Official name: Exiles of Faira Common name: Faira - Whether referring to male or female or singular or plural.
Government: Military society Faira government is the way it is out of need. With their dangerously low population and no planet to call home, military way of life is the only way that can keep their species alive. That allowed for a sort of socialistic governing and eliminating the concept of money from their economy which made them much more flexible in rebuilding after their Exodus.
Home system: Faira nebula (Current) - A hostile gas cloud that is full of radiation and storms that generate strong EM pulses. The Faira ships can only survive here because of their state of the art shielding systems. In return, they are nearly perfectly hidden within the nebula, as it interferes with most sensors and even the visibility is very low. A remnant of a supernova, the nebula is rich in gasses, but the only source of ores are the remnants of one planet shattered into a tenuous asteroid belt. In the middle is a neutron star - the source of the deadly radiation.
Faira (Formerly) - The Faira star was a red giant that was at the end of its life by the time the Faira species reached into space. Evolving in this system gives the Faira high resistance to heat and their sense of sight is most sensitive to the red part of the spectrum. The Faira can see the part of the infrared spectrum as well, essentially granting them heat vision.
Inhabited planet(s): Faira’Erea (Formerly) - The planet was the closest one to the star by the time Faira evolved. The planet’s life was based on organic silicon, and the Faira are no different, while the crust was also rich in iridium, iron and carbon. Copper and aluminum were practically nonexistent. Faira’Erea’s gravity was about 0,8 of Earth’s and the planet had no day/night cycle or satellites. The atmosphere was composed mostly of oxygen and nitrogen, and the planet had no hydrosphere.
Space nomads (Current) - The Faira now live on spaceships, searching for a planet that would accommodate them. The trouble is that the Faira evolved on a relatively rare planet under even less likely circumstances. It is likely they will forever be condemned to living in space, but they are adaptable people.
Philosophy: Authoritatian, Militarist
Civilian assets: Faira’Dea - A giant lifeboat featuring rotating segments to provide gravity to the large ship efficiently. Houses 90% of the remaining Faira. Spanning 25 kilometers from bow to stern, this is one of the largest ships constructed, dwarfing even the relic ship found on Faira’Erea..
Faira’Tris - Garden ship that provides the Faira with food. About 5 kilometers long, it still dwarfs most military ships in existence. Over half of it is just storage for the processed food, with the production occupying only about 20% of the ship’s internal volume.
Faira’Karte - A mobile shipyard of the Faira and their only way of manufacturing ships. It’s size of three kilometers limits the size of ships the Faira can build. Faira’Karte features one capital 2km berth, two 500m berths and four 200m berths. It has two strikecraft production modules and sizeable docking array.
Faira’Capra - A resource processing and storage ship. It can house and carry the whole Faira mining fleet.
Faira’Hexus - Colony ship that is a jack of all trades. It has large crew capacity, self sustaining food production, strikecraft factory, hangar, resource processing plant and cargo bay and advanced sensors. It is literally built around a prototype FTL drive that allows a single Faira to jump the entire ship. It is the only Faira civilian ship that is armed, but only with point defense weapons.
Species
Name: Faira Population and growth: Total population reaches 1 000 000 - The maximum capacity of Faira’Dea. The terminally ill and disabled are often euthanized to make space for new children. While this may be cruel, the concerned Faira have a high sense of species unity and go along with this willingly. The population increase is 0% due to birth control laws and aforementioned practices. It is worth noting that only about 10% of Faira are born male.
Morphology: Faira are humanoid in shape. Their hands have a set of three fingers and an opposable thumb, while their feet are toeless. Their skin is universally silver, but they have natural pigmentation patterns on it that vary in shape and colors. Their faces spot a rather flat nose with two slit shaped nostrils, mouth with metal looking, sharp teeth and trapezoid lidless eyes. Their forehead is lower than that of humans and turns into tendril like antennae that cover the whole of Faira head. Those are the only sign of sexual dimorphism of the species, as male are not longer than few centimeters and rather sturdy, while female can reach below shoulders and are extremely sensitive. Their bodily build is rather lanky with height span from 170 to 210 centimeters, and they lack physical strength due to evolving in 0,75G gravity. Their movement is very precise and quick though.
Anatomy: Faira skeleton is very durable due to actually having metal iridium deposits within, making them an organic composite and allowing them to somewhat withstand higher gravity than their homeworld’s. Same can not be said for the rest of them though, as the silicon based tissues are more fragile than carbon or sulphur based life. A punch from a human will cause a painful injury to a Faira, possibly even causing lacerations. The species makes up for this with very sharp senses and high intelligence. Faira eyes are capable of seeing wider spectrum than human eye, mostly into the infrared wavelengths. Their touch is centered mainly to their fingers and palms. The rest of the senses are concentrated on their antennae, which are actually organic sensors. This causes Faira males to be unable to smell most things and renders them nearly deaf. The female antennae on the other hand are extremely sensitive to touch, sound and chemical composition of the surrounding area, to the point of incapacitating them with sensory overload on certain occasions.
Faira reproduction is mostly facilitated by the female. The hereditary information of the species is kept as an electrical wave function rather than chemical compound, with randomization caused by interference between the female and male signal. The fetus develops in the female’s abdominal birthing pouch for roughly twenty months. Faira have very short childhoods, fully grown at the age of 10.
Due to their rare biology, Faira are nigh immune to all biological diseases, but their wounds take awfully long time to heal. They possess a heightened resistance to heat and radiation extremes in general, to a point of being able to survive on a planet orbiting a red giant, or recover form vacuum exposure far longer than a human would.
Faira don't need to eat to sustain their life, but merely to get material into their system for growth, and healing. They gather energy from red light through special cells in their skin in a process similar to a solar power plant. As such, Faira have, in theory, unlimited life span, but most of those lives end earlier due to fatal injuries.
Mind-space
The Faira are sensitive to what they call Mind-space. It is a phenomenon they cannot well explain themselves, as it comes to them naturally, like moving a limb. They are uncertain to whether the existence of Mind-space is a result, the cause, or independent on their species. Other species might designate Faira as telepaths, but the definition is not exact. The Faira are able to cause events with thought alone, such as communicate with others, operate their technology or even lift entire ships into mind-space for faster than light travel, but even if other species were sensitive to Mind-space, communicating through it with the Faira would be nigh impossible, because the thoughts would feel alien in a manner similar to hearing an unknown language.
Mind-space is the basis of their technology, which is a good security feature, as to any species without Mind-space sensitivity, Faira technology would be as useful as a piece of rock. Even if you are sensitive to Mind-space, you will have to spend considerable time with heuristic decoding (Read: Trial and error) to figure out how to operate the systems if a Faira did not train you.
Using Mind-space allows the Faira to perform some spectacular feats not generally possible with common technology, such as projecting shields to protect their ships and moving them faster than light without the need for any dedicated drive. However, such feats require the cooperation and cognitive ability of more than one individual unless they are further assisted by additional technology. This means that the average Faira ship will have more crew than necessary to operate them, potentially putting more lives at risk and also causing some logistical issues.
There are several specializations a Faira can pursue regarding their usage of Mind-space. The most common are the Psychokinetics, who specialize in projecting force fields, performing FTL travel and constructing things from raw material. The less numerous are the Oracles, whose minds have limited precognition, allowing them to see possible impacts of an action with greater ease. Finally, there are the Inventors, who focus on experimenting with Mind-Space and pushing the boundaries of their knowledge.
Very rarely a Faira will reach a point of mastery in all three areas. Such Faira, called an Ascendant, can use the Mindspace to augment their own abilities, essentially creating a Mind-space feedback loop. One such Faira is able to operate a destroyer-class ship without any aid or stand up to a battalion of soldiers and come out victorious. This condition is however very rare and takes centuries or even millennia to awaken.
History
The Faira believe to have evolved on the planet they call Faira’Erea during it’s sun’s last phase of life. As such the life form evolved to a very specific set of conditions. Due to their rather extreme intelligence, they were able to study their star quite early in their technological development. Realizing the threat, they pooled all of their resources in a last ditch effort to escape their untimely destruction.
It was in the nick of time that they discovered an ancient wreck on their planet - a relic ship left there by a civilization long extinct. Through examining the relic, they managed to learn about the life outside of their system and reverse engineer some technologies that would prepare them for what they might meet out there, most importantly weapons - a concept alien to them thus far, as the Faira were always a unified people.
Seeing the evidence they might not be alone in the universe though, the Faira prepared for the eventuality, and although their escape plan only involved what would come to be known as the civilian fleet, they came up with blueprints for warships and modified their harbor ship accordingly.
Leaving just in the nick of time, the fleet managed to get out of the system just as the star begun to collapse. The initial plan called for the Exodus fleet to find a suitable planet and then evacuate more of the Faira. Instead, they found themselves without supply lines and with no home.
Threatened with extinction, the Faira were forced to take extraordinary measures to ensure their species’ survival. The military took over with the captains of the six ships taking on the roles of the governors. Strict birth control was established and most of the socialistic laws from before the exodus like healthcare for the disabled had to be removed. Under the new circumstances, their economical system simply couldn’t continue. Thus the Faira adapted socialism out of sheer necessity.
They had no choice but to return to their home system, now one of the most hostile places in the universe, as fresh supernova remnants tend to be. After a few rough years, their situation stabilized. Now with sustainable population, the Faira begun developing new technologies and building more ships that would allow them to expand into new systems and hopefully one day find a new home so that they would get the chance to build a civilization.
Culture
The Faira are a matriarchal society. To an outsider, they might even appear monogendered, as with how things are now the males are kept safe within the nebula as pretty much a national treasure. Being busy with their own survival throughout pretty much all of their existence, Faira developed little to no culture. What they have serves mainly for education, such as documentary movies or literature.
They prefer to relax physically in their free time rather than seeking food for the mind. There are facilities on each larger ship that are built to simulate their native environment, which they enjoy deeply as the environment they can maintain on their ships is vastly different, and while habitable, not at all pleasant to them.
Due to their frail nature, no competitive sports ever existed in Faira society, instead replaced by multiple games of skill and wit. The favorite is a simulation game where a player takes the role of a guide and guides a selected civilization on its development.
As far as design goes, Faira are fond of shades of red and metallic grey for colors. Their buildings used to have large flat bases with spires towering form them, something that carried over to their ship designs, which are generally flat slabs with functional parts mounted on them rather than integrated into the design itself. Faira do not wear clothing in the usual sense - due to their fragile nature, they took up to wearing powered exoskeletons with protective abilities. Only high ranking officers and diplomatic officials wear uniforms.
Technology
Base elements of Faira technology are Silicon, Iridium, Helium and Xenon
With the abundance of Helium in the Faira Nebula, Faira abandoned their original fission reactors in favor of newer fusion ones that had better power/fuel density ratio.
Faira sublight drives eject plazmatised gas, giving their ships very decent pull and acceleration while being rather easy to refuel with ram scoops from nebulae and gas giants.
Mind-space motivators are the first Faira attempt at building an FTL drive. A Faira physically connects its organism with the device through the antennae, essentially expanding their brain. This allows a single Faira to operate even the destroyer class ships, or jump a fleet of smaller ones into FTL. This process is very energy consuming and requires time to set up.
The exiles numbers are too low to allow far many casualties of war. as such, Faira developed highly advanced AIs to pilot their strikecraft and automate most of the duties on the capital ships. The hardware is based on their own physiology, making them essentially organic semiconductor computers.
The Faira use hull-envelope metal-ceramics composite armor: Lacking resources to build heavy armor, Faira never really invested into researching the technology. Their ships have double hulls serving as breach protection and spall lining, with the outer hull being a strong composite. While relatively resistant to kinetic attacks, it has trouble dissipating energy weapons.
The Faira can detect the Mind-space echoes of events in real-space, allowing them to bypass the usual interferences like celestial bodies, or radiation that would interfere with electromagnetic sensors.
While the theoretical principles behind Faira weapons are based on a relic ship of a long extinct advanced race, they could not completely reverse engineer the advanced technology. The power consumption leaves the energy based weapons with long recharge times and the ammunition actually makes it a logistical nightmare to supply their warships without access to a nebula or gas giants.
Military:
Ground forces: 0. Faira can not spare the lives, nor are they interested in invading majority of the planets. All of their crews can be considered ‘marines’, but they train to fight inside warships exclusively.
Ship classes: FF Dwarf Class: Fighter Length: 10m Crew: 0 Description: The Dwarf is a combat drone that can act either on its own AI or be piloted remotely from a capital ship. They are lightly armored, but fast and agile. The most common tactic is to swarm the enemy with overwhelming number of these small, easy to produce drones.
FG Singularity Class: Gunship Length: 100m Crew: 0 Description: Big enough to be on the border between strikecraft and a ship, the Singularity is lumbering automaton bristling with weapon turrets. While well armored, this ship is slow and thus usually fit for escorting capital ships rather than attacking.
FC Nebulon Class: Cruiser Length: 200m Crew: 50 Description: The Faira cruiser is meant for escorting larger vessels and patrolling alongside drones, acting as their mobile command center and launch platform. Due to the drones requiring no personnel, they can be latched onto the hull without the need for a hangar bay. The fastest of the Faira capital ships, having the largest crew to mass ratio.
FCv Pulsar Class: Corvette Length: 500m Crew: 100 Description: Where the Nebulon is meant for defense, the Pulsar is a workhorse of Faira fleet, a jack of all trades, master of none. It was designed with that in mind, and itss gun placement allows for at least 50% of its firepower to be projected to all directions, with all weapons being capable of firing to the front. This is the smallest ship to carry the modular torpedoes, four tubes a piece with magazine for sixteen missiles.
FFg Comet Class: Frigate Length: 1000m Crew: 500 Description: Created to be a ‘pocket destroyer’, this class is meant for engaging enemy warships. While it has the heavy weaponry of a destroyer in the form of the 15m dual mode plasma cannon, and its redundancy in engines, it lacks the fighterbay.
FD Meteor Class: Destroyer Length: 2000m Crew: 2500 Description: The mightiest ship in Faira arsenal, these beasts can gut enemy ship in minutes with its two dual barrelled 15m plasma cannons and massive load of torpedoes. They are however extremely expensive, and to this day the Faira could only afford to build three of these ships - the Auriga, the Fury and the Imperieuse. The ship is, in theory, capable of rendering the equivalent of 35% of Earth’s surface uninhabitable if it expends all of its ammunition. Many voices have criticized the construction of these ships as being a countermeasure to a nonexistent threat. Further testing showed that it is also difficult for these to operate too far from the Nebula, as replenishing the ammunition for the two plasma cannons becomes a logistical nightmare.
Organization: The bulk of Faira ships is split between three fleets. The Defender fleet, stationed with the civilian ships in the nebula for repelling immediate attacks, the Watcher fleet, patrolling the rest of the nebula and tasked with securing expansion points, and the Striker fleet, for operations outside of Faira territory.
Gender: Female Age: 312 Faction: Marauders Role in team: Intelligence and procurement specialist, sensor technician
Appearance:
Like all Faira, Ikeia is lanky compared to a human, standing 198 centimeters tall. She weighs about 60 kilos and is of average fitness, making her able to lift up to 50 kilos unaided and run at about 70 kilometers per hour. Her face is angular, even for a Faira, with prominent cheekbones and pointy jaw. Her skin is of silver color, and she has violet pigment accents in wavy pattern. Her antennae reach halfway down her back, although she keeps them in check with an iridium clip.
Her exo-suit is light gray with patterns made in the same violet color as Ikeia’s pigment patterns. The suit has a bulge on the back that contains an EVA pack and retractable helmet.
Personnel file:
Ikeia signed up with the Striker fleet after the exodus, because she wanted to see what was out there. It was for that reason why she was so disillusioned when the admiralty chose the careful approach and only expanded a couple of systems in fifty years, none of which contained a worthy candidate for a new colony. In the end, she decided to retire and leave the fleet altogether, choosing to pursue her dream on her own.
She’s had little contact with her own species since, but regrets none of it. In her over 150 years of free roaming over the cosmos she visited all of the homeworlds that were friendly to strangers, served on many private ships and as such, created a sizeable network of contacts. This has sparked an interest for intelligence work in Ikeia and she spent several decades sharpening her skills in hacking, information gathering, navigating black markets and working with sensors, putting her Oracle training into great use.
Eventually her thirst for the unknown got the best of her again, and influenced by her new skillset, she sought out the Marauders to offer her services in exchange for a ride along.
Personality:
Ikeia is an oddball - Where the Faira usually do not talk all that much and mind themselves, Ikeia loves to talk about anything and poke around everywhere. She did not sink into the species-wide melancholy that followed after the Exodus. Granted, she lost loved ones, a home, just like everyone else, but rather than seeing it as a seminal tragedy, she focuses on the opportunity in it. She believes that this is the chance to show the universe what the Faira are made of, that extinction-level events do not apply to them.
Ever since the discovery of the relic ship on their homeworld, she has been dreaming about meeting the life that undoubtedly has to be out there. She realizes that out there is where they had to go to reach greatness, and the Supernova of their star was just a kick to get them going in the right direction.
She is well mannered, but her curiosity make her look like she is ‘butting in’. At times, even she would succumb to the species wide gloom, especially when things don’t fall through for her. Like all Faira, she is worried about the future of her race, despite her optimistic look on things, and it makes her very aggressive if safety of any life, although Faira in particular, is threatened.
Skills:
Ikeia is skilled in combat as much as someone who comes out of a species that never waged war can. She trained against her peers in simulated scenarios, but she knows the reality is probably vastly different. However, she is malleable and can adapt to situations quickly.
Her mindspace affinity is relatively balanced between an Oracle and a Psychokinetic, but her path to ascension is blocked by having no talent for Invention.
Her Psychokinetic abilities are focused on small scale manipulation - a necessity developed during her lonely travels. She can jump a person through mindspace for a short distance, up to 50 meters with a line of sight or if she knows the layout of the landing zone. She can also project a spherical shield roughly 5 meters in diameter, although it would not last long under sustained fire at that size.
She however relies on her Psychokinesis as a get out of dodge for free card.With her Oracle abilities, she prefers to avoid problems altogether. She can sense mindspace echoes unaided within a light year in real time, although small objects like individual people are much harder to detect, limiting her to about 500 meters. Although she can detect the echoes in real time, it takes her some time to properly identify what caused it. In close proximity, she can read the biological em-field of races she has been exposed to to accurately tell their emotions, helping her to recognize sincerity and malicious intent.
Equipment:
Ikeia has an exo suit with integrated EVA pack, shield projectors and two dual plasma blasters mounted in forearm pods. The suit has its own tactical AI and advanced sensor suite.
Ok, so I ditched the “recently discovered” thing. It worked well in other RPs but here it’s just hindering. Marked changes in red for your convenience.
Name: Ikeia AKA: Iki Race:
Ruling body
Official name: Exiles of Faira Common name: Faira - Whether referring to male or female or singular or plural.
Government: Military society Faira government is the way it is out of need. With their dangerously low population and no planet to call home, military way of life is the only way that can keep their species alive. That allowed for a sort of socialistic governing and eliminating the concept of money from their economy which made them much more flexible in rebuilding after their Exodus.
Home system: Faira nebula (Current) - A hostile gas cloud that is full of radiation and storms that generate strong EM pulses. The Faira ships can only survive here because of their state of the art shielding systems. In return, they are nearly perfectly hidden within the nebula, as it interferes with most sensors and even the visibility is very low. A remnant of a supernova, the nebula is rich in gasses, but the only source of ores are the remnants of one planet shattered into a tenuous asteroid belt. In the middle is a neutron star - the source of the deadly radiation.
Faira (Formerly) - The Faira star was a red giant that was at the end of its life by the time the Faira species reached into space. Evolving in this system gives the Faira high resistance to heat and their sense of sight is most sensitive to the red part of the spectrum. The Faira can see the part of the infrared spectrum as well, essentially granting them heat vision.
Inhabited planet(s): Faira’Erea (Formerly) - The planet was the closest one to the star by the time Faira evolved. The planet’s life was based on organic silicon, and the Faira are no different, while the crust was also rich in iridium, iron and carbon. Copper and aluminum were practically nonexistent. Faira’Erea’s gravity was about 0,8 of Earth’s and the planet had no day/night cycle or satellites. The atmosphere was composed mostly of oxygen and nitrogen, and the planet had no hydrosphere.
Space nomads (Current) - The Faira now live on spaceships, searching for a planet that would accommodate them. The trouble is that the Faira evolved on a relatively rare planet under even less likely circumstances. It is likely they will forever be condemned to living in space, but they are adaptable people.
Philosophy: Authoritatian, Militarist
Civilian assets: Faira’Dea - A giant lifeboat featuring rotating segments to provide gravity to the large ship efficiently. Houses 90% of the remaining Faira. Spanning 25 kilometers from bow to stern, this is one of the largest ships constructed, dwarfing even the relic ship found on Faira’Erea..
Faira’Tris - Garden ship that provides the Faira with food. About 5 kilometers long, it still dwarfs most military ships in existence. Over half of it is just storage for the processed food, with the production occupying only about 20% of the ship’s internal volume.
Faira’Karte - A mobile shipyard of the Faira and their only way of manufacturing ships. It’s size of three kilometers limits the size of ships the Faira can build. Faira’Karte features one capital 2km berth, two 500m berths and four 200m berths. It has two strikecraft production modules and sizeable docking array.
Faira’Capra - A resource processing and storage ship. It can house and carry the whole Faira mining fleet.
Faira’Hexus - Colony ship that is a jack of all trades. It has large crew capacity, self sustaining food production, strikecraft factory, hangar, resource processing plant and cargo bay and advanced sensors. It is literally built around a prototype FTL drive that allows a single Faira to jump the entire ship. It is the only Faira civilian ship that is armed, but only with point defense weapons.
Species
Name: Faira Population and growth: Total population reaches 1 000 000 - The maximum capacity of Faira’Dea. The terminally ill and disabled are often euthanized to make space for new children. While this may be cruel, the concerned Faira have a high sense of species unity and go along with this willingly. The population increase is 0% due to birth control laws and aforementioned practices. It is worth noting that only about 10% of Faira are born male.
Morphology: Faira are humanoid in shape. Their hands have a set of three fingers and an opposable thumb, while their feet are toeless. Their skin is universally silver, but they have natural pigmentation patterns on it that vary in shape and colors. Their faces spot a rather flat nose with two slit shaped nostrils, mouth with metal looking, sharp teeth and trapezoid lidless eyes. Their forehead is lower than that of humans and turns into tendril like antennae that cover the whole of Faira head. Those are the only sign of sexual dimorphism of the species, as male are not longer than few centimeters and rather sturdy, while female can reach below shoulders and are extremely sensitive. Their bodily build is rather lanky with height span from 170 to 210 centimeters, and they lack physical strength due to evolving in 0,75G gravity. Their movement is very precise and quick though.
Anatomy: Faira skeleton is very durable due to actually having metal iridium deposits within, making them an organic composite and allowing them to somewhat withstand higher gravity than their homeworld’s. Same can not be said for the rest of them though, as the silicon based tissues are more fragile than carbon or sulphur based life. A punch from a human will cause a painful injury to a Faira, possibly even causing lacerations. The species makes up for this with very sharp senses and high intelligence. Faira eyes are capable of seeing wider spectrum than human eye, mostly into the infrared wavelengths. Their touch is centered mainly to their fingers and palms. The rest of the senses are concentrated on their antennae, which are actually organic sensors. This causes Faira males to be unable to smell most things and renders them nearly deaf. The female antennae on the other hand are extremely sensitive to touch, sound and chemical composition of the surrounding area, to the point of incapacitating them with sensory overload on certain occasions.
Faira reproduction is mostly facilitated by the female. The hereditary information of the species is kept as an electrical wave function rather than chemical compound, with randomization caused by interference between the female and male signal. The fetus develops in the female’s abdominal birthing pouch for roughly twenty months. Faira have very short childhoods, fully grown at the age of 10.
Due to their rare biology, Faira are nigh immune to all biological diseases, but their wounds take awfully long time to heal. They possess a heightened resistance to heat and radiation extremes in general, to a point of being able to survive on a planet orbiting a red giant, or recover form vacuum exposure far longer than a human would
Faira don't need to eat to sustain their life, but merely to get material into their system for growth, and healing. They gather energy from red light through special cells in their skin in a process similar to a solar power plant. As such, Faira have, in theory, unlimited life span, but most of those lives end earlier due to fatal injuries.
Mind-space
The Faira are sensitive to what they call Mind-space. It is a phenomenon they cannot well explain themselves, as it comes to them naturally, like moving a limb. They are uncertain to whether the existence of Mind-space is a result, the cause, or independent on their species. Other species might designate Faira as telepaths, but the definition is not exact. The Faira are able to cause events with thought alone, such as communicate with others, operate their technology or even lift entire ships into mind-space for faster than light travel, but even if other species were sensitive to Mind-space, communicating through it with the Faira would be nigh impossible, because the thoughts would feel alien in a manner similar to hearing an unknown language.
Mind-space is the basis of their technology, which is a good security feature, as to any species without Mind-space sensitivity, Faira technology would be as useful as a piece of rock. Even if you are sensitive to Mind-space, you will have to spend considerable time with heuristic decoding (Read: Trial and error) to figure out how to operate the systems if a Faira did not train you.
Using Mind-space allows the Faira to perform some spectacular feats not generally possible with common technology, such as projecting shields to protect their ships and moving them faster than light without the need for any dedicated drive. However, such feats require the cooperation and cognitive ability of more than one individual unless they are further assisted by additional technology. This means that the average Faira ship will have more crew than necessary to operate them, potentially putting more lives at risk and also causing some logistical issues.
There are several specializations a Faira can pursue regarding their usage of Mind-space. The most common are the Psychokinetics, who specialize in projecting force fields, performing FTL travel and constructing things from raw material. The less numerous are the Oracles, whose minds have limited precognition, allowing them to see possible impacts of an action with greater ease. Finally, there are the Inventors, who focus on experimenting with Mind-Space and pushing the boundaries of their knowledge.
Very rarely a Faira will reach a point of mastery in all three areas. Such Faira, called an Ascendant, can use the Mindspace to augment their own abilities, essentially creating a Mind-space feedback loop. One such Faira is able to operate a destroyer-class ship without any aid or stand up to a battalion of soldiers and come out victorious. This condition is however very rare and takes centuries or even millennia to awaken.
History
The Faira believe to have evolved on the planet they call Faira’Erea during it’s sun’s last phase of life. As such the life form evolved to a very specific set of conditions. Due to their rather extreme intelligence, they were able to study their star quite early in their technological development. Realizing the threat, they pooled all of their resources in a last ditch effort to escape their untimely destruction.
It was in the nick of time that they discovered an ancient wreck on their planet - a relic ship left there by a civilization long extinct. Through examining the relic, they managed to learn about the life outside of their system and reverse engineer some technologies that would prepare them for what they might meet out there, most importantly weapons - a concept alien to them thus far, as the Faira were always a unified people.
Seeing the evidence they might not be alone in the universe though, the Faira prepared for the eventuality, and although their escape plan only involved what would come to be known as the civilian fleet, they came up with blueprints for warships and modified their harbor ship accordingly.
Leaving just in the nick of time, the fleet managed to get out of the system just as the star begun to collapse. The initial plan called for the Exodus fleet to find a suitable planet and then evacuate more of the Faira. Instead, they found themselves without supply lines and with no home.
Threatened with extinction, the Faira were forced to take extraordinary measures to ensure their species’ survival. The military took over with the captains of the six ships taking on the roles of the governors. Strict birth control was established and most of the socialistic laws from before the exodus like healthcare for the disabled had to be removed. Under the new circumstances, their economical system simply couldn’t continue. Thus the Faira adapted socialism out of sheer necessity.
They had no choice but to return to their home system, now one of the most hostile places in the universe, as fresh supernova remnants tend to be. After a few rough years, their situation stabilized. Now with sustainable population, the Faira begun developing new technologies and building more ships that would allow them to expand into new systems and hopefully one day find a new home so that they would get the chance to build a civilization.
Culture
The Faira are a matriarchal society. To an outsider, they might even appear monogendered, as with how things are now the males are kept safe within the nebula as pretty much a national treasure. Being busy with their own survival throughout pretty much all of their existence, Faira developed little to no culture. What they have serves mainly for education, such as documentary movies or literature.
They prefer to relax physically in their free time rather than seeking food for the mind. There are facilities on each larger ship that are built to simulate their native environment, which they enjoy deeply as the environment they can maintain on their ships is vastly different, and while habitable, not at all pleasant to them.
Due to their frail nature, no competitive sports ever existed in Faira society, instead replaced by multiple games of skill and wit. The favorite is a simulation game where a player takes the role of a guide and guides a selected civilization on its development.
As far as design goes, Faira are fond of shades of red and metallic grey for colors. Their buildings used to have large flat bases with spires towering form them, something that carried over to their ship designs, which are generally flat slabs with functional parts mounted on them rather than integrated into the design itself. Faira do not wear clothing in the usual sense - due to their fragile nature, they took up to wearing powered exoskeletons with protective abilities. Only high ranking officers and diplomatic officials wear uniforms.
Technology
Base elements of Faira technology are Silicon, Iridium, Helium and Xenon
With the abundance of Helium in the Faira Nebula, Faira abandoned their original fission reactors in favor of newer fusion ones that had better power/fuel density ratio.
Faira sublight drives eject plazmatised gas, giving their ships very decent pull and acceleration while being rather easy to refuel with ram scoops from nebulae and gas giants.
Mind-space motivators are the first Faira attempt at building an FTL drive. A Faira physically connects its organism with the device through the antennae, essentially expanding their brain. This allows a single Faira to operate even the destroyer class ships, or jump a fleet of smaller ones into FTL. This process is very energy consuming and requires time to set up.
The exiles numbers are too low to allow far many casualties of war. as such, Faira developed highly advanced AIs to pilot their strikecraft and automate most of the duties on the capital ships. The hardware is based on their own physiology, making them essentially organic semiconductor computers.
The Faira use hull-envelope metal-ceramics composite armor: Lacking resources to build heavy armor, Faira never really invested into researching the technology. Their ships have double hulls serving as breach protection and spall lining, with the outer hull being a strong composite. While relatively resistant to kinetic attacks, it has trouble dissipating energy weapons.
The Faira can detect the Mind-space echoes of events in real-space, allowing them to bypass the usual interferences like celestial bodies, or radiation that would interfere with electromagnetic sensors.
While the theoretical principles behind Faira weapons are based on a relic ship of a long extinct advanced race, they could not completely reverse engineer the advanced technology. The power consumption leaves the energy based weapons with long recharge times and the ammunition actually makes it a logistical nightmare to supply their warships without access to a nebula or gas giants.
Military:
Ground forces: 0. Faira can not spare the lives, nor are they interested in invading majority of the planets. All of their crews can be considered ‘marines’, but they train to fight inside warships exclusively.
Ship classes: FF Dwarf Class: Fighter Length: 10m Crew: 0 Description: The Dwarf is a combat drone that can act either on its own AI or be piloted remotely from a capital ship. They are lightly armored, but fast and agile. The most common tactic is to swarm the enemy with overwhelming number of these small, easy to produce drones.
FG Singularity Class: Gunship Length: 100m Crew: 0 Description: Big enough to be on the border between strikecraft and a ship, the Singularity is lumbering automaton bristling with weapon turrets. While well armored, this ship is slow and thus usually fit for escorting capital ships rather than attacking.
FC Nebulon Class: Cruiser Length: 200m Crew: 50 Description: The Faira cruiser is meant for escorting larger vessels and patrolling alongside drones, acting as their mobile command center and launch platform. Due to the drones requiring no personnel, they can be latched onto the hull without the need for a hangar bay. The fastest of the Faira capital ships, having the largest crew to mass ratio.
FCv Pulsar Class: Corvette Length: 500m Crew: 100 Description: Where the Nebulon is meant for defense, the Pulsar is a workhorse of Faira fleet, a jack of all trades, master of none. It was designed with that in mind, and itss gun placement allows for at least 50% of its firepower to be projected to all directions, with all weapons being capable of firing to the front. This is the smallest ship to carry the modular torpedoes, four tubes a piece with magazine for sixteen missiles.
FFg Comet Class: Frigate Length: 1000m Crew: 500 Description: Created to be a ‘pocket destroyer’, this class is meant for engaging enemy warships. While it has the heavy weaponry of a destroyer in the form of the 15m dual mode plasma cannon, and its redundancy in engines, it lacks the fighterbay.
FD Meteor Class: Destroyer Length: 2000m Crew: 2500 Description: The mightiest ship in Faira arsenal, these beasts can gut enemy ship in minutes with its two dual barrelled 15m plasma cannons and massive load of torpedoes. They are however extremely expensive, and to this day the Faira could only afford to build three of these ships - the Auriga, the Fury and the Imperieuse. The ship is, in theory, capable of rendering the equivalent of 35% of Earth’s surface uninhabitable if it expends all of its ammunition. Many voices have criticized the construction of these ships as being a countermeasure to a nonexistent threat. Further testing showed that it is also difficult for these to operate too far from the Nebula, as replenishing the ammunition for the two plasma cannons becomes a logistical nightmare.
Organization: The bulk of Faira ships is split between three fleets. The Defender fleet, stationed with the civilian ships in the nebula for repelling immediate attacks, the Watcher fleet, patrolling the rest of the nebula and tasked with securing expansion points, and the Striker fleet, for operations outside of Faira territory.
Gender: Female Age: 312 Faction: Marauders Role in team: Intelligence and procurement specialist, sensor technician
Appearance:
Like all Faira, Ikeia is lanky compared to a human, standing 198 centimeters tall. She weighs about 60 kilos and is of average fitness, making her able to lift up to 50 kilos unaided and run at about 70 kilometers per second. Her face is angular, even for a Faira, with prominent cheekbones and pointy jaw. Her skin is of silver color, and she has violet pigment accents in wavy pattern. Her antennae reach halfway down her back, although she keeps them in check with an iridium clip.
Her exo-suit is light gray with patterns made in the same violet color as Ikeia’s pigment patterns. The suit has a bulge on the back that contains an EVA pack and retractable helmet.
Personnel file:
Ikeia signed up with the Striker fleet after the exodus, because she wanted to see what was out there. It was for that reason why she was so disillusioned when the admiralty chose the careful approach and only expanded a couple of systems in fifty years, none of which contained a worthy candidate for a new colony. In the end, she decided to retire and leave the fleet altogether, choosing to pursue her dream on her own.
She’s had little contact with her own species since, but regrets none of it. In her over 150 years of free roaming over the cosmos she visited all of the homeworlds that were friendly to strangers, served on many private ships and as such, created a sizeable network of contacts. This has sparked an interest for intelligence work in Ikeia and she spent several decades sharpening her skills in hacking, information gathering, navigating black markets and working with sensors, putting her Oracle training into great use.
Eventually her thirst for the unknown got the best of her again, and influenced by her new skillset, she sought out the Marauders to offer her services in exchange for a ride along.
Personality:
Ikeia is an oddball - Where the Faira usually do not talk all that much and mind themselves, Ikeia loves to talk about anything and poke around everywhere. She did not sink into the species-wide melancholy that followed after the Exodus. Granted, she lost loved ones, a home, just like everyone else, but rather than seeing it as a seminal tragedy, she focuses on the opportunity in it. She believes that this is the chance to show the universe what the Faira are made of, that extinction-level events do not apply to them.
Ever since the discovery of the relic ship on their homeworld, she has been dreaming about meeting the life that undoubtedly has to be out there. She realizes that out there is where they had to go to reach greatness, and the Supernova of their star was just a kick to get them going in the right direction.
She is well mannered, but her curiosity make her look like she is ‘butting in’. At times, even she would succumb to the species wide gloom, especially when things don’t fall through for her. Like all Faira, she is worried about the future of her race, despite her optimistic look on things, and it makes her very aggressive if safety of any life, although Faira in particular, is threatened.
Skills:
Ikeia is skilled in combat as much as someone who comes out of a species that never waged war can. She trained against her peers in simulated scenarios, but she knows the reality is probably vastly different. However, she is malleable and can adapt to situations quickly.
Her mindspace affinity is relatively balanced between an Oracle and a Psychokinetic, but her path to ascension is blocked by having no talent for Invention.
Her Psychokinetic abilities are focused on small scale manipulation - a necessity developed during her lonely travels. She can jump a person through mindspace for a short distance, up to 50 meters with a line of sight or if she knows the layout of the landing zone. She can also project a spherical shield roughly 5 meters in diameter, although it would not last long under sustained fire at that size.
She however relies on her Psychokinesis as a get out of dodge for free card.With her Oracle abilities, she prefers to avoid problems altogether. She can sense mindspace echoes unaided within a light year in real time, although small objects like individual people are much harder to detect, limiting her to about 500 meters. Although she can detect the echoes in real time, it takes her some time to properly identify what caused it. In close proximity, she can read the biological em-field of races she has been exposed to to accurately tell their emotions, helping her to recognize sincerity and malicious intent.
Equipment:
Ikeia has an exo suit with integrated EVA pack, shield projectors and two dual plasma blasters mounted in forearm pods. The suit has its own tactical AI.
- Since we have already chosen Starlance's character as our pilot, would you be willing to change to a new position, or is that kinda a temporary one since they are a new member and not really a part of the crew yet? keep in mind we don't accept co-positions
- What do you mean as ambassador? As most newly met races would speak with the Council, not Exploration crews. At most they would inform council of a new planet and if pushed maybe deliver the person to the Spire. Or is this just a position they hold on their planet and you wanted to state that fact?
Well I had a bit fo a problem with defining Ikeia's place. She's been alive for longer than the lifespan of half of the cast, so she's been around.
Isn't everybody with a small craft a pilot by definition? :D She's only piloting the shuttle though, not a combat pilot, so if you need a drop to a planet, do a milk run back to the Spire or pick up a derelict probe of interest on the other side of the system, you call her rather than the fighters that have no cargo holds... *shrug*
The Faira will be cold towards the idea of overarching galactic ruling body, they would preffer to make separate deals, at least in the beginning, and choose themselves whom to interact with, given their still fragile state and the power that could be brought to end them if the powers that be so desired. So anyone who will interact with other species will have an ambassadorial role by default, with her main task to evaluate the oter species - even if they are not the most representative individual of them, they could provide insight to their histories etc. It's more of a possible worldbuilding thing really.
She's mostly going to be valued for her Mind-space related abilities I guess, like shielding a ground team or jumping the Monroe to safety if the drives give out and being a small scale AWACS.
-Could you copy what you have in google docs into a hider instead? It is difficult to open on mobile devices and such.
Will do, forgot about mobile.
- When you say the race is immune to all diseases, do you mean literally immune or that they have not been introduced to diseases to get sick and think they are immune?
They are as far as I can tell the only silicone based speices here, with vastly different biology (There IS a reason for that, but I don't want to spoil much, especially since even the faira don't know themselves). The bottom line is to think of them as organic semiconductor computers rather than life as we know it - Even their "genetic" information is kept as a wave function rather than chemical compound like DNA, so viruses are SOL, and carbon based bacteria and parasites just wouldn't survive in their organism. their homeworld was pretty much barren, with he Faira being one fo the few species to exist there in symbiosis with the rest, so no natural diseases to carry over form homeworld either. The Yhei probablz have the technology to develop some organism that oculd cause them trouble, but there are farmore effective ways to kill them all at this point
As far as any "Sole survivor" situations go... Anyone who kills a faira will have the rest of them set on a course to burn their homeworld and eliminate the threat. They are kinda bitter about that what with most of their kind being blown up by an exploding star xD I'd preffer the careful first contact scenario, at least initially.
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Carlyle,
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Apollosarcher,
Starlance,
Fish of Oblivion,
Danyel,
RBYDark,
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