Kaeolians

The Kaeolians are a race of humanoid mammals from the planet Kaeolus, located in the Triangulum Galaxy. They are commonly considered to be one of the most prominent species located in The Cluster, forming an immense empire that remained largely unchallenged prior to the First Cluster War.

Biology
In an extremely unlikely coincidence, Kaeolians bear an almost uncanny resemblance to both Humans and Zetylians. They are bipedal primates, possessing finely-attuned upper appendages that allow them to grasp and manipulate objects. Their bone structure has evolved to allow for standing and running on two legs, and their skulls are uniquely shaped to accommodate their large brains. Kaeolians are, in many ways, identical to human beings, outside of a few differences produced from the uniformly arid environment of their homeworld. Kaeolians have much less body hair compared to Humans, and their bodies are contoured to be more slender overall. They have very large ears and eyes, and have much better hearing and vision compared to ordinary Humans. Much like a Zetylian's eyes, a Kaeolians eyes are completely orange in outward color. They have dark brown skin and dark black hair, which are physical traits that are shared between all Kaeolians. They reproduce sexually through conventional means and are omnivorous.

The Kaeolians are commonly considered to be the forerunners for much of the humanoid life that existed in The Cluster following the end of the First Cluster War. They genetically engineered numerous slave races through their Paragon Project to give themselves advantages during the war, which were eventually left to their own devices after the war was finished. None of these races had any major recollections of their interactions with the Kaeolians, mostly due to the immense time spans that passed after the end of the First Cluster War, leaving their humanoid appearance as the only remaining trait they shared with one another. Certain physical traits of the Kaeolians (such as their uniform eye color) did make it into the genomes of some of these races, but overall, no striking physical similarities exist between the creations of the Kaeolians and the Kaeolians themselves at the genetic level.

Homeworld
Kaeolus is a predominantly arid planet, possessing a uniformly warm climate throughout most of its surface thanks to its close orbit. Though temperatures are prohibitively hot near the equator, life flourishes further away in an area around the northern and southern poles of the planet, separated by the extreme heat of the equator. Since the overall environments on either side of the planet's equator are very similar, the fauna and flora of Kaeolus' northern and southern hemispheres are almost identical, comprised mostly of various species of large herbivores and carnivores, as well as many species of large grasses and trees. The Kaeolians themselves originated in the southern hemisphere of their planet, though they eventually migrated into the northern hemisphere once technology allowed them to cross through the equator safely. Due to the immense temperatures located at Kaeolus' equator, firestorms frequently rage near that part of the planet as large patches of dry grassland are ignited. Though these firestorms can pose a threat to Kaeolian infrastructure, these events are a normal occurrence on Kaeolus, and are not seen as a major ecological threat by the Kaeolians.

As the Kaeolians industrialized and gradually developed into a large space-faring civilization, the surface of Kaeolus was radically changed. To reduce the need for surface space, the Kaeolians built residential and industrial facilities on massive floating platforms that swarmed the atmosphere of the planet, allowing larger sections of the grassland below to remain untouched. Space elevators connected the Kaeolians to Kaeolus' two moderately sized moons, which they hollowed out and turned into spaceship factories. Unlike the homeworlds of many other races, Kaeolus was able to remain ecologically stable even when faced with the rapid industrialization of its inhabitants, thanks to their careful use of natural resources.

This did not last, however. Following countless battles near Kaeolus during the First Cluster War, the planet's ecology and infrastructure was severely damaged. The floating platforms in the atmosphere were easy targets that invading Zetylian fleets attacked, causing them to crash downwards onto the surface below. After the conclusion of the First Cluster War, Kaeolus was a graveyard of billions, its surface completely covered in the metallic detritus of Kaeolian supply platforms, space elevators, and plenty of both Kaeolian and Zetylian invasion ships. It is rumored that, among the ruined hulks of spaceships and structures, small communities of Kaeolians continue to survive on the planet's surface, living off of the food and supplies they are able to salvage from the wreckage. It is mostly impossible for any civilization to confirm this theory, however, as the highly-efficient ground-to-space defenses present on both of Kaeolus' moons continue to operate many hundreds of thousands of years after the conclusion of the war, swiftly destroying any ships that come into orbit around the planet.

Psychology
Since early Kaeolian civilization was almost completely confined to the southern hemisphere of the planet, the Kaeolians have always lived in close proximity to each other, and, as a result, have grown to become a very unified species overall. They are not heavily separated by racial distinctions, as all Kaeolians have practically the same phenotype. They are generally very amiable creatures, always eager to assist each other. This mindset mainly arose from the absolutely critical importance cooperation played to ensure their survival on Kaeolus, the dry environment and plentiful carnivores of which posed a great threat to early Kaeolian communities. Thanks to this, the Kaeolians were able to industrialize easily and establish themselves as a major interstellar empire. Since intelligent life in The Cluster was very sparse during this time period (mostly due to the havoc wreaked by the First Vuokra Invasion), the Kaeolians were largely unchallenged in their conquest, at least until they encountered the Zetylians.

Kaeolian unity came at quite a cost later on in their history, however. Managing social cohesion on the interstellar scale was difficult, forcing the Kaeolians to resort to some distasteful practices in order to keep the Kaeolian Empire stable. Kaeolians that resided on Kaeolus and other major Kaeolian colonies used genetic engineering (a technology the Kaeolians had a particular aptitude for) to prevent even the slightest mutations in their genome, allowing them to remain "pure." As a result, they saw the genetically diverse Kaeolians of their more distant colonies as impure and defective, and often attempted to genetically modify them (sometimes against their will) so as to unify the Kaeolian genome throughout the entire empire. When this didn't work, the Kaeolians would resort to brainwashing or, in the most extreme cases, systematic extermination to reduce unneeded diversity in Kaeolian populations. Their careful nature made the Kaeolians were much better at keeping these practices a secret to the public than other morally-questionable empires, but every once and a while, when information appeared that jeopardized Kaeolian cultural unity, the Kaeolians would expose their true face by going to any means necessary to remove such information.