Hope to see the human factions soon. Too many Xenos is bad for business, especially since I got a xeno too due to not really knowing what sort of human civ to make. But may my sugar cubes make fun contact for the other aliens be it bugs or slugs
Name or Designation: "Sugarcubes", "The Pure"
Race/Species: Xkto-Akk (their actual name, literally means 'pure')
Sex(as applicable): no physical or psychological dimorphism exists in the sexes beyond that some sugar cubes lay eggs while others fertilize them
Appearance: Design wise, they are considerably akin to a large spider, in having many long, spindly limbs that that have bulb-like grabbing organs at the end of them that are used similar to a human hand. These limbs prorude from the base of their main body, which looks quite a bit like a fleshy cube. They have small, beady eyes on the vertices of their fleshy cube bodies. Yet their seemingly artificial core skin seems of organic elements such as its fuzziness and textured body that is distinct from individual to individual. Some are known to really look like a sugar cube in their body texture, for instance.
This base design has in itself many variations from caste to caste, often pertaining to specialized functions with pilot castes often having tall rectangular prisms for their main body and technical castes having ten limbs instead of eight and a fatter core head. However their design is most influenced by their lack of need for Gravity- being space structure dwelling organisms since the year 2110 AD.
Personality: (because an entire species all think the same?). Anyhow, the pure are a caste-based species and tend to latch their identity not to themselves, but to their spaceship. The caste functions of the pure however prove much less socially rigid than one may think; in each caste there is much movement to be had, for instance.
History: Sugar cubes come from the ruins of the ancient annihilators that thrived when humans still thought plate armor was the height of advancement, their civilization existed far away from sol thankfully- as the annihilators annihilated their own civilization and many others. Currently the annihilators are but ash and ruin; the scar on the galaxy where their civilization once was still there.
From that scar would come the sugarcubes, whom were a nomadic group of beings that managed to survive the last war and nomadically spread to various parts of the galaxy. Most sugarcubes live as fleets in relative, xenophobic isolation. However some fleets do engage in commerce with other species, often trading their biological resources for communication technologies that they integrate into their bodies to have no sensual experiences.
However, the Gestalt of Xpp-kto would emerge as a regional power in relatively recent history, and be a quite curious civilization that intends to not make the mistakes of their ancient, powerful ancestors; however that may be achieved.
Other: Designated as sugar cubes in order to make them sound cuter than they actually appear.
Name: The Gestalt
Location: Currently somewhere between the technocracy and uarshi swarms
Flag: N/A (Their honorary signature is 1-3984-XXY, which is as close as you get to a flag in their society)
Govt: Decentralized bureaucracy
Their castes are split between the technicians, the pilots, the maintainers, the engineers, the gunners and diplomatics. The ruling caste is the pilot caste, who pilot the ship and the crews.
History: The gestalt is the most powerful of the sugarcube groups, with asteroid settlements that are connected through a ruling fleet that keeps order throughout the local galactic region. The Gestalt is only two centuries of age and act mostly as the centre for the Gestalt of fleets. The motherships of the fleets convene on policies at the Xpp-kto system located somewhere on the outer arm. This system tends to have a fleet that locally defends it. Much of the gestalt’s infrastructure is based much more around small moons, asteroids and the rings of gas giants than on planets. However planets are often used for their atmospheric mixtures to compose the gases sugarcubes need to survive. Sometimes a world will even be terraformed to support the unique composition of gases the sugarcubes require to survive.
Currently the gestalt are highly expansionist, their rapid spread facilitated by their advanced spaceship engineering. However their expansion sis till much smaller than any of the larger civilizations, and infrastructure wise most of it is based in asteroids more than planets. Their system of beliefs unites the sugar cubes to their spaceships. Unlike most sugarcube cultures that have given up on the concept of having a home world, the Gestalt is unique in that the Xpp-kto system has in a sense, become a new home for their kind. The legitimacy of Xpp-kto being their new home system is due to having ruins from the ancient annihilators. As little they know of the world based ancients, there is much concern among the elite of making the same mistakes as their highly violent ancestors.
Yet, their culture still remains rather violent; frequent it is ritual warfare breaks out between spaceships and frequent it is that asteroids being battered in flesh become featured art works in their society due to quite powerful scanner stimulation they cause. Cultural markings are surprisingly common in the gestalt, often in the form of fractal based patterns. These markings tend to etch into the hull of their vessels and are purely decorative, being more or less a means to signify individuals when using ship scanners. Their art overall is designed to stimulate the scanners of their ships in unique ways or to make radio songs.
Food-wise there is a tendency to “flavor” their atmosphere to give different tastes to their chemical mixture of the gas medium they dwell in. Ecosystems in their spaceships tend to play out darwinistic games, the corridors being lined with creatures similarly adapted for space that are meant to help facilitate the internal atmosphere of the ship. Unlike humans who segregate their nature to biospheres, the sugar cubes tend to have nature exist all over their ship due to the whole design of their ship being synthetic as is.
The gestalt have, due to rediscovery of lost annihilator technologies in their local region of space innovated heavily in their military, making use of energy methods that are astoundingly powerful despite the small space they are used in. Thankfully the gestalt tends to not have large fleets, instead having high quality spaceships over a flood of high quantity spaceships.
Contact with humans happened around a century earlier, with communication with humans being established being a relatively recent phenomenon. However, the gestalt recently has obtained human designed warp drives; of which proved superior to the warp tech used by their own kind.
General military information:
The engineering sugarcubes use has allowed for the construction of spaceships that are designed to be highly modular and have a overall synthetic design to them. Their ships often take on a tubular or torus-like design (with the occasional sphere or cube) and make use of highly advanced kinetic weapons that rely on having a high energy base (of which also allow for quick powerful explosive fusion-bomb payloads). They also make use of chemical weaponry (as a result of their naturally toxic atmosphere to humans) and will often use it when the opportunity is given (such as taking over a space station or spaceship with technology of interest), but are easily stopped by most forms of defense due to the payload requiring a slow enough velocity for injection. Energy weapons are quite sophisticated as well, using particle beams frequently to intercept enemy missiles and maul through enemy energy shields. The ship itself is shielded by a high energy barrier that acts as its “health”, being able to absorb hits until the allocated energy to the shielding system runs out. Despite use of redundant systems, the hull is rather weak in terms of defense being unable to take many hits due to the complexity of the internal ecosystem required for the survival of the sugarcubes and wildlife within. The ship as a whole functions as a giant individual, and this is reflected in the quick reflexes the ship has when everything is working right, often being fast enough to make long range attacks incredibly frustrating and in the atmosphere of planets this rapid reflex allows for highly evasive low gravity jets that may be deployed around asteroid colonies or small moons that often make use of high energy weaponry.
On ground the sugarcubes tend to meld into combat constructs to engage underground targets or any space stations that the Gestalt fleet intends to capture. However their weapons tech on ground never really progressed past near future military tech- making use of ballistic weapons despite their use of advanced kinetic weaponry on their spaceships. On ground, chemical weapons are frequently used- protective measures are recommended.
Chemical weaponry is a frequently used device when taking over spacecraft, on the dual purpose of killing off the crew of a enemy ship and making the ship suitable for the technicians who will eagerly pick apart their enemy ship when in tow.
Other: They're meant to be advanced, but have weaker industry than other civilizations along with having rather pathetic ground based tech due to requiring a highly insulated suit just to survive in the gravity well of a world like earth (meaning they can't really do much in terms of ground deployment beyond exploration).