Faraday's Homeworld
Races
Xirit
Xirit stand alone as the one race that has driven the planet's direction through their interactions with the other two sentient races. They remain a force behind diplomatic and long-term planning including the decision to keep space and the reason no one else has entered space outside of deploying security androids.
Physical Description
The adult Xirit is the single most terrifying thing on the planet. There are no predators greater, and no single force more powerful. Tauric in shape like the Myris, they stand over ten feet tall on eight solid legs like a spider that can eveb let them climb near vertical surfaces, and on their upper bodies are a pair of powerful arms terminated in massive, hardened fingers that they can use to grab and crush much like lobster claws. While the Myris have venemous spines, the jagged teeth of the Xirit are soaked in venemous drool that is toxic to both Myrid and Kaelid. They have four eyes mounted two forward and two sideways making them very hard to creep up on.
However, adults never appear pristine. All adult Xirit sport variable levels of cybernetic augmentaion including but not limited to weapon hardpoints, armor, shield generators, sensors, and weapons that favor precision or close combat. The number one cause of Xirit injuries and the number one target of Xirit in combat are other Xirit.
Family and Society Structure
There is no family structure in Xirit, and the philosophy is that the strong survive to lead the rest. A single mating can produce up to fifty spawn that are only guarded for the first six months where the parents watch and place bets on their favorites. The young are born fully developed and able to survive provided food, and the first source of food in other Xirit whether born or not. Therefore, the strongest and first hatched have the advantage.
This remains a pattern through life. Xirit live in colonies while their numbers dwindle, and by their second year, most of their siblings will be dead and they will be hungry, mangled killing machines. At this point the strongest earn their first augmentations that they must take without anasthetic. Those that survive the process are considered adults and taken into more formal training. Continued bouts of honorable combat after that further dwindle the ranks until the Xirit are left with a sustainable population. However, given space to expand, they could rapidly increase their numbers, and if not for the efforts of the Kaelid and Myris against them, they would likely have claimed the whole planet. Lucky at least for the Kaelid that Xirit are worse underwater than Kaelid are on land.
Culture
It would ve very easy to think of the Xirit as a very primitive race built on conflict, but that would be a mistake. The eldest war leaders of the Xirit possess wisdom not only of how to fight but also how to guide a race ready to battle at all times away from self destruction or constant engagement in war with their neighbors. Ritual combat and competitive engagements one might almost call sports keep the ranks trained but controlled. Honor is important to the Xirit for better or worse. Still, they see strength as the guide for who should survive, but that strength need not always be physical.
Xirit see the Myris as their most worthy prey and a natural target. They are hard to startle, impossible to hide from once they mobilize, and while they are smaller and weaker, they are no less venemous than the Xirit. Their ability to fog the minds of others and change perception of the battlefield to their advantage means Xirit must be strong in body and mind to battle Myris. Finally, the lords of the Time War should be respected for the power they commanded against all. Myris remain a high ranked target for Xirit while an honorable accord between Xirit and Myris has kept overt predation down to rogue elements including those that attacked Faraday and Coulomb.
To the Xirit, the Kaelid were initially cowardly beings not worthy of life. They were too slow on the battlefield and too prone to hiding underwater. Then the first Xirit mimics came forth, and opinions changed. A single Xirit mimic android could often take twenty or thirty adults down before being destroyed. While the Kaelid made an offering of peaceful units to the Myris, the Kaelid made the only Kaelid mimic combat android ever produced for the Xirit. Its designer went with it and challenged their best to honorable combat, and when he was asked to declare a weapon,he sent in his android stating if the droid falls, he falls. The fight lasted nearly an hour as Xirit and machine tore each other apart. The Xirit narrowly survived meaning the droids maker would die. The machine was impressive, but that is now that earned his race respect from the Xirit. The Kaelid stood without argument and accepted his death without bargaining. Word kept and paid for in blood, the Xirit would no longer call them spinless cowards. This was a mixed blessing as they were no longer worthless and to be disregarded but instead proved to be more worthy combatants even if they stood in the shadow of their machines.
There is one class of Xirit that the other races did not know of until after the Time War. Xirit mystics are a special class made up of the oldest of all Xirit. They do not engage in combat not is anyone allowed to challenge them. IN fact, they are the most carefully protected individuals in the whole Xirit race because they are responsible for carrying forward the knowledge of their kind. They are the true masters of war and history, and they rank over all other Xirit but are also their great teachers. From combat to cybernetics, they know all, and they hand pick those to replace them. To be a mystic is the greatest honor any Xirit can obtain.
Myris
The great diplomats of this world, the Myris know how to keep large communities functional while wielding large sticks against those that might upset them.
Physical Description
Adult Myris are 6-8 feet tall and stand on six long, sturdy legs on a mantis-like frame. Generally blues, greens, and sometimes oranges in hue, they possess smooth but hard plated exteriors with internal skeletons for primary structure. Long, angular heads bear strong jaws with conical teeth. They have two upper limbs that terminate in tough, clawed hands with six fingers meant for strong gripping. They possess a sharp backwards facing barb just up their arm from their wrist that is most toxic to Xirit while more of a laceration risk to Kaelid. Their venom does not affect their own kind. Myris also have heavy cutting claws on their front set of legs that are normally used in a grapple and kick manuever that Xirit know not to underestimate.
Family and Society Structure
Myris are born in clutches of two to four per mating pair and raised together communally. They are soft and vulnerable for their first year, but they benefit from excellent protection from the bonded families. By the time they are a year old, their psionic aptitude manifests, and they begin integration into the local hive where they learn societal rules but alos slowly become used to the ability to think as a collective and not as an individual. Because of this link and the family structure, Myris are very successful in terms of protecing their young to adulthood even in the face of the Xirit.
Culture
Myris are not accorded the same safety that Kaelid enjoy, and so they have build their society to match. The hive mind structure means communication and warnings are spread rapidly across the community, and almost all remain on alert for attack even after the accords following The Conflict and The Time War. The Time War is a dark mark upon their people that they have made sure everyone will remember not only for what they did, but what the Kaelid managed. The deception of the Kaelid and their ability to break the hive structure is a reminder to the Myris that no structure is foolproof. The Myris were surprised a second time when it was the Kaelid were first to offer, in their way, the highest sign of their apology in a diplomatic offering in the form of two linked androids to serve as a diplomatic PDAs. As the Kaelid described, they are "The pinnacle of our capabilities at present made in hopes for peace and bound together like you, two beings made as one." Ties since have grown between the two races as they try to deal with their more combative neighbors.
Kaelid
The often mysterious aquatic inventors that could replace you with a construct in a pinch.
Physical Description
Kaelid are amphibious creatures with a strong bias toward their aquatic side and smooth, rubbery skin to match it. They range from five to seven feet from the top of their heads to the bottoms of their webbed feet, and they possess a shark like tail roughly 4-6 feet long. Their specialized lung structures have an open from both their oral cavity and, when underwater, vent through two slits along their sides. They have large eyes with protective lids that engage when above water to protect their eyes and correct their vision for air. Kaelid are extremely dextrous with four prehensile limbs that do not include their legs. With six limbs, Kaelid have the fewest limbs but the most ability to manipulate objects. Kaelid prefer water to air, but they can survive out of water when they must. On land, Kaelid are clumsy, and they often make use of tools for survival both in and out of water.
Family and Society Structure
Kaelid families are small, tight units consisting of a mated pair, the youngest children, and sometimes the generation prior to the youngest. Children begin their education early at home and then move on to study at local schools which then form the center of social groups that will often last into adulthood. Kaelid are observers by nature, and they are taught how to observe and understand everything sentient or non, a philosophical life made possible by the protection of water. The adult Kaelid structure relies on invention and innovation with each major corporation putting forth their best while the people decide from them who shows the best skill to lead them for the next ten years.
Place in The Conflict
Kaelid have enjoyed a great deal of protection from other races because their native biome is difficult for others to access, particularly the secure depths within ocean trenches. Their quarry with the surface world involves all that they discard into their watery home of which both Xirit but especially Myris have been quilty of historically. In the context of The Conflict, they are late comers and the creators of the most fearsome and subtle technolgies uses in the war. As master observers, Kaelid came to understand both Myris and Xirit on a level deep enough to create and deploy mimics of both races to break their societies from within. The Myrias mimics were particularly fierce in their ability to disrupt the hive mind links of the Myris, and it could be said that the Kaelid were the reason thr Myris began the Time War in an effort to repair what the Kaelid had torn apart.
Modern Day
At the resolution of the Time War, an accord was struck between Myris and Kaelid to ally them against the force of the Xirit. One condition of the accord was that all androids must bear shapes that are not extant in the star system and shold be of coloration such that they can be easily spotted. The Kaelid took this as an opportunity for artistic expression rather than regulation, and the colors and shapes of androids like Faraday are a result. The Myris were required to develop and deploy environmental controls that did not involve dumping their refuse into the Kaelid's home. Most Kaelid of the modern age have gone back to the roles of observers and inventors, though now many of the observers keep tabs on the Xirit for the benefit of both races. Kaelid are not, and refuse to be, self-modifying like the Xirit, and those that dwell on land generally produce suits to keep them comfortable and sometimes more mobile, but never are they integrated into their bodies.
Extinct Races
The Deep Dwellers
Records of the Deep Dwellers are restricted almost entirely to the Xirit Mystics, and this is because they saw these creatures as a threat to the survival of their race and not just another rival. The Kaelid also have record of such a species, perhaps even more detailed than that of the Xirit, which they simply call The Folly. The results of the Folly's actions, however, are recorded in both Myris and Xirit history to more or less extent.
Kaelid's Folly occurred during the earliest days of civilization well before the Xirit expanded to cover the southern continents. It was the day the Kaelid fled the sea and began to appear on the shores of Xirit and Myris nations. Terrified and driven by something below the water's surface, they showed no fear and no desire to fight either of their neighbor races, but this was before the world settled on being universally trilingual. What followed after them was mistaken for more Kaelid at first, but these black, eyeless things came from the abysses of their world and carried a power great enough to kill a Xirit with a word. Xirit records indicate that the Kaelid were spared by them as a source of intelligence against this foe. The Myris account, what remains of it, suggests that psionic energy was used to bridge the language gap and inform them of what the Kaelid knew.
A vast army of living night was rising from the deep and covering every shore, wielding a power that the Xirit mystics understood and the Myris hive mind would just barely deflect. A hundred years war consumed the planet and resulted in the loss of most records. But that does not erase what truly happened before the three races split again for a thousand years.
The Truth of Kaelid's Folly
The world was once rich and magic, and with a dense network of ley lines crisscrossing the entire surface, nearly all races dabbled. Myris were the first to learn, and as part of their evolution, they began with elemental magic and eventually rejected it as the psionic hive mind formed leaving them with control of the mind over matter. Xirit looked to such power as gifts of the gods and used it in wars against their own that kept them from spreading across the planet and taking it as their own. Natural elemental magic was their choice, and their strong wills made magic easiest for them to master.
Relics of the Kaelid
But that leaves the Kaelid. They were, and still are, the great observers. They watched this power, they tracked it to its origins, and occasionally they prodded it. They deeper they went into the old caverns and the regions pushed up by volcanic activity, the more they found evidence of races like their that once dominated the oceans before them. Many wondered where the old races had vanished, and none understood some of the great runes and carefully sealed portals that they were opening once more. There has been two great water races before them. One of them nearly vanished and slowly rose up to become the modern day Kaelid. Then there were the others.
The conflict took place well before the Xirit evolved and when the Myris were in their infancy. the Kaelid precursor, spawned from the shimmering energy of the ley lines, was the first was first, while their dark mirror was born in the deepest abysses. Fifty thousand years before the modern nations would form, they were born and expanded until they came into conflict, and the seas ran red with the blood of both species. Magic boiled the oceans in places, fight at the surface cast the skies into dreadful storms that would frighten the ancestors of the Xirit and Myris, and nothing was left unscathed by the war. Eventually, the Kaelid precursors used the last of their power to seal their dark halves away for they knew they could not destroy the Abyssal species and survive. The world went quiet as the deep dwelling monsters were locked away, and tens of thousands of years later, the Kaelid would never know of what had happened before them.
The Awakening
Kaelid, being curious creatures, continued to explore the strange ruins with the zeal you would expect of academics. Without prior knowledge, however, they couldn't know they were breaking the seals on something that should have been left to rest until volcanic activity one day devoured it. What they awoke looked like a black, eyeless version of themselves from a far earlier evolutionary period. The dark ones were larger, stronger, and they had a power to control water and more with sound alone. The moment they awoke, they recognized the descendants of their ancient foe and attacked. The Kaelid were powerless before them and fled to land rather than being trapped by the nightmares they awoke.
The Silencing
The Xirit were the first to realize the power being used against them, and they showed no hesitation in delivering deadly blows with their own power. The initial advantage belonged to the dark ones though, and only the rapid growth of the Xirit kept their ranks from falling. The Kaelid learned to communicate enough to provide tactical data, but they were not seen as something to spare.
On the Myris side, a link was made sufficient to allow the Myris and the Kaelid to communicate. It was within the hive mind that they Myris understood and devised what must be done to stop their attackers, and this was the beginning of a language modification that shaped the world afterwards. Psionics was the first method used to neutralize the Folly by nullifying not just their magic but all magic. A global dispelling of power allowed the Myris to gain an advantage over their less land-optimized enemies and employ their cutting barbs and venom with great efficiency.
From the Myris, the news spread through the Kaelid who began adopting the technique, something that eventually angered the Xirit as it destroyed their command of the elements, which then spread to the Xirit when they saw it as necessary. With their main assault tactic crushed, the Folly were chased back into the seas along with the Kaelid who were blamed for the entire incident whether they deserved it or not. It was up to the Kaelid to finish the war, and like their ancestors, they locked the Folly away at great cost to their own numbers. This time, they dispelled the very gates that held the Folly and, as far as the planet is concerned, exterminated them.
A world Without Magic
Due to the poorly remembered events of the Folly in ancient history, the planet was rendered without magic except for the psionics of the Myris and the ley lines themselves. Myris psionics branched off and was independent of ambient energy for its actions and was thus spared even if greatly diminished in power. Xirit and Kaelid lost all ability to use magic, and all three races lack the ability to sense it. Their day to day language continues to keep a powerful dispelling field around the world by the sheer volume of dispelling charms used per second in normal speech.
For those with the ability, such as the androids Coulomb and Faraday, there is still power to be taken up and used with the right linkages. However, there is still the chance that the Folly exist off world or some plane near it, so magic rediscovered and made functional through the dispelling atmosphere is very much at ones and everyone's risk.