Shesani

Summary
The shesani are a six-limbed mammalian species from the planet of Meno out along the Sagittarius Arm. The upper limbs are actually a set of strong arms with elongated digits with a thin membrane stretched between them. By flapping these fingers, the shesani are able to fly, in a similar manner to the bats of Earth. Unlike bats, however, the shesani have a separate set of forelimbs that serve ably as hands as well as a larger frame. Meno is a, comparatively, low gravity planet, meaning that a shesani has difficulty staying aloft for even a few moments on most settled worlds.

The shesani joined the Coalition before the tlecian uplift fleets began to insist that worlds form a unified government capable of mass troop mobilization before they were allowed entry into the alliance. Meno was a peaceful world (having successfully abolished organized conflict altogether), yet still divided into traditional nation-states. The shesani’s developed economy and friendliness convinced the tlecians to welcome them into the Coalition. When the majority of shesani’s nation states later refused to implement drastic measures in order to help fight the denazra (reneging on their treaty obligations), the rest of the Coalition reduced them to Associate status. The shesani have remained there for many years, still unwilling (or unable) to unify and sending small groups of volunteers to the front lines when requested. Beyond that, the shesani have limited themselves to purely logistical aid. As a result, the rest of the Coalition (led by the tlecians) has withheld several significant technological discoveries from them in recent years; the shesani have become something of a pariah species in galactic culture.

The shesani achieved peace on their world through a remarkable incident that could serve as the premise to a dozen different human horror stories. A Shesani scientist, referred to by members of Meno’s dominant religion as the “Twelfth Sage,” sabotaged a project of the most powerful military alliance on Meno (the Saracanto Treaty Signatories) during the midst of a shesani cold war. The project involved the coordination of dozens of military satellites capable of using magnetic coils to launch projectiles down towards the planet’s surface with enough force to destroy a small country. It was intended as a tactic to gain the upper hand over the STS’s hated enemies (the Brenaet Alliance) during their ongoing cold war, which had already led to both sides accumulating massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

The Twelfth Sage (Yulo Pinara) was the lead computer programmer on this project, a closet religious fundamentalist, and recognized even by his detractors as a genius. When the project went live, the other project directors were appalled to learn that their head programmer had turned control over much of their strategic “defense” network to a computer program. This computer, fairly primitive in comparison to modern artificial intelligences, had notably seized total control over the military satellite network that surrounded the planet. As the satellites moved into position above major cities across the globe- and Yulo Pinara was found in his home after committing suicide- the now rogue computer system broadcast a message world-wide. The planet of Meno would now live under an enforced policy of total mutually assured destruction. Any armed conflict of any kind between the shesani nation-states or any attempt to deactivate the satellite network would result in orbital bombardment of the entire planet, targeting the perpetrator, victim, and bystanders alike.

All conflict did not cease, of course, but the ever present threat of the satellites brought a strange calm over the world. Nation-states were forced to rely on espionage and an occasional assassination, but the threat of total obliteration actually brought a strange calm, similar to the quieter times on Earth that many historians attribute to the spread of nuclear weapons. The satellites are self-sufficient in terms of power and still have enough fuel onboard to maintain their orbits for another century past the modern era. As the years passed, the petty squabbling of national actors gradually diminished as the ordinary shesani began to travel and talk. While relatively few nations elected to merge with one another, there was a gradual erosion of cultural boundaries. All shesani nations maintain stockpiles of arms, but the costs of maintaining large standing armies increasingly became seen as obsolete. Whether by accident or design, the nebulous nature of the prohibition on armed conflict (did it include a skirmish, a civil war or, just conventional conflict?) actually caused the shesani to step even more carefully, as they were unsure how much of a disturbance would trigger their annihilation. The satellites have the capacity to monitor significant amounts of electronic signaling, but all attempts to communicate further with the network have failed.

Meno is now a planet better defined by art than technology. Without looming conflicts to drive them, the shesani have struggled to maintain the same push for newer technologies. Shesani medicine, however, is well regarded throughout the rest of the galaxy. With the withdrawal of access to much of the Coalition’s newest technological discovers, the shesani are slipping further behind every year. But despite this, Meno is reputedly one of the safest and most utopian societies in the galaxy.

Biology
The shesani are, comparative to other Coalition member species, fairly small. Even large individuals rarely break 50 kg or 1 meter in height. In wing span, however, shesani commonly reach 1.5 meters and can knock over an adult chantar Roq or a young kral’shir with their impressive shoulder muscles. Males are, on average, 2 centimeters taller than females and typically weigh 1-2 kilograms more. Shesani have membranous wings that stretch across the full length of their bodies like a leather cape, although the back of these wings is covered in the same fine hair that shields the rest of their skin.

Shesani fur color varies greatly based on region, although their bellies are gray and blue. This allows them to blend in with Meno’s vivid sky when viewed from below. The fur on their back can range widely, commonly including grey, yellow, white, and blue. While it provides little practical defense, the fur does thermally insulate the shesani and allows them to survive colder temperatures.

A shesani has six-limbs, with four long fingers on each of its four arms and four toes on each of its two feet. Their fingers and toes are exceptionally dexterous and provide excellent fine motor control, and every limb has a muscled digit that functions as a thumb. This allows the shesani to grip on to even very slippery surfaces and complete exacting tasks using their toes. It is common to see shesani working upside down or using a dizzying number of appendages to accomplish every kind of task.

The strong uppermost set of arms, set slightly further back on the torso than its other arms, end in four elongated digits that extend much further than either of the lower pair of limbs. A tough membrane stretched between these digits creates the large wings that allow the shesani to fly. Despite their small frame, shesani are actually almost too big to fly due to their solid skeleton and multiple appendages, even given Meno’s weaker gravitational pull. Despite the stocky body, a shesani flying on its home world has a typical cruising speed of about 60 kilometers per hour and can reach upwards of 100 km/hr when swooping or racing. Their ability to fly with such speed was heavily influenced by their home world’s low gravity environment, and they struggle to even stay aloft when removed to higher gravity environments. In zero gravity, however, shesani are surprisingly nimble and notoriously talented.

The middle set of limbs on a shesani end in a set of long-fingered hands. Shesani fingers are nimble and flexible, and they routinely engage in intricate work that would force other species to rely on artificial tools. These limbs are not, however, as strong as the upper wings or even their powerful legs. These stronger legs, capable of launching a crouched shesani into the sky from a standstill, bend towards the rear of the body (opposite to humans) and can easily be drawn up underneath the body during flight. These strong legs also allow shesani to hang upside down for great lengths of time without muscle strain.

Shesani have four highly sensitive elongated ears running along the sides of their heads, but they do not use echolocation. Their ears are, however, extremely sensitive and even an average shesani is adept at estimating distance and location based solely on sound. In addition, they have superb eyesight that functions exceptionally well at night. As long as even one of Meno’s moons is half full in the sky, a sober shesani with decent eyes could navigate safely. With two half moons or one full, the shesani can pick out shapes and movement at a great distance and can function almost as well as in daylight. On average, shesani vision is approximately 20/10 and they can function with little to no loss of ability in anything but total darkness.

The shesani have short, prehensile snouts. Historically, the shesani used these flexible trunks to help them retrieve the choicest food from Meno’s massive treetops. While they have long since advanced to more reliable sources of sustenance, the shesani still use these snouts to manipulate food while they eat and to communicate a wide variety of body language to those experienced enough to read it. To turn up your nose (showing your nostrils) on Meno, for instance, is usually only done as part of an insult or an extremely inappropriate joke.

The shesani give birth to live young, usually one at a time, and their offspring mature slowly. A shesani child is usually not weaned until after their second birthday and is not considered an adult until thirty. Shesani typically reach their full adult size and strength by twenty, however. Tradition dictates that an individual undergo a certain amount of ethical and intellectual development before being welcomed into adult society. Shesani usually live approximately seventy or eighty years and have a shockingly low variance in this figure, perhaps due to their unique culture.

History
The shesani evolved from a winged, omnivorous species that dominated the canopy of Meno’s tall forests. Due in part to its low gravity and rich atmosphere, plant life on Meno frequently grows to astounding proportions. The tall, crowded nature of Meno’s forests and jungles means that relatively little plant life survives on the forest floor. As a result, most life forms native to Meno have at least one method of reaching the rich tree tops. The shesani were perfectly evolved for this niche, being excellent climbers in addition to having the capacity to fly. From their perches on trees or rock faces, the primitive shesani could swoop down on prey animals and then retreat to a safe location (even if that meant hanging upside down from a tree branch a hundred meters above the forest floor) to eat. In addition, the shesani’s dexterous fingers and toes meant that they could access many types of fruits and nuts that other species could not.

This cleverness and adaptability eventually gave way to the use of tools. The shesani spread across the planet and rose to the top of every ecosystem they discovered. Their ability to hunt at night allowed them to avoid dangerous heat extremes and their insulated fur provided them with excellent protection from the cold. As the shesani tribes spread further afield, many taking advantage of their mobility and migrating with the seasons, their technology advanced apace and societies began to form among them.

As time wound on, shesani society fractured and went in a variety of directions. Important to most of them, however, was the coming of the First Sage. In the modern era, approximately two thirds of the population of Meno can be considered to be a member of the faithful. In practice, of course, there are dozens of different sects and religions at play. Many disagree over particular interpretations of the sages’ words or debate whether or not a particular individual was simply wise or was holy. Several devastating wars have been fought over distinctions such as these. However, all acknowledge the First Sage.

The First Sage was called Tola Pos and was born in the ancient “summer city” (so called as it was part of an old migratory route) of Karando. At the time, most of the Bronze Age shesani worshipped a wide variety of nature spirits and pantheons. Tola Pos preached against what he saw as the growing disunion between the shesani and the natural world they sought to tame. The First Sage appealed to a shared bond between all living creatures. He called himself a messenger from the “Meta Spirit” (roughly translated) that was composed of the unified souls of every life in the universe. According to legend and some historians, he had a supernatural ability to command animals and even plants and his entourage typically traveled across the lands surrounded by a menagerie. Central tenets of his movement included a commitment to charity towards all living creatures and, except in cases of extreme need, vegetarianism. As harvesting and farming methods became more advanced, there was increasingly little need for meat in the shesani diet and it proved to be a popular movement. Converts spread across the land, preaching tolerance and cooperation with the natural world.

According to holy texts, Tola Pos traveled to a major provincial capital of the Empire of Sulot. There, he demanded the local governor stop persecuting converts and free local animals being bred for slaughter. When the city rose up in a riot against his arrival, and the governor sent his soldiers into the streets to beat all of the faithful into submission, a nearby mountainside began to rumble and released a terrible volcanic eruption. As the locals tried to flee, Tola Pos advised them to free their domesticated animals and follow them to safety. Tola Pos, accordingly to multiple witnesses, apparently then sat down to wait with the city’s infirm and elderly. According to legend, he died in the city square along with most of the city’s population. Those who freed their herd beasts, and fled after them on foot (a questionable decision for a flying and intelligent creature), were the only ones to survive to spread the news.

Within a few days after its founder’s death, Tolanism had its first schism. Tola Pos’s mate carried on in the First Sage’s stead. Tola Meru is called the “Second Sage,” but her actual status is still hotly contested in theological circles. She preached extensively on unity and pacifism, encouraging all shesani to discard their tribes and nations so that they could become a “Perfect Mirror” to the Meta Spirit and live in true happiness. Conservatives in the movement questioned her decisions and authority, arguing that structure and commitment was needed in order to spread Pos’s divine message. An all out holy war was avoided, but an Imperial Commander dispatched from Sulot took advantage of the situation and burned Meru and several of her closest advisors to death after tying them to a tree. This symbolic murder was a terrible sacrilege to some and, even to Meru’s detractors, a horrific act of barbarism (not least because the Suloti had needlessly destroyed a tree). The subsequent rebellion felled the Empire, but it also swept aside the nascent pacifism amongst Meru’s followers.

As time passed, the faith spread and new Sages would arise. Those who offered genuinely new insights or philosophies were often anointed as saint-like figures. But exactly who was a Sage and who was not became a divisive issue. Even as the faith spread, it twisted and changed into dozens of different forms. While a nation and its neighbors might have a similar faith, rarely does the list of Sages look terribly similar even from one continent to another. Holy wars were fought and religious purges conducted, all in the name of peace and coexistence with the natural world.

Despite the violence, the shesani reached the industrial age without much of the environmental degradation that has plagued so many other developing species. Plants and animals are considered to be sacred by a large portion of the population. These protections do not always prevent their harvest, but it does mean that most shesani will think twice before taking a life and usually do so in a sustainable manner. Even ancient cities show remarkable foresight in their planning, including entire structures built out of living trees high above the forest floor and harnessing a huge variety of semi-domesticated animals to perform helpful tasks in shesani settlements. This relative harmony with nature, however, did not stop the fighting between shesani themselves.

After a massive world war, largely between two alliances of sedentary nation-states and involving the widespread persecution of tribes that still kept to the migratory traditions, the devastated shesani populace began to increasingly split along ideological lines. In the years following, a handful of the richer nations developed new and exciting ways to decimate their opponents. A cold war soon developed, as increasingly deadly missiles and biological weapons spread across the globe and more nations gained the capacity to annihilate the entire world at a whim. Much of the conflict came to a head around two alliances: the Saracanto Treaty Signatories (“STS”) and the Brenaet Alliance (“BA”).

The Brenaet Alliance had become increasingly popular across the globe, but the more technocratic STS had an edge in hardware. In an effort to finally force their enemies to back down from this deadly faceoff, the STS embraced the first rule of shesani warfare: attack from above. While traditionally this had taken the form of armed airships, missiles, and primitive drones, the STS took advantage of their technological edge and Meno’s low gravity to rapidly militarize their planet’s orbital space.

The culmination of this strategy was a series of mass driver equipped satellites that could be easily maneuvered around the planet to target any city on the globe. The satellites were powerful, relied on cheap projectile ammunition, and were largely self-sufficient in terms of power and fuel reserves. They even had short range defensive systems to intercept “satellite killer” missile attacks. As a majority of the rest of the planet’s nations protested, the STS successfully launched their satellite network.

Unbeknownst to his fellows, the senior programmer on the satellite project had sabotaged their work. Yulo Pinara, who would later be recognized by more than half of Meno’s various sects as the Twelfth Sage, left a security backdoor in the satellites’ software. On launch day, he uploaded a bundle of several dozen different programs to his masterpiece and then went home. His colleagues thought he looked exhausted and assumed he was going to rest, but he was later found dead of self-inflicted wounds in his rooms.

Thirteen hours after the successful launch, the Brenaet Alliance’s chief ambassador was in the process of delivering an ultimatum to the STS. In the speech, the ambassador made it clear that the BA would launch enough fission missiles to overwhelm the STS missile defense system and preemptively destroy their enemies unless the satellites were immediately taken off line. Part way through the speech, news agencies began to report a sudden change in the trajectory of the satellite grid. Many of the orbital platforms were positioning themselves above cities aligned with the STS. The military refused to confirm or deny anything, but observatories around the globe reported a series of shifts across the planet. It soon became clear that the satellites were repositioning over all of the largest cities on the globe, regardless of nationality or ideology.

In the midst of the slowly growing panic, the satellites transmitted a message to their military handlers. At the same moment, a prerecorded message from Yulo Pinara was delivered to a dozen different media networks through civilian channels.

Yulo Pinara told the world that he had turned over the control of the satellite grids to a computer program of his own design, circumventing ground control. The satellites, possessing a wide variety of espionage equipment beyond their impressive armaments, could receive and analyze information from Meno. If any group of shesani used organized violence against any other, the satellites would simultaneously launch their payloads across the entire globe and annihilate the entire shesani race.

As panic began to grip the people of Meno, Yulo Pinara went on to apologize for his use of coercion but explained his belief that the shesani would eventually annihilate themselves if a greater power did not intervene. These satellites would assure total mutually assured destruction and were programmed to fire if any attempt was made to attack or deactivate them. The observational systems on the satellites would make sure everyone stayed honest and the satellites would no longer acknowledge any shesani command signal, even his own.

While the world was gripped with panic and pundits predicted that some insane dictator would annihilate the entire planet out of spite, the authorities found Yulo Pinara’s corpse and discovered that he had destroyed most of his lab equipment and electronic files. The shesani have still, in the modern era, yet to figure out exactly what the Twelfth Sage did. The ambiguity, however, has actually helped to keep the peace. Nobody is sure exactly what will trigger an attack. The satellites have remained silent and inactive besides a few minor orbital trajectory adjustments. In the past century, the only recorded activity occurred during the Lathean Civil War. The nation of Lathea had experienced a series of peaceful protest movements against a junta government and, despite numerous attempts to seek a compromise by other nations (including the distribution of non-lethal weapons to both sides), the situation turned violent. As the death toll rapidly climbed above twenty, one of the satellites repositioned itself directly about the Lathean capital. As word got out, the fighting quickly subsided. The satellite has never moved from its geosynchronous orbit since.

Amazingly, the world settled into a strange peace. While military think tanks tried to figure out new and exciting ways to disable the satellites, the world moved as one to spread the word of what had happened. The most likely thing that would doom them now was if an uninformed person did something stupid. Word travelled fast and, despite a few violent flare-ups, the apocalypse did not come.

As time passed, and no one was willing to try disabling the satellites for fear of triggering a response, the national powers of Meno settled in to a new equilibrium of sabotage and espionage. Even this was carefully restrained however. Nobody wanted to do anything that would provoke a rash response and even the victim would frequently keep quiet about small losses in order to avoid escalation.

The shesani themselves began to travel and talk. In the short term, the prohibition against violence often helped local dictators retain control, but the overwhelming trend was towards liberalization. Peaceful marches could not be stopped with anything except the gentlest of non-lethal force and the marchers could not use violence to further their own ends. The methods weren’t always pretty but the tides on Meno gradually turned towards détente. Travel restrictions were eased and the shesani began to visit and talk with one another over newly opened communication channels. The centralized authority of governments began to be eroded worldwide. The real winners in the power rebalance were those who controlled the media, as the power to influence and arouse the masses became increasingly important.

While the national governments remain powerful, and mass democracy does not always lend itself to stable governments, the cultural boundaries between people have undeniably eroded. The shesani struggle with many of the same problems that other peoples face, but they have increasingly bent their resources away from defense and towards social enrichment. By the time the tlecians arrived, the shesani militaries had largely been reduced to reserve forces and large stockpiles of aging weapons.

The tlecians had set out towards Meno with their ark ship just before the satellite crisis. They anticipated that they would find either a burnt husk of a planet or else a triumphant STS that would be able to unite the planet against the denazra. Instead, they found a quiet planet fifty years into a cultural revolution. The tlecians, who had yet to develop their policy of insisting on planetary unification before inviting a species into the Coalition, decided to extend their offer to the tlecian nation-states and see how many would agree to join the cause. The satellites did not, after all, keep the shesani from fighting a different enemy off world. Over 184 of Meno’s 216 nations willingly agreed to come to the aid of the Coalition against the denazra. The treaty became de facto international law over the next few years as most of the hold outs signed on in order to gain access to the advanced tlecian technology.

When the gate linking them to the rest of Coalition space was opened, the shesani joined the galactic community. But few of them showed much interest in exploring higher gravity planets where they would be unable to fly. As conditions on Meno improved and stabilized further, fewer and fewer volunteers were found who even wanted to establish a colony outside of the home system. The shesani preferred to stay in their own system, either on Meno or in the massive habitats that had begun to be assembled in orbit and on Meno’s three moons.

When long range observation uncovered the denazra fleet approaching the homeworld of the Tumacoom, the Coalition sent out a call to arms. The shesani, who had only a few spaceships and reserve forces that had been comfortably stationed at home for decades, balked. They offered to provide logistical support and to send supplies, but tensions grew higher as the Coalition representatives explained that they needed the supplies and the promised soldiers as well. To the shesani, sending their soldiers to die on a higher gravity world where they would be crippled defending a people that few of them had ever even met never made much sense. With the exception of a few squadrons of volunteer hybrid air/space interceptors, the shesani reneged on their treaty obligations and refused to conscript their populace to fight.

The chantar ambassador famously suggested that the Coalition should either trigger the satellite network’s defenses or dismantle the system’s gate entirely. Eventually, the Coalition voted to reduce the shesani to Associate status within the Coalition and deny them many of the most cutting edge technological developments that were due them under the terms of the alliance. The shesani protested, but the measure went through almost unanimously. The handful of shesani nations that had begun to mobilize and were intending to honor the treaty immediately ceased their preparations and withdrew.

As the years have progressed, the Coalition has shown no interest in restoring the shesani’s status and the shesani nation states have not petitioned to ask for it back. The shesani have demilitarized even more, relying on a large police force to keep the peace using non-lethal methods. Off planet, they heavily patrol their system but have not invested in a large military fleet. Their handful of military ships, and a few squadrons of interceptor squadrons maintained by a determined corps of volunteers descended from the units that fought against the denazra, rarely leave their home system. The shesani have become something of a pariah race, withdrawing from direct contact and seemingly content to mind their own affairs.

There is a still a vocal minority on Meno who argue that the shesani need to commit themselves to the Coalition in order to fight the denazra, but they are matched by an even larger group who rail against the injustice of a group of ethnocentric alien oligarchs wanting to conscript millions of shesani to fight in foreign theaters without considering their environmental and cultural needs. The shesani maintain that they are willing to fight, but they don’t want to contribute lives to a war machine that simply throws soldiers fruitlessly into battle while the tlecians hypocritically sit at home.

Meno is a remarkably well preserved planet, with cities interwoven with forests and cliff faces and pollution-less airships linking an increasingly peaceful population together. Most of the shesani live in virtual democracies, where remote telecommunications allow ordinary people to actively participate in the day to day governing of their particular nation. This, along with the lack of external enemies, has led to the decentralization of power away from government organizations and towards individual people (and Corporations). While the lack of Coalition technology has caused the shesani to fall further and further behind the other species in known space, they have largely eliminated hunger and most crime from their settlements. Meno is a vibrant world, full of life and a dizzying array of native species, and the shesani uniformly have access to well funded social services and healthcare. Most shesani, if asked, would question why they need a more powerful rocket engine to finish building utopia.

Culture
Meno is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful and exotic places in the world. While the shesani don’t often bother visiting other planets, largely due to a visceral dislike of their inability to fly on higher gravity worlds, their low gravity world has become a very popular tourist destination. The shesani are often somewhat disdainful towards the aliens who are mad to visit a vacation world where even walking is delightfully easy, the same aliens often hold a dim view of the shesani due to their detachment from Coalition politics. However, even those species that view the shesani as naïve hedonists free-riding on the sacrifices of other species’ soldiers still travel for weeks to vacation there. And the shesani don’t dislike the imperialism of the Coalition enough to refuse their money.

Shesani culture is highly reverent of the natural environment. Whenever possible, the shesani try to blend their lives with the animal and plant life around them. They also, after puberty and before old age, have an amazing amount of personal mobility thanks to their ability to fly. As such, the shesani build cities over a much larger land area than other species and weave their buildings into the very fabric of Meno’s massive trees. They make extensive use of renewable fuel sources and pursue policies that promote activities and industries with low environmental impact. In order to accommodate the infirm, or alien visitors, the shesani often string simple rope bridges or even prune trees so that their branches interweave with those of their neighbor. Whether on a cliff face or tree top, shesani settlements are usually beautiful and verdant places to live or visit.

Shesani art and music are considered to be must-sees across Coalition space. Their synchronized flying dances and open air symphonies are legendary and tickets can fetch high prices even in such entertainment-saturated cultures as the chantar. Shesani architecture is also remarkably beautiful, with soaring spires and delicate arches only possible thanks to Meno’s low gravity. Much of the world’s beauty can only truly be appreciated from the air, and the shesani have grown increasingly tolerant of the large clouds of personal gliders operated by visitors and tourists.

The shesani operate at a slower pace of life than many other species. Beauty, personal or otherwise, is highly prized even amongst the most cynical. Instead of tolerating cramped shuttle or airplane rides, the shesani generally choose slower journeys via high speed airships. Due to the low emissions and incredible popularity of these rides, most of Meno’s nation-states have subsidized their use.

Dexterity and talent in flight maneuvers, whether personal or mechanized, is highly prized among the shesani. The most popular genres of fiction focus heavily on talent pilots and fliers. Talented airship pilots can expect to be treated like celebrities and shesani regularly compete over who can perform a more perfect and smooth flight.

The shesani value the preservation of life whenever possible. As such, their medical science is one of the few fields in which they have independently managed to keep pace with other Coalition species. They also provide health care for free and without question to all those who need it and find the concept of profiting off of another’s poor health to extremely distasteful.

In addition to medical science, the shesani have also pursued a variety of mutually beneficial relationships with animal and plant life on Meno. In addition to using living plants as building material in their cities, the shesani make use of a wide variety of animals. The most popular pet on Meno is the Kava Bird, a falcon-like creature that traditionally helped partnered shesani hunt. They also can locate several varieties of extremely nutritious (but very thick shelled) fruit and nuts by scent. This has produced a remarkable partnership, that continues to this day, in which the Kava guide the shesani to the best spots to gather fruit and then receive a share of the spoils when the shesani collect the hard to access delicacies and crack them open. The shesani are extremely protective of the animal life on Meno, both for religious reasons and thanks to a long history of cooperation and coexistence.

Religion
Approximately 2/3 of the population of Meno follow one of the sects descended from the teachings of Tola Pos. While Tolanism is, by far, the largest religious group on the planet, it has been subdivided so many times that the actual faith is often very varied. While all acknowledge the divine inspiration of the First Sage, there are a thousand different interpretations of everything that followed. Typically, the faithful espouse beliefs in charity towards living things, pacifism, and the importance of consuming food as low down on the scale of sentience as possible.

In recent years, the often marginalized school that held up Tola Pos’s wife Meru as the Second Sage has regained prominence. Her vision of a united people without the shackles of violence or government has become popular in the newly utopian culture and the tenets of pacifism became increasingly attractive due to the imposition of world peace.

Besides the First Sage, the only Sage who has attained similar prominence across all sect lines is that of the Twelfth Sage. In many faith groups, the Twelfth Sage actually has a different number, but his shared numerical position across three of the largest sects means that his title entered into the popular consciousness with that label. There is still significant debate about the Twelfth Sage’s actions, but the continuing “Great Peace” planet-wide on Meno has helped keep all discussion of reversing his project purely hypothetical.

A small number of shesani still worship various forms of nature spirits, but these ideas have been largely absorbed by the tenets of Tolanism and the Meta Spirit. The largest remaining religious group outside of Tolanism is, actually, atheism. Those who deny the existent of the Meta Spirit also run the gamut in beliefs, from hedonists to ethicists and all the stages in between. One such group, that formed after the failed defense of the Tumacoom and the withdrawal of full Coalition membership, is a group of secular militarists who have been trying to sound the alarm about the growing denazra threat. They remain firmly in the minority but have managed to convince the richer nation-states to continue funding controversial planetary defense programs.

Economy
The shesani are excellent artists and builders. Their cities require significant upkeep and the presence of so many symbiotic animals in shesani cities mean that plant and animal tenders are in high demand. Botanists, zoologists, and other experts in the life sciences are also very common on Meno. The shesani have also recently been enjoying an economic boom thanks to an influx of tourists from across the Coalition.

Shesani industry, however, is comparatively lacking. The shesani have only constructed one, small space elevator. While the lower gravitational pull of Meno means that it requires significantly less energy to lift personnel and materials into space, the lack of infrastructure has significantly hampered the shesani’s ability to expand beyond their planet. The general distaste that most shesani have for the confined interiors of space ships has not helped matters.

The shesani do maintain a surprising number of space stations in orbit around Meno and its moons. The moons themselves have several million shesani living on them; while the lack of a breathable atmosphere can make the habitats feel cramped, the minimal gravity is an incredibly popular draw to the shesani. For that reason, the shesani also seem to love living in orbital environments, provide there is space for them to stretch their wings from time to time.

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Language
The shesani have over two hundred commonly spoken languages on their home world. Each language has a variety of viable dialects. However, as a result of the ongoing cultural renaissance, the shesani have gradually begun migrating to learning a common tongue as a second language. The language of Pomate has spread across much of the planet and more than 60% of the population is believed to have a working understand of it. That number would probably be substantially higher if it weren’t for the arrival of the tlecian translator devices. While shesani translators are a little out of date, they have been able to modify them satisfactorily and even manufacture their own for distribution to their offspring. The tlecians, for their part, have been hesitant to cut off access to an invention that makes communication easier; their ambassadors maintain that the shesani will one day come back into the fold.

Military
The shesani military is, except for a few elite interceptor squadrons and a handful of trained special operations soldiers, atrophied. Most of the soldiers on Meno are reservists who, besides monthly training programs, have never had to wield a deadly weapon. The military has been repurposed, for the most part, as a natural disaster relief force and support group for the police. Circumstances dictate that the shesani rely exclusively in non-lethal tactics, and they have little use for interpersonal combat.

The only elements of the shesani military to see any recent action are its space interdiction forces. Hundreds of volunteers served in the siege of Orm, battling the denazra in near orbit and then even in the atmosphere of the planet in a last ditch effort to deny the machines a beachhead. These same veterans form the core of a surprisingly competent close-space defense force. Besides monitoring traffic, this space-based defense force primarily patrols the system and intercepts any ship that might show an unhealthy interest in the shesani satellite grid.

Conventionally, the shesani have shown a remarkable aptitude for zero gravity operations and aerial combat. Shesani pilots need fewer artificial aids than most other species and seem largely immune to motion sickness. The low gravity on Menos helped contribute to a glut of cheap air transport and the shesani military doctrine relies almost exclusively on air superiority.

Larger shesani military ships are typically larger and better armed than their average counterparts in the Coalition. Their technology is, however, increasingly dated and their ships have a large surface area because they design them around large, open central chambers that allow for zero gravity “flight” between decks. This design quirk means that a significant hull breach is more likely to cripple a shesani ship than one belonging to a less claustrophobic species.

Military Ship Classes:

Notable Planets
Meno – the home world of the shesani is a beautiful, well preserved planet brimming with life. Settled areas are designed to be accessed from the air, making Meno's architecture unique amongst the Coalition worlds. The shesani typically modify the landscape rather than replace it, and many of the largest shesani cities are built inside of (and in harmony with) living forests. Meno's low gravity means that every species on the planet uses less energy to accomplish every day tasks. Whether because of this, or from other factors, the native life on Meno is more inclined to symbiosis than on other worlds. The only species on Meno particularly prone to violence appears to be the shesani themselves, and they appear well on their way to rectifying that fact.