Kral'shir

Summary
The kral’shir (“people of the world”) originated from the planet Kral out towards the galactic rim along the Perseus Arm. Their system is actually one of the rarest in the galaxy due to the presence of two garden worlds, each capable of supporting a wide variety of intelligent life. Sadly, the two worlds (Kral and its neighbor Corifan) have had an incredibly rocky past. The kral’shir now dominate their home system and are associate members of the Coalition, although the corifan (actually a kral’shir word for “dishonorable nemesis”) are not extinct thanks to Coalition intervention.

The kral’shir are arguably reptiles (although human biologists are constantly reassessing their old classifications these days) and are cold blooded. Their highly active energy capacity, fueled by a truly impressive appetite, has allowed them to thrive where other species of reptile become sluggish and unable to keep up with mammals (who often stereotypically place themselves at the top of the evolutionary ladder simply by virtue of their biochemistry). While the vast majority of the kral’shir live in the warmer equatorial region of their planet, the kral’shir spread across Kral as their technology advanced. Kral’shir who live in the more polar climes usually live in underground, heated settlements and trade the valuable ores common in those regions for food and other luxuries.

Due to their biology and the hyperactive environment on their home world, the kral’shir have not truly mastered their own planet. As a result, kral’shir society is incredibly competitive, whether that is between individuals, different clans, or against the native animal and plant live. Kral’shir are often stereotyped as temperamental by outsiders, but they can be surprisingly patient, preferring to launch ambushes and allow an opponent to show their hand before retaliating in kind. Kral’shir society, while divided up into a large number of competing clans, largely shares a deep respect for life. While a “typical” kral’shir will quickly resort to a display of anger, competitiveness, or even violence when dealing with challengers, they will never kill an opponent unless strictly necessary. This has led to many misunderstandings with members of other races, as a kral’shir will use force much quicker than many other species, but draw a much clearer dividing line when deciding whether to use lethal force (meaning that a kral’shir might assault a human and then be honestly shocked when that same human draws a weapon in “self-defense”).

The kral’shir view technology as a tool and, at least on the home world, personal augmentation is severely frowned upon. This arose, in part, from the bloody war the kral’shir fought against invaders from Corifan, who used a wide variety of advanced technology in an attempt to subjugate them. The kral’shir have reluctantly agreed to deal with the other species of the Coalition when necessary, but augmented visitors to Kral can expect a cool welcome.

The divided and chaotic nature of kral’shir society has made them lukewarm allies of the Coalition at best, and they have only been granted “associate” member status. As the kral’shir themselves are still very much divided over whether interacting with outsiders is a good idea, it seems unlikely that this will change any time soon. The alliance of major clans that currently holds sway on Kral is friendly enough to outsiders but politics on Kral can change drastically in a matter of hours.

Biology
Covered in scales, wielding long claws, and with a powerful bite, the kral’shir are best known for their natural weapons. This has spawned many stereotypes and generalizations about them being inherently ferocious. The kral’shir are technically quadrupeds, typically traveling by “knuckle-walking” with their elongated and powerful front arms, similarly to the gorillas or anteaters native to Earth. Unlike most quadrupeds, however, they are easily capable of standing on their legs like a biped for extended periods of time. When standing fully upright, a kral’shir male stands approximately 1.75 meters tall with females averaging 1.6 meters. Usually, however, a kral’shir that is not in combat will hunch over to walk on all fours. An adult kral’shir will usually weigh between 70-90 kg and has an arm span of 2-2.25 meters. Besides size, the primary physical differences between males and females is a small crest of bone and scales protruding from the back of female kral’shirs’ heads and, obviously, genitalia.

The kral’shir are egg layers, with females capable of laying a clutch of one to three eggs every two to three years. An infant will reach maturity in approximately one decade (by the Kral calendar). Both males and females have pouches attached to their stomachs which they use to shelter their young for the first year of their lives (“leaving the sac” is considered to be the first step towards adulthood and is celebrated throughout an entire community). The high rate of fatalities amongst the kral’shir serves to keep their population well below levels that would cause overcrowding. Kral’shir young have a highly accentuated fight or flight reflex, with even an adolescent youth capable of remarkable physical feats when provoked. This volatility declines, somewhat, with age, but even adults are often seen by other species as quick to anger.

A kral’shir can, if it is lucky enough to avoid death by external dangers, expect to live for over a century. Their window for breeding, however, is fairly narrow, spanning from about twenty years of age to approximately forty. The immense amount of resources required to keep a voracious baby kral’shir fed, in addition to keeping the brood healthy and safe in Kral’s environment, means that very few kral’shir will raise more than four or five offspring over their lifetime. Furthermore, the likelihood of a kral’shir surviving past a century is low; kral’shir doctors have much more experience treating physical injuries than the illnesses and deterioration attendant to old age.

Due to their cold blooded nature, kral’shir are more sensitive to temperature extremes than most species of the Coalition. However, due to an incredibly active metabolism, kral’shir have an astoundingly high active energy capacity provided they are well fed. Kral’shir also have the capacity to absorb energy from heat (they prefer sunlight whenever possible) and can survive for weeks without food provided they have a hot place to rest and do not move around.

Kral’shir have atmospheric requirements including significantly higher oxygen and carbon dioxide than humans do. Besides this, however, they have remarkably similar habitats to humans, something which has caused no small amount of excitement amongst xeno-biologists from both cultures.

The kral’shir have an opposable talon-thumb on each hand, similar to many of the other advanced races, and were using tools long before humanity took its first steps on Earth. They have vestigial tails, which helps them balance upright when they move around as a biped, and have a surprisingly low center of gravity for such a large creature. Kral’shir scales act as a functional armor, composed of overlapping flaps attached to a strong bone base. These scales will change hues over the course of 1-2 generations depending on their environment. Differing levels of solar radiation, diet, extended travel onboard a spaceship, or even frequently moving from place to place can cause the change. Historically, different scale color was used to discriminate against those viewed as “different” within kral’shir subcultures, but with the advent of easier travel (and more dangerous external enemies), this distinction has largely fallen into disuse.

History
The best research available on Kral indicates that the first tool using life (the creatures that would evolve into the kral’shir) arose in the equatorial region of the second largest of Kral’s major continents. Several clans, unsurprisingly, maintain separate claims as to the true birthplace of the kral’shir. From there, the kral’shir primarily spread into other warm areas, avoiding areas of extreme cold or heat, and established numerous settlements. Kral is populated by numerous species of extremely resilient and deadly animals and plants, making ancient life extraordinarily dangerous (and modern life manageably so).

While there were conflicts and competitions between the clans, the precarious nature of their lives on Kral led the kral’shir to value non-lethal methods of dispute resolution. Posturing, mock battles, and athletic competitions all served as ways to avoid the ruinous consequences of war on a planet where even a slight mistake could destroy an entire village.

Technology advanced slowly for many generations, with the kral’shir developing the use of primitive tools long before humanity was in its infancy but falling behind as time progressed. In what was called the 14th Century on Earth, however, kral’shir society began a rapid period of change that many historians argue persist to this day. The rise of new transportation technology, including a primitive automotive, brought the kral’shir clans into closer and closer proximity with one another. Territorial disputes flared with increasing frequency. Violence broke out from time to time, but primarily this increased tension drove an instinctual need to compete. The kral’shir began to treasure progress and technological advancement and even the traditionalists began to grudgingly move along with them.

As the clans industrialized and became increasingly politicized, they still proved unable to truly tame their planet. Kral remains a risky place to live even today and the kral’shir developed a healthy respect (and appreciation) for its varied dangers. The presence of wide spread natural resources on Kral ensured a stable economy with steady growth, allowing them to form enclaves and bypass many potential conflicts over natural resources that have plagued so many other developing societies. Even so, it took many generations for the kral’shir to finally cooperate enough to consider space flight. As the kral’shir finally began to look towards the stars, they found the first real evidence that they were not alone in their solar system.

There was no radio message or other obvious attempt at communication, but scientists had long been aware that a nearby planet was compatible with life (even though the atmosphere, gravity, and atmospheric pressure were different enough from Kral that any visitors would require protective suits and breather-masks). Simple long range observation via telescope had revealed a network of dim lights spread across much of the surface of the planet during its night cycle. Even so, the light was dimmer than that produced by kral’shir settlements and there were many doubters who floated hypotheses about bio-luminescent fungi and other unlikely causes. Finally, increasingly sophisticated instruments allowed the kral’shir to begin cataloging background radiation levels and observers spotted an increasing cloud of what appeared to be artificial bodies (satellites) in orbit around their neighbor. In some ways, at least, the kral’shir knew their neighbors had more advanced technology than they did. What followed was an argument that lasted a decade. Finally, one of the smaller, technocrat clans (the Rastefar) side stepped the whole debate and began transmitting a series of radio messages and signaling across the gap with a repeating series of laser pulses.

One or both (kral’shir scientists now believe that it was probably the laser pulses, as the corifan were never observed to use radio communication) of these messages was apparently received. Close to a decade later, the kral’shir received their first off-world visitors. The aliens were strange, boasting odd machinery and using notably more advanced computer systems than the kral’shir possessed. They seemed unable to communicate with the kral’shir in any meaningful way. The kral’shir attempted everything from words, to mathematics, to hand gestures; there was never a response.

What followed afterwards is a hotly debated subject in kral’shir society. Accounts differ widely and the people of Corifan are obviously unable to offer their version of events. All sources agree that there was a dispute of some kind. Commonly repeated causes include a simple dominance display, a dramatic cross-species romance (deemed unlikely), an attempt by the corifan to abduct kral’shir young, and the corruption of kral’shir visitors to the landing site by a secret “techno-plague”. The truth is very confused and each clan guards their version of the story jealously, as it usually features their own people in a heroic role. Whatever the truth, the end result is indisputable: the visitors from Corifan killed half a dozen kral’shir adults before the weight of the entire clan descended on their ship and eliminated the alien crew.

The kral’shir quickly began to analyze the devices and space ships left behind and found that they were not as far behind as they thought. The primary difference seemed to be that the corifan had radically altered their own physiology through the introduction of machines and computers. This was distasteful to many of the kral’shir but not unheard of, as several clans in the coastal regions of the largest super-continent had begun similar experiments. The kral’shir were unsure what the corifan response would be to the disaster, but they rapidly accelerated research on weapons and a space flight program, all while building ground-to-air and ground-to-space defenses near populated areas.

It is unclear how much of the corifans’ motivation arose from the incident on Kral. Modern observations indicate that Corifan is mineral poor, meaning that simple greed may have been a part of what drove the corifan to seek out new sources of wealth in their solar system. The corifan did return to Kral, whatever their motivations.

The kral’shir had decades to prepare, spurred on by reports from astronomers that there was a growing build up of artificial satellites and orbital construction around their neighbor. Scientists struggled to understand the corifan’s strange technology, which seemed to rely heavily on nanotechnology. The entire might and all the resources of the kral’shir were mustered to prepare their world for invasion.

A large fleet of corifan warships finally arrived in Kral’s orbit, rapidly sweeping aside the crude defensive satellites that the kral’shir had launched from their own nascent space program. The kral’shir ground defenses, however, proved harder to crack. The amount of energy required to launch projectiles and other weaponry from the ground into orbit was prohibitive, but the kral’shir had resources and the will to defend themselves. Even so, they were unable to stop the corifan from landing at multiple sites around Kral, usually in more rural areas. The corifan deployed large numbers of automated weapons, drones, and robots. When a corifan did appear, they were encased in powered armor or sheltered within a deadly war machine. By modern standards, this technology was actually fairly crude, but to the kral’shir of the time the assault was overwhelming.

In places where the kral’shir defenses were able to hold, the corifan began to deploy swarms of nanites (tiny, programmable robots), which would descend on an area and consume whatever substance their creators programmed them to target. When the kral’shir began wearing armor to shield their flesh, the corifan redirected the nanites to destroy that first. It was a dark time for the kral'shir, as even when they scored victories they knew that they were not truly eliminating the corifan as a threat; they were simply buying time until a new machine could be assembled and unleashed upon them.

The kral’shir unified for the first (and only) period in their history, buying time in desperate delaying actions while they tried to assemble a massive army that could launch a counter attack. The kral’shir used modified nuclear weapons to disrupt the corifan advance, eventually discovering the principles of pure EMP weapons. Still, these strategies proved to be pin pricks against their enemy, who was able to adapt in kind after every new kral’shir counterattack. As the corifan advanced on all fronts, the now legendary Bhel Torivok Yr’tyl launched his great deception.

The Torivok clan had held its ancestral lands throughout the early years of the fighting but was squarely in the path of the corifan advance. Bhel Yr’tyl was one of his people’s greatest scientists and had spent long years studying the technology of the corifan and helping his people prepare for their return. The Torivok had volunteered to delay the corifan with a staunch defense of their lands to buy the assembling kral’shir army time. Bhel Yr’tyl, however, had a secret plan.

Using reverse engineered nanites, he secretly infected his clan mates (including himself), the city’s food stores, and even local wildlife. The corifan, for all their technology, had grown accustomed to the primitive nature of the kral’shir and followed a predictable pattern. When they found the Torivok defenders waiting for them in imposing defenses, they released a nanite swarm to soften up their target. Bhel Yr’tyl had noted that the corifan always collected resources as they advanced and wasted nothing; he correctly hypothesized that their nanites would not simply destroy the materials they consumed but process them and return to their masters. Bhel Yr’tyl’s nanites (stolen from the corifan to begin with) easily joined the swarm as the Torivok were consumed. The corifan apparently saw little need to screen their most advanced technology from tampering from such a primitive culture. Months more would pass, as these subverted nanites multiplied and spread, quietly counting down to Bhel Yr’tyl’s youngest child’s birthday.

All around Kral, the machines began to fall silent and the nanite swarms turned on their masters. The kral’shir, not understanding the cause but seeing the opportunity before them, rapidly turned the tide and advanced on their enemies without pity or mercy. When a corifan was slain, the kral’shir burned the corpse to prevent the medical nanites from reassembling the dead creature’s body. Machines were broken down into scrap and entire occupied provinces were reduced to cinders by the kral’shir in order to purge all traces of the corifan from their world. Much of the corifan fleet drifted in orbit, as the insidious nanites destroyed their critical computer systems and left the crews to asphyxiate.

The kral’shir would eventually discover that the corifan force was not as large as they had first feared, during those desperate days of the initial invasion. The corifan had relied on their advanced technology to overwhelm the kral’shir and had been using the resources they seized in the invasion to construct more war machines to make repairs and replacement drones. The kral’shir happily began to salvage what they could and assembled their own, cruder versions of the corifan ships. The intricacies of the corifan’s most advanced systems proved difficult to implement, particularly without the massive amount of biomechanical modifications that the corifan used, but the kral’shir quickly grasped the concept of basic space travel and the power of a mass driver projectile delivered at high speeds.

Before the corifan arrived, many of the kral’shir had experimented with augmentation and even escalated their own efforts during the war in order to better defend their homes. Some of these augmented kral’shir now live in hermit communities on Kral, content to live in isolation even if they are sometimes treated as monsters in bedtime stories. Several of the largest clans that embraced augmentation, however, left Kral entirely. After the corifan were finally pushed off of Kral, the alliance began to arm itself for the inevitable continuation of the war in space. In this lull, the augmented clans decided to do what they viewed was best for the kral’shir as a whole and removed themselves. These kral’shir devoted themselves to the construction of a giant “sleeper” ship and began the long, sub-light journey to a nearby system where long range telescopes had detected four potential planets that were within the habitable “band” around the system’s sun. Once they had departed, they largely disappeared from the attention of the home world.

The kral’shir war effort finally produced a cobbled together fleet powerful enough to contest control of the solar system with the rearming corifan. The corifan had better technology and had successfully prevented the nanophage from spreading to their own world, but the kral’shir fleet was now more numerous and growing more powerful every day. This second war, mostly in space, was as bloody and desperate as that on the grounds of Kral. Millions more died as each species went to increasingly brutal lengths to vanquish their enemy, with neither side able to communicate with one another and the kral’shir increasingly less willing to try.

Finally, the kral’shir began to push the corifan back onto their world through the costly tactics of attrition. As they entered corifan orbit for the first time, the kral’shir calmly began orbital bombardment, destroying every settlement or sign of their hated enemy they could find on the surface below. The corifan, however, proved surprisingly difficult to eradicate, and every kral’shir attempt to land ground troops was quickly repulsed or consumed by nanite swarms.

In the midst of this final chapter of the war, the tlecian uplift fleet arrived.

The tlecians found the war to be a great tragedy. They offered the kral’shir a deal. The tlecians would gift the kral’shir with technology that was, in many, ways superior to the corifan’s and construct a gate, allowing the kral’shir to spread onto other worlds and join the galactic community. In return, they asked for a mutual defense treaty between the clans and the Coalition that would require the clans to mobilize their species for large scale war against the denazra and that they would halt their gradual xenocide of the corifan people.

The kral’shir, however, refused. The concept of creating a government that could dominate all of the clans and force them to conscript individual kral’shir to fight in a distant war was not palatable to all but a small minority. What was more, the kral’shir did not relish the thought of the tlecians offering a similar deal to the corifans and resuscitating a deadly enemy who was finally on the brink of defeat.

The kral’shir and the Coalition compromised. In return for some limited technological assistance (including access to the gate network), the kral’shir would agree to come to the aid of the Coalition when the denazra attacked. They would not promise to conscript their citizens or mobilize more troops than the individual clans would decide to allow. They would also refrain from annihilating the corifan entirely, but they would maintain a series of ships and satellites in orbit and would destroy any settlement or industrial site large enough to support a counter offensive. The tlecians would be permitted to monitor the activities of this fleet to ensure that the spirit of the agreement was maintained.

The kral’shir have kept their word, sending troops to defend worlds attacked by the denazra since gaining their status as associate members of the Coalition, but the clans have (as expected) refused to send more than a portion of their available forces to fight in these conflicts. The tlecians have continuously reported that the kral’shir are honoring their agreement to spare the corifan, but bombardment is regular and the corifan still seem to be trying to mount a counter offensive or find some way to destroy the kral’shir fleet. All attempts by the tlecians to contact the corifan to negotiate a cease fire have failed. The surviving corifan people have attacked all landing craft approaching the surface (including Coalition diplomats) and have either refused or failed to understand all attempts at communication.

As the active war ground to an unsatisfactory halt, the notorious Bhel Kerot ostracized herself from her own clan and kral’shir society in general by forwarding a stolen copy of the gate plans by sublight message towards a prearranged set of coordinates left behind by the augmented refugees who had left Kral at the end of the first war with Corifan. The tlecians, despite their anger over the theft of such highly classified material, took advantage of the situation and sent along further coordinates for a rendezvous. It would take four more decades, but the lost colony of Lam would finally make contact with the Coalition and their cousins on Kral. The lam’shir had, despite all expectation by the more cynical residents of Kral, not succumbed to total body and mind modification like that practiced by the corifan. The kral’shir clans reluctantly began to resurrected old relationships with the exiled clans and the next generation of kral’shir may even become more open to the philosophies and ideas espoused by their distant kin. The tlecians have found the people of Lam to be more open to a strong friendship than the kral’shir home world but are still struggling to create a formal military alliance. The lam’shir seem unwilling to commit themselves totally to the Coalition while their relatives on Kral are still so resistant to the idea.

The kral’shir, for their part, have taken to modernization with an intense desire to succeed and secure themselves from any future threat like that posed by the corifan. They have used the gates to settle their first colony world on Urtov and are gradually opening up to the idea of relationships with friendly alien species, although the memory of their first contact lives on in the minds of many of the more cynical and paranoid kral’shir. Without the full extent of the technology of the Coalition at their disposal, the kral’shir have had to fight prejudice and stereotyping of their status as a “primitive” species and are determined to modernize on their own terms.

For the its part, the Coalition has proven unwilling to directly intervene in kral’shir affairs, even when rogue kral’shir clans seem willing to resort to the unheard of crime of piracy against Coalition shipping in nearby space. The tlecians are hoping to exert subtle pressure on the kral’shir to manage their own affairs, perhaps leading to a unified government that can finally join the Coalition as full partners. In the interim, the Coalition has taken to denying new colonial charters in the region near kral’shir space so that, in the event of any unforeseen problems, they will be able to effectively cut off the kral’shir from the gate network if necessary.

Culture
The kral’shir are better understood as an amalgamation of clans than as a single culture. A common piece of their mythos tells the tale that the first kral’shir hero (Shir herself) led a warband of her clan mates in an epic confrontation with the Gods of Kral. In the battle, Shir and her fellows slew their own gods. Since then, no one has ever been able to control “the People”. This is sometimes recited as a point of pride by the kral’shir, who treasure their freedom and traditions, but can also wryly refer to the fractious nature of politics on Kral and the difficulty of implementing even beneficial governmental programs.

For many thousands of years the kral’shir changed slowly, if at all, but experienced a massive acceleration around the 14th century on Earth. Transportation technology allowed clans from across Kral to come into contact with one another with greater and greater ease. This rarely led to war, but it usually fostered competition. The kral’shir adapted, painfully at times, to this new reality and began a series of decentralized reforms that persist to this day; kral’shir culture is constantly in flux with relatively few rules that are seen as inviolable.

The first and foremost stricture that most kral’shir (those associated with the dominant “traditionalist” beliefs on the home world) will not break is a strict prohibition against mechanical augmentation of their bodies. Their experience with the corifan has led to the kral’shir belief that as organic beings increasingly rely on machines, they begin to think like machines. A kral’shir has less fear of an Artificial Intelligence than they do of a cyborg; to the kral’shir, the cyborg retains the innate capacity for cruelty and violence found in organic life while sacrificing the moral code that serves to keep it in check. A computer, at least, is only obeying its programming.

A second similarity, common across nearly all of the kral’shir tribes, is a total lack of the discrimination based on gender that is common throughout so many cultures in the galaxy. To the kral’shir, this is simply a matter of common sense: Kral is a dangerous place, different clans are usually not good neighbors, and they have already experienced a near extinction event thanks to an outside species. The concept that half of the population should be prevented from fully contributing to the clan’s well being (whether that contribution is child rearing or waging war) seems preposterous.

The kral’shir have found numerous other ways to discriminate against one another, however. Beyond the traditional (and fading) differentiation between kral’shir of various scale hues, the kral’shir are normally most separated along clan lines. While many kral’shir recognize the honor due to any clan, no matter how large or small, others hold surprisingly long memories. A clan’s betrayal, or violation of one of the few sacred traditions, can still hold weight after hundreds of years.

The kral’shir are less combative than popular Coalition media makes them out to be, but they are incredibly competitive. Their inter-clan sports competitions are undoubtedly one of the wonders of the galaxy. Participation in these monthly events is considered to be extremely honorable and an excellent way of resolving disputes; the terms of many peace treaties have been decided over the result of a particularly fierce tournament. By far, the most popular sport on Kral is that of mundo, fairly analogous to Earth’s rugby, and these matches are one of the few pastimes that the kral’shir seem to share across all clan boundaries. Huge, global events are held multiple times a year on Kral, with the location rotating from clan to clan.

The kral’shir perform music and create magnificent art, but their finest work is usually found in the field of architecture. While there are endless divisions between clans, actual clan groups are extremely adept at cooperation. In addition, the desire to compete with other clans in peaceful ways often encourages the kral’shir to build impressive monuments to show their dominance to their neighbors. Kral’shir cities are truly stunning places to visit and have already become a popular driver of interstellar tourism.

The kral’shir rarely kill outside of a time of war, but when they do fight they can be unrelenting. When a formal war is declared (they find the practice of waging a war without declaring it first through a highly complicated series of formal pronouncements to be highly distasteful), the kral’shir consider all tactics to be on the table and embrace total war in a way that only a truly competitive culture can.

Usually, however, a kral’shir will not kill unnecessarily. That being said, kral’shir have a hard time understanding the aversion of other species to non-lethal acts of violence. A kral’shir is expected to have many rough encounters over the course of his or her life, providing a useful (and non-lethal) way of establishing dominance and avoiding potentially deadly confrontation. While it is certainly regrettable behavior, the kral’shir see little real threat in a rogue clan ambushing a Coalition trade vessel and absconding with its cargo provided they did not lie, murder, or refuse to accept a surrender. This has caused numerous ongoing disputes with Coalition authority and is a significant factor in the kral’shir only retaining associate status within the Coalition.

There are many ancient customs that have spread a surprisingly large number of clans, including a hospitality tradition similar to that found in many ancient Mediterranean and Gaelic cultures on Earth. A kral’shir will often fight, even to the death, against their own kin in order to protect an individual they have accepted into their home. Even a gross violation of etiquette by the visitor will usually only prompt a hosting kral’shir to escort that visitor to a safe location (with proper provisions) and advising them to never return. If said offending individual is encountered again, however, all bets are off. Similarly, the kral’shir also idealize an extreme form of loyalty that both requires subordinates to follow a properly dominant leader and demands that said leader properly submit (or die) in order to protect the lives of those same followers. These, and other similar traditions, are thought to be a cultural response to the extreme danger posed by Kral’s hyperactive biosphere and deadly environment; cooperation and trust, even amongst rivals, has helped ensure the survival of the disparate whole countless times throughout kral’shir history.

As is true of most things on Kral, even the most popular traditions can prove contentious and far from universal. Particularly amongst marginalized kral’shir or those living far from home, these traditions hold less and less meaning every year. For now, however, a violation of these ancient traditions remains one of the exceedingly few provocations that the kral’shir believes to be true justification for lethal force.

Religion
The kral’shir lack formal religions along the lines found on Earth (and other, similar worlds). According to a widespread kral’shir legend, their heroes killed their gods many thousands of years ago during a great war between supernatural beings vying for control of the kral’shir themselves. Since then, the kral’shir have lacked a dominant religion, but their adherence to tradition and interest in philosophy has led to a wide spectrum of belief systems.

Kral’shir ethics focus mainly on the concept of loyalty. This can take many forms, but common philosophical systems focus on the competition between loyalty to a clan, a smaller family unit, the self (sometimes interpreted as individualism, others as hedonism), ideals, and the species. Most kral’shir have a hierarchy that differs in subtle ways from that of their neighboring clans but find common ground in the belief that loyalty itself is important. Depression is treated very seriously, usually prompting a widespread intervention from the entire clan, and nihilism is terrifying.

In part due to the fierce individualism which functions in a strange duality with the kral’shir focus on loyalty, and in part due to the experiences of the kral’shir people during the corifan invasion, the kral’shir are also strongly opposed to personal augmentation. This being Kral, however, means that even this strong aversion is not universal. Some isolated communities on Kral, and many kral’shir who live off-world, have embraced augmentation, despite its philosophical implications.

Another popular philosophy on Kral bears many similarities to determinism. These philosophers argue that the environment shapes all decisions, even by “free-willed” organic life. They do not deny the thinking capacity of sapient beings but rather argue that these decisions are all based on the context surrounding the individuals making them. Popular thinking on Kral, at least at the moment, is that since the environment shapes choice, building the perfect society merely requires the careful engineering of the environment. Of course, since every individual Kral’shir has a different idea as to what this means, this has usually taken the form of aesthetic schools similar to feng shui on Earth as well as ethics courses taught to children during their education.

Off-world kral’shir often espouse more cosmopolitan views but are no less divided in their thinking. The themes of loyalty, even to those ideologically separated from their kin on the home world, still ring strong. The name of the first Kral colony world (Lam’shir) - settled by augmented exiles following the first war against the corifan- translates roughly to “distant friend.”

Economy
The kral’shir have closer to an organized, command economy than a free market, but these collectives are organized by clans on a strictly local level. Large bureaucratic bodies created by treaties between the clans have less authority than one might expect, largely functioning as exchanges to enable efficient trade between the various clan groups in Kral’shir territory.

Kral’shir businesses occupy a niche in society much closer to the original conception of corporations in Western European and American culture. In short, they are private entities empowered by the government to take on certain tasks that the government believes it would do poorly. They are sharply limited to activities that specifically relate to their corporate charter and attempts to diversify to other areas or acquire influence in unrelated fields are sharply curtailed. As such, kral’shir businesses are much like their governments: small, competitive, and occupying specialized niches in society.

Due to their status as associate members of the Coalition, the kral’shir have not received quite the level of technological assistance from the tlecians as other species have. They have taken this challenge in good humor, ramping up their domestic efforts in order to achieve similar results through different methods. The kral’shir are expanding rapidly into outer space, focusing their efforts on cooperative initiatives like space elevators and orbital dry docks that will allow the widely disparate clans to pursue their own agendas. Some reformists hope that the rapid expansion of infrastructure, both planet side and in local space, will see the gradual unification of the kral’shir and allow a true alliance to grow between Kral and the Coalition. Others, however, have pointed to the rise in interstellar violence brought about by the kral’shir expansion and the inability of any central authority to keep control over the excesses of resistant clans.

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Language
The kral’shir clans speak many languages (there are an estimated 7,240 dialects spoken on their home world of Kral alone, with over 1,000 more on their colonies), with the only true common tongue being that of the Kral’pomte (literally “world language” but more accurately understood as “combat language”). Pomte used to be well known across all of the kral’shir clans, as it was the only reliable way to communicate before, during, or after a conflict with another clan.

Now, Pomte is falling into disuse and many fear it will be forgotten altogether. The kral’shir reluctantly allowed the adoption of the tlecians’ supremely valuable Coalition translator. In respect for the kral’shir’s disgust concerning implants and augmentation, the tlecians modified the design so that the device sits entirely outside of the user’s body. Now, a kral’shir can simply speak in the native tongue of their clan and be understood by anyone equipped with the nearly ubiquitous devices.

Some kral’shir hope this historic shift in communicability will mark a turning point in the unification of the fractured world of Kral, but others see it as a dangerous short cut that seeks to crush local culture in order to satisfy alien outsiders who already have too much influence over kral’shir affairs. There is a sharp split between the clans on the wisdom of using these devices, and there is a substantial minority who refuse to use them entirely. Fortunately, the tlecian device can also translate Pomte.

Military
The kral’shir army is an amalgamation of different clan groups that, hypothetically, can be called up to fight under one banner. When united, the kral’shir can field an extremely capable force

The kral’shir navy is still a work in progress and remains very fragmented. The navy is actually more of an alliance between the fleets of different clans. The large majority of the clans who have the economic power to support a small fleet of starships are part of the ruling alliance on Kral, but even the closest friendships amongst the kral’shir can be contentious. As a result, the kral’shir operate a decentralized military command structure, delegating tasks to certain sub-fleets and letting them handle their own affairs during an operation. Given how quickly any command structure can fall apart in the chaos of battle, this has served the Kral’shir better than one might expect.

The multi-clan fleet blockading Corifan is one of the few places in kral’shir society where a centralized authority has been able to exert control. The Corifan Fleet Authority, governed by an elected and rotating board of three admirals (all with strict term limits), has kept the peace through judicious use of orbital bombardment for decades. The current board, composed of Krat Sorif Juntak, Krat Ikken Ta’phon, and Krat Erat Bula’t, has just started a new term and represent a diverse group of clans that, back on Kral, are often squabbling and competing with one another. Despite the traditions of kral’shir politics, the fleet has remained stable and remarkably disciplined through the course of its mission. Most of the day to day authority within the fleet rests with the universally respected Su Tok Kral Hunur. He has created an extremely professional fighting force. As a result, the Coalition has proven increasingly willing to work with the fleet and assist in their mission, building friendships and mutual trust that, the tlecians hope, will one day allow them to incorporate the kral’shir into the Coalition’s ranks.

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Notable Planets
Kral – the home world of the kral’shir has a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than Earth, as well as higher proportions of oxygen. Besides that, however, Kral is surprisingly similar to Earth. Kral is, on average, warmer than Earth, but still has chilly regions closer to the planet’s poles. The kral’shir have, reluctantly, settled these areas (mostly in underground cities) in order to better exploit their planet’s high concentration of valuable minerals. Kral itself is considered to be incredibly wealthy in natural resources, including pharmaceuticals from the numerous (and highly dangerous) wild flora and fauna that populate the wilderness outside of kral’shir settlements. The kral’shir are notoriously resistant to the idea of central government and do not welcome census takers, but the population of Kral is higher than five billion and may actually be closer to six. Their rich planet, large population, and natural defenses make kral’shir something of a sleeping giant; if they could ever find a way to stop the never ending infighting between their clans, they would be a powerful force on the galactic stage.

Lam – the first colony world settled by the kral’shir, its settlers exiled themselves from the home world to escape what they viewed as a looming civil war over the use of augmentations to change the “natural” make up of organic beings. The colony was first settled by several full sized clans, who left their planet en masse in a massive sleeper ship in cryogenic suspension after the first war with the corifan concluded. They targeted a system with a wide habitable band, containing many potential colony planets. Lam was the one planet that was terraformable. This process, while advanced, is still ongoing. Kral’shir outside of the planet’s many domed habitats must wear breather masks, but no longer have to wear environmental suits. With further development, it is hoped that the atmosphere of Lam will be fully breathable within another one hundred years. While there are many similarities between Lam’shir and Kral'shir society, the settlers’ history of marginalization and decision to embrace personal augmentation has left them at least a little more unified and cosmopolitan in their thinking. Thanks to the intervention of a rogue kral’shir scientist after first contact with the tlecians, the lam’shir colonists were able to construct their own (small) gate and linked themselves to the galactic network. The Tlecians are currently ferrying gate components through this small connection in order to construct a much larger gate that can handle standard sized trade ships. The home world clans, reluctantly at times, have begun to pursue a friendship with their lost cousins. Controversially, while they have agreed to assist the Coalition of their own accord and have sent diplomatic observers to other planets, they have refused formal membership in the alliance while reunification talks are underway with the kral’shir.

Urtov – the first “official” colony, with colonists drawn from the ranks of home world clans long after the lam’shir clans left on their self-imposed exile, this new world is somewhat poor in natural resources but has an atmosphere largely compatible with kral’shir physiology. Many smaller clans, forced into less profitable territory on the home world, have embraced the opportunity to start anew far away from the ancient clan politics that rule Kral. Of course, upon their arrival on Urtov, a whole new series of disputes began. While the colonial administration helps mediate arguments, the colonists on Urtov are largely left to their own devices. The hot bed of new ideas and philosophies coming out of Urtov has given it something of a bad reputation with the more conservative clans on Kral, but most of the kral’shir recognize Urtov as an important resource for their species and a symbol of their first major steps onto the galactic stage.