A listing of Concordat species that may be encountered in the Northwest Imperial Quadrant.
Hrok
Physical Description
Hrok resemble Terran sea anemones, assuming they were large enough to swallow a sheep. Their main body is shaped like a stubby cylinder, usually three to four feet in height, varying between sandy and gray in colour. Atop their cylindrical body is a crown of fronds/manipulators, tentacle-like limbs that vary between the thickness of a human finger and a human wrist, usually four to five feet long. Hrok move slowly using a single foot at the base of their bodies, like a slug or snail, but prefer to be carried by servitor species when possible. They require constant moistening to avoid drying out, and their fronds are lightly poisonous, giving humans a sense of buzzing euphoria on contact, though to other species it may be instantly poisonous. Hrok are obligate carnivores.
Society/History
Hrok evolved from pack predators, hunting at night in the shallow seas and marshes of their homeworld to surround prey, paralyze it and slip away with it before they were detected. They had an advanced culture, greatly capable in maths and theoretical sciences, but lacking the necessary limbs and dexterity to put their theoretical knowledge to any practical use, until they encountered another sapient species that had evolved on the same world. A species of large detritivores, the Amsipel, with a simple society that were characterized by being immune to Hrok toxins. They agreed to a mutually beneficial pact whereby the Hrok would share knowledge, science and planning, while the Amsipel would provide the muscles and dexterity to put it into effect.
It was a long and excellent symbiotic relationship, though subsequent alterations to the agreement kept shifting it more to the favour of the Hrok, until the arrival of humans. Seeing their chance, the Hrok invited the humans to share the same relationship as the Amsipel, but of course with much worse benefits for the humans since they were by far more desperate to have homes and jobs. A number of humans, seeing a chance for survival, accepted, which allowed the Hrok to fire a large number of their Amsipel servants, and indicate to the rest that unless they accepted the same terms as the humans, they, too, would be released from the pact.
A number of violent incidents between humans and Amsipel have since occurred, and more simmers below the surface on practically every Hrok world.
Hrok popular entertainment tends to mostly be slapstick involving lesser species suffering humiliating-but-not-fatal accidents as a result of their own foolishness.
Ortworgs
Physical Description
An Ortworg in pristine condition looks similar to an anthropomorphic rhino about four feet tall and four feet wide, densely built and clearly almost pure muscle, with three broad fingers and a thumb on each hand. However, most Ortworg also sport a broad collection of vestigial limbs, digits, tumors, freely growing flesh tags and still-healing scars and scabs. They are herbivorous and have trouble dealing with polluted or low-oxygen atmospheres due to an inefficiently evolved lung-and-airway system.
Society/History
In semi-recent history, not long before the arrival of humans in Concordat space, the Ortworg had grown tired of physical frailty, old age and paying for healthcare, and so a cabal of wealthy bio-engineers were contracted to solve the problem. They slaved away for decades before revealing their achievement: a virus that would sweep through all Ortworgs, rapidly editing their genes and germline cells to give them amazingly rapid regeneration, allowing for sick and flawed parts to simply be excised as new ones would grow quickly, and all but the most grievous wounds would heal in hours.
Unfortunately before the gene edits and their long-term effects were fully tested, the virus escaped and rapidly infected all Ortworgs on their core worlds, only a few far-flung traders and ambassadors escaped being modified. The virus did as was promised, and Ortworgs are almost impossible to kill without extreme violence, unfortunately the regeneration effect also causes them to constantly produce excess tissue, in the form of vestigial limbs, extra teeth, spare organs, flesh and skin tags, sometimes entire bones and in rare cases, if left untreated for long enough, siamese twins.
This has produced a society obsessed with the surgery constantly needed to rectify this, and surgery is the number-one Ortworg hobby, entertainment and business. Getting surgery to Ortworgs is much like getting a haircut to other species, and most Ortworgs maintain the tools at home necessary to snip off the occasional extra digit or spare chunk of flesh.
Ortworgs were one of the first species to embrace humans as employees, as they were confident their medical expertise could deal with any human diseases or bacteria crossing the species barrier, and the constant, low-grade pain they were in from their self-surgery and excess tissue growth left them eager to offload much of their physical work on another species.
Scolopendra
Physical Description
Fully grown Scolopendra are between eight and ten feet in length, roughly as wide along as an adult human torso, and resemble brightly coloured Terran centipedes with several of their upper-body legs branching into capable manipulator digits. Their dietary requirements are omnivorous, but must include regular doses of sugar-heavy products manufactured only in Scolopendran cities. They are vulnerable to a number of non-indigenous fungi that attack their exoskeleton, causing it to become pale and brittle and eventually killing them, thus limiting their ability to travel for long periods off their home worlds without regular dermal care and antifungals. Scolopendra have poor vision in brightly lit environments, and thus prefer dark, dry indoors areas.
History/Society
Scolopendra are one of the few Concordat species that have not widely adopted humans as clients and employees. Humans in Scolopendran employ primarily work for trading combines, capable of ranging farther afield than Scolopendra due to their non-reliance on Hive Jelly and their lack of vulnerability to off-world infections. Scolopendran worlds have usually had their indigenous biospheres completely eradicated to avoid harmful bio-agents, or have been terraformed from the ground up, and tend to have extremely strict import/export controls by Concordat standards, as well as a comparatively low amount of private enterprises, instead being heavily state controlled.
Scolopendran society is generally insular and poorly known, even by other Concordat species.
Their exported popular entertainment tends to be mostly music.
Terrans
Physical Description
Terrans, or humans as they call themselves, stand between five and seven feet tall when they reach full adulthood, and may have various hide colours from white to almost black, including several reddish and sandy colours. Large decorative plumes of hair are also common, though some humans choose to wholly remove these for mysterious cultural reasons. Their soft and fragile skin conceals a bony endoskeleton and despite their appearance, they remain one of the hardiest species of the Concordant, capable of surviving in a wide range of atmospheric compositions and temperatures, as well as having a very non-restrictive omnivorous diet. Humans have also shown an ability to survive in a broad range of gravities, exposed to a number of different biologies, and with minimal breathing apparatus they can even function in aquatic scenarios.
Compared to the rest of the Concordat's species, humans have a staggering amount of symbiotic bacteria and latent viruses in them, so far none have infected or made the jump to another species, but they should still be kept at a safe distance from advanced species and cleaned thoroughly at regular intervals.
Society/History
The details of human history, including the location and details of their homeworld, are mostly lost to time. Human history now begins from the moment that the Nomad Fleet entered Concordat space, engaging in a brief skirmish with a number of Hrok patrol vessels that resulted in light damage to both sides, before lines of communication and mutual understanding were established. The Terran/Concordat pact establishes humans as being Concordat citizens with rights equal to any other Concordat citizens, and that the Concordat Central Authority shall do its utmost to locate or terraform a new homeworld for humanity. The latter is, after several hundred years, mired in a number of third-stage feasibility studies, but you can't rush perfection.
Meanwhile, humans, to avoid placing undue burden on any one Concordat world, have been distributed among them as guests of the various Concordat species. However, as the Concordat is not a charity, humans will still have to work for their food and board. The result is that most human families are now hopelessly mired in cycles of debt, closely bonded to their employers, with little freedom of movement or self-determination. Lucky humans occasionally manage to "break even" somewhere in their 50's or 60's and reputedly move to one of the Concordat's paradise worlds where they live happily ever after, it's a thing for all humans to strive for, and they are rarely heard from again, presumably because they're busy having such nice lives.
Due to the pressures of employment, most human parents choose to have their children raised by communal creches which educate, feed and train their children for a nominal fee and then assist them in finding employment once they hit the age of majority(18 to 21 Terran Years depending on local legislation). Resultingly, most humans have little connection to their parents and families, and usually associate primarily with non-humans outside of those other humans working the same job as they do. It's a marvel of peaceful integration that humans feel no need to cluster in ghettos among their own kind.
Humans produce no cultural artifacts of any value, having a less evolved society than the rest of the Concordat, and should be pitied, not hated, for this. Humans are, however, sapient enough to enjoy the cultural products of other Concordat societies.
