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The J'Rill are all that remains of a highly advanced race destroyed by a civil war in the distant past. Intensive use of cybernetic enhancements has made the J'Rill almost immortal, but at the cost of being heavily dependent on their hardware for survival. The need for spare parts and energy sources has driven the J'Rill to carve a destructive path through space, engulfing entire races in their quest for survival.    PHYSICAL APPEARANCE    - General    Originally a humanoid race, the J'Rill are now more a fusion of organics and machinery, a techno-organic entity, than a true organic species. Extensive use of cybernetic implants has greatly increased the intellect and information processing ability of the J'Rill Directors, but at the same time has stripped them of their empathy for other living beings. The use of the device known as the "Cradle of Life" has made the Directors virtually immortal, but has rendered them sterile and completely dependent upon their technology.    - The Cradle of Life    The "Cradle of Life" is the primary instrument of the J'Rill Directors. The Cradle is actually a supercomputer built into a hemispheric frame. In the center of the frame is a padded couch that hold the body of a J'Rill Director. The Cradle not only houses the control modules that allow the Director to control the gunships and strikers of his squadron, but is also the source of sustenance for the organic body. Branching out from the Cradle is a web of optic cables and tubes that feed the Cradle with information, power, and nutrients, and allows the Director to control both his flagship and the ships of his squadron.    - The J'Rill    The physical appearance of the Directors is largely irrelevant, since they are masked behind cybernetic enhance-ments and the machineries of the Cradle of Life. Suffice it to say that they were bipedal humanoids and that form is still somewhat discernable underneath all the hardware.    - J'Rill Drones and Remotes    Because they are completely dependent on their Cradles to sustain them, the Directors have been forced to develop an array of drones and remotes to perform physical tasks. Drones are the more primitive of the two. These devices carry onboard artificial intelligence (AI) and are used to perform routine tasks. The majority of the J'Rill repair and labor units are drones, as well as some security and combat units.    Remotes are more advanced, carrying an upgraded organic processor that is more capable and more responsive than a electronic processor. These units are "programmed" with a set of skills, but unlike the limited AIs, these units possess limited analytical capability and can take independ-ent action. The majority of J'Rill combat and security units fall into this category, as well as the more advanced repair units.    RACIAL BACKGROUND    Originally, the J'Rill Directors were the ruling class of their nation, mandated by the masses to rule in the best interests of the J'Rill people. The Directors were chosen on the basis of ability and merit; family background played no part in an individual's ability to join their elite ranks. Under this system, the J'Rill nation grew steadily and achieved an enviable level of prosperity and wealth.    During this period of growth, the J'Rill developed a global computer network and information database. This system compiled data from all regions of the world and was designed to improve the ability of the Directors to rule effectively. As the J'Rill domain moved off the homeworld into space, that network expanded to the offworld colonies and the database began to include colonial reports as well.    As the huge of amount of information pouring into the system threatened to overwhelm the Directors and their bureaucracy, the J'Rill rulers were forced to seek an alternative to their existing system. After some experiment-ation, they adopted cybernetic implants that allowed them to plug directly into the computer net. Although this alleviated some of the overload, the Directors still found themselves wading through gigabytes of useless information. The answer was, of course, to narrow the range of data entering the system. It was a simple answer that took decades to execute.    The final solution was a system of remotes that could be directed from the central administration on the J'Rill homeworld. Now the Directors could obtain only the information they required without sorting through useless chaff. Furthermore, they found that they were also freed from the distortions and data-manipulation of local officials seeking to cover up incompetence or even outright corruption. The end result was an empire that was run efficiently and fairly. In the J'Rill records, this is referred to as The Age of Clarity.    Over time, however, the intensive use of cybernetics began to have unforeseen effects on the Directors. The first was that the existing Directors became almost immortal. As their minds became more and more integrated with the machines, the two became almost indistinguishable. The body became almost useless to the Directors, serving only as a means of keeping the mind alive. When the body became too decrepit, it was linked to advanced life support systems, or in some cases, replaced entirely by mechanical life support. With no turnover in the ranks of the Directorate, no new members were brought up, and ideas and thinking fell into rigid patterns. In addition, the Directors became more and more distanced from the people that they ruled. They began to take actions that were justified as being "in the best interests of the imperium," but which seemed to leave out any humanitarian considerations. A key example was the D'Nathi Incident. When confronted with a virulent plague on the D'Nathi colony, the Directors elected to "sterilize" the planet rather than attempt to find a cure. The result was a military biowar operation that stripped the planet of all higher lifeforms, killing over 500 million inhabitants. The Directors justified the sterilization by arguing that the plague in question was indigenous to the D'Nathi colony and it was therefore inefficient to devote resources to such a localized disease. Sterilization was considered the most practical course of action, as it would eradicate the plague and prevent it from spreading to any of the other J'Rill worlds. The uproar caused by the Director's decision was attributed to "irrational and emotional opposition to pragmatic policies adopted by the Directorate that sought to strengthen the J'Rill imperium."    In any event, a rift had developed between the Directors and the J'Rill people. This rift continued to widen until it erupted into armed conflict. The J'Rill civil war was a disaster for the masses. Although they were able to initially seize control of over three-quarters of the J'Rill fleet, they were unprepared for the level of control wielded by the Directors. Historical records indicate that the J'Rill rulers were able to seize control of ships and planetary defenses, turning the weapons against the rebels.    The ruthless tactics employed by the Directors made the war a short one. By the end of the war, almost the entire population of the imperium had been exterminated, with the exception of a few of the smaller colonies. Ironically, these populations were saved by the cold logic of the Directors, who determined that they were no longer a threat and therefore not worth the expenditure of additional resources.    The Directors, however, had earned a pyrrhic victory. Although the rebels had been defeated, the Directorate's methods had laid waste to the entire imperium. With their industrial infrastructure destroyed and energy reserves dwindling, they were forced to seek out new worlds. Moving from their homeworld citadels to a massive fleet of starships, the Directors left behind their home in a desperate bid for survival.    The Directorate fleet quickly came across a young empire, just entering the middle stages of high-tech development. This empire, whose identity has been lost, quickly succumbed to the J'Rill attack and became a servitor race. Over the next century, over a dozen more species, three of them advanced spacefaring races, were similarly "incorporated."    THE DIRECTORATE     The J'Rill Directorate is a loosely knit group, with a highly decentralized structure that places power in the hands of several senior Directors. There is no discernable hierarchy or chain of command, and unit organization consists of haphazard groupings of Director fleets. These groups center around a senior Director, generally one with a large personal fleet and a large store of resources, and will only occasionally operate as a whole.    Despite the lack of coordination among groups, the pattern of behavior is remarkably uniform. When a Directorate group enters a sector, it will seek out the most developed star system and move to subjugate it. Once that is accomplished, the group will establish a base in the system, activating their shipyards and resource processors. The fleets of the subordinate Directors then scatter to conduct independent operations in the area, raiding local shipping and seeking out new population and resource centers, while the fleet of the senior Director remains to exploit the new resources. When an area is stripped of population and resources, or when a new source is discovered, the group will gather under the senior Director and begin the cycle anew.    If a Director fleet should encounter a new spacefaring race, it will proceed to launch a series of probing attacks to determine that race's technological capability. Once sufficient information is accumulated, the fleet returns to its homebase and reports its findings. This allows the senior Director to determine if the new race is worth consuming or if it should be left to develop a bit more before subjugation. If the senior Director decides to attack, the information can also be used to make any necessary changes to the group's ships before an attack is initiated.    - Director Fleets    A Director fleet is the basic unit of the J'Rill Directorate. At the heart of each fleet is a command vessel that is essentially a transport. Each transport carries two to three gunboats that are typically of battle runner or first runner hull size. The remaining ships are expendable strike vessels, which are the main attack element of the fleet.    The command transport houses a crew of one; the J'Rill Director. The Director controls the ship and the rest of the fleet through the command modules linked into his Cradle of Life. Functions that cannot be accomplished from the Cradle are handled by drones and remotes. From the Cradle of Life, the Director receives sensor input from his own ship's sensors as well as from those of his gunboats and expendable strikers. This information is processed by the command modules and routed into the Cradle's main processor, where it is distilled and fed to the Director. The Director also uses the command module link to transmit orders to his gunboats and strikers. Since the command ship has no offensive capability of its own, the Director is entirely dependent on its complement of gunboats and arsenal of expendable strikers for firepower.    The gunboats, which range in size from first runners down to battle runners, are the command ship's screen, protecting it from any enemy vessels that might attempt to destroy the command ship. The gunboats have no living crew. Instead, they are controlled by a bio-mechanical slave module linked to a command module aboard the command ship. Since they are dedicated to the defense of the command ship, the gunboats rarely stray far from the command vessel.    The fleet's main offensive assets are the expendable strikers. These small, extremely fast ships are launched in squadrons of six and used like flying bombs. Each striker carries an advanced AI slave module, with each slave module in a squadron linked to a single command module back aboard the command ship. In combat, these strikers are targeted against a particular ship where they can quickly overwhelm a ship's defenses and inflict enormous damage.    The appearance of these fleets and their fast, savage style of combat was a rude surprise to the Kess and Vestrii, and was nearly the cause of their undoing.    Back