Naltok - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text, by Quantumshark
TECHNOLOGY
OTHER
The Naltok are a species located here, on the fringes of the galaxy west of the Kimek.
The Naltok are intended to be roughly Tier 1.5, sitting somewhere between humanity and the Korath automata, marginally above the Hai, but with technology that specialises in efficiency rather than raw power.
Currently, the Naltok are split between two main governments: the technocratic government of the Telashki and their Ministries, and the charismatic military leadership of the Xochira under the command of the Grand Admiral, Keloxok. There are also independent merchants, and a single neutral station observing the two white dwarfs in Vokegol. While the Telashki and Xochira have fought in the past, and are nominally still at war, they are not actually fighting each other - the only route between the two factions passes through Vokegol, but also the Xochira are sufficiently outmatched by the Telashki that they're reluctant to attack, while the Telashki have decided that having an enemy is in many ways quite useful.
The Telashki are led in a distributed system of government by the Ministries. There are several Ministries of various sizes, but the main ones are the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Alien Life and most of all the Ministry of Genetic Research. Each Ministry is primarily composed of experts in the relevant areas, and has direct power over only the decisions relevant to it. In Telashki society, the population have been socially engineered over many years with the objective of streamlining the process of technological advancement. Secrecy of any form is taboo among the Telashki - civilians and the government alike are always open, and misleading or lying are likewise seen as attempts to obfuscate the truth.
Relatively recently, significant numbers of Alphas arrived in Naltok space, travelling via the wormhole. These Alphas, considered friends by the Telashki and enemies by the Xochira, are now trapped in Telashki space, unable to leave due to the vigilant patrols of the Xochira that cover all potential exits from Naltok space.
The Xochira are led by their military, and particularly revere their charismatic leader, the Grand Admiral, Keloxok. Most Xochira distrust the Alphas, the Telashki, or both, and despite their comparatively weak military position the Xochira's ultimate goal is to invade the Telashki and force the Alphas out of Naltok space. While at first glance the Xochira superficially resemble other militaristic factions like the Unfettered or the Vi, they do not share those factions' honour, nor do they place value in personal physical strength - rather, the Xochira strongly value tactical brilliance, not raw strength.
The Xochira subscribe to the Human side of the story about the Alphas, specifically to a single account of it from one human crew member the Alphas brought with them, an account the Telashki dismissed as misinformation and slander, and are repulsed by the fact that the Telashki treat these psychotic aliens better than their own citizens.
The ancestors of the Naltok were creatures similar to newts, evolved on Nareltok, an old, marshy planet orbiting a small orange K3 star. The notable parts of their history begin in their industrial period, where their physiology coupled with the fact that a majority of their fuel source came from peat rather than more efficient coals and oils made them particularly vulnerable to greenhouse warming. As their planet warmed and dried, their society collapsed into a massive global war, until they were approaching the brink of extinction. Unable to repair their planet quickly enough to save themselves, the Naltok modified themselves into forms better suited to the self-inflicted harsh conditions of their planet - thick, waxy skin to reduce water loss, decreased size and slowed metabolisms to reduce their food requirements, and a dark radiation-resisting pigment to shield them from the effects of the nuclear fallout resulting from the war.
Having rescued their entire species from extinction, the group of scientists responsible for this initiative were able to take power, forming a single unified government. The new government blamed the disasters on the preceding governments' lack of scientific knowledge, and established their distributed technocratic system. The end of the war, and the subsequent reengineering of the Naltok, ocurred around 5700 years before the start of the game.
With no vaguely habitable planets in their home system beside their moonless homeworld, and having identified the life-supporting moon Vigechox in their neighbouring system, the Naltok sent out their first interstellar voyage disproportionately early relative to their technology, so the resulting colony was separated for around 300 years before the hyperdrive was developed. During this time, the lower gravity of the newly colonised moon, and the comparative ease of transit to the other moons of the same gas giant, led to a much more developed shipbuilding industry than developed on their homeworld, where the local government heavily pushed for biotechnology over other advances, supported by the blind trust of their populace. Despite this, ultimately it was scientists on the homeworld that first invented the hyperdrive, reuniting the two societies.
The reunification was peaceful and total, with free exchange of technology and free movement of citizens beginning almost immediately. Both sides experienced this as a major technological leap, and with the new Hyperdrives they quickly began expanding into the rest of their region of space. Soon after this, the Naltok encountered the Quarg for the first time, and after a brief delay excitedly initiated contact, expecting a peaceful unification similar to the unification of their two worlds that had occurred a few years earlier. The planet of Kutora, as close as possible to the Quarg ringworld, was settled and became home to the newly founded Ministry of Alien Life, and the Naltok began excitedly sharing their technology with the Quarg, in the assumption that the Quarg would reciprocate.
The Quarg, however, had no interest in granting their technology to the vastly less mature Naltok, particularly the Jump Drives which could allow the Naltok to meet the Coalition. The Naltok hopes of cooperation were slowly crushed into oblivion, and quiet hostility toward the Quarg began to grow throughout the population. The Naltok, at first hopeful, now abandoning their dreams of a peaceful cooperation and unification like that between Nareltok and Vigechox, began to attempt to decipher the actions of the Quarg. With great reluctance, the Ministry of Alien Life and Ministry of Genetic Research made a single exception to their policy of non-secrecy, out of fear of potential Quarg retaliation if discovered. Quarg genomes were sequenced in secret, using collected genetic material from their surroundings, and Quarg cloned, in an attempt to understand the physical neurology of the Quarg brain that ultimately yielded little of any use, and is generally viewed as a mistake by the few that are aware of it. Despite their resentment of the Quarg, the Naltok never considered that it might be possible to force them away, and so the Quarg were left to build their ringworld in peace.
(there is a gap in their history here that is several thousand years long that hasn't been written yet, but the main notable event here is their first contact with small Heliarch visits similar to those on Poisonwood)
Recent Naltok history is defined by the arrival of the Alphas. A single Alpha ship, with a Jump Drive dating back to a single Pug-enhanced Deep ship looted during the Alpha Wars, travelled from Men to Amansinaya, then through the wormhole and into Naltok space. The Naltok remained hopeful that the Quarg were the outliers in terms of interspecies relations - the exception, not the rule - and thus welcomed the Alphas with open arms, hoping to gain insights about any technology they might have. Though the Alphas could provide little of note, their technology being far behind that of the Naltok (and what they brought being somewhat outdated by human standards), the Alphas quickly realised that by playing along with the Naltok requests they could secure a base beyond humanity and perhaps begin manipulating and cheating the Naltok as they had sought to with the Hai. The Naltok quickly identified the hallmarks of genetic engineering in the Alphas, and were even more excited to discover a species with artificial genetics like their own. The Alpha ship travelled to human space and back several times, bringing across an entire enclave of Alphas and some of their Human subjects.
In fact, the Naltok government's treatment of its Alpha visitors was far better than that of its own civilians, and many resented this. In a series of brilliant speeches and tactical engagements, Keloxok rallied together a fleet on Xorechige, declared the independence of the Xochira (meaning "defenders") and captured the southern half of Naltok space before their opponents could react. The Naltok government rallied a fleet in Keloteg, preparing to jump to Lixetog, but as they took off they found the required hyperlane inexplicably absent, leaving no possible path to attack from. Not wanting to risk a battle in Vokegol, the newly christened Telashki (meaning "augmented", a description intended to include both the Naltok and the Alphas) relented, beginning the ceasefire which has continued to this day.
Naltok ships have several distinctions from many other ships, thanks to their unique construction. While other species tend to build ships from metals or similar materials, Naltok ships are made of living bacterial colonies. This grants the Naltok a fairly powerful innate hull regeneration ability with very low energy requirements, at the cost of very poor heat dissipation and a permeable shield matrix as the bacterial hull grows over and partially blocks the shield projectors. This hull is also heavier than conventional materials, so Naltok ships tend to broadly have higher ratios of mass to outfit space than comparable ships of other factions.
Naltok ships designed before the Xochira-Telashki split are generally undermilitarised and make questionable design decisions, both factors resulting from the long Naltok history of peace. More recent designs by the two factions break this trend, being highly effective at the cost of civilian capabilities.
Naltok outfits are highly efficient at the cost of raw power.
Naltok shield generators have similar generation/ton to human shield generators, but use only 1/3 of the energy per shield point.
Naltok engines have similar thrust/ton and turn/ton to human plasma engines, but with extremely low energy requirements and heat generation that make them better than anything else currently in the game for thrust and turn per overall outfit space after cooling and energy - these are intended to provide an alternative option to the late-game engine sandbox, though I don't anticipate them being used more often than Korath or Remnant ones. The Naltok also have larger turning than thrusters (though not as much so as the Bunrodea), because with the high raw mass of their ships this gives their stock ships average top speed and turning but poor acceleration, and they don't have reverse thrusters.
Naltok reactors and generators have generally comparable energy/ton to human equivalents, but with massively reduced heat generation that pushes them up to T1.5 levels of overall efficacy. In addition to bioelectric cells, an RTG and a fission reactor, the Naltok also have biophotovoltaic cells, which provide half their energy as solar collection and half as energy generation. The Naltok make significant use of biotechnolgy where possible, and this is an area that I hope to expand on during their campaign, particularly for the Telashki.
Naltok weapons generally have low energy requirements and heat generation, and are somewhat lacking in raw power for their size, but they can still pack a hefty punch in the right circumstances. Of particular note are their Shell-Splitter Torpedoes, massive staged missiles that use discarded armour plating to distract enemy anti-missile systems, and their Steel-Render, a large artillery-like turreted cannon.
In addition to their shared weapons, the Xochira have two weapons specifically designed to block hostiles from traversing their space without conflict. Halt-Swarm missiles are fast, but weak, and deal slowing damage, but the more notable of the two weapons is the Leech-Ray, a burst-firing laser which drains its targets' fuel reserves. Mounted on the impressively fast Archerfish, the Leech-Rays make Xochira space very difficult to travel through without preparation.
The wormhole was opened by the Pug when moving the Wanderers out of this region of space, but was disrupted by an unexpected astronomical event, redirecting it and placing it in a metastable state from which it cannot be safely closed. The disrupted wormhole also has the notable feature of fully depleting the shields of any ship that passes through it, due to energetic flux experienced in transit.
A species of filamentous bioluminescent spacefaring bacteria, acquiring nutrients and energy from charged dust particles. Star-Worms propel themselves through space in a semicontrolled manner using tiny biological ion drives, and are noted to have a fondness for clinging harmlessly to ships' shields.