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Khruzi |
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Homeworld: |
Khruzi, Sector 375 | |||
Ecology: |
Nitrogen-Oxygen-Water (H:D:1:7) | |||
Biology: |
DNA I | |||
Languages: |
Khruzi Shardakka, Anglic dialects | |||
Human Contact: |
3437CE | |||
FTL Status: |
3355CE - Indigenous macrojump | |||
Current Status: |
Imperial Major Race 3512CE, Mendam Codominium founder 4762CE | |||
Environment |
Ideal |
Tolerance |
||
Atmosphere: |
.20B O2 | .12-.30B O2; CO2 < .02B | ||
Temperature: |
300K | 280-320K | ||
Gravity: |
0.87G | .12-1.20G | ||
Other: |
Humidity 20% | Humidity 2-80% | ||
The Khruzi share dominance of the Mendam Codominium with Humans. They are strongly identified by their pervasive Fzuki Way religious philosophy and by their perpetual enmity toward the Dragon Race.
Khruzi are symmetrical upright bipeds with two arms and a triangular head. Massing 70-100kg and ranging from 1.5 to 1.9 meters in height, the adult Khruzi is similar in form and size to Humans. The soft-skinned Khruzi body is covered in tan or golden-colored fine hair-like cilia. The Khruzi head is dominated by two large black eyes, protected from particulate debris by nictitating membranes. A large four nostril nose, specialized for breathing and hearing, runs along the middle ridge of the head, ending in a sharp-toothed mouth that is used for feeding, communicating, tasting and smelling. The Khruzi arms and legs end in wide pads with three broad finger-like digits and a fourth, clawed opposable digit. Khruzi toes are generally fused and adapted for traction in shifting sands. Khruzi favor loose-fitting robes or tunic-like clothing, though they will often leave the chest bare and adopt a kilt or skirt-like garment. Shoes, gloves or any head covering are virtually unknown expect in hazardous environments. Much like Humans, the Khruzi are visually oriented with an effectively stunted sense of smell.
Khruzi have two sexes. The female gives birth to usually singular live Khruzi infants after a gestation period of just over one standard year. Khruzi young are capable of independent locomotion and communication within a Khruzi year (285 standard days) of birth but stay with their birth families until reaching full adulthood at twenty-one local (about sixteen standard) years. Traditionally, the next six years of a young Khruzi's life were the Wandering, a period of nomadic traveling, though in modern times, the Wandering generally encompasses a period of advanced education or service including indoctrination in the Fzuki Way. Roles in Khruzi society are determined less by gender than by Mission, which divides society into the more solitary and mobile Seekers and the sedentary and gregarious Sustainers. Sustainers include all life-bonded couples, responsible for raising families, farming, and most city-dwelling occupations; Seekers include scholars, explorers, prospectors and most professional military personal. Though Seekers maintain contact with their Sustainer family units, they do not form their own life-bonds or establish families. Once a Khruzi has chosen a Mission path, usually by the end of the Wandering, changes in roles are rare.
The natural Khruzi lifespan was less than eighty standard years. Standard nano-mechanical enhancements have stretched the useful lifespan to nearly three centuries. The Khruzi Fzuki Way and other cultural tenets contain no belief in an afterlife and Mechanist or B'dr'rak style mechanical transference is distasteful to Khruzi. Regeneration is possible, though the Khruzi process is difficult, fraught with psychological dangers and rarely attempted more than twice by any individual. An Elixir-like treatment, Murbansha, was developed in the late Fourth millennium, but was lost after the Mech Plague.
The Fzuki Way, a religious-like code of conduct originally developed from ancient religious principles by Brashadar Fzuki in 4366CE. Emphasizing the perfection of nine virtues, it governs much of modern Khruzi life and has developed considerable Human adherents both within and outside the Mendam Codominium. The Fzuki Way is also practiced by scattered Khaddahl, !Tak and even Turgil adherents.
Khruzi developed from omnivorous hunter-gatherers living on the fringes of their homeworld's arid regions. By 150,000BC, the Khruzi had developed a nomadic stone-age civilization with limited animal domestication. During this period, Khruzi became home to a small Dragon outpost, and the Khruzi endured thousands of years of Dragon domination before the first Dragon civilization succumbed to the Hitzarchi Plague. After the surviving Dragon colonists collapsed into a pre-industrial era civilization, the Khruzi revolted and eventually exterminated their overlords in a mythic struggle that remained part of Khruzi oral tradition for ten of thousands of years.
Khruzi civilization returned to a nomadic stone-aged culture, with only small villages developing periodically at the oases and fertile mountain valleys of the world's supercontinent. An obliquity-induced wetter climate with regular monsoons began to affect the environment of Khruzi-inhabited regions around 12,000BC, and the small villages became centers of agriculture, developing into early metal era city states by 4000BC.
Early Khruzi civilization was rife with conflicts between city-states that expanded into growing nations. The period from 500BC to 2500CE is now remembered as a golden era of warring iron age kingdoms. The coastal nations of the Humbanan Peninsula entered a period of learning and exploration that led to an industrial revolution by 2800CE and to a new series of wars that left the Khruzi homeworld carved into four Humbanan-based late industrial era empires by 3100CE. After three world wars, the third employing nuclear and biological weaponry and instigating an orbital space race, the Khruzi formed a decentralized world government, the Covenant of Kzakhara, in 3204CE.
As ritualized duels replaced massive wars and society tackled depleted resources and population pressures, the Khruzi space age began in earnest, with the first interplanetary expeditions and asteroid factories starting by 3270CE. The first Khruzi macrojump vessel, Pride of the Sun, made its inaugural voyage in 3355CE and the Khruzi established their first interstellar colony at Sheenta in 3386CE. In 3397CE, the Banner of Fire discovered Mendam and the Founder-era ruins on and above the world, and in 3437CE, the Human Imperial Navy frigate Pisces made contact with the Khruzi expedition to Tetraluna, starting a period of contact and friendship that led to the Khruzi joining the Empire of Humanity as a Major Race in 3512CE.
Humans and Khruzi enjoined warm relations, and established joint colonies on Mendam and elsewhere within the growing Khruzi sphere. The Khruzi began military cooperation with the Empire of Humanity even before joining the Empire, and a tradition of noted Khruzi military leaders continued throughout the Imperial period. In 3692CE, Khruzi hosted an Imperial Exposition, marking the growing cultural discourse between the species.
While the Khruzi became closely allied with the Humans, they grew to become bitter enemies of their Ancient Demonlords, the Dragons. Much more so that Humanity or the Fak, the Khruzi retained a strong semi-religious enmity for the Dragon race. Khruzi explorers first discovered an abandoned Dragon settlement, complete with preserved Dragon bodies in 3774CE and Khruzi officers accompanied Jon Gades on his first voyage to Draco in 4063CE. Prickly relations between the Dragons and Khruzi first publicly erupted into violence with a famous duel on Mendam in 4098CE and worsened considerably during and after the Dragon War of 4210-4216CE. A failed reconciliation led to continued strife and the Dragons and Khruzi banned all direct contact after 4571CE.
In 4366CE, Brashadar Fzuki published his doctrine of mental and physical discipline, the Fzuki Way, which soon built a substantial following among both Khruzi and Human adherents.
Khruzi settlements during the Imperial era encompassed over fifty worlds, nearly all within two hundred light years of Khruzi. With Imperial authority collapsing and the Mech Plague devastating civilization, the worlds of the Khruzi region, including over twenty Human settled worlds and a number of joint colonies, formed the Mendam Codominum in 4762CE. Over the next two thousand years, the Codominium persisted, maintaining interstellar civilization in the spin-core region. Either allied with neighboring states and Races or alone, the Codominium fought over a dozen frontier wars against Dragon encroachment. The Fzuki Way came to dominate Codominium culture, with its formality and ritual a part of everyday life for most Khruzi and Humans in the society.
Nearly all one hundred and twenty billion Khruzi live within the worlds of the Mendam Codominium on one of sixty-one Khruzi or mixed settled worlds. Substantial Khruzi minorities live on the sixty Human-dominated Mendam worlds and in nearby spinward client states. A vast majority of Khruzi adhere to the Fzuki Way philosophy. Khruzi relations with Humans remains very strong, though formality and ritual can be an obstacle to understanding for Humans outside the Fzuki Way. The Khruzi avow the Dragons as their mortal enemies and border tensions, raids and occasional massacres persist between the two races.
The Khruzi are exceptional in their ability to maintain a strong cultural cohesion, even under Human influence, and are the only Race to substantially incorporate Human participation in their culture, rather than the more typical reverse circumstance of Human cultural domination.
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