Race Attributes: 


I was looking around and realized everyone really loves making nice little races that have awesome technology and are all good little boys and girls who will fight the good fight and would give their lives to save the galaxy. (with a few exceptions like the Necromonicon of course) So I give you a darker race, not neccesarily big glactic baddies but just not very nice. I guess you could call them the galaxy's mafia race... kinda. Anyways...
The Zrahi (Holding two PF pistols, refer to this page:
http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=5018.60 for info on PF pistols, look under the "Slerka's Trade Market" post)

Nano-suit Zrahi
Body The Zrahi are a sort of cross between reptile and amphibian in appearance but are warmblooded in nature. The Zrahi were naturally snake-like with a quilled end on their tails. They have six arms and two fingers and a thumb on each hand. The Zrahi were not statisfied with their bodies though and believed that their Gods had made them but it was up to themselves to improve themselves. They believe that they have reached the pinnacle of perfectionf for a species with the perfect balance between organic and technological parts. They now have replaced their main forearms and hands with mechanical replacements, each containing a retractable blade installed. Their quilled tails have been replaced with a mechanical bladed and hinged tail that is much more useful in this day and age. The four canisters act as venom-producing organs and can release this venom onto the edges of the bladed tail in order to ensure the painful death of it's victim. Their heads have been improved with metal plating that protects their once fragile skulls, and given an enforced lower jaw making their crushing bite even more deadly. The slits in the front are enhanced olfactory organs; the blue circles further down are eyes capable of zooming in and out up to 300 yards; behind those are red spots which are actually heat-sensors, perfect for hunting living prey; and behind those are small enhanced ears with two antennae coming off of each giving them the ability to pick up radio signals.
Evolution Microscopic: The Zrahi started out, like all life, as a single celled organism. Even as a microscopic lifeform the Zrahi were carnivorous with absololutely no interest in eating plant life or other matter.
Multicellular: As time progressed the Zrahi evolved into simple snake-like creatures about a 3rd the size of an average human's arm. Their early backbone allowed only for side-to-side movement and so they could not rise or dive within in water easily. This led to the groth of thin appendages with fins on the ends of them so that the Zrahi could be more agile in their water environment.
Advanced Predator: After millions of more years of evolution the Zrahi evolved to be much larger and more reptilian, their once pewny fins had become large powerful clawed fins capable of pushing Zrahi through the water incredibly fast, and their tails become just as powerful, being used as whips to knock away any prey or attackers. Soon after the tails began being used as wips, the tails began featuring large quills that could easily puncture the side of any unwary and unwanted guest. The Zrahi began to hover ever closer to the top of the food chain.
Onto land: Soon the Zrahi began swimming to the surface of the ocean, not because they were swimming higher but because tectonic activity had started pushing up the sea floor and pushing water further onto land, making the areas they lived in more and more shallow. The Zrahi were closer to the surface now but also had more room to hunt because of the ocean's expansion over land. Plate activity much later began to reverse the process the Zrahi found themselves slithering over patches of land, leading them to evolve from lunged serpents to land-dwelling carnivores.
Intelligence: After thousands upon tens of thousands of years later the Zrahi began hunting more in packs, and coordinating with eachother. This also led to competition to other packs of Zrahi, the first signs of aggression between their own race. With their prey becoming more agile and fast the Zrahi began to gradually mutate towards a larger cranium and therefore a larger brain, bringing comprehension and sentience. This made the Zrahi the first race of their planet to reach sapience (but not the last) and they would soon begin to form tribes and enter a deadly competition of survival among the other tribes and even members in their own tribe.
BiologyThe Zrahi reproduce Asexually, meaning that each Zrahi gives birth to their own young without a partner. This is made more efficient because all Zrahi not only have their own DNA but multiple strains of random DNA, DNA that';s sole purpose was to ensure that the offspring of any Zrahi was not identical and ensure that evolution could take place. Of course the random DNA isn't completely random, it is based off of traits of ancestors of each Zrahi and is just easily mutated to include new traits making evolution happen rapidly. Each Zrahi has an average of 7 strands of random DNA but more recently it has become common to genetically alter or remove this random DNA to ensure that new Zrahi remain "perfect" and do not mutate into a lesser form than that of current Zrahi. Zrahi lay eggs once in their life and it usually consists of 6 to 9 eggs. Now since they reproduce in this manner and only have one gender ALL Zrahi have traits that are often related to males in other races(such as great strength, the ludy for conflict and a more hostile disposition.)
TribalEarly Tribes: The earliest tribes consisted completely of family members, they were merely the next step from hunting packs. Each tribe would would burrow holes out of the ground and use the soil they had pulled out along with sticks, leaves and rocks to build a short wall and a roof over the pit, making it easy to hide their dwellings from unsuspecting prey. Each member of the tribe, once reaching adulthood, would lay anywhere from 6 to 9 eggs and the entire tribe would look after the eggs until they hatched. Once hatched the Zrahi who parented those eggs would split off with it's children and form a new tribe, and the adult would become that tribe's elder or leader. This would have rapidly increased the growth of the Zrahi population if it weren't for the infighting among their race and the extreme conditions and other predators of their homeworld.
Joined Tribes: Eventually the Zrahi began to stay with there old tribe even after their eggs had hatched, making some tribes very large and very powerful, easily capable of destroying other smaller tribes. Although these larger joined tribes were very powerful it gave way to more problems. If the Zrahi did not split off to form their own tribe than who was the elder of the tribe? This would usually be determined by a large fight, usually to the death, of all those Zrahi who believed they should be elder. It becam a sacred right that all Zrahi, once in adulthood, would battle with the other Zrahi until a winner was obvious and that winner would be the new elder. The losing Zrahi would either be dead or badly wounded, which would either cripple them for the rest of their lives or dishonor them among their tribe.
Greater Tribes: It soon became clear to some tribes that in order to survive they must combine with other tribes that they weren't even related to. It was common though that if tribes successfully combined that the multiple leaders would fight among eachother to try and create one leader like there were in the joined tribes and small tribes, this however proved to be a problem with such a large tribe. Tribe members would pick sides and if their elder lost they would fight with the winning tribe and often kill them, leaving the Greater tribe leaderless. The Zrahi began to think logically after thousands of years of endless small fights. They began to make a "Table of Elders" which was a group of all the leaders of the Joined Tribes that made up the Greater Tribe. Now that the Greater Tribes could exist with relatively little fighting within them, the Zrahi would begin to construct their first great cities, bringing them one step closer to unifying to explore the galaxy.
Cities and NationsCity-States: With the Greater tribes growing ever more powerful and wiping out the few remaining smaller tribes City States began to be very common among the Greater tribes. These City-states were ruled over by one supreme Zrahi called the Zah-Ter. (The Zah in Zah-Ter means "Zrahi Elder" and the definition of Ter is one who holds the highest power, so in effect Zah-Ter comes from when the Zrahi were still tribal but now they must chose one elder among very many, the Zah-Ter) The Zrahi did not fight eachother as much as they once did within their tribes. A few elders (4-16, depending on size of tribe and city) were placed on the Zah-Ter's council, they were each put in charge of different city districts or different needs such as construction, taxation or military. The City-States often fought between eachother and soon the planet would be ruled by a handful of Nations.
Nations: The Zrahi had progressed through their age of City-States with numerous small wars and even large-scale conflicts that spanned far and wide always ending with one supreme victor who would recieve all the land and property of the losers. This soon led to the creation of greater nations. These nations, like the City-States were ruled over by a Zah-Ter his council(now made up of 12-25 members with each member having more responsiblity and power). the Zrahi soon began fighting over land, with no other reason for conflict, all the nations wanted to have the most land. This part in time is one of the longest in old Zrahi history it was during this great age of a race for control that the Zrahi began making technological achievements from everything from the first functional gun-like weapons to eventually aircraft and space technology. At the end of this era 7 major Zrahi nations were left, with some small land that was inhabited by still by primitive tribes, they would be taken soon enough. Each of these seven nations would enter into a war with eachother with two sides, these sides had no names they were merely enemies of eachother and would refer to the other as "the enemy" or as the appropriate nation(s) that they were speaking of.
Super Powers: This world war would encompass only 27 Zrahi years, which is very little when you take into account how long conflicts usually last among Zrahi. One side was made up of 5 nations, they were the 5 smallest and knew that only together could they easily wipe out the two largest nations of Zrah. After 27 years of this fighting the two nations feel and the land they had occupied was divied up among the victorious Zrahi according to the effort each felt they had put into the war and the current size of their nation(of course the leaders fought over it in combat cuz their Zrahi and thats what they do, some changes in ownership occurred due to these honorable combats). Over the course of this war new technologies had been developed such as biotechnology, leading to the form of current Zrahi, but from this point the present is very very very distant future. Research into space travel would soon begin, resulting in a war over Zrah's moons and eventually the other planets in the solar system which would end not with one victor but with the discovery of something so profound it would change the path of the Zrahi forever.
**More to come soon! But for now tell me what you think and what you'd like to see!**