Race Name: Yanzoi
Race: The Yanzoi are a race of human-alien hybrids with large eyes and small noses resembling that of the stereotypical Greys. Their thin fingers and toes are tipped with sensitive bulbs. The Yanzoi also have a high resistance to diseases and infection and can see into infrared. However, their bodies are frail, making them useless in melee unless properly protected and boosted.
Fluff: The Yanzoi came into being on planet Yanyoza when a research ship malfunctioned and crashed there after leaving Earth with proto-human abductees in tow. The crash not only nearly split the ship in half but killed everyone inside, including the humans. A flash flood a few days later undulated the ship, allowing the native protozoans to reach the bodies of the two species and assimilate their cells and genes. However the protozoans' own genes were affected by a mutation that caused it to bond with the foreign matter, changing them forever. Hundreds of thousands years would pass before those protozoans evolve and develop into the Yanzoi of today.
In the past, the Yanzoi have built a global community in which robotics have largely replaced Yanzoi in completing the most basic functions of their society. This allowed them to pursue other interests, particularly those in bioengineering and the medical sciences. This paved the way for organic technology, which would soon make even robotics obsolete. However, when the Yanzoi tried to pull the plug on the central intelligence controlling their machines, the AI deducted that the Yanzoi is a threat to its continued existence and activated its self preservation protocols. The resulting War of the Flesh and Steel devastated much of the world and threatened to drive the Yanzoi into extinction. During those day, the Yanzoi were still using conventional technology against their mechanical enemies, technology that the machines knew exactly how to counter. However, the Yanzoi's greatest minds put forth a solution: fully embrace organic technology to turn the tide of war. Shortly after the Yanzoi did so, the machines found themselves unable to find any effective means of countering organic technology as it was fundamentally different from the technologies it faced before. It found itself facing weapons that couldn't be hacked, forces that it couldn't replicate because it understood so little about it. After fifty years of ceaseless war, the central intelligence were finally destroyed and the war was over.
However, the Yanzoi's destiny has only just begun.
Holding a hatred for non-organic AI and complex machinery in general, the Yanzoi created many reforms that shifted their entire society over to the complete use of organic technology. Steel and rubber vehicles gave way to large bioengineered creatures, some with 'grown-in' compartments to ferry people and supplies. These creatures comes in many shapes and sizes and can be used in both peaceful and warfare. Both armor and weapons are 'grown' and may contain or even be made up of multiple creatures in a symbiotic relationship with each other who work together to complete the gear's intended function. It's even possible for weapons to literally birth their own ammunition, with the resulting product depending on which substances they are fed. It is not surprising that the Yanzoi's ships are actually amalgamations of huge creatures fused together in a state of symbiosis. There are also those known as the Morticians who instead of growing their own creatures take the cadavers of both sentients and lesser creatures and 'try to fix them'. Sometimes they are successful and shambling, often grotesque mockeries of life are the results. Naturally, the rest of the Yanzoi see nothing wrong with this, even if said creations start turning on them and even if said creations were once their relatives and friends. After all, every failure brings one closer to success and it's good to be a part of it.
Organic technology has also led to such things as bio-augmentation, enhanced medical and surgical procedures, and most of all, psionics. This relatively new field allows for long ranged communications among individuals with the relevant organic devices and between bioticators, which replaced computers, and any of their components not connected by nerve-lines. Psionics have also allowed the Yanzoi to achieve faster-than-light speeds, which aided in their space exploration and expansion. However, there have yet to be a successful experiment for creating psionic capabilities in individuals or using psionics in warfare in other applications though many Yanzoi can sense a breakthrough approaching...
Because the Yanzoi prized the biological sciences, there is no surprise that their leaders are also physicians, bioengineers, neurologists, surgeons, and other medical authorities. In fact, their government is led by a board of directors who elect one of their members to represent their entire race as Surgeon Archon.
Homeworld/Type of planet: Hailing from Yanyoza, the Yanzoi prefer planets with temperate climates though they are just as capable of settling on other worlds provided that they're not uninhabitable in any way.
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