Nycendi

The Nycendi are a species of sapient flyers who have historically lived as a client race of the Jennar and their Glorious Empire.

Homeworld

The Nycendi homeworld is near the lower bound of size for a habitable planet, with a surface gravity of only 0.23g, atmospheric pressure of 1.3 bars, and continental landmasses broken up by oceans. There are no polar ice caps.

Biology

Evolving for flight in their world's low gravity, the Nycendi are gossamer-like sapients, with graceful but frail bodies. A central "thorax" supports a head, four limbs for walking and manipulating objects, a pair of rigid, translucent wings, and a tail with a secondary lifting surface. Several subspecies exist, optimized for different flying conditions.

Psychology

Migratory sapients for much of their prehistory, the Nycendi do not hold as strongly to territorial and propertiarian norms as many land-dwelling species.

History

The Nycendi had reached a mid-industrial level by the time the Jennar contacted them, drawn by technosignatures of industrial gases and radio transmissions. Once contact was made, conquest in some form was fairly inevitable, as squabbling Nycendi factions sought to acquire alien technology for use against their rivals, and their ostensible Jenulan "benefactors" demanded concessions in return. Largely without violence, and before they realized what was happening, the Nycendi were taken into the Glorious Empire as subjects and a client species. This was not completely bad: the Nycendi standard of living surged as advanced technologies proliferated into use, Imperial peacekeeping operations tamped down wars, and a number of them reached high positions in Imperial politics, but, as scholars in subsequent centuries have noted, irrevocably tied their species to the Jennar and, by replacing their own technological and social base with another, ensured they will forever exist in their contactor's shadow.

While the Stellar Compact ended any legal recognition of client-species status in the laws of its member states, the Nycendi remain part of the Glorious Empire, with proposals for independence referenda usually meeting a mix of apathy, outright opposition from Nycendi integrated into the Imperial power structure, and general desire to not upset the status quo.

That said, there is tacit toleration for quasi-independent Nycendi colonies existing largely outside Imperial rule, to a level that would not be permitted for Jennar citizens.