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Yalifira
Yalifira have no gender. He/she is replaced by xez (pronounced zeez) and him/his/her/hers is xerz (pronounced zurs). Since they are neither male nor female, in place of lady/gentleman referred to as xerzson(s).
Yalifira have green jewel-toned scales that are covered in a soft, short fur over body, arms, and legs. Average height is around seven feet tall, with a long oval face and large, oval eyes that shift between being all black, grey, or red. They tend to have purple hair of varying lengths and styles.
Ravusq
Grey-skinned aliens with bulbous heads and large round black eyes, thin bodies, and long thin arms. They are stronger than they appear.
Doolari
To all intents and purposes, gnomes with alabaster white skin and vertical, slitted eyes.
Zathru
Sometimes mistaken for human because of their similar general size and how they carry themselves, except they have a forward arched back and cat-like eyes. Zathru are descendants of lizards.
Qi’ta-ji
Non-humanoid four-legged four-armed creatures. Red skin, silver/white or gold haired.
Abara
Non-humanoid gaseous creatures who employ hovering suits to have dealings with other races.
Luranai
Fat, nearly gelatinous aliens with no actual appendages, but they can produce arms and hands to move things and otherwise interact with other races
Wunatt
A race never seen in Human territories. Around five feet tall, with heads completely flat at the top. Triangular ears at the top of their head, small, glowing blue eyes. Thick inky crimson fur, except for the hair atop their heads, which varies from utterly black to shock white. Anywhere from four feet to five feet wide, legs and arms seemingly too long for their torsos.
Bra-tou-var-ii
A rare, hardly seen alien race.
Pame
Another rare, hardly seen alien race. Around five and a half feet tall, with long, long arms that reach to their ankles. Eyeless faces imbedded within the chest, a hide that’s usually a golden-red color. They have four eyestalks protruding from the top of the chest, fleshy-looking tubes with eyes strikingly similar to human eyes at their end. Males have no hair, females have hair that looks more like feathers. The have a long tail studded in tusks.
Gaeitsu-aqin
A race never seen by Humans. Largely comprised of energy
Mog’va-triath
An aquatic race never seen by Humans.
Kityrny
Though capable of hyperspace travel, they largely kept to themselves. Kityrny are between seven and nine feet tall, two arms, two legs, and two heads. Each head has a single eye, single nostril, single ear. They have no mouths - but a toothless maw between the heads to consume food.
Xnad
The indigenous race of conjoined twin worlds. They are no more than five feet tall, with smooth grey skin, wide mouths and huge, round, blue and gold eyes. They have four arms, but no legs. They move much like snakes, undulating with tails the end in wicked, sharp spear points.
Gardut
A race from a trio of worlds just past the edge of Ravusq space. They look a great deal like shrubs and have multiple appendages they can use like arms and fingers.
Torvodach
A race spread out over a particularly large portion of space with many star systems, never encountered by Humans.
Torvodach adults average around six feet tall, are largely cylindrical from their base to about midway up their body. Then they taper to a thin, rounded point at the top. They have six appendages, the two nearest their lower half longer than the four above them, three to a side, like tentacles. Each pair on the left and right end in a different protuberance, two being pinchers, two being suckers, and the last two in slender fingers and an opposable, equally slender thumb.
Along their backs are rigid, hard scales, rounded at the bottom, which they can shift to surround and protect their entire body. Their skin is a luminescent white, which shifts as light catches it. They have no obvious eyes, mouth, nose or ears.
Dramorit-Onai
A race only recently encountered by other non-human races. They are similar in technologies to the Wunatt, but with a higher ethical standard overall.
Mo-heen
A race observed by the Gardarran Pulsar Confederation that hasn’t unlocked faster-than-light travel yet.
Druxt
A race unable to expand beyond their solar systems due to unethical practices such as slavery. Never seen by any who do not border Druxt space.
Oniadorv
A race unable to expand beyond their solar system due to unethical practices such as slavery. Never seen by any who do not border Oniadorv space.
* Ni’zoparta
A race unable to expand beyond their solar system due to unethical practices, never seen by any due to their extinction.
* Eftall
A race that occupied the same part of space where the Doolari come from, but nobody has ever seen them.
*Extinct or believed extinct
The Intergalactic Credit Exchange (The ICE) - Maintains money across the galaxy. ICE Money is referred to as credits and is standard across all the races, Human and non-Human alike.
Hypercomm Arts and Entertainment Networks (The HAEN) - Broadcasts channels across hyperspace of news, entertainment, sports, and other information. Basically, hyperspatial intergalactic cable.
Hypercomm Arts and Entertainment Agency - The business behind the HAEN.
Hyperspace communications are maintained via planetary, satellite, and remote station relays across the galaxy. The Hypercomm Arts and Entertainment Agency maintains works between all races, Human and non-Human alike.
Almost every technologically advanced world has an infonet. These, in turn, are usually connected to an Interplanetary Cyberspace Infonet, which in turn is usually connected to the Hypercomm (the hyperspace communication network) and its Virtual Data Infonet, which is also connected to the HAEN.
Cosmic Security Agency (CSA) – An intergalactic police force, allowed by treaty to operate across almost every human sector and several non-human sectors. They have limited authority with certain particular exceptions.
The CSA breaks down into three primary operations: intelligence oversight and information gathering; policing and security; and cross-system investigation.
Around the age of six, depending on the human world in question, you receive - in addition to certain vaccinations - an injection of self-replicating translator nanodroids. They can translate every human language into what is called Galactic Standard language, excepting certain words and phrases.
By-and-large they can also translate alien languages, most specifically Yalifira, Zathru, and Ravusq. After a longer amount of time among native speakers, the nanodroids also translate Doolari.
Androids are usually needed to translate the language of most other races, since the nanodroids can only glean a few words and phrases, and the other races do and do not employ a similar translation method. Nanodroid upgrades can be purchased and injected into adults.
Non-perpetual: These require a fuel to be charged and recharged. Many are battery packs that can be replaced or renewed, while others involve forms of liquid, solid, or gaseous fuel like an oil or other element. This also includes radioactive elements and fuels.
Most starships have at least some reliance on a power source that requires refueling of some kind. They are still the cheapest resources, despite needing to be renewed, because they are easiest to acquire, produce, and maintain.
The three perpetual sources: The first is antimatter or dark matter. Unstable naturally, once harnessed and stabilized these are among the best power sources and easy to maintain. These are used in starships as a primary power source and containment requires a large vessel.
Antimatter is the main source of fuel for starships of every size and configuration across most races.
The downside to antimatter is its volatility. If containment is breached, you get a very large explosion.
The second perpetual source is a harnessed singularity. This uses the energy of a black hole for power. A singularity can provide slightly more power than antimatter - and creating and containing a singularity is somewhat easier than acquiring and containing antimatter.
There are, however, downsides to singularity power. The first is the necessary size of the containment vessel - meaning only large freighters and capital ships can employ them. However, using a singularity for power negates the need for any secondaries.
But the volatility is in some respects worse than that of antimatter. Rather than a breach causing a large explosion, a singularity breach threatens not just an implosion, but at least - in the process of a breach - a black hole that can destroy anything in close proximity.
One of the reasons that singularity power requires so much containment is because the singularity created is in the process of collapse. Containment stabilizes it, holding it in its death throes while channeling that immense power. Once breached, however, the collapse concludes and can do a lot of local damage.
The third perpetual source is the most expensive, but also the most stable. Universal Source Energy lacks the destructive volatility of the other two sources, and can be contained in much, much smaller vessels.
It is the purest form of energy known to anyone in the galaxy, and while technically everywhere, condensing it and containing it into a power source is a lengthy, complicated, delicate process that takes decades to complete.
Breaching containment simply frees the energy, and it vanishes. No explosion or implosion, just a transmogrification of the energy.
Because of the complexities and time to create a Universal Source Energy power supply, they are often reserved for military applications.
The Gaeitsu-aqin – themselves being mostly energy - are a resource most non-Human races use to acquire these.
Ehteratorradium - A unique mineral only found on worlds orbiting a certain type of star. It is only ever found in relatively small quantities, but is valued because, once super-heated, adding even a drop of it to any other metal makes it heat-resistant once cooled.
Ehteratorradium infused metals not only are heat resistant, but also manage to disperse heat frictionlessly. As such, they are used to coat heat shields on many of the starships across the galaxy by nearly every race.