The Liliate


The liliate are really a composite of two species. The first species being the titular liliate, who are large, plant-like beings with many lily-like heads. The second species are the buzzers, who are akin to bees except come in many uniform colors instead of the yellow jacket color bees typically are associated with. Through millions of years of co-evolution the liliate have become a mutually intelligent being. The buzzers get a mobile home and food source in exchange for pollinating the liliate and carrying out tasks for the liliate.


The liliates themselves are large, plant-like beings whose many appendages, stems, leaves, vines and roots give them mobility as they wrap, pull and drag themselves around. They tend to move about in large capsule-like devices when inside spaceships or environments hostile to their kind, but on good soil they tend to go without the capsules. The lily-like parts of their bodies are akin to their heads in that they hold many sensory organs that allow them to see countless more colors than humans. Liliates also reproduce with their lilies, usually pollinating themselves when alone or pollenating with another liliate in close proximity. They don't have gender or sex, but have seen enough other animals and aliens to have a concept of what gender and sex are. Liliates are universally referred to in feminine pronouns despite not having human concepts of femininity. They're liliates.


Besides liliates, there are buzzies who co-evolved with the liliate. Buzzers, like mentioned earlier are like bees with multiple castes and a highly eusocial mindset. Physically they're only a bit bigger than a bee, but come in many colors of the rainbow to indicate their role in the hive. A liliate is a host to buzzies, usually having at least two dozen hives and queens who make their home somewhere in the liliate's large stems. These queens act as a consciousness for the liliate through a mode of communication not properly understood. Buzzies are around the size of a large bee on average, the queens being only 5 inches in size and have a whopping 12% of their body weight as a brain. They're not that smart despite that. The queens produce babies and relay commands from the liliate to the buddy drones to have them do all sorts of tasks. With advancements of technology, the amount of Buzzer types has expanded greatly through genetic engineering.


Liliates as a species are numerous, but the vast majority are commoners who lack the advanced biotech the higher classes of the sanctum carry about. Their high populations are more due to their long life spans as opposed to fucking like rabbits; a Liliate can live 3 centuries on average.

Their diets consist of water, sunlight, fertilized soil and dead, rotting corpses along with a wide range of nectars or bloods (depending on role) for the buzzers.


Government


Their society is a somewhat feudal society where the affairs of government are private to the common liliate as the typical liliate has no concern for political troubles. They are much more inclined to enjoy a pastoral existence on a garden world than to go around conquering and empire building. They don't see the point in democracy since your typical liliate can live in the wild just fine, modifying it however they like.


The ruler of their civilization is the Verdant One, who is picked by assembly (ritual will be shown IC) from the elder patrons.


The elder patrons are the close knit circle around the Verdant One who carry out the will of the Verdant One and enforce policies domestically. Their jobs are also highly spiritual in that they will pick worlds to bless with life, however the Verdant One can overrule any of the decisions a Elder Patron may make. Besides the additional responsibilities, they still carry the burdens of their lesser peers.


The liliate who deal with political concerns are the patrons, who are called such due to their patronage of the arts and their patronage of life. Their main tasks are to carry out the more complicated tasks of the sanctum such as genetic modification, diplomacy, waging of war and management of the commoners. They do not own land like a noble, instead having a communal spaceship with other members of their pod they watch over a planet with.


The commoners have it the best, arguably. While the patrons in theory have absolute control over the commoners, the commoners in practice are simply tasked with making the world a prettier place. They are numerous and live on a planet without borders, tinkering with the ecosystems and biomes of a garden world or progressively designing and terraforming/bioforming a wet enough desert world. They don't get drafted into wars except in situations of planetary defense where they may levied by the patrons to fight against a hostile intrusion.


Outside of the liliates (and their buzzers), various forms of organic drones/wetware are used for repetitive tasks and ship construction. These drones tend to just be modified versions of animals they have encountered among the cosmos.




Military technology


Their military is a mixture of organic and artificial technologies, but very lopsided towards organic tech with inorganic (metal/metalloid-based) tech being seen as a "necessary evil".


Their deadliest weapon is a powerful radiation array ("Sunshine" as it is colloquially called) that pretty much reduces a world to a blighted hell hole incapable of growing life. The liliate themselves find the weapon utterly horrifying and only use it as a last resort, only having a limited supply stashed on high level spaceships under constant watch.


Liliates specialize in biological and chemical warfare, with conventional methods not really gettuing nearly as much funding. Their vast library of deadly toxins and diseases is a well known secret of the Sanctum, and this library only grows as they expand and find new chemicals and breeds of bacterium.


On ground, their deployments of drones who are chemically intoxicated to do anything on the whim of their liliate patron, offensive terraforming and swarms of patronized buzzies (with stings that contain all sorts of horribly contagious, extremely fatal illnesss) make them pretty much a death knell to civilian infrastructure. In space, their weapons are sub-par due to their ships being more carriers than fighters. They make use of laser weaponry and other conventional modes of ballistics, but all this is more to defend a ship more than engage in a offensive war in space. Instead, the Liliate try to rush to planets they know the enemy won't be willing to glass (like a planet full of civilians) to get a leverage on their enemy and force negotiation.


On the defensive they tend to make use of multiple defensive platforms laden in conventional weapons and tend to dig very deep into planets (especially cave heavy worlds) in places where potential conflict may arise. Such digging in can make quite impressive monuments to the terraforming capabilities of the Liliate, despite how amish the common liliate is to an outside viewer.


Technological Overview


The Liliate, as mentioned in the military section are biotech heavy. This applies to their less murderous applications of tech as well. For instance, they make use of neural manipulation (or mind control) to make beasts of burden bend to their every whim. This mind control relies heavily on instinct manipulation and requires for a node to be placed inside one's head for it to actually be effective. The Buzzers have developed castes that pretty much try to go into your ear to allow for a liliate to control your mind.


Their computers use a neural form of wiring that allows them to think through many different designs of creatures and splice them. Experimentation using these computers is a constant in their society. This same neural wiring is used in their space probes, which are encased in protective layers of plastics/metals. The application of the automations are pretty diverse, but they're only seen in the company of patrons and on spaceships- they aren't allowed on the garden worlds.

The Liliate tend to terraform worlds that 'have potential' into garden worlds and can do so in a matter of a several decades because once a planet is blessed to be terraformed more and more common liliate will be transported to the world by the patrons.

Number and industry-wise they're around average in terms of productivity when it comes to space ships. In colonizing and terraforming, they're very productive.

The FTL they use is standard with nothing unique about it. The cultural impact of FTL however, is what caused them to begin their quest to start seeding and terraforming any world they bless with their kind. Even if it's already in use, as the concerns of some meathead or metalhead only matter if they dare undermine the Verdant One's wishes.


Cultural Overview


The Verdant Sanctum's overall culture is actually quite artistically inclined, at least for the vast majority. They treat their ecosystems and biome modification as art, and therefore is not usually trying to be efficient in terms of sustainability or ecological harmony. The common liliate live in quite open conditions with the closest things to homes being shelter systems from harsh weather or incomplete worlds. Patronic liliate tend to live in spaceship terrariums, only being allowed to go on world by a elder patron. A elder patron is only allowed to go on world by the verdant one, who is rooted on the home world.

The word buzzer is never actually used to describe the species that is in communion with the liliate; buzzer is a slang term invented by some other species. The liliate themselves do not really distinguished buzzers from the liliate. It's as absurd to them as claiming your tongue or pinky is a separate species. Or claiming white blood cells are separate from humans. In the Verdant Sanctum, the "buzzers" pretty much act as and perceive themselves as extensions of the liliate. The queens may be psychologically independent from their liliate, but they pretty much see themselves as part of the same mind. Despite this, the buzzers pretty much have autonomy in what the liliate is saying since when a liliate talk, it's really the coordinate buzzing of the buzzers. If a buzzer queen is lost, it is like losing a part of one's personality.

Liliate have a great interest in life in general, going as far as to raid and abduct life on alien worlds should there be no other means to obtain it. On several occasions already there are liliate who have put multiple alien species on a planet and tried making a functional ecosystem out of it. They see technology as a necessary evil that has enabled them to spread life outside of their single star system and their relationship with technology is very mixed as a result.


Their economy is pretty much built around constant expansion, for they need to keep colonizing and terraforming more worlds in order to keep growing as a civilization and most liliate go without money instead just having a simple barter economy. Patrons however, do have a system of wealth that is more based in favors than in actual currency- the better a patron is doing, the more they are allowed to commission to the common Liliate. Trade with aliens is done exclusively in barter, however.


Their relationship with other forms of intelligent life who have embraced metal-based technology to far greater degrees is not all that great, however they may find common cause with an ideologically similar species. Their system of blessing worlds may cause them to get into major trouble with another society. They have many other art forms beyond ecological art including art that humans would refer to as "art" like their large scale gardening, rock art, symbol drawing and painting. (sadly their paintings can't be fully enjoyed, let alone understood by human eyes).



History


The Verdant Sanctum's History is one that started in tragedy, for the Verdant Sanctum formed only after their kind some several hundred years ago suffered a massive dying off known simply as "The Weltering" that nearly caused their species to fall back to the stone age. In what seemed like the end of their kind, the first Verdant One managed to bring together the anarchy that was consuming their world and in what should have been the end of Liliate civilization turned into a renaissance and cultural rebirth as their conventional technology managed to accidentally happen upon the Warp Drive. In this renaissance, the baseline for the Verdant Sanctum was born.


In the first explorations of space, a realm once seen as a empty void without any value to their kind they discovered that other planets also had life. The discovery of alien worlds with life lead to the first blessings of alien worlds as the Third Verdant one set down the foundations for which worlds may be blessed by herself personally.


The criteria goes like this:
1. Wet enough
2. Warm Enough
3. Sunny Enough


Over the following few centuries and to present day, the Verdant Sanctum has spread across dozens of star systems (moderate size civilization with dense population- tell me how big is balanced for this RP) and have made contact with intelligent life in the past century.


(History beyond this point will be based in history collaboratively decided on)


Other


(Will use this section for my characters)


Formulaic Patron of Skimming Light

Prospecting Elder of the Blue Abyss

Imagining Patron with Violet Minds

(Naming convention is ROLE + SOCIAL CLASS -transition (not nessecarily just "of")- Adj + Noun)