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The Vestrii of the Alkeldan Period (denoted as all before their contact with the Hre'Daak) were a quasi-democratic society, with random selection across the population used to assign various individuals to a general pool of lower-level regional political offices, and a popular vote, or weighted tally, used to select individuals from that general pool to form the more centralized and powerful Central Government. The members of the Central Government would then, in turn, select one of their own members to become the Chosen Leader - the most culturally influential individual who was not a member of the Overseers, the quasi-religious elders who were responsible for the overall philosophical tone and direction of the Vestrii people.    Until their encounters with the Kess and the J'Rill early in their high-tech spacefaring period, the Vestrii had been a completely peaceable race, who preferred not to interact with the few low tech (pre-industrial) sentient races they had encountered. The Vestrii's primary socio-political ambition, both individually and culturally, is to achieve as high a degree of understanding of their "Survivor's Creed" as possible before death. This Buddhist-like philosophy of growth and interdependence is a very important part of their lives.    The Vestrii, however, are more than capable of acting as fierce and able warriors if their own interests (or those of their allies) are threatened. The Vestrii are highly technologically innovative, and are quite capable of "copycatting" novel technological systems in short order. (The so-called "Sham Fleet" that the Vestrii presented to the Alliance upon their emergence from seclusion after ISW-4 was a marvelous example of their powers of both imitation and deception. An entire fleet of over three hundred vessels was produced to mirror the general capacities and design and system structures then employed by the Alliance forces. The Vestrii claimed that they did not wish to "frighten" us with the level of technology that their real fleet was comprised of.)    As has been shown time and time again, the Vestrii do not see any contradiction in fiercely and steadfastly forming the closest of bonds with other races, to the point of adopting their outward appearance and language (as they did with the Terrans even before the Visitations), doggedly standing by their allies throughout even the most one-sided encounters, and then consistently misleading these same allies "for their own good." In short, the judgement must be rendered that the Vestrii are honorable pragmatists, willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve their goals, and completely devoted, if not always completely open, to their few allies.    PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS    In their natural form Vestriians appear to be a composite of bundled strands of neural fibers encased in a hard black chitinous substance.This chitinous material is regularly segmented and is roughly humanoid in shape. The egg-shaped primary neural nexus that rests atop the Vestriian frame furthers the illusion. Specially articulated portions of the Vestriian frame act interchangeably as locomotive and manipulative digits, though, as discussed below, these are not the Vestriian's preferred methods for such activities. While the Vestriians display no evidence of internal, sexual or sensory organs it is known that they perceive by means of an extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic lines and fields. As an aspect of this sensitivity, the Vestriians appear to be able to "perceive" up and down the entire EM spectrum.    The Vestrii seem to have a life span of between 150 -175 standard years. The Vestriian methods of reproduction and food consumption are unknown. The Vestrii are somewhat more adaptable and able to withstand harsh conditions than other life forms, being able to survive and flourish in what we would consider only borderline environments. The Vestrii, however, do require an Oxygen/Nitrogen type atmosphere and some sources of minerals/proteins in order to survive.    Transcribed from the First Contact files, Patrick Marlowe, Archivist    RACIAL BACKGROUND    At the time of the original Alkeldan conflicts, the Vestrii were an HT1 population who had begun to explore and settle the systems in their stellar "neighborhood." Their local area of space was bordered on the one side by the Dark Crescent, a huge dust-cloud nebula with extremely odd properties, and on the other side by the Dark Crescent's mysterious gravitational shadow, The Maze, a twisted jumble of tenuous, unstable warp point links. Nestled into one of the numerous pockets of semi-normalcy sandwiched between these two imposing bits of galactic terrain, the Vestriian homeworld of Vestra provided a secure and isolated environment for the development of its inhabitants. The Vestrii developed into a social race with complex social patterns and an overall cultural impetus to learn and grow.    For the bulk of their known history, Vestriian society was divided into quasi-political factions formed along familial/clan lines. By their own count, there were, at the height of the Vestrii's clan conflict period, over a hundred major clans, subclans and families all vying for a superior position in the early society. During the Vestrii's pre-high tech period, they shifted from a nomadic cultural base to a primitive urban situation. The Vestrii, who by our best estimations, are capable of directly consuming their required nutrients in raw mineral form never really developed much in the way of agri-culture or livestock cultivation. However, as they developed the basics of both physical chemistry and excavation engineering, they learned how to better utilize and replenish the abundant supplies of the minerals they needed to survive in a single area, allowing them to abandon a perpetual lifestyle of wandering the wastes of their homeworld searching for exposed sources of minerals, and to produce more permanent settlements.    This cultural shift allowed the Vestrii to move away from the rigid clan structure that had dominated every aspect of their society. By settling into defensible areas with more than abundant "food" supplies, the early Vestrii settlers were able to support a greater population base, and as such seemed much more willing to mix with other "bloodlines." The apparently sexless Vestrii seem to produce their young at random intervals. 25-45 cm at birth, they grow rapidly to their full adult size of two meters (approximately) quite quickly, usually within three years. Because of our complete lack of understanding of the Vestrii's innate form of communication, it is virtually impossible to judge the young's mental maturation, since they are not provided with translation devices, or "voice-boxes," until well after their physical maturation is complete.    It is now known that the Vestrii did, in fact, encounter two (and perhaps more...) sentient spacefaring races before their initial contact with the Hre'Daak Ah'ihroz. (Earlier claims on the part of Terran archivists that the Vestrii had "not encountered any other races more advanced than the bronze age" were the result of a misunderstanding (one of many) on the part of the Terran interviewers and the semantically obsessive Vestrii. The actual intent of the Vestrii's comment in question, made by Groot'Dinir in response to what is now generally accepted as a poorly phrased question on the part of Patrick Marlowe, the Terran interviewer, was that the Vestrii had never met a planetbound race of greater technological advancement than the bronze age. Neither the Kess nor the J'Rill fit the conditions of the question, and, as such, remained unmentioned.) It was not until just before the Second Visitation, and the ensuing Battle Of Corcyra, that the Vestrii offered any further information on their prior contacts with the Kess and the J'Rill. At that time, of course, the Alliance was a bit rushed, and did not fully pursue the issue until several months later.    THE OVERSEERS    The Vestrii Overseers are the true guiding force in the Vestrii society. It has been determined that the Overseers are very old and are rumoured to live in excess of 500 years. The Overseers, who have renounced any claim to clan or familial ties, and who, if we understand correctly, even surrender their individual names, are the supreme arbiters of the Vestriian society. They are responsible for the interpretation of the Survivor's Creed, the philosophical tenets of the Vestrii race. Thirty or so elder sages, drawn from every level of Vestrii society, form The Overseer Council.    In order to come to any degree of understanding of the Overseers, one needs to examine the Survivor's Creed which holds that all life must go through a series of trials called Hwekli (Threshold), trials which serve to mark not only the maturation of the life form, but the direction in which it is destined to grow. Not all life will pass the same thresholds, and a threshold that has a particular significance for one life form might not hold the same significance for another, but any who confront and overcome these thresholds, becoming in the process Survivors, will be transformed by the trial, either in terms of growth, identity, or both.    There are three basic types of thresholds in the belief. The first, called Dhulopk, represents a threshold whose passage indicates an advance in maturity. The second, called Hyntuar, indicates a change in lifestyle, perhaps from hunter to farmer (our frame of reference) or from oral history to written. The Hyntuar has equal significance for whole societies as it does for individuals. The third threshold, the J'hunkar, is the rarest and indicates for the Survivor both a growth in maturity and a change in lifestyle.    Over the centuries, the Overseers have attempted to divine and catalogue the numerous types of potential Hwekli that life forms might encounter, and the numerous twining paths which define all the possible ways of life, or Hynt, that sentient creatures might follow. The Overseer's list is impressive and they claim to have defined over 19,000 Hyntuar in their Myalmyehynt (Grand List Of Lives) and a related number of J'hunkar. There may be a few more scattered around, they claim, but their practitioners are most assuredly so alien to the communal Vestrii as to be practically unidentifiable as true sentients. As an interesting side note, the Overseers claim that there is no limit to the number of Dhulopk that might be encountered, since the potential for growth for all living things is infinite.    The Overseers do not contend that all Hynt are mutually compatible, however. They fully recognize that some Hynt thrive on conflict and dominion. The Survivor's Creed does not judge these types to be evil, or require that they be rooted out and destroyed. Rather, the prevalent ideology is that encounters with those who follow these types of Hynt are in and of themselves a type of Threshold to be encountered, and survived. The Destroyer and the Conqueror are both part and parcel of life in an infinite cosmos, and while the Vestrii themselves did not choose this lifestyle (they would claim that they were not offered the correct J'hunkar to allow this change to occur), they recognize the potential and the rightness of this path for others.    It is with this flexible philosophy driving their cultural pragmatism that the Overseers were able to so easily direct the Vestrii to abandon their homeworlds when threatened with destruction by the Hre'Daak. The arrival of the Hre'Daak was simply taken as a formidable J'hunkar for the Vestrii race, one through which they would either change their Hynt (to become, for a time, Juystylok Bren Sumen, or "Purposeful Wanderers Escaping Dire Circumstances"), and grow as a people, or perish. They felt that to fail this Threshold would most likely lead to the destruction of the race.    Before the arrival of the Hre'Daak, Thresholds did not usually pose such ominous or lethal threats, although encounters with physical peril did play a large part in the maturation of the Vestrii. The passing of the Keylar Threshold (The Test Of Faith In One's Ability To Endure) is a requirement for all who wished to join the Vestrii's Starguard, for example. This particular Threshold is one of the (numerous) subsets of Hwekli that are called Myiodin, or "Thresholds That May Be Sought Out."    It was the Overseer's duty to help see to it that the Vestrii, both the individuals and the race as a whole, were provided with the information that would allow them to gauge the nature and implications of the various Hwekli they encountered. To this end, the Overseers had long ago established a special Institution, called Hyntakori, or "Lessons About Life," devoted to the practical public dissemination of the knowledge about the various Hwekli and their significance for various individuals. Over the years the Institution produced numerous Initiates, who, having shown to their Overseer superiors that they had attained sufficient insight and empathy, were sent to the various population centers that spread across the face of Vestra, to take up the role of All-Knowing Advisor. In the days before technology allowed rapid communications, these Advisors were the voice of the Overseers in outlying areas, especially those Advisors who assumed a nomadic role, traveling from center to center, bringing news of the region with them. It is no surprise to find that the Advisors became a central, and much revered, portion of the Vestrii society, even well after they had begun to colonize other worlds. Even today, the descendants of those early Advisors who choose to take up the ritual vestments of their vocation, the Myalmyehynt and the Gyu'tyart (a multi-vesseled hourglass symbolizing the numerous branching possibilities of life under the Hynt) are still advising and guiding the Survivors (as the Vestrii refer to themselves these days) in the various possibilities that life amongst the stars provides them, under the distant, but ever present control of the Overseers themselves.    THE STARGUARD    A life in the military was just one of the numerous paths open to a Vestrii during the Alkeldan period. (Today, virtually every adult Vestrii is involved in their military to one extent or another.) The Vestrii's Starguard was their multifaceted military structure, surprisingly referred to as the Starguard even centuries before the Vestrii were a spacefaring power. The Starguard makes surprisingly little differentiation between what we would consider Planetary and Naval formations, placing all of their forces under a single unified command structure. While the Vestrii, recognizing the different roles that need to be played by forces in various environments and situations, do maintain what we would easily identify as a Navy, an Army, an Orbital Defense Command and a Survey Corps, the Vestrii do not consider these to be separate divisions of the military hierarchy, but rather as wholly integrated aspects of a single unified military structure.    The Starguard, in fact, is not even a wholly military organization. Within the ranks of the Starguard, one finds numerous professional vocations such as Historian, Sociologist, Linguist, Engineer, Teacher, Inventor, Librarian, Writer, etc. The Starguard is a full-spectrum social service organization, that provides not only for the military needs of the Vestrii people (and later, their allies) but for their social needs as well. In this aspect, members of the Starguard are often seen acting as local police forces, providing educational services, producing historical accounts, providing emergency relief in stricken areas, or helping to erect new structures in emerging population centers. In short, the peacetime Starguard acts as the arms and legs of the Vestrii government in virtually all aspects and at all levels in Vestrii society.    In wartime, however (which, according to the Vestrii has been ever since the Hre'Daak showed up), the Starguard is essentially indistinguishable from Vestrii society itself. Ever since the retreat from their home systems, every Vestrii has been considered a member of the Starguard to one degree or another. While only those who serve in a role that would be considered a "traditional" Starguard position display the symbolic tokens of membership, virtually every member of the society (apart from the Government itself, the Advisors, and the Overseers) are considered to be operating under the auspice of the Starguard. Even well after Corcyra, and throughout the Subjugation and Occupation of the Territories, the Starguard, well remembered and regarded for their outstanding performance all throughout the war, was described as consisting of the entire Vestrii population!    Back