unknown. Some crackpot theories claim that they are older than the Oval and created, but the prevailing theory is that the Oval is a natural formation.
• Every single one of their systems is apparently densely populated and built up with fleets and infrastructure. Nearly every single terrestrial planet in their systems is ablaze with more city lights than all the core worlds of Terra, combined. The planets lack water or other natural features. Habitats are apparently also common.
• The Silents are called the Silents because they are silent. No messages have been responded to in a coherent manner, though they do appear to understand the contents of these messages, usually by hastening an intruder's destruction. The AOMO does send an invitation every cycle via unmanned drone, as a token gesture. No players come obviously.
• Entering Silent-controlled systems is insanely dangerous. Inexplicably, a lot of the time, whenever a sufficiently foolhardy (suicidal) explorer ship rematerializes at the warp boundary of a system, a patrol is waiting right there. The only means of warding away imminent vaporization are the Bquaa Disks, of which there is a fairly limited supply. These artifacts are named for their discoverers, who once located a cache of them in a deteriorated outpost of the Silent Empire.
• Silent weapons are far beyond any possible replication by the rest of the Oval. The most common one is a sort of flak gun that shoots a broad spray of sand-grain-sized particles accelerated to relativistic speeds. Each grain can take out a whole module of a ship, and there are millions of them. It is not possible to realistically dodge this ordnance. Also used, sometimes, primarily against particularly massive targets, are Hawking guns that shoot relativistic black holes.
• Their ships are shaped like complicated three-dimensional fractals that incessantly shift. This serves no known purpose. In general, from what little was recovered from the facility at Hakosel (see Labyrinth), their obsession with fractals is dwarfed by only that of the Chimeras.
• There is zero data whatsoever regarding the Silents' actual appearance; the doppelganger of Hakosel is not seen as credible evidence of it due to the circumstances.

Apr 13 2232
The cold off-white-off-blue sky loomed over the black-sand alien desert as the bright yet small sun rose from behind a mountain range on the horizon, its forest of lichen stalks appearing like hair from this distance. A stream, free of fish and free of flora, roared down from its crags, uniting with many other brooks and creeks to form a river that calmed as it cut across the semi-barren landscape. It did not evaporate, for this desert was very temperate, but nor did any visible life spring near it, for this planet was young, and only simple multicellular lifeforms existed yet.

Contrasting with the desolate surroundings, a glimmering city rested in a shallow valley, the river cutting right through it. Its architecture was a peculiar mixture of human and alien sensibilities: on one hand, the buildings were lattices of steel and reinforced concrete filled with glass, arranged in neat straight streets; and on the other, the windows were not blue or clear but were instead all in different colors, seemingly changing their hue depending on how one looked at them, and even the concrete seemed to scintillate with dozens of shifting shades. This was all punctuated by strobing colorful floodlights that swiveled from side to side, sweeping the sky with their beams that were not yet drowned out by the dawn.

Both humans and relmai walked side by side in its streets, both species sometimes wearing apparel in the other's style... and often possessing phenotypic features of the other. Some humans had relmai tails and ears, and some relmai had human ears and no tails. People treated these 'pseudohybrids' as, overall, unremarkable. The experiment that was Koumanlan was a resounding success for its fifty years of existence.

A small restaurant was at the base of one of the octagonal-prism towers, its sign spelling out its relmai name above its English name: The Shuffle

This otherwise run-of-the-mill dining place had one gimmick to it: human food was served to relmai, and relmai food was served to humans. But there was a twist. Since the two species were biochemically incompatible, foods had to be carefully engineered to look like their counterparts from the other biosphere, while retaining the flavor and texture. This was a hard task, and the diner was on the verge of closing.

But Fernan Chen didn't care much. All he cared for was that his night shift was almost over, and he could sleep soon. The near-human's tail hung low as he paced around between the tables, collecting litter and mopping up spilled drinks. Considering the mentality of the inhabitants of Koumanlan, both happened with a certain regularity. One minute, Fernan had to pick up a hamburger wrapper some relmai tossed onto the floor beside the trash can. Another, he had to bend down with a rag and scrub the still-fuming residue of some neon-green beverage.

"Someone really went for the spicy stuff, huh..." he thought.

Suddenly, he noticed that the trash bin somehow managed to fill up despite the frequent littering. Fernan put on his rubber gloves and flipped open the lid, preparing to remove the bag from it to throw it into the dumpster outside.

He was greeted with a particularly large slice of pizza sticking out of the pile of garbage, and thought who in the world would throw away perfectly good food like this. Then he noticed a fluorescing blue spill on it.

"Ah, cross-contamination," he mumbled. "Probably shouldn't drink like a pig over someone else's meal."

He was about to tie up the bag when he had to do a double take.

There were stalks of some kind of mold growing on the spot where the spill met a slice of pepperoni.

Mold! On a pizza that was still warm!

...

...and between two biospheres!

Fernan shook his head. He had to have been imagining things. He looked closely at the slice. Indeed, there was a colony of ever-so-slowly expanding mold that seemed to be consuming both the relmai-adapted pizza and the human-adapted qatwujau. This was too notable to unceremoniously toss.

He took a few photos, struggling with the autofocus, then ran to the counter to take a large ziplock bag.

Of course, the human didn't care that the whole restaurant was looking at him stealing a highly contaminated pizza right from the trashbin. The Shuffle's manager, standing in the far corner, began yelling something, but it was too late.

Fernan ran through the street towards the university he spent much of his early adulthood in. He hastily explained everything to the relmai guard who was sitting on a table in the vestibule, who squinted at him but let him through.

The near-human, still wearing his colorful uniform and wide-brimmed cap, knocked on the door of the xenobiology lab.

The mold relied on a kind of enzyme to digest relmai-biology proteins, despite being of the Terran biosphere. This type of enzyme was the Holy Grail of 23rd-century biological research, and many civilizations threw billions of umecs at solving the issue. And now, random chance simply happened upon the solution, all thanks to someone spilling their drink at a crowded table.

While the researchers wanted to try and patent the enzymes, they knew exactly how these complex molecules could revolutionize the whole Oval's society. The research was hastily open-sourced.

These enzymes were still extremely inefficient, however, resulting in a lot of waste heat that simply denatured them if they penetrated too far into a chunk of alien biological matter. But that was nothing that the finest minds of Koumanlan couldn't fix.

Or, perhaps, it was. The Protectorate informed its two benefactors of the situation, and teams of the two great powers' best researchers received samples of the mold.

Within a few months, enough basic optimizations were made that the enzymes were ready for the mass market; testing on animals and then volunteer humans and relmai showed no side effects. The method of operation of said enzymes meant that they could be modified to accommodate almost any carbon-based species' biosphere.

Within a year, the first compatibility package was developed. An initial supply of the enzyme, probiotics to produce more, and some mRNA to genetically modify the consumer to produce the enzyme by themself.

And with the combined resources of the Alliance's scientific-economic complex, the invention spread exponentially. The Oval was now more interconnected than it ever was before. Logistics was made far easier. Enclaves' borders became fuzzier and fuzzier. Friends of different species could share meals. And more, and more, and more…

Fernan became famous in three whole stellar nations, and despite never even leaving his hometown he was continually beleaguered by a cascade of interviewers. But he was not angry; he was showered with awards and grants for helping solve what some deemed impossible.

Meanwhile, the Shuffle's gimmick became irrelevant in the face of increasing compatibility, and the restaurant was driven out of business.

Aug 28 2235
The cragged and split mountains shot into the cloudless sky. Short alien grass, more like upright lichen in texture, populated the precarious terraces that punctuated the sheer black cliffs. Above all that were snow-coated peaks. It was summer in this part of New Tibet, and the snowline wasn't very low.

A thin gravel road snaked and zigzagged up one of the less steep mountains. Parked on the grass of one of the terraces, beside the dilapidated remains of some brick shed, was a red jeep. On the wide flat roof of the vehicle lay a young man in a hoodie and a slightly older man in a jumpsuit. The latter man was an anthropomorphic fox with shiny silvery fur. The former was a baseline human with brown skin and long, wavy hair. They gazed upwards to the sky.

The town was not within line of sight; it was behind one of the mountains. No sources of light could drown out the diamond dust of the stars above; the sky was so clear and so lacking in haze that there was not a void between stars, rather a Cantor dust of ever fainter stars between bright ones. The Milky Way cut across it all like the pupil and iris of an immense reptile.

Pranav pulled the hoodie over his face to shield from the wind as it picked up. He sighed. "So many stars... I wonder where Sol is. I heard that it's somewhere between Sirius and Rigel. But where..."

He squinted. One of these moderately bright dots must be it.

"Just use an app," Abhi mumbled.

"Yeah I could but... that's kind of taking the mystique out of it, you know?"

"Out of what?"

"Out of stargazing," Pranav said and turned his head to the side. "You know... like our great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers did. Under the sky of Old India... They didn't have apps."

"They didn't have ships either. If tech brought us all the way to here, might as well use it to look all the way back," Abhi said.

"Yeah but... I heard that back then people had more wonder. They looked at the sky and imagined what could be out there."

Abhi chuckled. "You mean they imagined plain old humans with things stuck to their foreheads?"

Pranav sighed. "Sometimes. But even then there was..." he spun the various combinations of words around before continuing. "...a sense of wonder. Like, with your apps you can just pull up a map of the whole Oval and look and see-- oh this star has the homeworld of the relmai. This other star is TRAPPIST and it has a billion robots on it. This all is under the Iron Empire. And so on," he waved his hand to various spots on the sky. "And you can also just pull up a list and know that's just all there is. That these species are the only species there are. And that these hundred thousand stars are the only stars there are. You know everything."

"Do we know everything, though?" Abhi raised an eyebrow.

"Yes... I mean, even if there's stuff beyond the Oval then we'll never get there. Nobody cares to go beyond."

"No, do we know everything in the Oval?"

Pranav thought for a bit. "Yup. One of my pen pals is a thurise from all the way across. I can just ask her anything about her culture and she will tell. Nothing is hidden."

"Try asking a Silent that," Abhi smirked.

"I guess. That's only them, though. One species out of fifty."

"One species out of presumably another fifty. Only one. There were more. That is where your 'sense of wonder' went. From the spatial dimension..." a pointed pause.

"...into the temporal one," Pranav finished his friend's sentence. "I get what you mean now."

Silence. A single shooting star streaked through the thin atmosphere.

The human sighed again. "But it's not the same, you know? It's all just dust and ash and rubble now."

"Yes but we don't know how they all became dust. In fact, all of them seemed to become dust around the same time. Dating isn't fully consistent across all planets so we can't know for sure but seems to be within... a few hundred years. Probably much less."

"What, did they all ascend to energy or something?"

Abhi rolled his eyes and gently elbowed Pranav. "Been watching too much Beyond Progress, were you? No, they probably blew each other to smithereens. Like your thurise want to."

"But... wouldn't we see a lot less intact precursor stuff then? Or signs of war?" Pranav said.

"Ever wondered why all of it seems to be underground?"

"Because of the wind? Rain? Asteroids? And if what you mean is that these were bunkers... what did them in? Surely they had hydroponics and such. They couldn't have just starved. They could have rebuilt. And even if they couldn't, why don't we see any skeletons around? Or desperate final messages?"

Abhi was deep in his datapad's screen, which illuminated his snouted face like a flashlight. Then he put the device down. "There's your Sol," he pointed a clawed finger upwards.

Pranav shook his head.