X'or

Introduction
Greed. Power. Hate. Some people are guided by their emotions, some civilizations are destroyed by their passions. The X’or will never share such a fate. Their single and only goal is integration, the expansion of their species. Gathering all the data, all the technologies, they implement them in their cities and in their fleets, they improve their worlds and universe. They develop new processes to improve themselves, and they integrate it in each of their drones and spaceships as a means of strengthening the unity, the nucleus, the Core…

The age before the Core belongs to the ancient past, to races long since forgotten. Nobody knows if the first beings developed by themselves or if they were experiences from other people, trying to create intelligent machines. The past and the origins of the X’or are lost in the sands of time.

One thing is certain, though: since the appearance of the Core, machines became real, living entities. Through the Core, the X’or gave their life a meaning and they started to multiply. They were only a few, without a goal, without a frame; but the Core gave them what Nature didn’t: evolution. As they are not plagued with the problems biological races face, such as wars and diseases, they became, in a very short lapse of time, the equals of civilizations that had been evolving for millennia.

Because they have no biological needs and they can survive in the most extreme conditions, the X’or colonized planets no biological being would ever dream of colonizing. Instead of trying to compete with other races, the X’or avoid them and only observe them silently, trying to understand their technologies. Since their territories hold raw materials with very low yield and they have such a major technological advantage, the X’or don’t really fear being attacked by the other races.

In their never-ending pursuit of knowledge, they discovered forgotten technologies of a long passed civilization in some random ruins. Since then, they explore the galaxy looking for other artifacts from that race, which, much like the X’or, was mostly interested in knowledge. While searching for more clues, they encountered another race of old. A race older than the Core itself. A race that doesn’t hesitate to exterminate other life forms to acquire knowledge.

Ship Designs
The ships of the X’or are assembled by combining ring-like structures with insect-like spikes, giving them medium attack and defense abilities and average maneuverability. The X’or prefer lasers over particle weapons and try to evade their enemies in battle with complex maneuvers.

Racial Characteristics
The X’or are a robot race with a central hive mind. The resulting efficiency gives them a very high production rate. As there is no individual in the X’or collective, the race lacks overall creativity. They have slow research and very weak diplomatic skills. The X’or get natural race bonuses on mining and production and penalties on research and diplomacy.