[hider=Species: Zek]
Name: Zek (sometimes Zekkians, but they don't accept that name)

Population: 17 billion

Appearance: Upright walking grasshoppers. They are green, brown, or black in color, with colored spots and patterns on their wings. They never stop growing throughout their lives, but the youngest adults are generally around one meter from head to thorax, and the oldest are generally 2.5 meters, though some grow to as much as 3 meters.

Special traits/abilities: Biologically tied to where they were born, and their internal clocks are hard to adjust. This means that the crew seldom works a specific shift, instead working a set amount of time per day. They must go home once per year to mate or the males die. Their wings let them fly or glide for kilometers, but there is little chance for that in space.

Culture: Their education consists of three steps. In the first step, before they are adults they learn a little of everything, from the normal classes like sciences, math, history, languages, as well as giving them basic instruction in combat. About two years before becoming adults they choose a field, science, trade, or military, and study that field exclusively for the next two years. When they become adults, they chose a specialty within their field and study under a specialist in that field until they have learned enough to perform the basic duties of that specialization on their own.
They are a somewhat secretive race, having large aspects of their culture which are taboo to discuss with other races.
Their ships have three "captains" who decide the ship's course and mission by voting on it, one each for science, trade, and military. The captain whose field most closely matches the correct circumstances or mission leads until they need to be replaced due to the irrelevance of their skills at that time. For example, if they are on a trade mission, the trade captain in in charge. If they detect a valuable ore deposit or a strange stellar phenomenon, the science captain takes over. If, however, they are attacked, or must run a blockade to trade their goods, the military captain takes over. In times of war, however, they will send out ships with only military captains to fight their battles, as they are the only ones who will be needed.

Description: Because there are huge areas on the surface of their homeworld which has no land, and therefore no native people to hire for the crew, there are periods of time in which no or few members of their race are working, so they hire members of other races to work for them to fill these time gaps.
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