CSS Xenodemographic Report:
The Saurian Races
The Saurian sentient races are scattered across the Vangelis (E), Kucera (F), Threshold (I) and Osmani (J) subsectors – more commonly known as the VKTO quadrant. Their home world(s) are located along the Spinward edge of the Vangelis subsector. Not much is known about the planets of their origin or its social structure. What is known is that Saurians do not rule any planets as humans or aslan would think of the concept. Each one of the four major Saurian races have a different approach to settlement and occupation of territory – some of which have put them at odds with the Scout Corps. As the human-aslan Confederation pushes Spinward in their expansion, there are sure to be more conflicts with the Saurians in the future.
The Alzo (Dependant Category 3)
The Alzo resemble theropods, two-pegged dinosaurs of ancient Terra. They have a boxy head that tapers to the front providing excellent vision without moving. Their eyes are golden and small in proportion to the rest of their head. Their facial expressions are difficult to read, their faces being frozen into an almost permanent smile with many upper teeth showing. They have long balancing tails that store energy when they run which also has some use as a weapon. Adult males average six to six and a half feet and weigh around 200 lbs. They are deceptively light for their size because their bones are honeycombed with holes. They can maintain running speeds of 20 – 25 miles an hour with 35 miles an hour in short bursts. Their skin color varies, usually into the tan to yellow-green range, typically with a darker diamond pattern on their backs. Females are smaller and have front to back stripes along the back with a reddish brown patch on the top of the head.
Male behavior for the Alzo is typically solitary. They don’t care much for the company of other males, although they will tolerate multiple females. A dominant male will gather a following of other species either through hire, slavery or other means of compulsion or attraction. Often other races will join the ranks of a male Alzo’s following because it is better to be a servant than food. A large Alzo can fit an entire human or aslan head between its jaws. They are quite intimidating, made more so because they tend to hiss their Galanglic from between their teeth and have a taste for free range live food. There are allegations under investigation by the Scout Corps of Alzo using humans as a food source.
The smallest Alzo social grouping is more like a clan than a tribe and they show little concern over family bonds. Not all of the males in a clan will be related, but they will pledge loyalty (such as it is) to a single leader or consortium of leaders. The most famous of these is the Toyo Alzo Cartel. The Toyo Alzo are natural predators in every sense of the word: not just in their food preferences, but in the way they do business and view the universe as a whole. They have their talons in most of the illegal operations (human trafficking, drug trafficking, piracy, tech smuggling, gun running, etc.) in the VKTO quadrant.
Because they operate on or beyond the fringe of civilized space, they fall more or less under the jurisdiction of the Scout Corps. Their operations are well funded and organized, using the best “talent” the Toyo Alzo can hire or enslave to run and maintain their operations, usually at stellar tech or better. They have also been known to employ more technically sophisticated ships with interstellar capabilities. What ever the tech level of the ship, it is built and run by another race. Alzo will only be present as captains or free range fighters.
The Solon (Dependant Category 3)
There are other sub-races of Saurians that the Confederacy has had more favorable contact with. The first of these are the Solon. The Solon also resembles a theropod, but not a carnivorous one. They are not as sleek in body or form as the Alzo, having shorter, stubbier bodies, legs and tails. Their arms are longer than an Alzo’s. Their frame is not built for speed but for strength. Males are distinguished by hard boney fused ossiplates on the top of their heads and bridge of the nose. With an omnivorous diet, they have mouths that are much smaller than the Alzo designed for chewing vegetation. Females have similar plates on their heads, but the ossiplates are not fused together into a single piece. A young male will have similar plates on his head and nose but he will not be considered a grown adult (and therefore one of the community) until those plates have fused together somewhere around age 14 - 15. By other Solon and those who know them well, the ossiplates are a form of identification. Entire families will have similar or nearly similar patterns of plates that are as individual as a finger print.
The Solon in general are builders of cities, but not of nations. It’s not unusual to encounter such a settlement (post industrial) scattered across the VKTO subsector, usually on planets that have little or no other population. They often have no ships of their own, lacking the technical skill for the building of them, but they do hire ships for transport. Some humans and aslan have found lucrative employment within the Solon sphere of influence doing cargo and colonists transportation. In societies where there is no “homegrown” space travel, the prices paid for services tend to be much higher.
On worlds that the Solon have settled and shared, they are generally good neighbors. They are not aggressive as a species but will stand their ground when their homes are threatened. Among the most likely off world settler among the Solon would be the Nistri Solon. The one exception to their general passive nature is when they encounter hunting parties of Alzo. Alzo will eat any being they can hunt, sentient or otherwise, but they really prefer to dine on saurian kind: it’s an ego builder, carrying various body parts home as trophies. A hunting party is one of the few times Alzo males cooperate with one another. The Alzo will usually hunt “au natural” with just fang and claw. The Solon are not opposed to using any weapons they can find to protect themselves, even building defensive walls around cities. That suits the Alzo well. They enjoy circling around the walls, terrifying the inhabitants and pitting their skill and wit against the leaf eaters. It is all good sport – unless you are one of the Solon.
The color palate for the Solon is in the medium to dark greens – the colors of the deep forest. They are not fast runners; they have plantigrade legs like humans and are just as fast but with less with less endurance. They can, however, carry large amounts of weight when they do run. Their best defensive strategy is to hide, although it is speculated that in an ancient day, they used the bony dome on their heads as some kind of a “butting” defense.
The Elon (Codependant Category 2)
There is a third type of Saurian common referred to by humans as a “twitchers,” because of their quick, bird-like rapid movements. In their own language they call themselves the Elon. Elon are common in the Vangelis and surrounding subsectors and of all the Saurian races are the most frequent companion of human and aslan crews. They share a similar silhouette with their Alzo therapod cousins, but there the resemblance ends. Like most other Saurian races, they have digitigrade legs and run on their toes. That makes them faster than any other sentient race except for the aslan, or Osmani when they run on all fours.
Elon heads are roughly conical shaped, the blunted point being their nose. They average four to five feet in height and under 100 pounds in weight. They are smart and well-coordinated for Saurians, better so than the other three races. Their colors range in the brown to light tan range with reddish hash marks across the spine. Females also have the same red patch on the head that Alzo females do. Both sexes have a "headress" of quills around the back of their skulls, similar to a male aslan's mane, in the dark brown to yellow color range. Female "headresses" are less pronounced than males. In both sexes, their plumes stand up when posturing: either threatening an enemy, a rival or trying to attract the attention of a member of the opposite sex. To enhance this effect, Elon youth frequently dye their plumes (both sexes) to show that they are single.
“Twitchers” because of their small size and small delicate fingers are highly valued as mechanics and repairmen on board ships. They do not have a lot of strength in their arms, but in jobs that require finesse and skill they are often the sentient of choice. The Dant Elon are well known as technicians with colonies at several Confederate Naval and Scout Corps installations. They are often paired with a human advisor in work details who will have better knowledge of ship’s systems. The Elon, under human direction, can go places inside the machinery and the ducts comfortably that humans could not hope to reach without dismantling other machinery. They can significantly shorten the time it takes to make major repairs.
Because of their small size and their natural tree climbing ability, there was an abortive attempt by the Confederate Marines to train some of them as snipers. Unfortunately, the Elon lived up to their human nickname. While they were great at open field running, and brave in the extreme, they couldn’t stay still long enough to be good soldiers – especially snipers.
The Moc (Dependant Category 2)
The Moc are the last of the four sentient Saurian races and perhaps the most distinctive in appearance. They are taller than the Alzo by virtue of an arched crest that runs from their nose bridge to a foot or more beyond the back of their skull. The length of the crest is an indicator of age: the longer the crest, the older the Moc. Females also have the crest, but it is less pronounced. This gives their face an almost blade-like appearance when looking at them head on. Theropods, like the others, their skin colors range in the blue-grey-black range. Their under parts are light grey to white, their sides blue and their backs mottled blue and black. The patterns on the back are shared by family members and can be used as a form of identification just as the ossiplates on the head of the Solon can be.
Males average in height around seven feet and 350 pounds in weight. Socially, the Mocs tend to spread out in settlements that loosely resemble island villages. They tend to settle along the water and by inclination choose fishing or some other water-based careers. They are omnivores, but consume a large quantity of fish in their daily diet if fish is available. Their natural defense in times of crisis (like an Alzo attack) is to take to the water. That instinctive reflex may be why they settle along the shores of inland sees and rivers. They swim like snakes, undulating their body side to side in smooth, rippling motions. They are certainly stronger swimmers than the Alzo who only dog paddle and would have to be really hungry to follow a Moc into the water. It only takes three of four Mocs to drown an Alzo. Typically the Alzo response would be to “ring in” a Moc in the water, but since a Moc can fish and feed while in the water, it would be a very long wait for it to come out unless the Moc was wounded. Usually the Alzo give up and go in search of easier prey.
The Talan Moc are probably the most famous of the Moc clans. They are merchants and the first of their kind to become well enough organized and funded to do business with other races. They maintain human or aslan ships with the help of their Elon cousins in building their merchant empire. They are only now developing the capability of ship building and have developed small fleets of stellar craft for in system trading. That would normally put them in a Category 4 status, but their long experiance with interstellar craft not of their own making earns them a Codependant Category 2 rating.