Iss

Typical representative (human for scale)

The Iss are bipedal reptiles that contacted the Alliance in 181 Standard Year.
Average height - 150-170 cm.
Estimated life expectancy - 110 ± 30 years.
Average weight - 70-90 kg

Brief History

Iss lived on a dry planet, lacking water. The seas occupied only 47% of the planet’s surface, and not all of them were deep enough for sailing. The other half had a huge desert for land. From the very beginning of their history, the Iss have sought ways to improve the irrigation situation - the lack of fertile land for farming has made them one of the most valuable resources, often causing wars over their possession. After Iss had reached into space, they began delivering ice from comets and ice asteroids to the surface of the planet. A terraforming project, the purpose of which is to increase the number of seas, and with them the area of the fertile lands. This project continues to this day, almost ten thousand years of replenishment of the world have increased the proportion of water on the planet to 55%, but the project is still far from completion, aiming at 66% water coverage. Contact with the Alliance has significantly increased the efficiency of the project and reduced the expected time frame. Contact with the Alliance occurred in an unorthodox manner - Iss did not invent a hypergenerator since they did not find any artifacts of the Ancients. They launched a sleeper ship with colonists suspended in cryopods in the direction of one of the nearest stars with planets considered to be habitable, accelerated to one-quarter of light speed. The flight took about 430 standard years, but upon arrival in that solar system and waking up from the long cryosleep, the crew discovered that the system already had a colony of the Alliance established 30 years ago.

The subsequent Contact required one of the Alliance patrol ships to jump back to Iss homeworld with representatives for the Iss on board. The remaining members of the colony ship that had time to withdraw from cryosleep by then were lowered onto the planet and given temporary housing.

Despite their conservative nature, the Iss actively welcomed the technologies of the Alliance, and immediately began to apply them. This led to one of the fastest colonization blasts in the history of the Alliance - over 40 years, iss have established more than a hundred new colonies, but immediately after that their colonization expansion almost completely stopped, and Iss concentrated on the development of the occupied territories.

Biology

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Iss are two-legged, but not upright, and they evolved as predators on their home planet. The short neck ends with a triangular head with jaws full of sharp teeth and covered with large horny plates. The Iss are cold-blooded, but their biochemistry allows them to remain active in a wide range of temperatures and for a long time.

Military doctrine

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State system

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Pseudo-anarchy. The society exists to ensure the safety of the population as a whole and to start large projects for which a large amount of resources, time, or workers is required. For more local matters, Iss are expected to self-organize and solve the issue by themselves.

Society (general mentality, special features)

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Since they descended from obligate predators, their civilization relies less on collectivism, which negatively affected their progress. They are almost four times more ancient than that of any other civilization of the Alliance and still a little behind the other participants in technical development, and their progress do not know any rapid advancements in technological development over short periods of time. This creates a strange looking duality of relations between the Iss and other civilizations - on one hand, they are concerned and aware of their slowness compared to other species (one of the main reasons that prompted them to take extreme measures such as a transient expansion into new solar systems), which in turn feeds their pride, because they believe that the principle of “Slow and steady wins the race” is the most faithful of all. Iss almost entirely lack mimetic muscles, so they gather the necessary social information using the tone of the voice. Prolonged silence is considered as either a sign of disrespect or an attempt at hiding something.