Simmu

This bipedal creature stands nearly 8 ft. tall, has a dry scaly hide, and has a lean but muscly physique. Its head has a set of three fins that form a crest on its head that join at a strong stalk that travels along the head to the base of the neck and partly down its spine. The creature has a massive hands with four fingers and a single thumb, its knuckles jut out like thorns when its fist is clenched in anger.

The home planet of the simmu in Sanctum is the planet Heyuk of the Keltet System. Unlike many of the other civilizations that can be found in Sanctum, the Simmu apparently didn't come from a previous intelligent race, instead evolving from strange creatures held on a livestock transporter. The creature they were derived from was apparently pseudo-intelligent race of salvages from the Old Galaxy.

All Simmu are born male, but during an event simply called the 'maiming' the crest of a defeated opponent is removed and the looser becomes a female over the course of a few months. For this reason, violence is deemed a good and necessary thing, a world without violence is a world without mates, children, and society. After an opponent is defeated it is adopted into the victor's family unit which whose form seems to vary greatly since the input of the galactic culture some 900 years ago.

First contact with the simmu was performed by the Far-Star Guild, who were welcomed onto the planet as a novelty and curiosity by the simmu. They were amazed and impressed by the tools and knowledge brought in from the stars; the guild members, however found the violent ways of the simmu to be…disturbing to say the least, but they seldom killed their opponents and even more seldom intentionally. The story being that the guild was almost ready to write the simmu off all together when several things happened: the simmu revealed the ship that brought life to the planet Heyuk nearly totally intact, it then being revealed to be of Old Galaxy design, and had numerous artifacts that the simmu now had control over access to. So reluctantly, the Far-Star Guild began to negotiate technology transfers for access and permission to study the relevant artifacts.

The simmu have adapted fairly well to their uplifting to the galactic stage, though some still wished they'd stayed isolated on their planet. Their violent cultural practices made them ideal muscle for crime bosses, amazing pit fighters, soldiers of fortune, and more. The galaxy has a strange way of working out problems though, a minority of the simmu began new societies under the tutelage of the finest surgions the galaxy had, and they began to take volentiers or drew straws to determine who lost their crests, without the need to rip them off. The simmus who kept the violent practices of their ancestors began to adopt their defeated foes of other species into their family or clan units, most even kept their scalps after the simmu realized scalping other species could kill them.