Name: Mantopolitis sp.
Common name: Mantids for some humans (This can vary for other species, races, and civilizations)
Class: Alien Bug Species
Description:

During the first expedition to the moon of Ezekiel, a desert planet with low gravity conditions, and light fauna covering its sandy surface, they encountered alien life in the form of rather large insectoids near mounds of sand and rock in the shrubbery’s and coasts of Ezekiel’s surface.

From first impressions, the weary explorers thought of them as primitive, and animalistic, it is only later they find that they are quite docile when approached, they express signs of curiosity, however none of it aggressive, as they entered the mound, they were surprised to the large cavernous underground that they possessed, it was an underground city almost, highly organized and partitioned for different levels.

[Behavior & Culture]

The insects don’t seem to mind until they get interrupted on the way to a task, assigned by the Colony’s caste superiors, they don’t seem to communicate through telepathic means, on closer observation, they seem to communicate via radio transmission using implants at the base of their skull. Even if this was the case, insectoids worked in unison, efficiently, and without stoppage, and when scientists jammed the area from a distance, the silence was replaced with loud clicks and chirps, and the smell of the air changed from dry, dusty and salty to humid musk, perhaps vocal and Chemical communication, their unison and efficiency dropped by a slight margin as they were slower to react to these other methods of communication. It is thought that different tasks use different chemical and vocal commands, thus garnering a different response.

Their intelligence is quite surprising considering the insects have knowledge of their own biology to be able to plant implants, but as well as the intelligence to plant it into the center of their brain responsible for smell and sound, without impairing their regular senses. However, unlike humans, they dispose their dead in piles outside of the mound, the explorers, as of this moment are still barred from entering deeper into the lower levels of their colonies.
Note however that the city itself is made up of many spires, only some of which reaching the surface, perhaps for ventilation or gathering moisture from the air as some show some sort of pipeline running down below. Despite not burying their dead, their culture is quite interesting, they show levels of intelligence that are comparable to humans, such as large sculptures, and some sort of worship to a god like being, perhaps the queen/s of the colony, it is unknown whether they are polygamous, or if they perhaps combine colonies into their own making a sort of super colony, or some other sort of arrangement that binds colonies into some sort of alliance, like treaties.

Their food sources are limited to the shrubbery above however, large columns of warrior caste and worker caste members leave the colony in different directions presumably to hunt or gather, the shrubbery in the surrounding area shows signs of herbivory, however from studies of their remains this is not shown to be their main diet, it seems they feed on some type of fungus, and other protein rich organisms. Which implies they have figured out agriculture of some kind, similar to leaf cutter ants.


[Caste & Biology]

Physically they look like the mantises of earth, however, their biology is perfectly made for their harsh environment, a respiratory system that relies on creating a vacuum to gather as much air as possible, a mouth filter for clean water, different sets of limbs for each caste to work specific tasks, antennae and various spines and hairs built for sensing changes in their environment, large eyes that can see into the infrared spectrum, large muscular bodies for digging and fighting, and other such things, their exoskeleton also has an inner part that is used for structural support and weight distribution so that the weight of the exoskeleton doesn’t affect impair the functions of their organs.

Their front facing limbs can vary, they can have four front facing limbs and most of the time they have a pair of front facing limbs that have hands and not digging claws, or large sword like appendages, though this can sometimes happen.

Their dead gave an idea to how their caste is structured, with scientists classifying it into three main categories.

-The Leadership Caste
This caste classification belongs to queens, brood lords, and Super Majors. These are the only ones in the colony to have been classified under this caste.

The queens:
They are quite large, bulbous in physique, however, they are the driving force and the beating heart of the colony, they give commands to all other castes, and those castes then pass down command to lower castes, thus maintaining the order of the colony. She is responsible for laying eggs, and leading the colony.

The Brood Lords:
they can easily be classified as kings, but unlike ants they serve another purpose, and that is to protect the queen or lead in place of the Super Majors if they are absent in the colony, thus making brood lords, larger than some of the largest warrior caste, being 8ft at most, and 3ft wide, their equipment is also heavier and less expendable. Though this comes at a price, due to their large size, their exoskeleton being heavy only covers a fraction of their overall size, though through analysis of the bodies, it is theorized, they can take a lot of punishment due to the injuries of some of these brood lords, this could be easily disputed that they died of these injuries though that is not what the evidence suggests. Their major blood vessels remain intact, they show no signs of pain receptors so there is no shock due to injury, and their major organs still seem rather functional, it is presumed that their thick muscle layer acts as some sort of cushion or extra layer of defense, thus leading to the atrophy of the exoskeleton as it was no longer needed through the process of their evolution.

The brood lords are responsible for mating with the queen, protecting the queen, and leading in place of the Super Majors thus their placement in this caste.

Super Majors:
they are the leaders of the expedition, the military mind, the brains of the army. These Super Majors coordinate the Army they serve as the tacticians and often a pivotal member of the colony if the colony is to survive competition with rival colonies. They are larger than your regular warrior, 6’5 standing tall as to official records of observation, they have hard exoskeletons, and longer antennae.

-Warrior Caste
This caste belongs to, regular warriors, Majors, Dragoons, Combat Technicians

Regular Warriors:
They average about 5’0ft, to 5’5ft as their name implies they are the backbone of the colonies offensive capabilities, they are often equipped lightly or not at all, due to their biological weapon, their scythes/sickle like limbs being usually enough for the job.

Dragoons:
These are regular warriors that are heavily equipped with a combat frame, as they are used for a chassis of a combat suit/walker that makes them 6’0ft tall, is usually equipped with regular canons, or repeating auto canons, they’re moderately armored, except for the back where the power unit is housed. Some Super Majors and Majors can be equipped with these as well, they can be 7’0-8’0ft at most

Majors:
These are what would classify as squad officers, in the warrior caste, in charge of small groups of units that can make decisions independently after receiving orders from super Majors, it is presumed that most if not all of the Mantis like insectoids are individual decision makers. They are at least 6’0 and have a more complex exoskeletal pattern than the Regular warriors, though even then it is hard to distinguish the two apart from size.

Combat Technicians:
They are in charge of the tech that comes into the battlefield, they repair any and all equipment that can possibly be repaired, if it cannot be repaired they assist in removing it in order for the other warrior castes to be able to fight effectively again, it is hypothesized that they also work with vehicles as evidences of large mechanical objects moving through a certain colony have been discovered, and unknown flying objects near colonies have been sighted but have not been officially documented as of this record. (OOC, Larger combat walkers, Artillery, Armored support vehicles, tanks, transports, various aircraft of different roles, etc.)

-Worker Caste
This belongs to Builders, Farmers, Nursers, and Engineers.
(OOC this caste is mostly based around what they do rather than their physiology, as having one strain do all the work, is easier on the queen than having 4 different strains do specialized work, this way the colony can just shift their roles to their needs)

Builders:
The name itself is enough to explain the worker caste role of builder, they build, dig, and assemble things for the colonies infrastructure to their industry.

Farmers:
Again self-explanatory, these are the ones that tend to the fungus in the colony’s depths, and keep the colony fed.

Nursers:
These workers take care of the eggs and the young, they look after them, tend to them, groom them, and nourish them by having a sort of second stomach for regurgitation of vital nutrients into the young.

Engineers:
These workers, are responsible for making technologies like walkers, and projectile weapons, they assemble the technical parts, and pass it down to the builders to assemble into the finish products

[Technology & Weaponry]

The technology they possess from what has been observed is quite sophisticated, far more advanced than what has been anticipated from such a primitive looking alien species. Armored combatants in powered infantry support walkers, and cybernetic augmentations.

Their weaponry however is quite similar to that of humans, using some sort of propellant for a projectile, however this is not the only weapon system they have, they also make use of a railgun that uses electro magnets to accelerate projectiles, it has been hypothesized that with the size and amount of power the fastest it can fire a projectile is from 1.5km/s to 2km/s though this is only used on their infantry combat walker, perhaps even on their vehicles.

Aside from their guns, they also have steel sleeves for their scythe like appendages, and even without these their physical bio-weaponry is quite devastating in melee having a thicker exoskeleton for support.

Their medical science is also quite advanced as with cybernetic augmentation came as well, functional prosthetics and nerve replacement, their underground homes are coated with some sort of liquid cleaning agent that is replaced every few weeks that help keep the colony as clean as possible, and all their sick go to the highest level to receive treatment, it is unclear what ailments these insects may have, perhaps parasites or some other common pathogens that they have grown to live with, at the very least from the bodies they’ve examined, most have died from old age, indicating that medical practices and cleanliness of their underground homes are excellent.

Their industry however seems primitive but has a basis for their society, some parts of their industry relies on automation, which has been observed in open areas of their mechanized factories, however it is believed that in the low gravity environment they should not have this much muscle which leads to the hypothesis that manual labor is used most often in the creation of their tools, prosthetics, and other such things, other members keep fit through sparring as war between colonies, or fighting hostiles is the norm on the sandy surface of Ezekiel, it’s harsh environment can lead to resilient organisms that are ruthless in their competition for food and water.

[Relationships with other colonies]

Interestingly, there are only two major colonies that have been discovered so far, with minor colonies aiding them.

It seems there may have been a civil war between these two Major colonies, but it is unconfirmed as they have never engaged each other directly. Their minor colonies, act as states for the Major colonies.

The two Major colonies have been given names;

Conquista and Imperia.

the Conquista are the main aggressors, in most conflicts, they treat their states as part of their colony, imperia on the other hand are the defenders in most conflicts, and treat their states as individual city states allowing them to do as they wish. In both cases the state colonies are quite well off. From the most conflicted areas of fighting the explorers gather that their rivalry has been a long one, many abandoned technology yet to be uncovered, the exoskeletal remains of many long dead individuals, and the damage that they have inflicted on each other are apparent from the damage to the exoskeletal frames, and their abandoned equipment.

(If anyone else wants to found a Mantopolitis colony Civ, they may or may not have to explain whether or not they are allied with or are part of either of the two Major colonies or is completely independent)

Focus Civ Name: The Imperia Major Colony
Secondary Civ Name: The Conquista Major Colony
(Note by Secondary I mean it can be an NPC, be my secondary, or taken by another player as his or hers if they so choose.)
How they acknowledge themselves: "The Free Ones"
Description:

The Imperia colony differs from its more aggressive counterpart, (Mantopolitis Conquista, or as they call themselves, "The Enlightened Ones") is that they allow their allies or rather colony states to flourish and grow on their own accord and do what they deem fit for their colony, unlike the Conquista colony, which will actively monitor their colony state, they will either hinder or aid in a colonies growth and production as they see fit.

Both situations prove to work well, however this differing system has led to a divide between these two large colonies, as a preference of system is disputed among them. Imperia's system allows for rapid growth, and a chance for merging of small colonies which is more difficult in Conquista, however it allows conquista to maximize the potential of each individual colony state by partitioning resources to each one allowing for an efficiency in resource management.

Another difference is in their Philosophy on outsiders, Conquista is less forgiving from outsiders, fearing it may lead to an imbalance in their tuned system, Imperia is more forgiving, however will restrict certain parts of their colonies in order to preserve the more sensitive parts of the colony such as their aggriculture.

Conquista would outright kill an outsider even if unprovoked if the outsider does not announce his presence and intentions first, Imperia require provocation before action and even then it would depend on what the outsider did before deciding his fate.

They have very different cultures all together, the Conquista believe that Unity through obedience is strength, therefore their imagery and art work heavily expresses a militaristic culture, Imperia on the other hand believe that unity through diversity is strength, therefore having many diverse imagery in many different colonies.

Despite this complexity, and heavy differences, they are still quite alike in many ways, their architecture remains quite the same, their army composition and philosophy of war is similar, their technology is of course the same, etc.

Name: The Manifold Sight (also referred to as Manifold Eye or, more rarely, Manifold Gaze).

Perspective: Custodian.

Information:

Among the innumerable structures in various stages of decay covering the surface of Ezra, few are as baffling as regards their design and original purpose as one particular complex located in what appears to once have been an industrial district, at a roughly equal distance from the world's northern tropic and pole. This installation, known to its inhabitants as the Cortex, consists of a small fission power plant, regularly supplied and maintained in a functional state, a large number of empty warehouses, several production facilities, most of them inactive, and a number of buildings whose intended function is unidentifiable, having elaborate, sometimes labyrinthine internal structures and containing features and instruments outlandish even by the standards of 82 Eridani's almost omnipresent cryptic ruins. What is especially remarkable is that the placement of buildings within the Cortex seems to be entirely haphazard, with no detectable pattern or scheme aiming to increase the efficiency of the complex's more recognisable processes, and that their architectural styles are wildly inconsistent, with unsightly, utilitarian blocks steps away from complex arrangements of three-dimensional geometrical figures, entirely curvilinear towers and twisted shapes founded on strangely concave angles.

Near the centre of the Cortex, at a short distance from the power plant, there gapes the mouth of a vast sinkhole, the bottom of which would be invisible even if a strong projector light were to be shined into it. From its sides, a number of tunnels branch off into parallel wells and mine shafts, at least one of which reaches deeper than the original cavity, as well as a few systems of subterranean caverns, some of them as vast as the Cortex itself. The sinkhole, known as the Axial Conduit, is the main focus of the complex's inhabitants, the custodian drones calling themselves the Manifold Sight.

The Sight as a group is rather difficult to define in a manner accessible to human knowledge. In basic terms, it is a set of beings who, although capable of functioning optimally separately from one another, become capable of accessing new, extended abilities only when closely cooperating. Another crucial observation would be that several of their core functions are essentially useless unless employed in conjunction with those of the others, rendering the relationship between them similar to a hypothetic instance of endo-organismal adapted symbiosis and reinforcing the supposition that they might have been created or modified (possibly by themselves) to operate as a collective.

The exact nature of the individual entities forming the Sight is unclear. The fact they can directly act through numerous unintelligent, non-living physical bodies or conduits at once (unconfirmed in the case of Dweller) would seem to suggest they might be some form of intelligence designed to be capable of employing various unusual mediums as hardware bases. However, there are several factors opposing such a theory, chief among them the fact that the guises controlled by each entity at any given time do not emit or receive any sort of signal directed at each other, indicating that they cannot be virtually connected by conventional means; additionally, they are only able to interface with each other if at least one (or a section) of their physical forms is located at a specialised terminal, referred to as Nexus, of which there exist several throughout the Cortex and the subterranean network below, alongside a section of their communication's intended recipient. The apparent absence of anything that may resemble a personality or individual psychological profile in any of the beings, and the fundamentally mechanical nature of their actions ad cognitive processes, might contest the theory that they are sapient, or even sentient individuals, and instead support the view that they are extremely complex, but comparatively unsophisticated constructs; yet this would fail to take into account such things as the Sight's remarkable abilities of unprompted innovation and the lack of regular patterns in its overall activity. Altogether, all that is truly known of these beings is that they are clearly artificial in origin, are capable of advanced cognitive, evaluative, strategic and creative mental activity and do not exist as material entities, instead coordinating the actions and properties of distinct bodies created by themselves.

The most visible of the Manifold Sight's components is Watcher, whose main activity is constructing mechanical drones out of the strangely resilient crystalline formations which abound in the mines around the Axial Conduit and putting them to use patrolling the Cortex and maintaining its few active installations, mining materials for further drones and operating the machinery to assemble them, as well as interacting with outside influences. The drones are typically uniform in shape, having a vaguely triangular body (with the figure being positioned horizontally, the hypotenuse directed towards the ground) supported by seven segmented limbs and possessing an array of antenna-like organs of perception at the front. They can, however, be distinguished by the colour of the crystal variety they are built of (which may be either translucent white, opaque violet or a combination of the two) and their size, which varies depending on their function (smaller maintenance drones can reach a minimum of twenty centimetres, while conveyor or combat drones may be as large as five metres). Specialised drones may possess hybrid features, as mentioned below.

Seeker appears to fulfil the role of main information gatherer within the Sight. It does not possess solid physical bodies like Watcher, but rather propagates its consciousness through an artificially designed noble, gas, mildly toxic to most life-forms, being present wherever a sufficiently large mass of it is gathered. Projecting itself through the gas enables Seeker to perceive its immediate surroundings down to their molecular components, as well as detect vibrations, light and temperature fluctuations. The major disadvantage of this conduit is that Seeker cannot actively control its "body" and must rely on other agents, typically Watcher's drones, to move independently of environment factors. Specialised drone models exist that exploit the gas's refractive nature to improve their visual perception, or are capable of releasing it around themselves.

Sentinel is the Sight's equivalent of a weapon, in the broadest sense of the word. Its material presence is represented by webs of fibrous, rubbery biosynthetic material, interspersed with bulbous cartilaginous clumps, typically found in mounds of viscous ooze scattered throughout the Cortex and its nether regions. However, those are not so much its actual conduit as a form of infrastructure necessary for the latter. Sentinel's consciousness is effectively contained in sequences of chemio-electric luminous impulses coursing through the organic constructs, which function somewhat similarly to a neural system, albeit without synapses. If necessary, Sentinel can project itself outside the webs in the form of potent discharges, which can inflict electric shock and considerable blunt physical trauma even at comparatively large distances, or generate temporary static fields which hamper the motion of physical objects and the propagation of energy. Thus, drones designed for combat by Watcher have Sentinel projector webs embedded in their bodies.

The last member of the Sight, Dweller, remains largely an enigma. Its primary function seems to be preserving an artificial ecosystem situated in the deepest caverns below the Axial Conduit, which apparently simulates conditions akin to those present on an Earth-like world during relatively early stages of the evolution of organic life (comparable to the early Terreneuvian series on Earth). The ecosystem is entirely aquatic, with several submerged chambers being maintained at more or less evenly warm temperature; complex algae are abundant within it, as are pluricellular invertebrate animals of various sorts. Dweller has been known to experiment on the life forms it breeds in subterranean laboratories, afterwards releasing the specimen onto Ezra's surface to test their resilience (none has survived for long thus far) or handing them to Watcher for hybridisation with drones or conduits. It is unknown what Dweller's own physical medium is, but, on the basis of its activities, it can be presumed it is organic, perhaps animal- or plant-like in composition.