[b]Name of nation:[/b]
[i]Official:[/i] Exiles of Faira
[i]Demonym:[/i] Faira - whether referring to a male or female, in both singular and plural

[b]Species:[/b]
[i]Name:[/i] Faira
[hider=Appearance]
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[img]http://fs-online.4fan.cz/tempfiles/cygnus.png[/img]
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[i]Population and growth:[/i]
Total population reaches 1 000 000 - The maximum capacity of Faira Dea city ship. While cruel, the terminally ill and disabled are often euthanized to make space for new children. The annual population increase is 0% due to birth control laws and aforementioned practices. It is worth noting that only about 10% of Faira are born male.

[i]Morphology:[/i]
Faira are humanoid in shape. Their hands have a set of three fingers and an opposable thumb, while their feet are toeless. Their skin is universally grey or silver, but they have natural pigmentation patterns on it that vary in shape and colors. Their faces spot a rather flat nose with two slit shaped nostrils, mouth with metal looking, sharp teeth and trapezoid lidless eyes. Their forehead is lower than that of humans and turns into hair like tendrils that cover the whole of Faira head. Those are the only sign of sexual dimorphism of the species, as male are not longer than few centimeters and rather sturdy, while female can reach below shoulders and are extremely sensitive. Their bodily build is rather lanky with their height span from 180 to 230 centimeters, and they lack physical strength and agility. Their movement is very precise though.

[i]Anatomy:[/i]
Faira, as all life forms of their former homeworld, are a species based on silicon. Their skeleton is very durable due to actually having metal iridium deposits within, making them an organic composite. Same can not be said for the rest of them though, as the silicon based tissues are more fragile than carbon or sulfur based life. A punch from a human could seriously hurt a Faira, up to the point of tearing muscle. The species makes up for this with very sharp senses and high intelligence. Faira eyes are capable of seeing wider spectrum than human eye, mostly into the infrared wavelengths. Their touch is centered mainly to their fingers and palms. All senses are concentrated on their ‘hair’, which are actually organic sensors. This causes Faira males to be unable to smell most things and renders them nearly deaf. The female antennae on the other hand are extremely sensitive to touch, sound and chemical composition of the surrounding area, to the point of incapacitating them with sensory overload on certain occasions.

Faira reproduction is mostly facilitated by the female, whose body is able to randomize the genetic information on it’s own. The male only gives a pheromonal impulse that actually decides the gender of the child. Faira have very short childhoods, fully grown at the age of 10.

Due to their rare biology, Faira are nigh immune to all diseases, but their wounds take awfully long time to heal. They possess a heightened resistance to heat and radiation in general, to a point of being able to survive on a planet orbiting a red giant.

Faira don't need to eat to sustain their life, but merely to get material into their system for growth, healing, and to replenish disposables like sweat. They gather energy from red light through special organs in their skin in a process similar to photosynthesis. As such, Faira have, in theory, unlimited life span, but most of those lives end earlier due to fatal injuries. The oldest Faira on record lasted 1251 years, and the oldest living one is 360 years old.

[b]Description of government:[/b]
[i]Type:[/i] Military state, socialism - Faira government is the way it is out of need. With their dangerously low population and no planet to call home, military way of life is the only way that can keep their species alive. That allowed for a sort of socialistic governing and eliminating the concept of money from their economy which made them much more flexible in rebuilding after the Exodus.

[i]Insignia and designations:[/i] The Faira were never fragmented into nations, and thus the concept of flags, coat of arms etc. is alien to them.

[i]Home system:[/i]
Faira Nebula (Current) - A hostile gas cloud that is full of radiation and storms that generate strong EM pulses. The Faira can only survive here because of their state of the art shielding systems. In return, they are nearly perfectly hidden within the nebula, as it interferes with most sensors and the visibility is very low. A remnant of a supernova, the nebula is rich in gasses, but the only source of ores are the remnants of one planet shattered into a tenuous asteroid belt. In the middle is a neutron star - the source of the deadly radiation.

Faira Star (Formerly) - The Faira Star was a red giant that was at the end of it’s life by the time the Faira species reached into space. Evolving in this system gives the Faira high resistance to heat and their sense of sight is most sensitive to the red part of the spectrum. The Faira can see the part of the infrared spectrum as well, essentially granting them heat vision.

[i]Inhabited planet(s):[/i]
Faira Erea (Formerly) - The planet was the closest one to the star by the time Faira evolved. The crust was rich with silicon, iridium, iron and carbon. Copper and aluminum were practically nonexistent. Faira Erea’s gravity was about 0,8 of Earth’s and the planet had no day/night cycle or satellites. The atmosphere was composed mostly of oxygen and nitrogen, and the planet had no hydrosphere.

Space nomads (Current) - The Faira now live on spaceships, searching for a planet that would accommodate them. The trouble is that the Faira evolved on a relatively rare planet under even less likely circumstances. It is likely they will forever be condemned to living in space, but they are adaptable people.

[i]Civilian assets:[/i]
Faira Dea - A giant lifeboat featuring rotating segments to provide gravity to the large ship efficiently. Houses 90% of the remaining Faira. Spanning 25 kilometers from bow to stern, this is one of the largest ships constructed, dwarfing many military ships. It is so big that it only mounts it’s own FTL drive, relying on tugboats to move it through normal space.

Faira Tris - A mobile shipyard of the Faira and their only way of manufacturing ships. It’s own size limits the size of ships the Faira can build. Faira Tris features one capital 2km berth, two 500m berths and four 200m berths. It has two strikecraft production modules and sizeable docking array.

Faira Karte - Garden ship that provides the Faira with food. About 5 kilometers long. Over half of it is just storage for the processed food, with the production occupying only about 20% of the ship’s internal volume.

Faira Capra - A resource processing and storage ship. It can house and carry the whole Faira mining fleet.

Faira Hexus - Colony ship that is a jack of all trades. It has large crew capacity, self sustaining food production, strikecraft factory, hangar, resource processing plant, cargo bay and advanced sensors. It is literally built around a prototype FTL drive that recharges twice as fast as the standard Faira model. It is the only Faira civilian ship that is armed, but only with point defense weapons.

[b]Cultural Overview:[/b]
The Faira are a matriarchal society. To an outsider, they might even appear monogendered, as with how things are now the males are kept safe within the nebula as pretty much a national treasure. Being busy with their own survival throughout pretty much all of their existence, Faira developed little to no culture. What they have serves mainly for education, such as documentary movies or literature.

They prefer to relax physically in their free time rather than seeking food for the mind. There are facilities on each larger ship that are built to simulate their native environment, which they enjoy deeply as the environment they can maintain on their ships is vastly different, and while habitable, not at all pleasant to them.

Due to their frail nature, no competitive sports ever existed in Faira society, instead replaced by multiple games of skill and wit. The favorite is a simulation game where a player takes the role of a god and guides a selected civilization on it’s development.

As far as design goes, Faira are fond of shades of red and metallic grey for colors. Their buildings used to have large flat bases with spires towering form them, something that carried over to their ship designs, which are generally flat slabs with functional parts mounted on them rather than integrated into the design itself. Faira do not wear clothing in the usual sense - due to their fragile nature, they took up to wearing powered exoskeletons with protective abilities. Only high ranking officers and diplomatic officials wear uniforms.

[b]Technological Overview:[/b]
[i]Base elements:[/i] Silicon, Iridium, Helium, Xenon

[i]Power generation:[/i] With the abundance of Helium in the Faira Nebula, Faira abandoned their original fission reactors in favor of newer fusion ones that had better power/fuel density ratio.

[i]Plasma thrusters:[/i] Faira sublight drives eject plazmatised xenon gas, Which gives their strikecraft the ability to switch between hi acceleration or high efficiency modes. Their capital ships are rather sluggish, however they can last a very long time on one tank.

[i]Subspace motivator:[/i] As the interstellar drive is actually the first FTL drive Faira came into contact with through unearthing a derelict alien ship on their world, their intrasystem drive works on the same principle, only creating an artificial jump corridor instead of a naturally occurring jump node they use for intersystem travel. This process is very energy consuming and requires several minutes to recharge - the power cost even exceeds that of an intersystem jump through natural jump point. As such, the Faira developed a way of tracking ships into and inside the jump corridor, allowing two ships to share the same route - when they exit FTL, they can immediately jump again using the other ship’s drive, while the first drive cools down and recharges on the way. They also continued improving their imperfect, hastily reverse engineered intersystem drive - the Hexus model can perform jumps twice as fast, however it is difficult to produce and remains untested as of yet. Due to the nature of the intersystem drive, Faira ships can only travel between stars along predetermined paths.

[i]Hull-envelope metal-ceramics composite armor:[/i] Lacking resources to build heavy armor, Faira never really invested into researching the technology. Their ships have double hulls serving as breach protection and spall lining, with the outer hull being a strong composite. While relatively resistant to kinetic attacks, it has trouble dissipating energy weapons.

[i]Ion barrier segment shielding:[/i] Faira developed a very strong shielding system that makes up for their pathetic ship armor. The barrier itself is composed of an ion field that can dissipate energy weapons and melt or vaporize projectiles. Perhaps it’s greatest strength though is it’s segmentation, allowing the commander to boost power into specific shield quadrant for tactical movements.

[i]Cybernetics:[/i] Faira use Semiconductor based computers. The difference from humans is that due to their own physiology, Faira are capable of using organic silicon, giving their computers AI capability quite easily.

[i]Communications:[/i] For short range communications, Faira use hyperpulse multiplex. While the communication Is FTL based, it sacrifices range for greater bandwidth at the same energy cost. This allows them to easily share large sums of data with an entire fleet. Long range communications are facilitated through dropped FTL relays. 

[i]Weaponry:[/i] Faira have never been in a war, however they realized that not only may there be other life in the Galaxy, but it may not be friendly. Due to the limited resources, they abandoned kinetic weaponry and instead focused on directed energy weapons, with the exception of the heavy hitters based on plasma - resources for both of which are easily harvested in their home nebula.

[b]Description of military:[/b]
[i]Ground forces:[/i] 0. Faira can not spare the lives, nor are they interested in invading majority of the planets.

[hider=Ship classes]
FF Privateer
Class: Fighter
Length: 10m
Crew: 0
Description: The Privateer is a combat drone that can act either on it’s own AI or be piloted remotely from a capital ship. They are lightly armored, but fast and agile. The most common tactic is to swarm the enemy with overwhelming number of these small, easy to produce drones.

FG Marauder
Class: Gunship
Length: 100m
Crew: 0
Description: Big enough to be on the border between strikecraft and a ship, the Marauder is lumbering automaton bristling with weapon turrets. While well armored, this ship is slow and thus usually fit for escorting capital ships rather than attacking.

[url=http://nohiki.deviantart.com/art/FC-Buccaneer-532695813?ga_submit_new=10%253A1431472929&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1&ga_recent=1]FC Buccaneer[/url]
Class: Cruiser
Length: 200m
Crew: 3
Description: The Faira cruiser is meant for escorting larger vessels and patrolling alongside drones, acting as their mobile command center, launch platform and taking onto the role of bombers present in other fleets. Due to the drones requiring no personnel, they can be latched onto the hull without the need for a hangar bay. This is the fastest of the Faira capital ships.

[url=http://nohiki.deviantart.com/art/FCv-Picaroon-531756219?q=gallery%3ANohiki&qo=0]FCv Picaroon[/url]
Class: Corvette
Length: 500m
Crew: 50
Description: Where the buccaneer is meant for defense, the Picaroon is a workhorse of Faira fleet, a jack of all trades, master of none. It was designed with that in mind, and it’s gun placement allows for at least 50% of it’s firepower to be projected to all direction, with all weapons being capable of firing to the front. This is the smallest ship to carry the swarm logic anti-capital ship torpedos, two a piece.

[url=http://nohiki.deviantart.com/art/FFg-Cygnus-531634521?q=gallery%3ANohiki&qo=1]FFg Cygnus[/url]
Class: Frigate
Length: 700m
Crew: 100
Description: Created to be a ‘pocket destroyer’, this class is meant for engaging enemy warships. While it has the heavy weaponry of a destroyer in the form of the 50m plasma cannon, and it’s redundancy in engines, it lacks the fighterbay.

[url=http://nohiki.deviantart.com/art/FCa-Corsair-532401380]FCa Corsair[/url]
Class: Carrier
Length: 2000m
Crew: 2000
Description: A one of a kind ship, the Corsair was the first Faira capital ship built. Largely a testbed for their at the time mostly theoretical technology. It's heavy armor asset and double barreled turrets make it a fortress and large number of redundant engine systems give it an unparalleled mobility. It's inner workings though are obviously prototypes, being built into the chassis rather than as easily replaceable modules unlike later Faira models. It was never meant to engage a ship of it's own size without first softening it up with it's drones, then jumping in for a finishing blow with its single 50m plasma beam cannon. To increase its survivability, it is equipped with dual FTL drive, eliminating it’s need for cooling down.

[url=http://nohiki.deviantart.com/art/FD-Raider-531633811?q=gallery%3ANohiki&qo=2]FD Raider[/url]
Class: Destroyer
Length: 2000m
Crew: 1200
Description: The mightiest ship in Faira arsenal, these beasts can gut enemy ship in minutes with it’s two particle cannons and massive load of fusion torpedoes. They are however extremely expensive, and to this day the Faira could only afford to build two of these ships. The ship is, in theory, capable of rendering the equivalent of 35% of Earth’s surface uninhabitable if it expends all of it’s ammunition. Many voices have criticized the construction of these ships as being a countermeasure to a nonexistent threat. Further testing showed that it is also difficult for these to operate too far from the Nebula, as replenishing the ammunition for the two plasma cannons becomes a logistical nightmare.[/hider]

[hider=Organization]
The bulk of Faira ships is split between three fleets. The Defender fleet, stationed with the civilian ships in the nebula for repelling immediate attacks, the Watcher fleet, patrolling the rest of the nebula and tasked with securing jump points, and the Striker fleet, for operations outside of Faira territory.

[i]Defender fleet:[/i]
FF Privateer: 200x
FGs Marauder: 50x
FC Buccaneer: 10x
FCv Picaroon: 5x
FD Raider: 1x (FD Nyxa)

[i]Watcher fleet[/i]
FF Privateer: 500x
FGs Marauder: 200x
FC Buccaneer: 5x
FCv Picaroon: 2x
FFg Cygnus: 2x (FFg Nero, FFg Shiro)
FCa Corsair: 1x (FCa Aetrea)

[i]Striker fleet[/i]
FF Privateer: 100x
FGs Marauder: 100x
FC Buccaneer: 20x
FCv Picaroon: 10x
FFg Cygnus: 2x (FFg Nagato, FFg Blackstar)
FCa Corsair: 0x
FD Raider: 1x (FD Trigati)[/hider]

[b]History:[/b]
The Faira have evolved on the planet they call Faira Erea during it’s sun’s last phase of life. As such the life form evolved to a very specific set of conditions. Due to their rather extreme intelligence, they were able to study their star quite early in their technological development. Realizing the threat, they pooled all of their resources in a last ditch effort to escape their untimely destruction.

It was in the nick of time that they discovered an ancient wreck on their planet - a relic ship left there by a civilization long extinct. Through examining the relic, they managed to learn about the jump points that link star systems together and reverse engineer the FTL drive, along with some basics of shielding and most of all weapons - a concept alien to them thus far, as the Faira didn’t have time to wage war if they wanted to survive.

Seeing the evidence they might not be alone in the universe though, the Faira prepared for the eventuality, and although their escape plan only involved what would come to be known as the Exodus fleet, they came up with blueprints for warships and modified their harbor ship accordingly.

Leaving just in the nick of time, the fleet managed to get through the only known jump point in their home system just as the star begun to collapse. The initial plan called for the Exodus fleet to find a suitable planet and then evacuate more of the Faira. Instead, they found themselves in a very unfriendly nebula, with the rest of their people dying in the supernova on the other side.

Now exiles without a home and threatened with extinction, the Faira were forced to take extraordinary measures to ensure their species’ survival. The Exodus fleet returned to their home system, now christened Faira Nebula. The military took over with the admirals taking on the roles of the governors. Strict birth control was established and most of the socialistic laws from before the Exodus like healthcare for the disabled had to be removed. Under the new circumstances, their economical system simply couldn’t continue. Thus the Faira adapted socialism out of sheer necessity.

After a few rough decades, the situation stabilized. Now with sustainable population, the Faira begun developing new technologies and building more ships that would allow them to expand into new systems and hopefully one day find a new home and return to their former glory.