Species: Vul’kruun [center][img=http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130522222305/elderscrolls/images/c/c7/Land_Dreugh_Concept_Art.jpg][/center] [hider=Overview and Historical Information] Membership in an empire is not an option. When intergalactic imperialism came to Vaera, the vul’kruun had already established a sizeable civilization. Though not exclusively placid and open to newcomers, the natives of Vru nonetheless tolerated their new galactic neighbors, merely eyeing them with heavy suspicion and immense distrust. The exploration fleet of this fledgling empire made the first authentic effort at formal contact—but the vul’kruun people were unable to understand the strange words that were directed at them. [/hider] [hider=Species Information] Average height: 9'5 Average weight: 6,430 lb Their mantis-like forms are supported by a protective endoskeleton, while the sturdy, cornified skin of the neck, head, trunk, and most of the lower body is encompassed by a natural armor matrix comprised of scutes and boney plates; the rest of a vul’kruun’s mass is covered in a spiked, chitin-like textile, with the entire defensive package capable of affording vul’kruun faint bodily resistance to low-velocity pistol cartridges. They possess six functional limbs: four powerful arthropodic legs for swift and nimble locomotion over most terrain types and a pair of arms and two clawed hands optimized for the precise manipulation of objects. The upper torso and lower insect-like trunk displays notable evidence of robustness; the vul’kruun’s hostile indigenous surroundings and their unvarying, antagonistic confrontations with the destructive predators of their atrocious world drove them to progressively develop denser and elevated amounts of muscular tissue and greater muscle cross-sectional area along their rigid bulks, gifting them with an enormous quantity of upper and lower body strength. Vru, being a hefty planet with a high gravitational pull, makes vul’kruun bodily motions on worlds with lower gravity disabling, outstandingly uncoordinated and, quite frankly, hilarious to observe. Their monumental vigor, however, is heavily-augmented in environments such as these—but it is debatable whether or not this boost in material potency is any match for an enemy species that is well-conditioned for a planet of this type. The vul’kruun are simultaneous hermaphrodites, but are capable of self-induced fertilization if appropriate mates are presently unavailable. During copulation, both members may agree to impregnate one another for a greater combined egg yield. Vul’kruun instinctively indulge in numerous cycles of reproductive sex throughout their lives--an evolutionary side-effect of their planet’s uncongenial ecology--with one parent capable of fabricating (or fathering) approximately fifteen to twenty eggs. The gestation period is two months. The parent (or the seeder) does not actively stay with the young, but instead forcibly discharges them from its presence so that they may fend for themselves. The survivors fully mature at age five, with vul’kruun typically dying from natural causes by age forty. Vul’kruun do not consume plant matter. They are hypercarnivorous ‘bulk eaters’ with intense opportunistic feeding habits, dining on any meat or dead animal biomass that they come across without a second though, and their high metabolic rates making them out as frantic consumers of most organic and synthetic dietary material. For this reason, vul’kruun do not leave behind corpses that they have claimed, and naturally become overly-aggressive towards non-vul’kruun if they draw too close to them during food consumption. Optical vision is decent, but is underdeveloped when compared to human vision, and lacks the ability to register certain color types. Vul'kruun do not have visible ears, but vibrations instead pass through two holes positioned on the opposite sides of the head and make contact with the inner ear. Smell is offered by powerful scent glands positioned atop the skull. Designed mostly for ripping and pulling, the mandibles of a vul'kruun are unable to chew food. Vul'kruun instead swallow their food whole down a long, fleshy dark canal that leads to their throat, while the lack of a tongue is remedied by the presence of weak taste receptors stationed along the surface of the inner mandibles. [/hider] [hider=Technology] [b]Weaponry[/b], which generally consists of the [b]Hound[/b], the [b]Roarer[/b], and the [b]Hunger[/b]. [b]Hound[/b]: An ambiguous phrase or term primarily attributed to vul’kruun high-performance self-guiding anti-ship missile technology. Advancements in relevant sensory, propulsion and warhead technical fields have resulted in vul’kruun 'MIRVs' to be driven by a crude, inexpensive and utilitarian type of mass-produced digital intelligence that utilizes standard gravitational, electromagnetic, thermal, and radar sensor suites to seek out predetermined targets. Vul’kruun Hounds are equipped with incorporated single-use wormhole-based FTL drives, primitive fission-fragment sublight engines and RCS points that shape them into a workable analog of the customary vacuum-based 'space superiority fighter' or 'strategic bomber'. Hounds lack integrated weaponry, but instead make use of potent electronic countermeasures, evasive maneuvers (like spinning to resist laser fire) and adequate amounts of ablative covering to evade and endure enemy interception and detection attempts. Relatively inexpensive compared to more technically sophisticated missile buses, Hounds are transported and deployed by vul’kruun star crawler weapons platforms, and are normally launched in the thousands by vul'kruun squadrons without much concern for their inherent manufacturing costs, and are especially deadly against larger, slower-moving vessels. Depending on its size, one Hound can play host to hundreds of self-guiding anti-ship missiles, with each missile capped with a high-yield thermonuclear bomb. Other Hound types may have a sub-munition bundle consisting of missiles that are equipped with nuclear-pumped x-ray lasers or explosively-formed nuclear penetrators. [b]Hunger[/b]: Other than the odd bomb-pumped laser weapon or two, the vul’kruun have not invested a significant degree of their species' time, resources and technical expertise into the development, fabrication and refinement of energy weapons. Projectile weapons, specifically Hunger weaponry (so named for its supposed insatiable lust for the flesh of the innocent) are widely considered by the vul’kruun to be superior alternatives to standard electromagnetic and laser weapon models. Whether or not this assertion is true remains uncertain. Hunger weapons are standard ballistic weapons, and take the form of unwieldy, box-shaped heavy machineguns of sorts. They discard traditional mechanical ignition in favor of an electronic ignition mechanism, which increases cyclic rate and provides diminished recoil; a muzzle break and hydraulic-based recoil compensation system increases shooter accuracy and reduces pain incurred from firing the rifle. Mainstay ammunition, called [i]Teeth[/i] (singular: [i]Tooth[/i]), consists of a cheap, large caliber ‘smart’ round. The slug, after having left the barrel of the rifle under the power of a caseless propellant and primer permutation, is boosted to hyper-velocity speeds via a small rocket motor fueled by a volatile solid monopropellant mixture, impacting a target with remarkable force and instantly killing them through pure caviation and kinetic energy transfer alone. Set to fully-automatic fire (and assuming a perpetual ammunition feed), Hunger weapons can unleash several thousand projectiles per minute, and feature a rail-mounted electronic sight with a laser range finder that feeds targeting data to each Tooth, giving a generous boost to shooter accuracy and even allowing projectiles to pursue foes hiding behind soft cover, hard cover or around corners. Hunger weapons are also keyed to the wearer’s genetic code, and will not function in the hands of an alien species unless modified beforehand. Large capacity box or saddle-drum magazines are characteristically operated, but Hunger weapons (especially the larger variants) can also make use of ammunition belts and backpack feeder systems. Attachments are also available, like 'stacked' pump-action smart grenade launchers or suppressors. [b]Roarer[/b]: An evolution of fundamental cannon technology, Roarer is a moniker jointly shared between vul'krunn-made combustion light-gas and electrothermal-chemical automatic and select-fire artillery pieces. They are similar in power to electromagnetic weapons, but are still [hazily] similar to modern solid-propellant guns in that chemical reactions (and not powerful electromagnets) are used to propel a projectile. Roarer weapons are universally employed by vul’kruun assault guns, starcraft and self-propelled artillery platforms, which use them alongside simple automatic loading mechanisms to fling punishing, hyper-velocity low yield nuclear shells at unfortunate xeno enemies. [b]Transportation[/b], which generally consists of the infamous [b]Star Crawler[/b]. [b]Star crawlers[/b] are vul’kruun starcraft. They come in an ample assortment of classes, sizes and roles. They are fairly uniform in appearance; most star crawlers are nothing more than enormous cylinders haphazardly machined together using rudimentary ship-building procedures and archaic power tools, diminutive amounts of preliminary construction planning, and substandard building materials scavenged from past kills and other vul’kruun starcraft. But unlike most species, vul’kruun lovingly look upon their ugly and technically inferior spaceships as literal places of worship and dynamic reverence, each one committed solely to the honoring of Kul, and each vessel telling its own distinctive narrative of lifelong bloodshed and wholesome slaughter by way of runic inscriptions, hieroglyphs and profane warpaints attributed to its spike-ridden and intimidating outer hull. In accordance with Kul’s teachings, august vuk'krunn ‘captains’ garb their vessels in the hides, bones and tarnished blood of those that they have slain, filling their ship's arcane spirit with bliss and resolve. Regardless of tonnage and purpose, all star crawlers are propelled using simple and effective (though rather inefficient) nuclear blast engines, which brutally drives the craft forward by casually detonating high-yield ‘shaped’ atomic bombs against a heavy pusher plate suspended by a series of shock absorbers and well-built bracings. Because of the forces this propulsion method enacts on a star crawler, the vul’kruun have been forced to design their vessels to be exceptionally robust, wrapping them in meters upon meters of hardened and treated composite armor plating, and turning them into an unembellished space version of a conventional, heavily-armored 'battleship' of sorts. Because their creators incorporated high levels of battlefield endurance, efficiency, flexibility, and inhuman brutality in their original designs, military-grade star crawlers are usually created with a high degree of redundancy in mind, and are accordingly separated into independent armored and armed automated modules called [i]Fangs[/i]. Each Fang possess its own digital intelligence construct, emergency power generation systems (usually in the form of several pre-charged power cells, which can be activated in the event that spare power cannot be siphoned from other fighting compartment), target acquisition systems, and armament and automatic loading systems and machinery, affording individual vul’kruun starcraft the capacity to prolong combat engagements even after having suffered severe external and internal damage. For defensive systems, star crawlers are equipped with outdated examples of electronic countermeasure pods, polarized plate armor, ablative shielding, plasma barriers, and kinetic/missile point defense systems. Offensive equipment consists of Hound cells and Roarer turret emplacements. Gravity control is sustained by spinning a star crawler’s habitat module, which generates artificial gravity through centrifugal force. RCS points positioned along the ship's hull provide thrust for course-correctional maneuvers and orbit-to-orbit travel. The command information center, fission reactor, crew compartments, and the ship’s FTL drive are nestled deeply within the innards of the vessel, and are further sheltered by additional metal shielding and the sheer bulk of the Fangs that engulf them. [/hider] [Hider=Military] When the opportunity to sadistically butcher and devour a squatting alien species has surfaced, one star crawler—functioning as a homing beacon for all nearby vul’kruun starcraft—will broadcast a long-reaching summons throughout vul’kruun-controlled void. By no means does this call go unanswered, and with enough time permitted to elapse, a massive communal of armored and armed starcraft manifests with due swiftness, their obscured gantries and warrens of origins funneling ammunition and supplies to the gathering masses by way of space haulers, the crew and command personnel of these ragtag spaceships and void fortresses euphoric for the genocide that is soon to come. These raids of revolution, repossession and seething hatred are known as ‘Quests of Reclamation’, and are bone-chilling wars of utter extermination waged against any and all xeno civilizations that the vul’kruun species comes across within their small pocket of formally-owned space. Vul’kruun normally shy away from decisive battles and large scale void engagements during these attacks, but instead launch lightning strikes against lightly-defended enemy population centers (frontier colony planets, artificial space habitats, colonized moons, or asteroid habitats) and logistical assets (asteroid and planetary mining stations, planetary manufacturing installations, zero-G production sites and starship construction yards). Assaulting the holdings of an adversary inevitably draws the attention of an armed response force, but when this does occur, vul’kruun marshals plunge their vessels into FTL, scattering to random locations—but only to regroup into a new squadron for a fresh crusade aimed at a fresh and unsuspecting target. Deception, diversion and division are the vul’kruun’s bread and butter; they have a sinister, though very much well-earned, reputation for being belligerent and resourceful terrorists. Starving the enemy, weakening him, is the vul’kruun way, while striking terror into the hearts and minds of the meek city masses ensures that widespread hysteria and panic can spread like a virus throughout a nation’s ill-begotten society. [center][img=http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100108062723/tylorempire/images/8/86/Orbital_Nuclear_Bombardment.jpg][/center] [/hider]