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, as very few specimens were captured for study.

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. As such, many of them have expressed sympathy with the exiles.

The 'priest-engineers' make up perhaps one per seven-hundred fifty in their population, according to axon analysis 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, and over a billion catalogued.

Nearly all dyrajt ships are either artifacts of ages past, or products of factories whose workings are well beyond the understanding of the priest-engineers. Their ships are classified into two groups, carrier ships, and pretty much everything else. The Ares Cannon obliterated the former, leaving the remnant of the human fleets to capture and disable the rest.

Aside from the carriers, dyrajt technology seems surprisingly primitive. Although they obviously have far greater access to exotics and hawkinium than humanity, beyond this, very little of their technology much surpassed 23rd century Earth, and they had very little understanding of what few pieces did. This, combined with patterns and numerical superiority, caused the elimination of the entire dyrajt force during the Contact War.

See carriers for an exceptino to the above.

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 destroy their significantly more advanced aggressors, and apparently, were not even aware of the artificial intelligences monitoring their ships, which they would consider to be anathema.

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 are believed to have been responsible for the Centaurus Relic, which is where the name comes from.

According to captured ship records, the tlorai home system became the victim of an exceedingly close encounter with a black hole. The ship's records make no mention of the causes that led to the dyrajt replacing the elder race, though it is presumed that the fearsome disaster 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, particularly their carriers, 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 ecstatic 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).