Dyrajt

The Dyrajt are a sapient lifeform hailing from a distant portion of the galaxy, their homeworld apparently located some several thousand parsecs 'trailward' of Sol. They arrived, intentionally, as the Consortium's attack on Ouranos Prime was nearing its final moments. Because of this, the conflict was named the Contact War.

Physique

Like humans, they possess an immense variety in shape and form. They are four-limbed bipedial creatures with a slim, vaguely reptilian construction, with scaled skin of varying colors covering muscle tissue and a calcium-based exoskeleton. Their feet and hands have four digits each, with paired opposable fingers (two to each side) ending in strong nails, though not quite claws. The majority of specimens possess a vestigal tail, and most do not walk fully upright. They have no necks, their heads fixed to their torsoes much like a fish or whale, though the eyes and mouth point 'forward' and not 'up'.

Dyrajt breath and hear through various membranes in their skin, though they have something akin to a diaphram which lets them force air through their mouths, enabling what passes for speech for them. Humans can mimic these sounds, though uncomfortably so. They have two eyes, which appear clouded and are nearly vestigal, preferring to see with their skin. Dyrajt have been able to reproduce clicks and certain limited aspects of vocalized language, but it is extremely crude.

They are a sexually reproducing species, with 'males' and 'females' though the exact mechanism for reproduction is somewhat different. The females lay eggs, which allows them, in theory, to reproduce quite rapidly, and despite a fast maturation cycle, they have an extended lifespan, capable of living nearly two centuries. Their genetic variation is far greater than that of root strain humans, and may in fact be several distinct species, given their strict breeding regimens, though it is not certain that there has been enough time for this to occur.

They are divided into many 'castes' through intense breeding, with a variety of duties and capabilities.

• The Priest Caste is the de-facto leader cast, primarily bred for intelligence. They function as organizers and engineers for the Dyrajt, though their numbers are too few to provide real advancement for the civilization. Unlike the other Castes, specific professions are based on merit, rather than birth.
• The Soldier Caste is the one most familiar to humanity, making up the basic combative class, and come in a variety of subcastes. Dozens have been captured for study, and they currently reside in various holding facilities on Ouranos Prime and Mars.
• The Worker Caste are a bred slave race. They come in a variety of subcastes, and are not terribly intelligent, even by the low standards set by the Soldier caste.

Culture

From the sparse evidence gathered so far, the Dyrajt are an intensely religious species, and have a philosophy bordering on xenophobia though they are not, it seems, directly opposed to the existence of other races. Instead, 'unnatural' intelligence - artificial or genetically engineered, is taboo, and they believe strongly in a stratified society.

The 'priest-engineers' make up perhaps one per seven-hundred fifty in their population, according to the disected mind of the sole member of that caste captured intact. Millenia of breeding programs have eradicated disloyalty and heresy from the lower castes, causing the soldiers and workers to possess a fanatical loyalty to the Race. They do not question, and only serve the benefit of the greater whole.

The priesthood, therefor, makes up the majority of the Dyrajt culture. It appears to be a semi-feudal system, normally suffering massive fragmentation over the roughly two hundred terraformed worlds that they control. They all appear to subscribe to the same 'faith', though they do not consider it such, their religion being fully integrated into their society, with, in most cases, heresy and crime being considered much the same thing.

If there are any such distinctions, or a true rebellious movement, the lone priest so captured was not aware of any such thing. They treat their technology as artifacts, ancient gifts meant to their glory, with no real knowledge as to their true origin.

Technology

Dyrajt technology is clearly borrowed, this much is certain. A fraction of the energy they expended to reach Sol could have been used to sterilize the entire Solar System. The total amount of energy they expended to participate in the Contact War is estimated to be roughly 1x10^42 joules, comparable with a supernova. If simply directed at our Solar System, every square meter would be subject to some ten petajoules of energy, overwhelming even the most powerful defensive systems by several orders of magnitude.

Due to their limited understanding of technology, their terraforming operations have been limited to near-Earthlike worlds, and apparently, have only colonized less than two hundred planets, though nearly a million star systems have been visited, many of which are used as energy farms.

Propulsion

Easily the most visible aspect of Dyrajt technology, a highly efficient form of gravitic propulsion. They are aware of its limitations and do possess technology for other drive systems, but none of these rival Terran systems.

Gravitic drives are considered to be sacred relics of the species, for once one wears out, there is no means of replacing it. The entire premise for the Dyrajt's assault in the Contact War was an attempt to capture this capability from a nascent race.

Energy

The Dyrajt possess a kind of battery called a warp cell. It can store nearly unlimited amounts of energy by warping space into a trapped loop, either to store or emit light. As with all gravitic technology, these devices are beyond the ability of the Dyrajt to construct, though the Constortium had built a comparitively primitive such device a few years before the Contact War.

Some vessels are apparently capable of running on fusion or antimatter power generation, however, most simply run off of warp cells, being more durable than the former two options. Massive solar collectors focus starlight into the cells, and over a period of years, enough energy is gathered to power a ship for significant operation.

Communication

If the Dyrajt once had radio, they have long since lost it, their communications systems based entirely on tachyons. Only twenty such ships in the invasion fleet possessed such transmission capabilities, however, they were neutralized on arrival by the Martian tachyon cannon. Their own cannons, directed at Ouranos Prime, served only to feed the stressed mobius patterns aiding in the defense of said station.

Their translation mechanisms must be unusually skilled, or, perhaps, they made some use of artificial sapience without quite being aware of it. How, exactly, they were capable of being aware of the impending conflict was lost with the destruction of the command ships, and will have to wait until humanity makes contact with the species nearer their home.

Weapons

The command ships of the Dyrajt possessed tachyon cannons, though of significantly less potency than the ones possessed by humans. These were neutralized early in the Contact War, however, and did not make any real impact.

The other warships in the Dyrajt fleet made use of coilgun and laser weaponry. They were apparently outclassed by modern defenses and weaponry, pair cannons being significantly beyond anything they had faced. A few ships seemed to have weaponized gravitic technology, however if so it was not powerful enough to overwhelm the structural stability of human vessels.

Materials

Dyrajt ships were an extremely valuable source of hawkinium and exotic matter. Some components of their technology had obviously long since faded due to the slow decay of other materials, leaving some of their ships partially irradiated.

History

Much of what is known about the Dyrajt comes from those captured after the Contact War. Another source is more telling, and less rank with bias - their ship logs. It is obvious that they do not fully understand the technology that they possess, a fact which allowed the broken Consortium and Triate fleets to fource a route of their significantly more advanced aggressors, and apparently, were not even aware of the artificial intelligences monitoring their ships.

Roughly a hundred and fifty thousand Earth years ago, another ancient race began exploring the Milky Way, specifically the region in which the Dyrajt inhabited. A guess is that they named themselves the Tlorai, though this is uncertain. The Dyrajt word ptora means 'blasphemer' or 'heretic', and given it is the only such word in a language for a highly religious culture, the similarity is well-noted. The Tlorai must have been a highly advanced civilization when they encountered the Dyrajt, and may even have been responsible for the Centaurus Relic.

According to captured ship records, the Tlorai home system became the victim of an exceedingly close encounter with another star. The ship's records make no mention of the causes that led to the Dyrajt replacing the elder race, though it is presumed that it was taken by the younger race as a divine signal, and the result was likely not a peaceful one.

Not a race keen on exploration, the Dyrajt remained largely within the systems previously explored by their benefactors, though a few terraforming projects were undertaken. Intraspecies conflict was extremely common, and quickly whittled away at the numbers of spaceworthy vessels in their armada, until an agreement was made to conserve their ships and do the vast majority of their fighting planetside.

This agreement held for a hundred thousand years, or perhaps longer. What is known is that the eruption of Kennedy Station was detected quite easily, and sent the Dyrajt into a state of extatic panic. The invasion fleet consisted of nearly half of their spacegoing resources, and every combat capable vessel was sent to the mysterious system which generated the most powerful tachyon signal in Dyrajt history (and quite possibly of the entire Milky Way).