Rules Stuff

Za generally understand science and technology better than we do. Any Techno conflict against a za receives a penalty on the initial roll.

Communicate through pigmentation, hissing, and gesture—it's difficult to speak it without machine translation. They have six different written languages for different purposes (techno, arts, commercial media, etc). These are generally hieroglyphic in nature.

The za don't have hyperdrives, but instead use star-gates to travel. It's fiendishly expensive and inefficient because they don't have Handwavium, but they figured it out for themselves without outsiders helping them along. Note that in order to construct a star-gate, you have to get to the destination first using STL travel, which is a pain. The za have colonized maybe 10 densely populated systems? Definitely more than the Verge, but about half the size of a Core nation.

The za are clever. When diplomats from the Core showed up and began talking about splitting up za space like the great nations of the 19th Century divvying up Africa and China, the za played stupid—but managed to turn all the emissaries against one another. Soon the human nations were fighting the Great War to decide which one of them would annex za territory. The Great War and completely halted human expansion for almost two centuries, during which time the za--who aided all sides against each other, but took no part in the fighting itself--colonized another solar system. The Concord was established to restrain the za as much as the human nations.

The za don't like to fight. They prefer to out-think and out-scheme their opponents—it's a very aikido mindset. “What would you like? Oh, that? Sure, let me help you—KA-POW!—hey, are you all right? Gee, I don't know what happened!” The za are actually pretty smug and condescending, though they're just smart enough to keep that hidden.

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